Need advice on cloning Debian server
Hello all.
I am relatively new to Linux/Debian and need some advice on "cloning"
a Debian system.
At work we have a Debian file server, running Squeeze, which needs to
be cloned to new hardware and then the old machine will be retired.
It is a file server for a small office, has 4 smallish SATA drives
and is setup with RAID 5 and LVM.
A new faster system has been built with two 2Tb SATA drives (plenty
of room to grow) and we want to set this up with RAID 1 and again LVM.
My inexperience with Linux in general and Debian means that I am
unsure how to do this efficiently, given that we are going from a 4
disc RAID 5 setup to a 2 disc RAID 1 setup instead. I recently
successfully did something similar with another server we had but
that was a RAID 1 system being cloned to a newer RAID 1 box. However,
I am unsure how to achieve a swap from the 4 disc RAID 5 setup to a 2
disc RAID 1 setup.
My thought is that I should install Debian squeeze on to it and get
it running with RAID & LVM, with partitions, logical volumes etc.
matching the original file server, and then use rsync to copy all the
data files over the internal network. I expect that this, as a
minimum, will mean a new IP address for the new box, fstab, hosts and
other changes on it compared to the original server.
Is this likely to be a major issue to sort out once the new system
has been setup? If so, what would the best way to "fix" the new
system once Debian is installed onto it? Can I also rsync the
contents of the /etc, /usr, /var, /boot, /root etc. directories or
will this cause problems (I suspect it will)? Is there anyway of
creating as exact a clone of the old system onto the new hardware as
possible? If so, how do I achieve this?
Any guidance or advice from those much wiser and more knowledgeable
than me would be appreciated.
Hope I have been clear enough above regarding what I want to achieve.
What else might you all need to know to be able to advise or suggest
how I can do the job?
Thanks in advance.
Joe Aquilina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joe Aquilina PO Box 819 Morley WA 6943
Mobile: 0428 216069
rhadmirri@westnet.com.au or joeaquilina@westnet.com.au
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