6 ms·

Anyone know of any good way to export linode images to other VPS providers? Seems like I'll have to be doing it manually.

jdboyd 14y ago
Generally speaking, this is one example where having a good deployment system starts to look extremely valuable (along with tested backups and restores for non-deployed data).
- windsurfer 14y ago
  I'd have to agree with you, but I didn't figure creating such a system for my hobby projects was worth it.
voidlogic 14y ago
If your using lvm you can create a snapshot to do this while online, if not just read from your disk (assuming sda here): 1. (offline) Boot new and old VM servers from live CD 2. old server: dd if=/dev/sda bs=8M | pbzip2 -c | netcat <newhost> <random high port> 3. new server: netcat -l <same port> | pbzip2 -cd | dd of=/dev/sda bs=8M Compression: You can use something besides pbzip2, maybe pigz of if you only have a single core use bzip2 or gzip. Security: You probably want to add encryption to this pipeline.
- windsurfer 14y ago
  Woah woah woah isn't this just transferring the contents of /dev/sda in the clear over the wire? Shouldn't you at least do this over SSH?
  - voidlogic 14y ago
    >>Shouldn't you at least do this over SSH? Yeah, I mentioned that at the bottom of my post. Using ssh or some other inline encryption would be a good idea if it is a system you care about. If you have a site to site VPN tunnel between your systems, you can skip adding the encryption.
    - miles 14y ago
      Yeah, I mentioned that at the bottom of my post It wasn't there when windsurfer replied to you (I was reading the thread earlier), hence his question.
      - windsurfer 14y ago
        Thanks. I thought I was just dumb.
      - voidlogic 14y ago
        I thought my only edit had been to replace might with probably. If this was not the case I'm sorry. Maybe I edited it to add that right after posting and forgot-
- nenolod 14y ago
  dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M | ssh root@<newhost> dd of=/dev/sda bs=1M let SSH handle compression for you instead.
  - voidlogic 14y ago
    That is one (good) way to handle the encryption. You don't want to leave out the compression or block size however, so add those back in. Most WAN links are low bandwidth enough that compression will not slow things down (this is usually true even on 1 GBE LAN links for pigz) and in my experience the speed-up is substantial. pigz is much faster than using ssh compression as it is multicore. apt-get it or http://zlib.net/pigz/ http://zlib.net/pigz/
    - nenolod 14y ago
      the compression is unnecessary here, you're moving a max of less than a couple of hundred GB of data.
      - marshray 14y ago
        A few hundred GB here, a few hundred GB there, pretty soon you're talking real bandwidth.
      - cookiecaper 14y ago
        It's pretty necessary if you aren't moving between colocated boxes. "less than a couple hundred GB of data" is still a lot of data to be moving around, even on a 100Mb/s link, which almost no one in America has residentially, and isn't even a guarantee for colo'd machines. In most cases, compression at the raw block level will result in HUGE size savings, especially since a lot of that may be free space. It might even make this transfer tenable.
    - BrandonM 14y ago
      Just add -C to the ssh command to enable compression.
  - offmycloud 14y ago
- tachion 14y ago
  There's very nice utility called Ghost 4 Unix that makes the whole thing even easier: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
  - voidlogic 14y ago
    Looks like overkill for a simple one time task that can easily be handled the UNIX way. Worth looking into if you need to do this alot-
    - tachion 14y ago
      Your procedure already requires booting out of live cd, and then uses "unix way" that might be easy to screw up for less advanced people, so using G4U simplifies it substantially, does the same good job and by no means is a 'overkill' ;)
- chatmasta 14y ago
  DigitalOcean should probably put this in their marketing materials.
euroclydon 14y ago
You mean the comprised image?
mspeed 14y ago
Check out http://www.cloudconverter.com http://www.cloudconverter.com - move from Linode to pretty much any other provider out there.

jdboyd 14y ago

Generally speaking, this is one example where having a good deployment system starts to look extremely valuable (along with tested backups and restores for non-deployed data).

windsurfer 14y ago
I'd have to agree with you, but I didn't figure creating such a system for my hobby projects was worth it.

voidlogic 14y ago

If your using lvm you can create a snapshot to do this while online, if not just read from your disk (assuming sda here): 1. (offline) Boot new and old VM servers from live CD 2. old server: dd if=/dev/sda bs=8M | pbzip2 -c | netcat <newhost> <random high port> 3. new server: netcat -l <same port> | pbzip2 -cd | dd of=/dev/sda bs=8M Compression: You can use something besides pbzip2, maybe pigz of if you only have a single core use bzip2 or gzip. Security: You probably want to add encryption to this pipeline.

windsurfer 14y ago
Woah woah woah isn't this just transferring the contents of /dev/sda in the clear over the wire? Shouldn't you at least do this over SSH?
- voidlogic 14y ago
  >>Shouldn't you at least do this over SSH? Yeah, I mentioned that at the bottom of my post. Using ssh or some other inline encryption would be a good idea if it is a system you care about. If you have a site to site VPN tunnel between your systems, you can skip adding the encryption.
  - miles 14y ago
    Yeah, I mentioned that at the bottom of my post It wasn't there when windsurfer replied to you (I was reading the thread earlier), hence his question.
    - windsurfer 14y ago
      Thanks. I thought I was just dumb.
    - voidlogic 14y ago
      I thought my only edit had been to replace might with probably. If this was not the case I'm sorry. Maybe I edited it to add that right after posting and forgot-
nenolod 14y ago
dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M | ssh root@<newhost> dd of=/dev/sda bs=1M let SSH handle compression for you instead.
- voidlogic 14y ago
  That is one (good) way to handle the encryption. You don't want to leave out the compression or block size however, so add those back in. Most WAN links are low bandwidth enough that compression will not slow things down (this is usually true even on 1 GBE LAN links for pigz) and in my experience the speed-up is substantial. pigz is much faster than using ssh compression as it is multicore. apt-get it or http://zlib.net/pigz/ http://zlib.net/pigz/
  - nenolod 14y ago
    the compression is unnecessary here, you're moving a max of less than a couple of hundred GB of data.
    - marshray 14y ago
      A few hundred GB here, a few hundred GB there, pretty soon you're talking real bandwidth.
    - cookiecaper 14y ago
      It's pretty necessary if you aren't moving between colocated boxes. "less than a couple hundred GB of data" is still a lot of data to be moving around, even on a 100Mb/s link, which almost no one in America has residentially, and isn't even a guarantee for colo'd machines. In most cases, compression at the raw block level will result in HUGE size savings, especially since a lot of that may be free space. It might even make this transfer tenable.
  - BrandonM 14y ago
    Just add -C to the ssh command to enable compression.
- offmycloud 14y ago
tachion 14y ago
There's very nice utility called Ghost 4 Unix that makes the whole thing even easier: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
- voidlogic 14y ago
  Looks like overkill for a simple one time task that can easily be handled the UNIX way. Worth looking into if you need to do this alot-
  - tachion 14y ago
    Your procedure already requires booting out of live cd, and then uses "unix way" that might be easy to screw up for less advanced people, so using G4U simplifies it substantially, does the same good job and by no means is a 'overkill' ;)
chatmasta 14y ago
DigitalOcean should probably put this in their marketing materials.

euroclydon 14y ago

You mean the comprised image?

mspeed 14y ago

Check out http://www.cloudconverter.com http://www.cloudconverter.com - move from Linode to pretty much any other provider out there.