Question about rsyncing "live" data

[anthor]

Hi ladies & gents

I'm planning to move a Zimbra mail server installation from one server to another. It has about 100GB worth of mail stored and I anticipate that it's going to take a while.

I know that running rsync while Zimbra is running would result in inconsistencies in the data on the destination server, but would it all be resolved if I take Zimbra down on the source server at the end and then run rsync again?

My hope is that I will copy over most of the data without downtime, and then just run it again after stopping Zimbra to make sure that the source and destination are exactly the same.

Can anyone tell me if my thinking is correct?

 

[WAslayer]

If you want to ensure data consistency, run the rsync offline.. I dont know the intricacies of Zimbra, but your safest bet is to run it offline..

if you want to do this migration without downtime and be sure of keeping data consistent, fresh install Zimbra on the new server, recreate the mailboxes and use this tool to migrate email between mailboxes: https://imapsync.lamiral.info/..

 

[Nod]

You could try this: https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Server_Live_sync

Another possible solution would be to keep the disks in sync on block level with something like DRBD.

 

[Sinbad]

So yes. When you rerun the rsync after shutting down the source instance, it will copy any deltas across to the target resulting in it being OK. Just make sure target isn't running while you do this.

 

[WAslayer]

Just make sure target isn't running while you do this.

This means downtime...