How to migrate to up-to-date and other OS

[boldlookup]

We want to upgrade our Zimbra instance and OS. Is this possible? Does Zimbra support this?

We did some tests with the Zextras migration tool but that does not seem to be a worthwhile approach. Our tests show that this tool will leave most mail behind. Using this tool we can only migrate around 2% of users mails.

So for example we tried to migrate one server running 8.7.11 zimbra to another server running Zimbra 8.7.11 using this tool. On around 98% of mails restore fails with message that "size" is missing in "metadata".

At this point the conclusion seems to be that a Zimbra server once installed is locked to a specific OS and version? Is this correct? If you want a different OS and version you just leave all mail behind? Maybe start a new mail domain? That doesn't make sense.

How do you keep a Zimbra site up-to-date?

[phoenix]

We want to upgrade our Zimbra instance and OS. Is this possible? Does Zimbra support this?

Yes.

We did some tests with the Zextras migration tool but that does not seem to be a worthwhile approach. Our tests show that this tool will leave most mail behind. Using this tool we can only migrate around 2% of users mails.

That's not correct, it will migrate all of the mail plus your server settings.

So for example we tried to migrate one server running 8.7.11 zimbra to another server running Zimbra 8.7.11 using this tool. On around 98% of mails restore fails with message that "size" is missing in "metadata".

That would indicate a problem with your current server and you'd need to investigate why this is happening.

At this point the conclusion seems to be that a Zimbra server once installed is locked to a specific OS and version? Is this correct? If you want a different OS and version you just leave all mail behind? Maybe start a new mail domain? That doesn't make sense.

You're right that doesn't make sense and that isn't the case.

How do you keep a Zimbra site up-to-date?

You can either update in place (after taking suitable backups of your ZCS server) or if you're moving to a new server then install the ZeXtras migration tool and install a new server (with whatever supported o/s you desire) then start the migration from your old server to the new one. I've done this many times without problems, so have many forum users.

There are other methods to move ZCS to a new server, check some of the forums threads and wiki articles on this topic and see which one suit you.

[strafford]

We just successfully upgraded both our OS and Zimbra and it is working fine. We first went to 8.8.15 running on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (which is done) and made sure everything was working. We had to make sure our split DNS was working (which it wasn't - solution is here). Then we upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS and then reinstalled 8.8.15 (again, or over-top of the existing install). It is working just fine. We followed the notes in the official release and also this guide by Daniel Mettler.