[Fedora-xen] server migration
Eric Brunson
brunson at brunson.com
Thu May 24 17:35:52 UTC 2007
Russell McOrmond wrote:
>
> I would like to ask a question that I was hoping would get answered
> in this thread. With physical hardware machines you can boot from an
> Install CD and do an upgrade. I doubt a F7 will be able to handle a
> FC1 or lower, but I have upgraded very old machines doing steps (RH8
> to FC1 to FC3 to FC5 in the past).
>
> I don't have hardware virtualization, so booting an install CD
> within a XenU isn't possible. I am wondering if there is a way to
> launch an upgrade process similar to what is on the CD, but within a
> paravirtualized XenU.
>
> Just forcing an upgrade of the fedora-release, and then doing a 'yum
> update' doesn't work well given the packages are being upgraded in the
> same context that yum is running. This is one of those things with
> I've seen Debian based systems handle better, and is one of the areas
> I'd love to see improvements in Fedora.
Always after a couple of tests on my machines at home, I've two dozen
remote upgrades on production servers using yum. RH9->FC1 was a
complete disaster, but every iteration of FC has been better. I have
one server that has gone from FC2->3->4->5->6 all via yum upgrades and
all remotely (I hate that datacenter). This last go around I took 4
other machines from FC4->5->6 with no problems whatsoever. The one
additional step I always take is: 1) force the upgrade of fedora
release, 2) *upgrade yum*, then 3) yum upgrade the rest of the system.
> Side-note: My ISP recommends against doing upgrades with RHEL -- I
> have customers with RHEL3 and RHEL4 that I want to upgrade to RHEL5,
> and I'm told that the only reliable way to do that is to wipe and
> re-install RHEL5 and then reconfigure all my software.
>
It's in your ISP's best interest to err on the side of caution, but I
don't have any personal experience with RHEL, so I'll leave it at that.
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