My agency is re-locating their HQ data center to a new remote data center. The new data center will have all new servers ready to be built for every application that needs to migrate, so the move is more of a migration than it is a "lift and shift" move of the current hardware. I need to start thinking how I can move my Orion system with minimal downtime and wanted to get some suggestions from Thwack. Here is a summary of my current Orion environment.
HQ data center
- Server 1: Main NPM polling engine; NTA, NCM, IPSLA
- Server 2: second polling engine; NTA, IPSLA
- Server 3: MSSQL 2005 Enterprise
- Server 4: Orion Web engine
For starters, the new data center will have all new servers available with Windows loaded, at least the same amount I currently have available although I may add another polling engine and/or split NCM out to it's own server. The server names and IP addresses will be different between the two locations, plus it is brand new hardware (Dell R610 versus Dell 2950) so performance will increase, but I can't maintain any of the naming so somehow I need to migrate the data in the database to the new location. What's the best way to do this?
It would be nice to retain all of my historical data, and I understand there will be a signifigant outage to make the move but I need to minimize it as best I can. Originally I was thinking of this plan:
- Stop all polling engines/Orion related services at the current data center
- Export/make a backup of the current database/import to the new database server so the data is there
- Install the Orion applications on the appropriate servers, and with the configuration wizard, pointing them to the new database server with my existing data but I think this may cause issues. The "polling engine" for each node in the database is in a column in the database and at that point, it would be referring to the old polling servers.
Should I massage the data in the database as I load it on the new database server to change the old polling engine names to the new polling engine names? Does Solarwinds have a "tool" or documents to migrate in a similar fashion?
Or is the best plan to standup the new Orion applications, then let NPM "import" or pull from the previous database?
Thanks for your suggestions and experience!
