Recommend how to move 31GB of mail to a new server

[Gary Mills]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2007 at 02:33:46PM -0700, Jose Hales-Garcia wrote:
> 
>    I'm preparing a new iMAP server and have 31GB of user mail on the
>    current server to move.  I'm looking for suggestions on doing the move
>    with the minimum of down time as possible.

I did this recently, although it was 300 gigabytes.  My strategy was
to convert the old server into a unified murder and configure the new
server as a standard murder node.  I was then able to use the XFER
function of Cyrus IMAP to move mailboxes transparently from the old
server to the new one.  There was no downtime other than for
occasional reboots.  The migration took a couple of weeks.

To begin, I had to upgrade the old server to cyrus-imapd-2.3.8.  I
recommend great caution if you follow this example.  I tested all of
my procedures on a pair of test servers before using them on the
production servers, finding a few bugs and other pitfalls along the way.

For only 30 gigabytes, you might be better off just copying the files
over, with IMAP down.  It could only take a few hours.  You can copy
a sample from the live system to get an idea of the timing.

-- 
-Gary Mills-    -Unix Support-    -U of M Academic Computing and Networking-