Migrating the SUSE Manager server to a containerized environment

To migrate a SUSE Manager 5.0 Server to a container, a new machine is required.

It is not possible to perform an in-place migration.

The original server is referred to as the source server, while the newly set-up machine is designated as the destination server.

The migration procedure currently does not include any hostname renaming functionality. The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the destination server will remain identical to the one of the source server. Therefore, after the migration, it will be necessary to manually adjust the DNS records to point to the new server.

1. Initial Preparation on the Source Server

Procedure: Initial preparation on the source server

  1. Stop the SUSE Manager services:

    spacewalk-service stop

  2. Stop the PostgreSQL service:

    systemctl stop postgresql

2. Prepare the SSH Connection

Procedure: Preparing the SSH connection

  1. The SSH configuration and agent should be ready on the destination server for a passwordless connection to the source server.

    To establish a passwordless connection, the migration script relies on an SSH agent running on the destination server. If the agent is not active yet, initiate it by running eval $(ssh-agent). Then, add the SSH key to the running agent with ssh-add /path/to/the/private/key. You will be prompted to enter the password for the private key during this process.

  2. The migration script only uses the source server’s FQDN in the SSH command.

  3. This means that every other configuration required to connect, needs to be defined in the ~/.ssh/config file.

3. Perform the Migration

Procedure: Performing the Migration

  1. Execute the following command to install a new SUSE Manager server, replacing <source.fqdn> with the appropriate FQDN of the source server:

    mgradm migrate podman <source.fqdn>