Migrating Cyrus-IMAP to another machine

[David S. Madole]

Fabio Corazza wrote:
>  simple question: is there a fancy method to migrate all the Cyrus IMAP
> mailboxes and databases from a box to a new one?
>
> Just hot copying the folder /var/spool/imap from the old box to the new
> one? And in case, how can I rebuild the databases in /var/lib/imap to
> sync with the new copied mailboxes?
>
> P.S.: I can have up to 1hr of downtime.
>   
My limited experience is that you can simply copy both /var/spool/imap 
and /var/lib/imap to the new machine if you are trying to migrate 
everything.

One way to do this to minimize downtime if you have a lot of data is to 
make a live copy while the old server is still running in advance of the 
switchover. Then take Cyrus down on the old server and rsync the 
directories on the new server to the old one. Since most of the data 
will already be there unchanged, rsync will only have to move the 
difference. Depending on your network and amount of data, this can be 
much faster.

David