I read on the Migration Tool page that if migrating a user to a new server that already has that name established, the migrated user will overwrite the existing user. Does it just update the settings for that user, or does it remove/create the account, just with the same name? And what happens to the assets under that existing user - do they get reassigned to/merged with the new user, or are they left unassigned? I'm thinking of moving two standalone servers to a mirrored multiserver setup, and I have a user names on both machines that are the same. if they both have 5 sites assigned to them on both machines, with the user on the new server(s) end up with 10 sites under them?
But there is Code: --server-prefix=<prefix> Use given prefix for conflicting usernames, if further conflicts occur, add _2 _3 _4 ... to username That is from https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial...-ispconfig-31-single-server/#advanced-options So you migration can avoid overwriting user with same name.
thanks for the responses I'm actually hoping it can do the "merge" of accounts, as I have 2 independent servers currently, and would like to consolidate them at the same time I'm migrating them to the multiserver-mirror set. So can I then assume that if "useracct" on server1 is holding the email services for that domain, and "useracct" on server2 is holding the web services for that account, then after the migration to the new servers, "useracct" will be in control of both email AND web services (merging them into one acct)?
and while I was typing that - DNS entries... are they updated to reflect the new location of the site during this process (i assume yes, but...)? if so, then I guess it would be best if the owner of those servers made sure the old server had the latest, valid, live versions of the DNS and not the newer server, as they might get overwritten what if the are no DNS entries on the old server, and some already on the new server - do those get removed, or is it additive/updated only?
Make a test setup and see how Migration tool works. It is going to take ages if you want to ask all possible questions before you start the process. Have you already read carefully the Migration Tool documentation? DNS entries you must change yourself. I have done it with SQL queries in the database. If there are no DNS entries on the old server, then there is no DNS entries to migrate so nothing happen in DNS zones. I have always migrated to an empty server, so I do not know how migration tool handles merging two accounts to one. I would assume tool can not merge in a useful way, and manually copy data in these cases.
Merging of multiple servers works well, so no issues are doing that with the Migration Tool. Clients and Resellers are identified by their usernames. Websites, and email domains by their domain names. The tool takes care not to duplicate things unless you have chosen to duplicate, e.g., clients during migration. So take care to choose to overwrite if you do not want to end up with copies of the same client. And take care to use dry-run mode for testing and like @Taleman mentioned, do a test migration first if you are unsure, migrate server 1 to the new system, then server 2, and then check if you are happy with the results. if not, reset the new system and do it again using different settings.
thanks for the responses - sorry for the multitude of questions but I like to think things through before I burn through a lot of time.