Migrate to new Physical Hardware

noddy53 wrote:
> Hi, new to this forum and very new to Linux, so not going to try to
> pretend I know anything about Linux so any help will be gratefully
> appreciated.
>
> My problem is I have been asked as part of a Data Centre Migration
> (with no Linux skills) to move two SUSE Linux Enterprise v9 boxes.
>
> The problem I have is that the existing SUSE Linux Boxes are running on
> HP Proliant DL380 G5 servers and as part of the migration we are being
> forced to install them on IBM LS22 Blades.

The question is how many boxes?

Why?

Because the procedure to convert isn't difficult, just isn't a push
button solution.

>
> I am hoping to P2P the boxes but am not aware of any tools that may be
> available to inject drivers for the new hardware.
>
> Are there any tools available to do this like DD Changer for Wintel?
> Or has anybody ever carried out this procedure successfully that can
> give me a step by step guide on how to successfully complete this task.

Windows is a front-to-back limited platforms solution from one vendor with
built-in paid for (along with vendor competition) support for relatively
new enough hardware configs (Windows drops the old stuff). Linux on the
other hand attempts to use free solution drivers, many of which attempt to be
very generic (so as to handle a multitude of known and yet known products
as well as very old products). Because Linux supports more hardware than
Windows, it could be viewed as being more complex.

With that said, here is an example set of steps.

Create a baseline SLES9 config (I recommend SP4 of course) on the new
hardware. That baseline config should either be a big fat rooted / baseline
with independent /boot or have filesystems that match and slightly exceed
the original system in size (always better to err on the bigger side).
Capture the /boot/grub/menu.lst info as well as /etc/sysconfig/*
(you may need that info later on).


From a rescue situation on the original SLES9 create tar balls of each
filesystem making sure to restrict them to just the filesystem being
targeted.

From a rescue situation on the new SLES9 restore the tar balls into
their appropriate filesystems. Overwrite /etc/sysconfig/* with
what you saved earlier (you can start the network in rescue mode
to make getting to that data you saved easier).

Exclude /boot in each case.

Obviously you had a very nice RAID controller on the DL380G5 and now
you probably have something stupid on the IBM blade (sorry IBM, but
IBM and hw RAID seems elusive).

Boot the new system into rescue mode. Make a temporary mount point
in /tmp. Mount the root / filesystem there. chroot to that mount point.

Mount /proc, /sys and the other filesystem including /boot.

Adjust the menu.lst you saved to match what is needs to be.

Do a mkinitrd.

You may have to do a grub-install.

Now see if it will boot.

Hopefully, if the network was config relatively ok in the baseline,
you'll have networking, but if you cloned this setup, you have
to go through the normal clean out of the existing network definitions
and redo them.

I'm just doing this from memory... others feel free to correct or
suggest a better way.