I'm using KVM so didn't have the tool.
While Les' suggestion looked like it was going to be pretty useful for
a variety of backup/restore situations, I didn't know if I had the
time to go through the docs and get things working in time.
So in the end I went with the repeated rSync method Scott mentioned.
The advantage is, I also went and made the new system C6 first, then
rsync the necessary data files instead of leaving it still on C5.
Thankfully nothing broke, well, except SSL certs for some reason but
that was easily fixed once people started complaining.
On 6/13/12, Tris Hoar <trishoar@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 08/06/2012 17:33, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
>> I've got a CentOS 5 server that I want to migrate over into a
>> virtualized instance.
>> The problem is I need to minimize downtime so was trying to figure out
>> a way to "live" clone the original.
>>
>> Initially, I thought I could do this via exporting an iSCSI target
>> from the virtual host, create a MD raid 1 array on the C5 server, wait
>> for it to sync, then shutdown the physical server and switch to the
>> virtual one.
>>
>> But after getting iSCSI working... I realize I could not create a md
>> device on a mounted disk. Unfortunately this old C5 wasn't setup with
>> md raid 1 originally so I can't just add a the iSCSI target as an
>> additional member for a triplicate.
>>
>> So I remembered DRBD was supposed to be used for replication.
>>
>> But after getting things set up, running the drbd-admin create-md
>> command gave me this scary warning it will destroy data on the disk.
>> Apparently because drbd writes meta data to the drive. So that appears
>> to be a no go too.
>>
>> Am I missing something glaringly obvious here, or is the only way I'm
>> going be able to migrate is to shutdown the C5 server for a few hours
>> while duping the old drives? Would greatly appreciate any pointers how
>> best to do this.
>>
>
> You don't say what virtualisation platform you are using is, but if it's
> VMware, then you can use VMware converter to do the migration. This can,
> if you want, clone the physical computer into VMware, shut down the
> physical computer and bring up the new virtual instance. All whilst the
> physical remained up. I've used it for a few Linux boxes, where I've
> wanted a quick dev version of an existing server and its been fine.
>
> I guess, you could try pulling it into an ESXi host, and then exporting
> that in a format whatever virtualisation program it is you use supports...
>
> Regards,
>
> Tris
>
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