CentOS 6 to CentOS 7 Migration

Overview

This article is a step-by-step guide to migrate CentOS 6 to CentOS 7 Appliance. This is not an automated migration, please read carefully and follow the instructions to avoid any issues on the migration. Swivel Secure highly recommend customers to perform a side-by-side migration with SOC team. Please request details about this support to your sales representative.

Requirements

Minimum for Stand-Alone and/or High Availability:

  • CPU: 2-Core
  • RAM: 4 GB
  • Free disk space: 80GB
  • AuthControl Sentry 4.1.1 or higher

Recommended for Stand-Alone and/or High Availability:

  • CPU: 4-Core
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Free disk space: 100GB
  • AuthControl Sentry 4.1.1 or higher

Command Line Interface access is required to perform the migration. Please contact to your sales representative relating this subject.

Swivel Secure highly recommend customers and partners to upgrade appliances with the typical product release cycle which includes specific stage and/or release process environments: Testing Environment, UAT (User Acceptance Testing), Staging Environment (Pre Production), etc before migrating Production environments.

Migration Steps

Step 1 - Backup Options

Keep in mind that this is step is related to backups performed in CentOS 6 Appliance.

Backup of Applications Option

In CMI, go to option “4) Backup and Restore”, then “1) Backup”, then “2) Application Only Backup”. After that, a new backup file will be created. This option requires no further actions apart from moving the 2021XXXXXXXXXX-APP file from CentOS 6 appliance to CentOS 7 appliance.

This backup migration process occurs only once when migrating CentOS 6 appliances to CentOS 7 appliances.

Step 2 - CentOS 7 Appliances Deployment

Deploy CentOS 7 appliance (appliances in case of HA). In case of Single Appliance, apply networking required configuration. In case of HA appliances proceed with the below:

  1. Networking configuration
  2. Replication configuration
  3. Test VIP
  4. Test replication

Step 3 - Restore CentOS 6 Backup

In CentOS 7 Appliance proceed to restore option in CMI Menu and restore the required CentOS 6 backup. Go to option “4) Backup and Restore”, then “2) Restore” and then “2) Application Only Restore”.

Step 4 - Functional Review

Go to User Administration and push User Sync in all repositories to ensure all users are brought up. Test and ensure all Swivel Secure products are properly deployed and Sentry users are able to login and logout.

Additional Information

Swivel Secure respositories are updated to be compatible with CentOS 7. Also, new repositories have been created to ensure Operating System level updates and patches.

The full list of repositories are available here.

Any warnings in the update process can be ignored.

Known Issues

Hostname change

Hostname can happen to revert to the original when rebooting the appliance. This is a legacy issue present in CentOS 6 appliances. In the mean time that this issue is not resolved, run the below command in the command line:

hostnamectl set-hostname <hostname>

If the case is for HA, run the above in both Primary and Standby. Restart the machine(s) and check for the hostname.