Google Search Appliance Upgrade and Migration Handbook - Manual (Page 16)

Disadvantages of this migration method:
● More time­intensive than mirroring, as all content needs to be re­crawled or re­fed by connectors
and feeds
● Additional connectors or feed clients may need to be set up on new hosts, since existing
connectors and feeds may need to continue to send to the production GSA (for content freshness
and/or authorization)
● Creates additional load to target content servers during re­crawl
Requirements
● Configuration file migration is generally recommended only between appliances of the same version
● Configuration file compatibility between different GSA versions is not guaranteed, and if performed,
configurations should be verified to ensure all settings are included.
Approach
The following steps describe the approach of migrating a search appliance by configuration files:
1. Examine the GSA version of the “target” GSA and check release notes of this version and of any
later patches, for issues that may affect the deployment environment. Update the target GSA to the
appropriate patch if necessary.
2. Export configuration file(s) from existing GSA and import them into the new appliance. If the source
and target GSA software versions are the same, the overall GSA configuration file can be exported
and imported. If not, choose various components of the admin console to export (eg. front­end XSLT
or collection definitions).
3. [optional] If there are feed clients or connectors in use, new instances of the feed clients or
connectors need to be setup with the target appliance, to index all content.
4. [optional] If it is critical to have fresh content in production system and the content servers can take
on extra load, the existing appliance should be kept crawling. If freshness is not critical, pause the
crawl on the existing appliance and any connectors or feed clients.
5. Allow the new appliance to completely crawl and index all content.
6. [optional] If a production backup appliance is in use, enable mirroring and setup the already
configured appliance as the master, and the new production backup as the replica. Let the replica
sync to 100%.
7. Cutover to new appliance(s) and decommission old appliance(s).
For details on how to perform a configuration file import and export, refer to the GSA Admin Help page for
Administration > Import and Export .
Migration scenarios
This section describes considerations and approaches to be taken in common scenarios for migration:
● Renewing search appliances
● Promoting a GSA configuration from one environment to another
● Increasing license count
● Migrating with existing mirrored GSAs
● Migrating with a distributed GSA architecture
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