Upgrading Zimbra

[synaesthesia]

I'm a bit of a noob with Linux so this is a fairly hefty undertaking, yet confident enough in my google-fu to muddle round. However, any advice from those that have done it would be appreciatd.

 

We currently run Zimbra 7.2.x OSE on Ubuntu 8.04LTS. Runs perfectly well, except the mass upgrade to Internet Explorer 11 has caused issues (no folders or colour codes!) Staff have access to Chrome so that's not a major issue, so we're looking at long term plans. Also we have diminishing storage, and at the rate of growth we've 6 months left before we fill up.

 

1. Go to Office 365. Ugh!

2. Upgrade.

 

2. is my favoured approach. The plan would be to set up Ubuntu 12.04 (or 14.04 if a newer version of Zimbra allows this) with Zimbra 8.0.x (currently 8.0.7).

However, shifting settings and data over seems to be quite a large job, plus something I'd be a *lot*/ more comfy with if I could test it. So far, I can't see a way of doing this without JFDI, live. (thankfully it's on ESX so we can happily snapshot away)

 

Would there be a way to clone it and have it usable without it connecting to the network/pulling in any mail/clients connecting to it, so I could use it for testing?

 

And when it comes to it, the upgrade path would be:

 

Update to Zimbra 7.2.7

Upgrade Ubuntu to 10.04

Update to Zimbra 8.0.7

Upgrade Ubuntu to 12.04

Cross fingers it works!

 

Quite long winded it seems!

[MicrodigitUK]

@tomdawson Edited May 13, 2014 by MicrodigitUK

[tomdawson]

@tomdawson

 

Hey, that's me!

 

Yup, I performed an upgrade from Zimbra 6.0.4 Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit physical to Zimbra 8.0.6 Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit in February half term. I say upgrade, it was a series of upgrades across a series of different virtual machines.

 

- Zimbra 6.0.4 Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit physical to Zimbra 6.0.4 Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit virtual (p2v)

- Zimbra 6.0.4 Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit virtual to Zimbra 7.2.6 Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit virtual (upgrade in-place)

- Zimbra 7.2.6 Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit virtual to Zimbra 7.2.6 Ubuntu 10.04 32-bit virtual (data to new vm)

then the fun starts with converting to 64-bit

Zimbra 7.2.6 Ubuntu 10.04 32-bit virtual to Zimbra 7.2.6 Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit virtual (data to new vm plus 64-bit conversion)

Zimbra 7.2.6 Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit virtual to Zimbra 8.0.6 Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit virtual (upgrade in-place)

Zimbra 8.0.6 Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit virtual to Zimbra 8.0.6 Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit virtual (data to new vm)

 

Clearly a lot more steps than you might need to perform as you're already at 7.2.x - and I might have been able to do the job with fewer steps - but it meant I had lots of places to roll back to. Upgrading Ubuntu in-place was a nightmare, trying to find appropriate repositories and such, so it was actually a lot easier to complete the task by building a new VM with the appropriate OS, copy the data across.

 

The information in the Zimbra Wiki is really good - especially for the migration from 32bit to 64bit (you didn't say which you're running), so I would spend some time reading that carefully if you need to perform this upgrade. Apart from that, the process is basically to create your VM, install Zimbra with the -s option, to install Zimbra without setting anything up, move /opt/zimbra out of the way then rsync /opt/zimbra from your old VM to /opt/zimbra on your new one, run zmfixperms to set the permissions, re-run the installer, it will pick up that there's already an installation in place, and continue to repair the installation.

 

DM me if you'd like any more hints, but that stuff with the information on the Zimbra forums should help!

[synaesthesia]

Ah, that's really helpful, many thanks! Yeah, our Ubuntu 8.04 is 32bit on 4GB ram, so naturally that's going up. Still been very impressed with how that's handled near 2000 mailboxes without ever missing a beat, going slowly or anything. Time to futureproof I've been glancing over the wiki's - as you say they're really in-depth, it was probably that which has put me off a little! Still, I think I'd rather go through all that admit defeat and roll over to Office 365.

[webman]

I've upgraded Zimbra and Ubuntu several times as well in the past - and as long as you have a plan for doing the correct versions of the OS and Zimbra in the right order, doing as tomdawson said is pretty much the gist of it. If you do it in a VM you could take snapshots after each successful step just incase the next one doesn't go to plan.

 

Have you ever used any custom scripts on the server to manage accounts or anything like that? Just make sure you migrate those too

[synaesthesia]

Thankfully not as far as I know But yes indeed, snapshots will be my friend through this process

[tomdawson]

I totally forgot about this thread! How bad is that?!

 

How did you get on, @synaesthesia ?

[synaesthesia]

Testing didn't go too far as I couldn't figure out how to do it *safely* without risking mailflow. We went as far as we could and decided to bite the bullet live during the summer. The test upgrade "worked" though - zimbra carried through the steps and upgraded all the way as did Ubuntu, but at the last stage couldn't go far enough to test if it actually worked. I'm likely to start from scratch with a fresh Zimbra installation on a fresh OS during the summer and use rsync to transfer.