How to move from 6108R to 6109R?

If you have an existing Aventurin{e} 6108R and wonder if, when and how you should migrate to 6109R, then let us help to give you some pointers.

Let us start with the 'if':

Aventurin{e} 6109R uses OpenVZ 7 and Kernel 3.10.0. As you are aware, the EOL for OpenVZ 6 (used on 6108R) is creeping closer and OpenVZ 6 is at best in maintenance mode with the occasional kernel patch coming forth. So you do essentially have two choices: Follow down an easy migration path and switch to Aventurin{e} 6109R on OpenVZ 7. Or switch platforms altogether.

To be brutally honest: This is a consideration that we ourselves have had. If LXC/LXD wasn't in such a sorry state as it is right now, then Aventurin{e} would most certainly use LXD instead of OpenVZ 7. Don't get me wrong: I love LXD and it'll be the future. Or it'll sire something from its loins that may be the future of virtualization. But that's music of the future and the gig is on right now. And if you choose LXC/LXD, then your have one or two OS choices (none really desirable), get a feature reduction, lower level of container isolation from each other and disk quota is suddenly out of the window. Unless you're crazy enough (in an adorable fashion) to somehow bolt quota support back on via some really nifty hacks.

When we summarized the ups and downs between LXC/LXD and OpenVZ 7, the only champion left in the ring was OpenVZ 7. There are things it has done right from day one (13 years ago!), which the hipper and much more recent LXD can't do today. Let that sink in for a moment. So here we are, a year late and a dollar short and we're staying with OpenVZ 7 for Aventurin{e} 6109R.

Will you, too?

When to make the switch from 6108R to 6109R?

We all hate to rock the boat and it's not that uncommon to run into Aventurin{e} nodes with +1000 days of uninterrupted uptime. On the other hand it's getting increasingly more difficult to get modern guest OS's to run on OpenVZ 6. CentOS 7 and Debian 9 guests might start to complain about the 2.6.32 kernel they see and Systemd off an on cartwheels off the tracks. This affects some users more than others. If you're perfectly happy with 6108R, then you might want to stay on it as long as the OS is still receiving security updates. But if you're looking for easier VPS management, more recent OS templates, Snapshots, several generations of backups and a more modern OS for the node? Well, then move to 6109R as soon as you can.

How to get existing VPS's from 6108R to 6109R?

Sadly you cannot directly use 'vzmigrate' to migrate from 6108R to 6109R. But we recently updated base-vserver on 6108R and it comes with an additional tool for just that purpose. You can find this script at /usr/sausalito/sbin/ovztransfer.sh. This is only used to get VPS's from 6108R to 6109R. Once you have the VPS's moved, you can use 'vzmigrate' again to migrate VPS's between 6109R nodes or nodes with pure OpenVZ 7.

Usage:

/usr/sausalito/sbin/ovztransfer.sh target-host <VPSID>

Example:

Your target node with Aventurin{e} 6109R is newbox.yourdomain.com. You want to move the VPS with the CTID (VPSID) 100 over. First you exchange SSH keys of user 'root', so that you can login via SSH from the 6108R node to the 6109R as 'root' without password.

Then you simply run this command on your 6108R:

/usr/sausalito/sbin/ovztransfer.sh newbox.yourdomain.com 100

This will take some time. It will in fact take longer than a 'vzmigrate', but you can let it run without much of a worry. It will automatically create a new Container on the 6109R, will copy and convert the VPS configuration, create a Ploop disk and will then copy all files and folders over. Once it's done it'll register the new Container with the hypervisor and you can then manage the VPS on the 6109R from the CLI as well as the GUI. What's left to do is to stop the container on the original node and to fire it up on the new node.

Caveats

OpenVZ 7 does a few things slightly different. Many Aventurin{e} users are familiar with managing their VPS's from the CLI as well as the GUI. But some of the handling you're used to, some features you're accustomed to have been deprecated or changed and there are some new commands and procedures to learn.

You might want to read our '6109R Cheat Sheet' which quickly walks you through the most obvious differences in handling and gives some pointers

 

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