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List: ngw
Subject: Re: [ngw] Novell direction for GroupWise agents
From: "Matt Ray" <mray () gwguru ! com>
Date: 2007-04-27 18:49:43
Message-ID: 4631E357.CD65.004F.0 () gwguru ! com
[Download RAW message or body]
Count yourself lucky on the moves. :-) I understand what you did and it makes \
sense. I would have opted for an hour of downtime rather than coordinating 200 user \
schedules. Sounds like way too much work for me. Glad it all worked out.
Matt
> > > On 4/27/2007 at 11:43 AM, <ngw@ngwlist.com> wrote:
I chose to do the user moves because I was given NO downtime to work with. In order \
to keep the system up and running for everyone except the users being actively moved, \
I chose to set up the second PO and do moves. I then was able to work on the moves \
during my normal work hours and avoided a weekend or evening event. I only had 200 \
users to move so this kept me busy coordinating with them for a few weeks but was \
do-able in my case. I like your dbcopy method as it seems like it would be much \
faster and cleaner in the end. BTW I had no issues when moving the users from PO to \
PO other than a few hung messages that needed a resend :)
Jim Schick
Office of Judicial Administration
State of Kansas
> > > On 4/25/2007 at 12:05 PM, in message <462F27EF.CD65.004F.0@gwguru.com>, "Matt \
> > > Ray" <mray@gwguru.com> wrote:
I just read through your instructions on migrating GroupWise to Windows. Most of it \
looks good, but there's no reason for you to do user moves unless you simply like \
potential pain and down time for your users. I just did a migration from 1 netware \
server to a newer netware server and I didn't do 1 user move. There is really no \
difference between these 2 migrations other than you're going to windows rather than \
netware. I would follow the directions below up until the part where you created a \
2ndary domain and post office on the new server. Once you have GroupWise installed \
on the new server or even before you have groupwise installed on the new server, \
simply do a dbcopy from the netware server to the windows server of your domain and \
post office. Dbcopy can be run while you're users are in groupwise. It won't \
cause any down time. Once it's completed (hopefully near the end of the day, or \
even right before lunch) take the post office down and do a final dbcopy (depending \
on the size, it shouldn't take too long as it will only copy those files that have \
been updated since the last dbcopy). During this copy process I would have \
installed the GroupWise agents on the Windows server pointing them to the directories \
where you're copying the domain and post office to. Once the the final dbcopy \
completes you simply bring up the agents on the windows server and you're done. \
I've done this with as little as 2 minutes of downtime.
There are a few tricks that you could use on the migration. If you can't port the \
old ip address with you to the new server, you'll need to provide redirection to the \
new post office for your users. This can be accomplished in 2 ways.
1. ngwgnameserver is a dns entry you add to your dns as a cname, pointing to the new \
groupwise post office. when the client comes up, if it can't find the agent \
listening on the old ip address it automatically does a dns query for ngwnameserver. \
If it finds it, they're in. The only down side to this is the client sometimes \
takes a minute or two to time out before it jumps to looking up ngwnameserver. An \
alternative which has zero timeout is next.....
2. Another way is to create a dummy post office on the old server. The dummy post \
office (i typically call it Dummy) will have redirection information in its tables \
and as soon as anybody tries to reconnect to the old ip address they'll find the \
dummy post office waiting for them and it will immediately redirect them to the new \
location. This ip address information is typically written to the registry so that \
once the workstation client has been redirected once, it will remember the new \
location. So, after a few days you can typically delete the Dummy post office and \
you're done. I would still put the ngwnameserver in place for any stragglers that \
try to login for the first time after you've deleted the dummy post office, but most \
of them would have already logged in by now.
3. Another trick is to change the path of the domain and post office (don't forget \
the mta and poa log file paths) as well as the IP address information right before \
you take them down for the final time from the old server. Watch the MTA and POA \
and make sure they actually get this information updated (you'll see the mta close \
the post office) before you take them down. Once they're down, you do the final \
dbcopy, which copies over the updated information as well, and then when you bring \
the domain and post office up on the new server, they're already expecting to be \
exactly where they're at. If you don't do this, when you bring them up on the new \
server, you've got to monkey around with them to get them to act nicely.
Anyway, I hope that helps with the migration. user moves aren't all bad, but I'd \
prefer not having to do them unless it's absolutely necessary. Case in point, I \
just spoke to a sheriff's department who did a bunch of user moves. Most of them \
went across flawlessly. However, 1 user ended up losing all of his mail. There \
are ways you can try to avoid these types of issues, but sometimes user moves reach \
out and grab you. Of course, make sure you have a backup of your post office \
before doing user moves as they will help you recover if a problem does occur.
Oh, and one last thing. It probably doesn't matter that much, but I prefer doing \
the upgrade in place before I move the post office and domain over. That's probably \
one of those 6 or 1/2 dozen things, though. Not sure if there's really an \
advantage in the migration I described. If you're doing user moves, however, I \
always like to do them with the latest version of the software rather than an older \
version. That 1 patch on the newer version may have addressed a user move issue \
from an older release of the software.
Forgive my verbosity.
Matt
Matt Ray
MC Consulting - GroupWiseGuru.com
MCNE, LPI, CNS
mray@gwguru.com
661.885.2699 - Office
661.599.3416 - Cell
866.869.9654 - eFax
AIM ID: mateoray
SkypeID, MSN & Yahoo!: mraymus
http://www.GroupWiseGuru.com ( http://www.groupwiseguru.com/ )
> > > On 4/24/2007 at 12:14 PM, <ngw@ngwlist.com> wrote:
I was hired into my current position a year ago for the purpose of managing the \
network and moving the GroupWise system from Netware to Windows under the same \
umbrella of simplification. There was nobody on staff who knew Netware or Linux, only \
Windows.
You're going to have to install eDirectory for Windows on at least one Windows \
server, although I'd recommend two or three for replication purposes. I don't use \
identity management to tie eDir to active directory but you can set that up as well \
or use LDAP to do this. I've got two servers running Groupwise, one is my post office \
and mta (and GWMonitor), the other is my gateway server which runs GWIA and WebAccess \
and a secondary domain MTA.
We didn't go with SUSE because that did not simplify our OS structure and training \
would have been needed for several support staff. I've asked the question at \
GroupWise Summit in the past about making GroupWise independent of eDirectory so it \
can be used by by any directory system, be it Active Directory, eDirectory, LDAP, or \
some other directory system and the engineers said they are looking at doing that in \
the future.
My GroupWise system running on Windows has been rock solid since upgrading over 7 \
months ago. I only have to stop the servers to apply MS patches. I've not had to deal \
with defragmenting issues which might come in the future.
Here's what I did to migrate from Netware to Windows:
Build the Windows Server 2003 server, patch and update.
Upgrade your eDir version on your current Netware servers to the minimum version for \
GW7 support. Install that same version of eDir for windows and set up replication on \
your new Windows server. Install any Identity management to tie together eDir and \
Active Directory accounts (I don't use this) Install GroupWise 6.5 on new Windows \
Server, creating a secondary domain and post office (these will become your primaries \
later) (I have my MTA and POA agents running on one server and my Gateway agents \
running on another) You can now begin to move your GW user accounts from the old post \
office to the new post office. Once all users are moved from your old post office, \
you can promote your new secondary domain to be the primary and go through the \
process of removing the original post office and domain from your GW system and from \
the server. You can continue to use your current GWIA and WebAccess agents on the old \
Netware server during this transitioning time, then move those as well. I moved mine \
over to the new server temporarily, while I rebuilt the original netware server into \
a Windows Server 2003 server, then recreated the gateway agents there in their own \
secondary domain. Once the whole system was transitioned to Windows servers, I \
performed the GW7.0 upgrade.
> > > "Paul Caron" <CARONP@mmc.org> 4/23/2007 12:48 PM >>>
My new boss has just uttered a decree to move our GroupWise system to Windows Servers \
from NetWare servers, under the umbrella of simplification. With our current \
implementation of Identity Management, we don't have any hooks into GroupWise yet. \
My concerns are:
I'm not currently supporting GroupWise under any Windows Environment (the web access \
piece is managed by our WebTeam). Everything else is on NetWare. Any words of \
advice in planning this migration? Make the assumption that I don't have a choice in \
this discussion.
In our current setup, we have a number of servers that house two post offices or \
more. Is this permissible with Windows Agents?
With Novell's direction with SUSE, should I be advocating this direction instead? \
Everything that I've heard from Novell employees seems to indicate a strong emphasis \
on SUSE. If my director's focus is on simplification, adding another OS probably \
won't be considered. Does going away from SUSE have drawbacks by going solely with \
Windows as a GroupWise server platform?
Paul Caron, CNE, MCSE
Maine Medical Center
caronpNOMO@SPAMmmc.org
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email message, including any attachments, is for the \
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<DIV>Count yourself lucky on the moves. :-) I understand what \
you did and it makes sense. I would have opted for an hour of downtime \
rather than coordinating 200 user schedules. Sounds like way too much \
work for me. Glad it all worked out. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Matt<BR><BR>>>> On 4/27/2007 at 11:43 AM, <ngw@ngwlist.com> \
wrote:<BR></DIV> <DIV style="PADDING-LEFT: 7px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 15px; \
BORDER-LEFT: #050505 1px solid; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f3f3f3"> <DIV>I chose to do the \
user moves because I was given NO downtime to work with. In order to keep the system \
up and running for everyone except the users being actively moved, I chose to set up \
the second PO and do moves. I then was able to work on the moves during my normal \
work hours and avoided a weekend or evening event. I only had 200 users to move so \
this kept me busy coordinating with them for a few weeks but was do-able in my case. \
I like your dbcopy method as it seems like it would be much faster and cleaner in the \
end. BTW I had no issues when moving the users from PO to PO other than a few \
hung messages that needed a resend :)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>Jim Schick</DIV>
<DIV>Office of Judicial Administration</DIV>
<DIV>State of Kansas</DIV><BR><BR>>>> On 4/25/2007 at 12:05 PM, in message \
<462F27EF.CD65.004F.0@gwguru.com>, "Matt Ray" <mray@gwguru.com> \
wrote:<BR></DIV> <DIV style="PADDING-LEFT: 7px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 15px; \
BORDER-LEFT: #050505 1px solid; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f3f3f3"> <DIV>I just read through \
your instructions on migrating GroupWise to Windows. Most of it looks \
good, but there's no reason for you to do user moves unless you simply like potential \
pain and down time for your users. I just did a migration from 1 netware \
server to a newer netware server and I didn't do 1 user move. There is \
really no difference between these 2 migrations other than you're going to windows \
rather than netware. I would follow the directions below up until the \
part where you created a 2ndary domain and post office on the new server. \
Once you have GroupWise installed on the new server or even before you have groupwise \
installed on the new server, simply do a dbcopy from the netware server to the \
windows server of your domain and post office. Dbcopy can be run while \
you're users are in groupwise. It won't cause any down \
time. Once it's completed (hopefully near the end of the day, or \
even right before lunch) take the post office down and do a final dbcopy (depending \
on the size, it shouldn't take too long as it will only copy those files that have \
been updated since the last dbcopy). During this copy process I \
would have installed the GroupWise agents on the Windows server pointing them to the \
directories where you're copying the domain and post office to. \
Once the the final dbcopy completes you simply bring up the agents on the windows \
server and you're done. I've done this with as little as 2 minutes \
of downtime. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>There are a few tricks that you could use on the migration. If \
you can't port the old ip address with you to the new server, you'll need to provide \
redirection to the new post office for your users. This can be \
accomplished in 2 ways. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>1. ngwgnameserver is a dns entry you add to your dns as a cname, pointing \
to the new groupwise post office. when the client comes up, if it can't \
find the agent listening on the old ip address it automatically does a dns query for \
ngwnameserver. If it finds it, they're in. The \
only down side to this is the client sometimes takes a minute or two to time out \
before it jumps to looking up ngwnameserver. An alternative which \
has zero timeout is next.....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2. Another way is to create a dummy post office on the old \
server. The dummy post office (i typically call it Dummy) will have \
redirection information in its </DIV> <DIV>tables and as soon as anybody tries to \
reconnect to the old ip address they'll find the dummy post office waiting for them \
and it will immediately redirect them to the new location. This ip \
address information is typically written to the registry so that once the workstation \
client has been redirected once, it will remember the new location. So, \
after a few days you can typically delete the Dummy post office and you're \
done. I would still put the ngwnameserver in place for any stragglers \
that try to login for the first time after you've deleted the dummy post office, but \
most of them would have already logged in by now. </DIV> \
<DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3. Another trick is to change the path of the domain and \
post office (don't forget the mta and poa log file paths) as well as the IP address \
information right before you take them down for the final time from the old \
server. Watch the MTA and POA and make sure they actually get this \
information updated (you'll see the mta close the post office) before you take them \
down. Once they're down, you do the final dbcopy, which copies over the \
updated information as well, and then when you bring the domain and post office up on \
the new server, they're already expecting to be exactly where they're \
at. If you don't do this, when you bring them up on the new server, \
you've got to monkey around with them to get them to act nicely. </DIV> \
<DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Anyway, I hope that helps with the migration. user \
moves aren't all bad, but I'd prefer not having to do them unless it's absolutely \
necessary. Case in point, I just spoke to a sheriff's department \
who did a bunch of user moves. Most of them went across \
flawlessly. However, 1 user ended up losing all of his mail. \
There are ways you can try to avoid these types of issues, but sometimes user moves \
reach out and grab you. Of course, make sure you have a backup of \
your post office before doing user moves as they will help you recover if a problem \
does occur. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Oh, and one last thing. It probably doesn't matter that much, but I \
prefer doing the upgrade in place before I move the post office and domain \
over. That's probably one of those 6 or 1/2 dozen things, \
though. Not sure if there's really an advantage in the migration I \
described. If you're doing user moves, however, I always like to do them \
with the latest version of the software rather than an older \
version. That 1 patch on the newer version may have addressed \
a user move issue from an older release of the software. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Forgive my verbosity. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Matt </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Matt Ray<BR>MC Consulting - GroupWiseGuru.com<BR>MCNE, LPI, \
CNS<BR>mray@gwguru.com <BR>661.885.2699 - Office<BR>661.599.3416 - \
Cell<BR>866.869.9654 - eFax<BR>AIM ID: mateoray<BR>SkypeID, MSN & Yahoo!: \
mraymus<BR><A href="http://www.groupwiseguru.com/">http://www.GroupWiseGuru.com</A></DIV>
<DIV><BR>>>> On 4/24/2007 at 12:14 PM, <ngw@ngwlist.com> \
wrote:<BR></DIV> <DIV style="PADDING-LEFT: 7px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 15px; \
BORDER-LEFT: #050505 1px solid; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f3f3f3">I was hired into my \
current position a year ago for the purpose of managing the network and moving the \
GroupWise system from Netware to Windows under the same umbrella of simplification. \
There was nobody on staff who knew Netware or Linux, only Windows.<BR><BR>You're \
going to have to install eDirectory for Windows on at least one Windows server, \
although I'd recommend two or three for replication purposes. I don't use identity \
management to tie eDir to active directory but you can set that up as well or use \
LDAP to do this. I've got two servers running Groupwise, one is my post office and \
mta (and GWMonitor), the other is my gateway server which runs GWIA and WebAccess and \
a secondary domain MTA.<BR><BR>We didn't go with SUSE because that did not simplify \
our OS structure and training would have been needed for several support staff. I've \
asked the question at GroupWise Summit in the past about making GroupWise independent \
of eDirectory so it can be used by by any directory system, be it Active Directory, \
eDirectory, LDAP, or some other directory system and the engineers said they are \
looking at doing that in the future.<BR><BR>My GroupWise system running on Windows \
has been rock solid since upgrading over 7 months ago. I only have to stop the \
servers to apply MS patches. I've not had to deal with defragmenting issues which \
might come in the future. <BR><BR>Here's what I did to migrate from Netware to \
Windows:<BR><BR>Build the Windows Server 2003 server, patch and update.<BR>Upgrade \
your eDir version on your current Netware servers to the minimum version for GW7 \
support.<BR>Install that same version of eDir for windows and set up replication on \
your new Windows server.<BR>Install any Identity management to tie together eDir and \
Active Directory accounts (I don't use this)<BR>Install GroupWise 6.5 on new Windows \
Server, creating a secondary domain and post office (these will become your primaries \
later) (I have my MTA and POA agents running on one server and my Gateway agents \
running on another)<BR>You can now begin to move your GW user accounts from the old \
post office to the new post office.<BR>Once all users are moved from your old post \
office, you can promote your new secondary domain to be the primary and go through \
the process of removing the original post office and domain from your GW system and \
from the server.<BR>You can continue to use your current GWIA and WebAccess agents on \
the old Netware server during this transitioning time, then move those as well. I \
moved mine over to the new server temporarily, while I rebuilt the original netware \
server into a Windows Server 2003 server, then recreated the gateway agents there in \
their own secondary domain.<BR>Once the whole system was transitioned to Windows \
servers, I performed the GW7.0 upgrade.<BR><BR><BR>>>> "Paul Caron" \
<CARONP@mmc.org> 4/23/2007 12:48 PM >>><BR>My new boss has just \
uttered a decree to move our GroupWise system to Windows Servers from NetWare \
servers, under the umbrella of simplification. With our current implementation \
of Identity Management, we don't have any hooks into GroupWise yet. My concerns \
are:<BR><BR>I'm not currently supporting GroupWise under any Windows Environment (the \
web access piece is managed by our WebTeam). Everything else is on \
NetWare. Any words of advice in planning this migration? Make the \
assumption that I don't have a choice in this discussion.<BR><BR>In our current \
setup, we have a number of servers that house two post offices or more. Is this \
permissible with Windows Agents?<BR><BR>With Novell's direction with SUSE, should I \
be advocating this direction instead? Everything that I've heard from Novell \
employees seems to indicate a strong emphasis on SUSE. If my director's focus \
is on simplification, adding another OS probably won't be considered. Does \
going away from SUSE have drawbacks by going solely with Windows as a GroupWise \
server platform?<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Paul Caron, CNE, MCSE<BR>Maine Medical \
Center<BR>caronpNOMO@SPAMmmc.org <BR><BR>CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email \
message, including any attachments, is for the use of the intended recipient(s) only \
and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and prohibited from \
unauthorized disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended \
recipient of this message, any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this \
message is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, please \
notify the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message and \
attachments.<BR><BR>--<BR>Visit <A \
href="http://www.ngwlist.com/">http://www.ngwlist.com</A> for help \
unsubscribing<BR><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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