Server to Server Transfer

L

layer0

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Aug 3, 2006
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There needs to be a robust server to server transfer utility like cPanel has had for many years.

For example, I should be able to login to the destination server, type in the admin details of the origin server and it should give me a list of the accounts I can migrate, and then offer me the ability to migrate whichever accounts I want.

Right now, migrating from one DA server to the other if there's a substantial number of accounts is an absolute headache. It shouldn't be this way.
 
Obviously doing it wrong? We encounter numerous errors every time we do this. We're doing things quite similar to what's mentioned in that post.

Have you seen how cPanel handles migrations?

With the way DA handles migrations, there's a lot of inherent limitations. For example, with the method you just linked to, there needs to be enough space on the origin system to store all those backups locally in the first place. So, instead you can use DA to FTP the backups as it generates them, but that is pretty error prone as we're experiencing right now...moreover, it would be nice if DA could at least implement SCP for this feature.
 
And don't get me wrong. I like DirectAdmin. I own a ton of licenses, and we want to keep it that way. We just want to see a cleaner way to transfer from to server. I'm not trying to bash, I'm not sure why it's such a big deal that I'm asking for this functionality to be improved.
 
I'm not sure how cPanel does it. But still some panels for managing VPS allow to migrate a container from one hardware node to another, so called live migration without need to backup/move/copy/restore data manually.

I guess here Directadmin could do the same way, and for these purpose to achieve the desired we need API for admin transfer, which already exists: http://www.directadmin.com/features.php?id=1090

So that's half way done already, I'd guess. And I like the idea.
 
I just moved a bunch of accounts from one to another server and found it painless, I was expecting a much harder task but to my surprise, it went very quickly and with no pain :)
I did do a couple test restores and they went well, I then got gutsy and did a major account backup on the one, went to the other, did an admin restore, selected all the accounts, with a nervous feeling, went to get a new cup of coffee and when I returned the restore was complete for all the accounts I had selected, at 1st I wondered if something went wrong because it was way too fast but, nope all were intact and working, couple of these accounts were huge in size like 20GB
so the server to server transfer is a great tool, saved countless hours of the one by one
as scsi has mentioned 'simplest thing ever':cool:
 
I often find the need to migrate between servers, often for clients, but now for us as we're migrating to all new managed systems.

We've run into occasional problems, but I can't see how the method used by cPanel wouldn't as well. I was discussing this very issue with AndyII on the phone today.

Tje problems we see fall into several categories:

1) a recent problem; a change must have been made to how Backup/Restore works; we got this error:

Cannot read /home/admin/admin_restore/USERNAME/backup/user.conf : Unable to open /home/admin/admin_restore/USERNAME/backup/user.conf for reading.

This appears to be a problem created (perhaps) because recent ystems are more careful about restoring as root. And older systems saved the file with root ownership. We resolved this problem by updating origin servers and redoing the backup. We'll report this later today as a bug as soon as we've verified details.

2) Usernames are duplicated on new server. I don't know if or how cPanel would resolve this issue, but in our case it's never happened. If it does, we'll need to change username before we make backup on origin server and we'd also have to either have the user rename databases (would be painstaking).

3) User backups don't move. If a user has made backups he'd like to see them available once we move him to another server. Would appreciate an option for this to override manual exclusion, but I doubt I'd ever use it.

4) Roundcube per-user settings can only curretly be moved on a per-server basis. This has been studied by John and appears to be a difficulty which shold be resolved by Roundcube, but it likely won't be. If you're moving one server to one server you can backup Roundcube database and restore it, but no easy way to merge two servers to one and retain the data.

We'd like an option to somehow manage DNS better so those of us using either Multi-Server Option or Master2Slave DNS Replicator (or other hidden-master solution) won't have to do a lot of manual adjustments. We've found a workaround for Mater2Slave DNS Replicator; we simply chattr immutable the file Master2Slave DNS replicator changes every fifteen minutes to notif the slaves. But it possibly could be made easier.

Got any other specific issues which need to be addressed?

Note that unless cPanel addresses thse isues, the fancy interface doesn't really make a move any easier or more successful; only less tedious.

Jeff
 
I've never been able to do it using backups period. I get a lot of dns related errors and unexplainable "restore failed" errors. While it easy to restore accounts using backups on the original server, I've had a time moving them to different servers.

So in short, I agree.. Moving accounts from one server to the next is not as for some as it is for some. My only success story is to literally create everything from scratch on the new server and rebuild the account manually. Very tedious..
 
Your firewall is most likely killing/blocking a successful backup or restore. I find out this myself. When I disable CSF large backups are successful, when I enable CSF large backups fail and small backups finish.
 
this would seem to be a perfect answer to the why failures :)
but opposed to disable, find and allow what the system needs to work, unless that would also allow a hole that would be dangerous

Petertjuh360 said:
Your firewall is most likely killing/blocking a successful backup or restore. I find out this myself. When I disable CSF large backups are successful, when I enable CSF large backups fail and small backups finish.
Click to expand...
 
I've never had this problem, I've always had CSF running on new servers and old, and have had no problem moving huge backups between servers. And I don't know what specifically in CSF could be causing a problem with large backups.

However... I generally don't backup directly to the new server. Usually I backup locally, then move the files with either FTP or SCP (I generally use SCP), and then restore them.

Jeff
 
I agree Jeff. I'm confident saying that my issue wasn't firewall based. Usually an easy thing to troubleshoot too when/if ever an issue is a firewall thing.

It was more like stagnant dns entries combined with the option to check for domain ownership. Didn't help that the two servers were set up for multi-server.. Wasn't serious, but for the newbie admin like me, was harder to accomplish than I would've liked. This is where cPanel wins I think. It does a lot of heavy lifting for the user/admin/reseller in this case. But like anything, once you do it right, you then know how. :)
 
You're right, r3chn3r, about the multi-server option problem. We don't use multi-server option so even though I knew about that problem, I forgot to write about it. And yes, I also didn't mention the issue of turning off the domain ownership restriction while doing the restores.

Jeff
 
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