Migrating a Network Data Center & IPs to BGP
Posted on April 8th, 2009
What Goes Into Migrating a Network Data Center & IPs to a BGP Network
Teddy here, one of the System Admins here at SevenL Networks.
Teddy – Systems Administrator
I am going to provide all of you interested folks about the <sarcasm> fun-filled </sarcasm> IP transfer we under went to get all of our dedicated server, VPS and Colocation customers onto our new “sexy” BGP network. Essentially we needed to switch every IP in our data center over to our new class of IP’s. Thankfully, this was a one time switch, it will never need to be done again. Our Network Engineer, Kyle was managing the BGP switch. My job was to assist Captain Kyle, our Ninja, as well as our managed hosting and unmanaged server customers through the transition.
The first step was to run the old IP block in parallel with the new BGP network. For all you that do not know what BGP is, check out this link. This was critical, since we had to migrate each dedicated server from the old IP to the new BGP IP range. When the old IP and new BGP network were working in parallel, we started to move each hosting server one by one to the new BGP IP. Exciting stuff!! Apache, DNS/Bind, CMS, Joomla, MySQL, you name it; the list was extensive as our dedicated hosting customers utilize a number of configurations that needed to be taken into consideration. After the hard-coded IPs were changed, the server was nearly ready for the BGP network. The networking configuration was changed and DNS was updated. To minimize downtime on critical web servers, network configuration and DNS had to be scheduled at the same time. We queued and scheduled these like when planes arrive at an airport. A lot of clients were able to “land” their own planes. That is to say, moved their server or VPS from the old IP block to the new BGP IPs without any assistance. Many clients were able to switch directly to the BGP IP but some clients needed a bridge and time to migrate their servers or VPS. This meant running their old IP along with the new BGP IP and routing tables together.
SevenL Networks BGP Migration Meeting
What are the things I consider important to remember?
Make a Plan With Your Team
Formulate a plan. Meet with your team a number of times to discuss the plan, review problems and solutions. Now make a website link for the Project. Everyone on the project knows their job, problems, and possible solutions, what others are doing, and full details of:
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1. Delegate
Delegate as much as possible. This makes the entire project very efficient and saves everyone time and work. Put trust in your team to do their part.
2. Bridge
You cannot do a project of this size without a bridge and time. Get your old server network and new server network to run in parallel. This ensures a successful transition.
3. Communications
With an up to date contact list/email/phone/database, talk, schedule and co-ordinate. It was a great way to catch up and chat with our clients as well! =)
4. One Place for Information
Email your dedicated hosting clients a link to guide and instruct them on the change over of their IP. This is important because everyone is on the same page with the same information.
5. Status
As you call or email your clients, write a text file. This is simple, but very important. At a glance, you can know the status of every one of your clients in the upgrade process.
As the list grows longer, move higher priority first. After each client is switched over to the new IP remember to note this on the .txt file!
Here’s an example of how I formatted my txt file to keep it simple yet thorough:
ACME Inc.
Mr John Doe 416-123-4567 john@acme.org
phone1 no answer, left message
phone2 no answer, left message
email1 sent
email2 sent John will send us an email with exact instructions on how to upgrade his servers to BGP. He needs to coordinate DNS at the same time. John needs coordination now, do not call or email.
I hope that this was informative and gives you a better understanding of what goes on during a migration like this. Thanks for listening!