Mirating to SmarterMail HA

The process of migrating from a standalone installation of SmarterMail to SmarterMail HA is really not that much different than migrating from one SmarterMail server to another. The most complex part of the process is architecting your HA cluster: setting up your shared storage, installing and starting up your hubs and nodes, etc . Once that's complete, the migration process is fairly straightforward.

The only real sticking point is when using more than one location for your domain and user data. If multiple volume mounts are used for your standalone installation, getting those set up in the shared storage system for your cluster can take some planning.

Our Example Scenario

As an example, let’s say you have a SmarterMail Enterprise Unlimited installation, with 200 domains and 20,000 users, and that installation uses a Primary Path for user and domain data, as well as more recent email data, and a Secondary Path for older email data. Your plan is to migrate this to SmarterMail High Availability that uses NAS storage and 2 nodes. How would would do that?

Prerequisites and Planning

1. Licensing

SmarterMail HA requires a partnership with SmarterTools and uses a monthly lease licensing model. Each hub and each node requires its own license. Every node license is essentially a SmarterMail Enterprise Unlimited license and includes the MAPI & EWS add-on. You need to contact sales@smartertools.com to initiate the partnership and obtain the HA installer files and license keys before you can proceed.

2. Infrastructure Needed

Below are the pieces you'll need. Hubs and nodes can be bare metal servers, VMs, or even containers.

• 1 NAS device (or SAN) — This is the shared centralized storage for all domain/user data. RAID 10 is recommended.
• 1 Hub server (Windows or Linux VM) — The hub proxies content and authentication to nodes. It stores domain and user settings on the shared storage.
• 2 Node servers (Windows or Linux VMs) — These are teh actual mial servers that handle mail processing.
• (Recommended) A load balancer — To distribute traffic across the 2 nodes.

Options include additional hardware for any standby hub or node(s) you want to configure for your cluster.

DNS Requirements

Each node, each hub, and any gateways must each have a unique A record in DNS. Each server should also have a valid PTR record that points back to its A record. (It's best to work with SmarterTools on the necessary PTR records based off your particular installation.) If nodes are on internal IPs only, the externally-facing IP (for outbound mail) still needs proper A and PTR records. If a load balancer is used, DNS changes for any hubs isn’t necessary as the load balancer would require those entries.

Migration Steps

Step 1: Prepare the NAS Shared Storage

Set up the NAS with a shared folder that has concurrent read/write access for a domain or local user account. Inside the share, create the following folder structure:

• A folder for the hub settings/data
• A folder for each node -- for our example, that means 2 folders. Ideally, the folder names would match the names given to each node being set up. Again, using our example, that would be Node1 and Node2.
  • Inside each node folder, create a folder for the domains being added to the node. This is where the domain data will go for each domain on that specific node. For our example, the folder structure would look like this:

Additional folders are created automatically when paths are set for them in the node, or when a node is joined to a cluster. These include Certificates, Logs, etc. folders. Only "Domains" folders need to be created manually within each Node folder.

Step 2: Copy Existing Data to the NAS

Before installing HA, you need to migrate your existing mail data to the NAS.

1. Stop SmarterMail on the existing server.
2. Copy the Primary Path data (all 200 domain folders, the domains.json, and system settings) to the appropriate location on the NAS. When using multiple nodes, be sure to move domains to the appropriate Domains folder on the node that will eventually house those domains.
3. Copy the Secondary Path (if ussed) data to the NAS as well. In HA, all data needs to be accessible from the shared storage. You have two options:
• Consolidate everything onto one NAS path — Move both primary and secondary data into a single path on the NAS.
• Maintain a secondary storage path on the NAS — If your NAS has different tiers of storage (e.g., SSD vs. HDD), you can keep the primary/secondary path split, but both paths must be on NAS-accessible shares that all nodes can reach.
4. Use Robocopy (Windows) or rsync (Linux) to perform the copy efficiently. For 20,000 users this will be a large data transfer, so plan for the transfer time.

Step 3: Install the Hub

1. Obtain the HA installer from SmarterTools (you'll get separate installers for hubs and nodes).
2. Install SmarterMail on the hardware.
3. Configure the Shared Hub Path to point to the hub folder you created on the NAS.
4. Complete the hub setup wizard — this is similar to a standard Enterprise setup, with the addition of the shared path configuration.
5. Activate the hub license.

Step 4: Install and Configure the Node(s)

Perform the following for each node you intend to have in your cluster.

1. Install SmarterMail HA on the first node VM.
2. During setup, select "SmarterMail High Availability".
3. You'll be asked to connect the node to your hub:
• Hub Address — The hostname of the hub you just configured (use the hostname, not the IP, if possible).
• One Time Password — Generated when you add the node in the hub's management interface.
4. Point the node's data path to the appropriate node folder and domain data on the NAS.

Step 5: Post-Deployment Domain Setup

This step is critical, and must be performed after the nodes are configured.

1. Log in to the Hub administration interface.
2. Go to the Manage area and click the Nodes tab.
3. Right-click on each node and select Manage Node.
4. Configure which domains are assigned to which nodes, in whatever configuration you want. For example, with 2 nodes and 200 domains, you can:
• Put an equal number of domains on each node,
• Put higher-use domains on one node and the rest on the other,
• If you have a domain with a high number of mailboxes, that domain can be split across the 2 nodes.
5. Ensure all domain paths reference the NAS locations correctly.

Step 6: DNS Cutover

• Update your MX records to point to the hub (or load balancer if you're using one).
• Update A records for webmail, ActiveSync, EWS, etc. to point to the hub or load balancer.
• Ensure PTR records are configured for all outbound IPs used by the nodes.
• Verify SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are updated if your outbound IPs have changed.

Step 7: Verify!!

It is extremely important that you verify all settings for each domain that's been migrated.

• Test webmail login for users across multiple domains.
• Test inbound and outbound mail delivery.
• Verify that both nodes are showing as active and healthy in the hub's Server Health page.
• Confirm that archived/secondary data is accessible to users. (If used.)

Key Considerations for Our Example

200 domains / 20,000 users is a significant dataset. Plan for substantial data transfer time to the NAS. Consider doing an initial copy/rsync (ideally, on Windows, use Hobocopy as it has VSS to avoid file locking) while the old server is still running, then a final incremental sync after stopping the service to minimize downtime.

Secondary Path data: Since HA requires centralized storage, both your primary and secondary/archived data must reside on NAS-accessible paths. If your NAS supports storage tiering, you can preserve the cost benefit of separating hot and cold data. NAS performance is critical. With 20,000 users, ensure your NAS has sufficient IOPS and network bandwidth. SmarterTools recommends RAID 10 for the data storage.

The old Enterprise license will no longer be needed once you're fully migrated to HA, as HA uses its own monthly lease licensing that includes Enterprise Unlimited + MAPI/EWS for all nodes.