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Migrating from Warm Standby Virtual Machine to Docker

  • Published on May 7, 2026
  • 6 minute(s) read
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Preparing to Migrate

This article explains how to migrate from Skylight orchestrator virtual machine Warm Standby 23.12.1 to Legacy Orchestrator Docker Warm Standby 24.09.1.

The migration uses a new Legacy Orchestrator Docker Warm Standby deployment (target installation) to import the database from the Skylight orchestrator virtual machine Warm Standby deployment (source installation). This requires ensuring that the hostname, IP address, NTP server, timezone, and deployment profiles are aligned between the source and target installations. The target installation may use new IP addresses, provided that network connectivity and firewall rules are updated accordingly.

Source Installation Assumptions

  • The Skylight orchestrator virtual machine Warm Standby system (source installation) is operating normally.
  • The app_server is running on the primary site.
  • The primary site periodically sends backups of its data store to the secondary site.
  • The secondary site is in standby mode, ready to replace the primary site in case of failure.

Target Installation Assumptions

  • The new Legacy Orchestrator Docker Warm Standby system (target installation) has already been installed and configured.
  • Required networking and firewall rules are already in place.
  • The services are running on the primary site.
  • The target primary site periodically sends backups of its data store to the target secondary site.
  • The secondary site is in standby mode, ready to replace the primary site in case of failure.
  • Backup retention on the target secondary site is configured, and sufficient storage for periodic backups has been verified.

Note: Refer to the Warm Standby Redundancy articles for more information.

Deployment of the new Legacy Orchestrator Docker systems is beyond the scope of this article. These procedures are already captured in the Docker Deployment article and should be used when preparing for the migration. The deployment profile is important to consider when installing the Legacy Orchestrator Docker.

The software ships with four deployment profiles:

  • 5K profile (default)
  • 15K profile
  • 30K profile
  • 60K profile

The profiles reference the number of network elements the system can manage. Larger profiles have larger memory, CPU, and disk requirements. The selection of the profile is dictated by the current number of network elements in your source installation.

Please consult your Cisco sales engineer if you need guidance on the profile to choose for your Legacy Orchestrator Docker. The deployment profile can be changed (during a maintenance window) at any time, but when doing so, adequate memory, CPU, and disk resources must be assigned to the Docker host.

Migration Process Overview

The high-level migration process involves the following tasks:

Source Installation Procedures

  1. Verifying and ensuring there is no offline data on the source installation
  2. Taking a database backup and transferring it to the target primary site
  3. Stopping the software on the source primary site
  4. Transferring the Performance Session Data

Target Installation Procedures

  1. Stopping the services on the target primary site
  2. Importing the database backup
  3. Starting the services on the target primary site
  4. Updating the schedule periodic backups of the target primary site

Source Installation Procedures

Verifying and ensuring there is no offline data on the source installation

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the primary Skylight orchestrator on port 22.
  2. Log in as the visionems user.
  3. Run the following command:
  find /data/medn*instance/s*/ -type f -name "*RESYNC*" | wc -l

The output should be 0, indicating that no offline data is present.

Otherwise, offline data exists in the virtual machine. In this case, you must wait for the virtual machine to process all offline data by generating the CSV file and sending all CSV files to the SFTP/Rsync destination. If this step is not completed, the offline data will be lost during the migration.

Note: Once the migration is complete, the Legacy Orchestrator Docker 24.09.1 application will continue to generate and handle live and offline data files correctly, even without any old offline data files.

Taking a database backup and transferring it to the target primary site

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the source primary Skylight orchestrator on port 22.

  2. Log in as the visionems user.

  3. Back up the database by entering:

    /opt/accedian/skylight/scripts/ems_backup_mysql.sh

The backup is created and saved in the /data/backups/ directory.

  1. Rename the database backup file to migrate.tar.gz and transfer it to the /tmp directory on the primary site of the new Legacy Orchestrator Docker Warm Standby.

Stopping the Software on the Source Primary Site

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the source primary Skylight orchestrator on port 2200.

  2. Log in as the visionems user.

  3. Stop the app_server:

    service stop app_server

Transferring the Performance Session Data

To preserve historical performance session data, transfer it to the target installation by following these steps.

To transfer performance session data:

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the primary Skylight orchestrator on port 22.

  2. Log in as the visionems user.

  3. Initiate the transfer by entering:

    rsync -av /data/sdmm skylight@<target-primary-ip>:/<directory>

Where:

  • <target-primary-ip> is the IP address of the target primary site.
  • <directory> is the bizn1instance directory under the so-data volume.

Target Installation Procedures

  • Ensure all devices are reachable on the new Legacy Orchestrator Docker (target installation), manually configure all settings related to the network, interface, NTP server, timezone, etc., to match the configurations on the source. Refer to the Docker Deployment articles for more information.
  • Ensure the data volume(s) is configured to store all performance session data and performance metrics data.
  • Verify and ensure the user skylight has read access to the archive that was copied in the /tmp directory.
  • The backup file migrate.tar.gz must be placed in the /tmp directory on the Docker host of the target primary site.

Stopping the services on the target primary site

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the Legacy Orchestrator primary site CLI on port 2200.
  2. Log in as the skylight user.
  3. Stop Legacy Orchestrator services by entering:
  services stop

Importing the database backup

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the Legacy Orchestrator primary site CLI on port 2200.
  2. Log in as the skylight user.
  3. Restore the database backup:
    database migrate migrate.tar.gz

Starting the Services on the Target Primary Site

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the Legacy Orchestrator primary site CLI on port 2200.

  2. Log in as the skylight user.

  3. Start Legacy Orchestrator services:

    services start

  4. Verify and ensure the Legacy Orchestrator services are healthy:

    services status

All required services are expected to report a healthy status.

Note: It may take up to 10 minutes for the Legacy Orchestrator services to be healthy.

Updating the schedule periodic backups of the target primary site

After importing the source database, update the backup settings on the target primary site to ensure that periodic backups are sent to the target secondary site.

  1. Open a web browser and use the following information to log in to web interface:
https://<target-primary-site-ip>/businessweb/Login.html

Replace <target-primary-site-ip> with the IP address of the target primary site.

  • Username: admin (default)
  • Password: 2admin$admin (default)
    Note: They are defaults and should be changed.

  1. In the Admin > Backup tab, select the settings icon.

  2. Set the parameters as follows:

    Parameter Value
    Protocol SFTP
    User skylight
    Password Password of the skylight user on the target secondary site
    Host IP address of the target secondary site
    Port 22
    Directory /home/skylight/backups
    Frequency Every 15 minutes

  3. Select Apply to execute the changes.

    This configures the primary site to create a backup of its data store every 15 minutes. After each 15-minute interval, the primary site will push the new backup in the /home/skylight/backups directory on the secondary site.

  4. Log out of the target primary site by selecting the X (in the upper right corner of the page).

Rollback Procedure

The migration can be rolled back by stopping the application on the target installation and restarting the application on the source installation.

Target Installation

This procedure stops the application on the target installation.

Stopping the services on the Legacy Orchestrator primary site

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the Legacy Orchestrator primary site CLI on port 2200.

  2. Log in as the skylight user.

  3. Stop Legacy Orchestrator services:

    services stop

Source Installation

This procedure starts the application on the source installation.

Starting the application on the source primary site

  1. Open an SSH terminal session to the primary Skylight orchestrator on port 2200.

  2. Log in as the visionems user.

  3. Start the app_server:

    service start app_server

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