Topic: Temporary migration of users to second server?

[Rogue]

At the end of this month I am changing broadband providers, and will encounter approximately one week of no connectivity. As several remote family members are now using my server for all their email traffic, I wanted to find a way to maintain service for them during the outage.

My server is currently SME6.01, and there are about 10 accounts I need to maintain connectivity for.

I have another SME6.01 server that I have installed for a colleague (another venue, different provider), which I have been given permission to use if it will help. Due to distances involved, it's not feasible to relocate my server to his location for the duration of this outage. I do have remote access to the Server Manager on his server, so hopefully I can manage all of this remotely.

What I was considering:
- Set up my domain as a virtual domain on his server
- Set up the 10 users (there are no overlaps in user names luckily) on his server
- Change DNS to set MX records and mail.domain hostname to his IP.
- Once the service is restored at my end, delete the users and virtual domain, update DNS again, etc.

Are there any obvious problems with this process?

I am also looking for recommendations on the best way to migrate any existing mail from my server to the temporary server (so users don't lose mail), then migrate this back when my server is back online.

[raem]

Rogue

Sounds Ok generally.

> - Change DNS to set MX records and mail.domain hostname to his IP.

I'm not totally sure, but you may have some propagation delay after changing the records & again when you change back to your new server, so there may be some few hours interruption.

> I am also looking for recommendations on the best way to migrate any > existing mail from my server to the temporary server (so users don't
> lose mail), then migrate this back when my server is back online.

At a point in time (when both servers are still live) you disable the mail server on the old server, and then create the new users on the remote server, copy the users folders & files from server to server using scp, fix any permissions if neceessary and then shutdown the old server (remembering to later re-enable the mail service after it is up and running on the new connection and after you have copied back all the mail the users got while at the new location.
When copying back, remember to disable the mail server temporarily on your friends server, copy the user files and delete the users, so that no messages get lost in space.

[Rogue]

Thanks Ray - exactly the type of feedback I was after.

I'm not totally sure, but you may have some propagation delay after changing the records & again when you change back to your new server, so there may be some few hours interruption.

Got this covered. I know my users are all on the same timezone as me, so I'll do a midnight cutover, and everything will be ready for them by the time they surface in the morning.

At a point in time (when both servers are still live) you disable the mail server on the old server, and then create the new users on the remote server, copy the users folders & files from server to server using scp, fix any permissions if neceessary and then shutdown the old server (remembering to later re-enable the mail service after it is up and running on the new connection and after you have copied back all the mail the users got while at the new location.
When copying back, remember to disable the mail server temporarily on your friends server, copy the user files and delete the users, so that no messages get lost in space.

This should be pretty simple then. Any known issues copying user files between SME versions? It's 6.01 - 6.01 for the initial cutover, but it will be 6.01 - 7.0RC2 for the switch back (I'm going to use the downtime to rebuild the server, replace aging hardware, etc).

[pcdoc]

Rogue, as this is 6 days later, you may have already realised there is an issue going from 6.01 to 7rc2. I have had this issue on a number of rebuids lately, and there is a trick.

create the user on 7, log on using imap, create an email folder called temp, copy all the files in the users /cur directory (for inbox, or whatever folder). Do this at command level using mc or similar program. You will have to do this folder by folder, haven't found a faster way yet, though i am still looking.

When you have all the files from the /cur folder to the new temp folder, open the temp folder in webmail, or whatever email client you are using for imap connection, and transfer all email to the new correct folder from the temp folder.

Repeat this until all folders are done.

The last server I had to do this on, it took about 4 hours. 150+ users with many sub-directories each..... AHHH!!!!

We do the upgrade to 7RC from 6.01 if mainboard fails on servers presently running 6.01 instead of just rebuilding with 6.01.

Hope this helps.

Matt H
TCM-NNS

[Smitro]

Rogue,

This may not be of much help, but worth a thought.

I did the same thing myself when moving house, I had a similar number of users and a friend that hosted my mail for the 3 weeks that it took to have everything hooked back up (should have been less, but that's another story).

What I did is gave my users warning that the change was going to happen, and that they would loose there current emails for a week or so while being moved to the tempory server, giving them a chance to get what they needed, then I did the change over, then before changeing back I gave them warning to grab all of the mail they needed as it would be lost.

All users did this and were happy that they did not loose any mail durring the down time. Simple solution I know, probably not the best. But in the end there was less worries for me.

HTH