Restoring virtualmin virtual server backup... but on a new dedi.

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#1 Thu, 09/12/2019 - 16:30
OliverF

Restoring virtualmin virtual server backup... but on a new dedi.

Hello!

I'm moving to a new server soon, first time in 5 years (holy cow, already?!?), and I'm in the middle of making myself a checklist of what could go wrong, or shouldn't be a cause for worrying. I've reached the case of virtualmin backups restoration, so I'd rather ask here and be sure, rather than discover by myself in 2-3 months without time to prepare in advance :)

So, please, may I humbly ask how much it can cause problems, if we
- (1) - Back up an entire virtual domain in virtualmin (files, databases, virtualmin/dns/mail/server config), on a production server, and
- (2) - Restore it onto a new machine, already live on the internet, on which virtualmin will be already installed, a machine that will have different hardware (still same CPU family at least, larger hard disks, slightly different partitioning), a newer OS (from oldstable to latest Debian), and different DNS settings (different IPs, different reverse as there'll be a moment when both servers will be live, during the transition phase.)

Is it a manual but relatively simple process, in which we import the websites one by one, once the import is done we go in virtualmin in the part where you configure the DNS, and we enter the new IP, the new reverse, plus the other DNS fields (a, mx, etc), and this is it?

Or maybe, will virtualmin auto-fill parts of the DNS fields, or maybe all of them, or won't be it autofilled? (In my eyes, it matters a lot. Wrong dns fields and mails could bounce because gmail/hotmail servers deem them untrusted, for instance, etcetera, in which case I'd go and install a brand new test ground website on the new server to see what the DNS entries ought to look like, etc...)

Or might there be issues I would have to take care of, first, or else the import onto a new server might go wrong? For instance, until I make the change on the registrar level, the new server on which I import websites may be live, but it won't be serving the websites yet, so maybe, if there is DNS fields autodetection, it won't know yet what to autodetect (honestly, no idea for sure.) Maybe it implies a period of panic in which the final settings are inputted only after the domain registrar is asked to point to the new server?

You're welcome to call me paranoid, but I prefer to be prepared in advance in case it's not an easy process.

Thank you very much if you've got a pair of minutes to talk about that, be it to reassure me or confirm it takes specific preparation, I'll be grateful :)

Fri, 09/13/2019 - 16:05
noisemarine

Have a read of this: https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/migrate

It's fairly straight forward and I have used it successfully.

Do a test or two before your main migration. That way you can check (and write) your documentation, as well as test you are getting everything you need from your backups.

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