Moving Domino from one piece of hardware to another
As you know if you read this blog, I’ve been slowly updating our servers to Domino 7. It’s gone swimmingly, but there’s one thing that I’ve done numerous times in the past, and it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is.
Moving a Domino server from one piece of hardware to another.
We had an old piece of hardware running Domino 6.5.4. We wanted to upgrade to new hardware and move to Domino 7. So, we would have to move the server at 6.5.4 then upgrade thereafter.
Well I built the new server and installed Domino 6.5.4 (along with FP1 and Symantec Mail Security for Domimo) in exactly the same way as it was installed on the old server. Then, I brought down Domino on the old box and copied the old data directory overtop of the data directory on the new box. I then changed the IP of the old box, and on the new box I gave it the old server’s IP. Then I simply fired up the server.
It came up exactly like the old server did.
So now I had the new server up and running and acting like the old server. No one had to reconfig Notes clients, open any ports, or do anything. It was the same old server, with a new hardware transplant. Oh yeah, I moved from Windows 2000 Server to 2003 Server as well.
Anyway, after I was sure everything was good, I then upgraded to Domino 7. No problems there either.
So in the course of 3 hours, I moved an entire Notes server from one hardware platform and one OS to another piece of hardware and a newer OS. I then upgraded the Notes server to version 7. The only reason it took 3 hours was because the 60 GB transfer of the data directory took two hours 🙂
Try that with Exchange. I dare you.
November 23, 2005 @ 3:49 pm
Yup -I recently did that with 50+ servers. moving from v4.5/v4.6 and v.5.0.8 to v6.5.x. From old servers to a new IBM blade farm.
Good, isnt it.
The most time consuming part was pursuading the project management that it would work, and telling the network folks to change the DNS (we couldnt re-use the old IP addresses in this case)
—* Bill
November 25, 2005 @ 9:08 am
Its just the beauty of the product summerised in one administrative task – moving hardware… I had to do this with exchange once, and it was a bitch. I think it would take a great advertisement.
List the tasks you had outlined above
List the tasks in moving an exchange server to new hardware
followed by two words
“enough said”