Problem

A Forum reader recently asked:

"I have a NetWare 6.5 SP5 server that is also our GroupWise server. Here is what needs to happen: new hardware, clustering, converting to NSS, and keeping the same host and IP address.

I have used the migration tool a few times. In this case, I am not sure of my order of operations given what needs to be done. I wasn't able to find a TID that showed how to migrate groupwise to hardware with same IP/hostname. I am guessing it's as easy as copying the data over, and reinstalling the app to the new server after NetWare has been migrated. I have quite a few articles on clustering and on clustering GroupWise, but I am not sure where to start here."

And here are the responses from Gregg Hinchman and Tim Heywood ...

Solution

Gregg Hinchman

That's going to be very messy - each cluster resource will have its own IP address separate from the server (cluster nodes) IP addresses. So trying to preserve your current IP address for GroupWise can be done ... but you may not want to.

Consider setting up NGWNAMESERVER in your DNS that will resolve to "today's" IP address. Then when you do move GroupWise over, you can just change the DNS entry. OR, DNS, the GWPOA today - get users using them. Then when you change, it's nearly invisible to users. A last idea is to create a 2nd POA for the existing PO on the old server and have it do redirection when you move the PO to the cluster.

As for the order:

1. Plan out your gw system on the cluster.

2. Plan out your cluster.

3. Document both of these.

4. Build your cluster nodes.

5. Build your cluster, cluster resources and configure.

6. Test the cluster.

7. Use the Server Consolidation Util to 'copy' GW data to cluster resources.

8. Configure load/unload for GW and test failover.

9. Change your DNS -as stated above.

Then sit back and enjoy - it's just that easy.

And in case you want a complete how-to book, try "Success with Clustering GroupWise" at http://www.taykratzer.com/cluster.cfm?t=13. It takes you through planning, documenting, and implementing.

To better understand clustering, you can look to my articles 1 thru 4, which represent the first chapter of my book on clustering GW. You can find them at:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/author/393.html

You will have a better understanding then.

Tim Heywood

The GroupWise POA is just an IP number that the clients go to, so if we are a little creative we can come up with a nice solution.

A cluster has to have all of the IP addresses in the same range/subnet, so as long as the cluster addresses are also in the same subnet that GroupWise currently uses, we are good to go.

1. Install the two new servers and create the cluster.

2. Test, test, and TEST again - make sure that you are 100% happy before you continue.

3. Create a resource for the GroupWise and either use the SCMU or just a simple copy to get the data from the "old" server to the cluster.

4. Install the agents (to the cluster resource:\system).

5. Now comes the clever bit - renumber the old server. So if the old server was 192.168.1.21 we can now renumber that to 192.168.1.211.

6. Add an extra secondary IP number to the cluster resource. So as far as the world is concerned, the POA is in the same place it always was.

The NGWNameserver entry in NDS is very useful, so if you don't have one already, then I would recommend that you create it.