Migrating to a new Parametric Search Appliance

Whether you've received a VM or hardware appliance please follow the instructions included with that for installation and IP configuration. Once installed and running on the network, procedures for migrating from appliance to appliance are the same regardless of whether either appliance is hardware or VM.

For this document the appliance that is the source of the migration will be called the "old" installation and the target of the migration will be called the "new" installation.

On the old installation go to System → System Setup → System Wide Settings, turn on Disable Starting All Walks, and click Update. Doing that will prevent scheduled walks from starting during the migration process. Then stop any running walks.
Backup the settings using System → Backup/Restore Settings → Backup Settings. Include System-wide info and All Profiles, or just the profiles you want to migrate. Backup settings will download the settings file to your workstation.
On the new installation restore the backup settings using System → Backup/Restore Settings → Restore Settings and choose the backup file you just downloaded.
If you are using Static Content that will have to be migrated by hand using System → Modules → Static Content. You can re-upload to the new installation from your own repository or download the individual files from the old installation to your workstation then upload those to the new installation.
Once all of the configurations are complete you have two choices for populating the profile data for searching. Do one or the other of the options below, not both.
- Re-enable the walks on the new installation and start the walks of each profile by hand or let them start by their schedules. Go to System → System Setup → System Wide Settings, turn off Disable Starting All Walks, and click Update.
- The alternative is to have the old installation send all of it's profile data to the new installation using data replication. See Replication Overview in the manual for how to setup profile replication. When setting up the sender profile you'd use Update instead of Update and go. Then go to Tools → Replication Tools and Send Data to start the send. It's best to send just one or a few profiles at once, waiting for them to complete before sending more.
After migration is complete go to System → System Setup → System Wide Settings on the new installation, turn off Disable Starting All Walks, and click Update.
The new installation is now ready for use as a replacement for the old installation.