Topic: Condensing Servers & Backup Server

[TrevorNWatson]

Currently at my office, each time somebody wanted to set up a new web site, they created a new server with new email accounts and domains and properties for each server.

Now that I've moved into the position that takes care of all the servers, I'd like to reduce the number of servers we have in our office as well as make it substantially easier for anybody to maintain or do any tasks on the servers (i.e. a new user means we need to make a new user on 6 different servers, plus passwords get lost by users quite often as they can't remember which password goes where... quite a pain!).

We have 4 servers that are for external sites, 3 servers for internal documents and various other servers for specific reasons (one is a fully functional server that USED to be used, but now just hosts the Jabber server (which isn't even used) and one is used by the developers as a source code repository).

Is there an easy way to consolidate all the servers into a single server?  I'd like to move from having the power consumption of a major corporation down to a reasonable level as well as make things easier on everyone.

Also,  if this were to happen (all domains on one server), it would be MUCH more critical that we could have a backup server running in tandem or via backups to keep information available in case of emergency or hardware failure.

I've seen Affa  (which seems to just copy files?) and imapsync (which I suppose COULD be used to create a script to backup the emails), but is there an easier way in SME Server to sychronize two servers or even better run them in tandem?

The existing servers run from SME Server 6.0 to 7.2 right now.

Thanks in advance.

Trevor Watson

[pfloor]

This could easily all be done on one SME server.  I did something similar, I consolidated 5 separate (mail, web, file, fax and Asterisk SIP) servers from desktop hardware all onto one server grade machine.  I didn't think it would work due to the phone system but it all went flawlessly and worked perfectly on one dual Xeon 2.6 server with 4 Gig of ram (and that turned out to be overkill).

You could do something like this:
1- Build a new server and restore the main user and data on it first.
2- Add additional iBays for other data and migrate the data from the other servers.
3- Add the other domains, create the needed iBays, migrate the web pages and point the domains to the proper iBays.
4- Move the other remaining things over.
5- Shut down old servers as you go along and don't forget to remap the client machines as some of your mappings will change.

Affa is more than just a file copy.  You can replicate your server and with basically one command (affa-rise) bring the replicated server online in minutes in the case of a hardware failure.

Running 2 servers in tandem (aka "High Availability") is something that has not been done successfully with SME (not from lack of trying) and is probably way overkill for what you need.  SME on good hardware is capable of handling hundreds (if not thousands) of users.  How many users are you talking about here?

[TrevorNWatson]

We're dealing with a small base of users, 10-15 at most at the current time.

I'm impressed you got it all onto the one server!  It took me too long to get the Asterisk/Fax box working how we want it.  I'm not gonna touch that one again!

Thanks for your comments