I’ve finished the server migration and everything was successful and only maybe 30-45 minutes of downtime. The old computer I’m using for a server got an upgrade while I was migrating as well. A little faster processor and doubled the memory in it.

I did run into a problem with ESXi, apparently since the motherboard was older in the server ESXi wouldn’t install correctly onto the drive I had in there, and the motherboard also didn’t support booting from USB to install ESXi to a flash drive, as suggested by a few sites. So I scraped the idea for ESXi and installed CentOS 5.4 on the server without any desktop managers and disabled everything except a few essential services, this netted a server using less than 200 MB of memory. Then I installed VMWare Server 2 on it and transferred my VM image over to the server. Although there is more overhead having a complete OS and VM Server for my purposes it should be fine.

Tags: server, virtualization

Before this week, my server that handles this website was beginning to show signs that it need a fresh start. It’s currently running CentOS 4.4, so I decided it’s time to upgrade. So I grabbed the latest DVD iso from CentOS for 5.4 and installed a clean virtual machine on my desktop. I’ve just finished migrating everything from the old server to the virtual machine. I’ve also done away with the cobbled together mail solution of sendmail, dovecot, and assp I had running in favor of a very nice open-source Exchange-type replacement called Zimbra.

The next step after a couple of days of testing will be wiping the old drive in the old server and installing VMWare ESXi on it. I decided to virtualize to make it easier to upgrade in the future when I decide to build a new desktop. I’ll retire my current desktop and recommission it as the new server and having everything virtualized should make the transition much smoother. I’m hoping downtime will be minimal if any at all.

Tags: server, virtualization, vmware