Due to aging hardware, upgrades, or changes in business requirements, you might find yourself needing to move your FileFly server roles between one or more servers. You can do this by using DrTool and the built-in backups within the FileFly Tools server.
The following example uses the these environment values:
Primary Server | Destination Server | |
|---|---|---|
Host name | filefly.ecorp.com | filefly2.ecorp.com |
IP | 10.0.0.52 | 10.0.0.120 |
OS | Windows 2012 R2 | Windows 2012 R2 |
This is the overall process for moving agents:
1 - Migrate the FileFly Tools Server
This is the process for migrating a server:
- Force a backup.
- Copy the backup to new server.
- Create a hostfile entry for DNS resolution.
- Install FileFly tools as a restore.
Migrate a FileFly tools server by performing a fresh install of FileFly tools and restoring from a recent backup file. The first thing to do is to locate the backup and take a fresh one. As a best practice these backup files should be backed up or written to swarm regularly if there are regular changes to the FileFly environment.
- To get to the backup section of the FileFly server, open the Settings (gear icon) at the far right:
- In the Settings, scroll to the Configuration Backup section. Record the path where backups are saved, as well as the option to Force Backup Now:
- The backup includes config DrTool files, log dumps, and other configuration information, so it may be quite large if you are migrating a lot of data. If needed, configure the backup options to write to a different location.
- After forcing a backup the new backup appears in the window once it is complete.
- In File Explorer, browse to the backup folder and locate the new backup:
- Copy the file to the Destination server, as you are prompted for it on install.
- Next is configuration of the destination server and installation of the FileFly tools on it. First, edit the hostfile so that the FileFly tools server can be installed.
A quick way to do this is to right-click PowerShell and open as an administrator then navigate toC:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts - Edit it in a text editor to point name resolution for the FileFly server to the localhost, in this case, filefly.ecorp.com:
- Once that change is saved, install of FileFly Tools.
- Click next past the first two screens until you get to this one:
- Choosing Restore from Backup prompts you to upload the backup file:
- In the background then is an extraction and check of the files and DNS names.
- If all of this passes the installer continues and completes.
- From the new machine, open the Admin Portal and Retire the older server, if it is standalone.
- Update the DNS record to reflect the changes, and remove the hostfile entry.
2 - Migrate the Stubs
When there is more than one migration agent, changing or consolidating migration agents requires migrating the file stubs to the target agent.
This is a 3-step process done from the FileFly Admin Tools server:
In this example, there are two existing migration agents. Although this shows a cloudscaler target, the method is the same for swarm targets. The goal is to move all stubs from filefly.ecorp.com to filefly2.ecorp.com and have one source, which is win://filefly.ecorp.com
Creating the DrTool file
When a task is run to create a DrTool file from source, a text file is generated containing all mappings between the file URIs and the Swarm objects.
Under Sources, note the one source, which is win://filefly.ecorp.com:
Under Tasks, run a DrTool from source task to generate a text file that contains all mappings between file URIs and Swarm objects. The sources for the DrTool job are below.
If there are more sources to be retargeted, those can be added to the same DrTool job.Run the task, allowing time for the job to run.
The DrTool operation does a file walk for every source, checking the stub file and its destination URI. The more files and folder levels, the longer this takes.Once the task is completed, download the DrTool text file directly from the Task tab. From the Recent Task History list, select Go to task for the run:
From the Task Details, select Download DrTool Files. This shows the last 5 DrTool file runs (or more, if the value in the settings is changed ).
The task's downloads page displays the last 5 DrTool file runs by default:
Tip: Navigate to the Settings panel to change how many DrTool files to keep and for how long:
Select the latest file, which is listed first:
Download the DrTool file by clicking on the bold timestamp link. Use the browser's Save File option to download the file.
Running the DrTool file
To apply the DrTool file, open the DrTool via command line to change both the destination server that the stubfiles are restored to and also the migration agent that controls the stubs.
On the Admin tools server, open up an elevated PowerShell or command prompt, running as an Administrator.
Note the switches needed to migrate the files:
-csu — changes the source, which is used to change the server from filefly.ecorp.com to filefly2.ecorp.com
-cmu — changes the migrated URL; use this if the destination has changed.
-recreateStubs — recreates the pointer files in bulk.
Move the DrTool file directly to the DrTool folder. First, set the -csu switch:
This opens the DrTool file with substitutions for the hostnames.Add the switch -recreateStubs to create the stubfiles on the alternate filename.
Change the migrated agent FQDN on the destination when decommissioning a migration agent:
Run the command with line breaks for easy reading:
.\DrTool.bat -csu win://filefly.ecorp.com win://filefly2.ecorp.com/ -cmu cloudscaler://filefly.ecorp.com/testdomain1.ecorp.com/fileflydata/ cloudscaler://filefly2.ecorp.com/testdomain1.ecorp.com/fileflydata/ -recreateStubs .\drtool.txt
Changing the Destination
Change the destination once the stubs are migrated.
Open the Admin Portal.
Select the Destinations tab and edit the destination that moved.
Update the URI for the new location, then Save.
