Upgrade with New Installation Zimbra 9

[oetiker]

Hi

I upgrade my zimbra 8.8.15 NE Ubuntu 16.04 installation since years and I like to make a clean new start of my zimbra server with zimbra 9
What would be a good procedure:

o Setup Linux Machine with Ubuntu 18.04
o Installing Zimbra 9 from Scratch
o How to migrate all the configurations of my Zimbra 8.8.15 Installation ?
o How to migrate all mailboxes, distribution list, .. ?

thanks

Manuel

[Martinwiertz]

I can’t give you the answer. But i am curious to the solution.

I am using Suite Plus. This helps with easy recovery or migration. On the forum there are some articles about backup/restore. Or you could do an inplace upgrade to 9 and then backup/restore on a new system.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=67804

https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/ZCS_to_ZCS_rsync_Migration

[oetiker]

Hi

I think it would be good to have default settings in the system. Over the years I did so many changes and I'm not
sure if this has any down sides now....

Clean new setup with default values and moving all accounts and domains to the new system would be my goal... to get
rid of all the changes and tweeks...

manuel

[rleiker]

h

Hi

I upgrade my zimbra 8.8.15 NE Ubuntu 16.04 installation since years and I like to make a clean new start of my zimbra server with zimbra 9
What would be a good procedure:

o Setup Linux Machine with Ubuntu 18.04
o Installing Zimbra 9 from Scratch
o How to migrate all the configurations of my Zimbra 8.8.15 Installation ?
o How to migrate all mailboxes, distribution list, .. ?

thanks

Manuel

Hi Manuel,

Normally, an in-place upgrade from 8.8.15 to 9.0 should work fine, but if you want a clean start, consider using a side-by-side migration. It is the safest and most reliable option for pulling in all existing mailbox data, while adopting the default settings that ship with Zimbra. It looks like someone started a Wiki article about it here, but didn't finish: https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zimbra_Migration . To briefly summarize the process, you would:

1.) From your 8.8.15 server, install the latest patches, perform an integrity check of your MariaDB database and perform a blob check of all mailboxes. Fix any problems found.

2.) From your 8.8.15 server, create an NG Backup (provided by Zextras) of all of your mailboxes to a network location (NFS, SMB, etc.).

3.) Install Zimbra 9 on a new server, and modify any default settings, as needed.

4.) Make the shared network location (NFS, SMB, etc.) available to the Zimbra 9 server. From the command line, run: "zxsuite backup doExternalRestore /path/to/your/backups domains example.com provisioning_only TRUE" (replacing "example.com" with the domain you want to migrate. This doesn't restore existing mailbox data, but does provision all of the mailboxes on the Zimbra 9 system, so users can at least login to those empty mailboxes.

5.) Update the DNS records for example.com so that new email is delivered to your Zimbra 9 server, and your users begin checking their Zimbra 9 mailbox for new mail.

6.) From your 8.8.15 server, run another SmartScan backup for the example.com mailboxes. This picks up all incremental mailbox changes since the initial backup was run in step 2.

7.) From your Zimbra 9 server, run: "zxsuite backup doExternalRestore /path/to/your/backups domains example.com" to restore the mailbox data for all example.com mailboxes.

This is just a brief list of the overall process, so you will want to check the Zimbra Administration documentation for more details, but it should get you started down the right path. The benefit of this approach is that it is minimally disruptive to each mailbox user, and there is no downtime, so new inbound messages do not bounce while the upgrade is in process. It is also very easy to roll back in case something goes wrong, as you need only reverse the change made in step 5 to revert users back to their 8.8.15 mailboxes.

[maxxer]

The best so far migration method has been ZeXtras migration tool for long time. It's free for 30 days.
But I haven't read any statement from them regarding Z9 compatibility yet.

[rleiker]

The best so far migration method has been ZeXtras migration tool for long time. It's free for 30 days.
But I haven't read any statement from them regarding Z9 compatibility yet.

I have been told by Synacor employees that Zimbra 9 has about 85% of the same code base as Zimbra 9, so I think this means the Zextras migration tool will work with Zimbra 9 too.

The Zextras migration tool is an option for upgrading to Zimbra 9, but it works differently than the incremental (side-by-side) migration described in my last post in this topic. With the migration tool, it is necessary to shut down the old Zimbra server, run the migration tool to copy all of the mailbox data in one shot, then restore it to the new Zimbra 9 server. The migration tool has the advantage of moving all mailboxes simultaneously, but it has the downside that both the source and destination Zimbra servers must be taken offline while the migration is in process. If you have a lot of data to move, you could be looking at either hours or days of downtime.

The incremental (side-by-side) migration approach described in my last post reduces the downtime to a bare minimum, and also offers a convenient means to fall back to the old Zimbra server, should there be a problem restoring the data to the new Zimbra 9 server.

[maxxer]

The incremental (side-by-side) migration approach described in my last post reduces the downtime to a bare minimum, and also offers a convenient means to fall back to the old Zimbra server, should there be a problem restoring the data to the new Zimbra 9 server.

What you described is the incremental variation of the migration procedure

Anyway it's the best option.

[rleiker]

The incremental (side-by-side) migration approach described in my last post reduces the downtime to a bare minimum, and also offers a convenient means to fall back to the old Zimbra server, should there be a problem restoring the data to the new Zimbra 9 server.

What you described is the incremental variation of the migration procedure

Anyway it's the best option.

Yes, that is indeed what I was describing. It is sometimes also called a side-by-side migration. Thanks for including the link to the associated Zextras documentation, as I overlooked doing that in my last post.

[ccelis5215]

Hello, if you are planning an 9 upgrade means that you are a Network user, so, the Zimbra 8.8..15.backup/restore tools will work for you.

You can perform an incremental migration depending on your mailboxes total size.

ccelis