Moving and upgrading FOG install at the same time
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Hi All,
I would like to do a fresh/updated OS install of the VM that we are using to run FOG and at the same time upgrade FOG to the latest version as we are having some issues with slowness of the FOG interface that we haven’t been able to get to the bottom of (I believe it is a sql based issue). I’m not entirely sure on the steps I should follow to do this and whether it is not a good idea to move and upgrade FOG both at the same time? Some of the Wiki guides are not up to date so thought I would ask on here if anyone could give a quick rundown on the process I should use please? I’m also unsure on what the recommended OS is these days, I believe Ubuntu is no longer recommended?
Current OS: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Current FOG version: 1.5.4Future OS: (Suggestions on best OS please?)
Future FOG version: 1.5.7My current plan is to do something like this below, but I’m unsure if this process is correct and what the actual steps are:
- Backup all necessary FOG related files (images, snap ins, sql database etc)
- Snapshot VM as a backup.
- Format VM and install new OS.
- Install FOG.
- Restore FOG related files from previous install.
- Remove VM snapshot once new install is working well.
Thankyou for any help you can provide!
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Any of the 3 leading linux distros are fine. My preference is Centos 7, but that is because I’m a long time RHEL admin. I might hold off on Debian 10 since its so new. But Debian 9, Centos 7, or Ubuntu 18.04 should be fine.
There are 2 wiki pages on migrating your fog server that you might want to read over:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Migrate_FOG
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Migrate_images_manually
The version 1.5.x series of FOG uses php-fpm to get over the slowness that was introduced in 1.5.0 (just because of the new ui interface). Make sure your VM has at least 4GB of ram and 2 vCPUs for this new configuration.
One thing I need to ask is how many client computers (with the fog client installed) will be communicating with this FOG server?
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Thanks @george1421
I think I will stick to Ubuntu 18.04 then as I’m used to that and not that familiar with linux in general.
So are you saying that our current version of 1.5.4 should not be running slow? We are seeing weird issues where it will take awhile to complete things such as updating details on a host (client computer). When you click the update button it can take up to 20-30 seconds sometimes for it to bring up the green box saying its completed. There are other random slowness issues but this is the most prevalent. I’ve tried bumping the VM up to 4 vCPU’s and 12GB of RAM but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I’ve also tried to tweak MySQL settings for better performance, but again doesn’t seem to make a difference (although my knowledge on this is limited). Watching the CPU usage it seems like the VM is being taxed pretty hard most of the time which doesn’t seem right.
We have probably about 400 to 500 client computers that could be contacting FOG, but generally not all of them would be turned on at the same time. The current client check in time is set to 5 minutes in the FOG Client settings in the FOG web interface. We also did not have any slowness issues prior to upgrading to 1.5.4 so it seems related to that version or something that has changed since older versions (perhaps the new UI interface as you suggested). Any tips around preventing this slowness issue other than adjusting FOG client check in times which I would prefer not to adjust if possible?
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Actually maybe I’ll try out Centos!
Also I should mention that our slowness issue seems to still happen even after hours when the majority of our client computers would be turned off.
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@Derek-Newbold Good choice I’d say. Make sure you read this: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=CentOS_7 (important parts about firewall an SELinux)
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@Derek-Newbold What kind of virtualization software do you use?
One thing that I recall happened sometimes on ubuntu (not sure if it was specific to ubuntu) was the switch to php-fpm not actually happening properly so people would be running the new interface without php-fpm which would be quite slow when you have a lot of clients and such.
If you check running programs you can verify whether there’s
phporphp-fpmprocesses running, which should give use a better idea of your current situation.Ubuntu in general has been somewhat problematic for FOG with dodgy updates on their end in relation to PHP and mysql and such.
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@Quazz we use VMware ESXi as our virtualization software.
I’ve also had a look at the running processes and it says
php-fpm7.1 -
@Derek-Newbold Good to know that php-fpm is installed and running! (Speaking of running processes, what does CPU and RAM usage look like (for processes such as apache, mysql, php-fpm, etc) when you try to do something that takes a long time for you?)
Odd that you’re experiencing performance issues despite this. Though number of clients could contribute to this.
If you have a bunch of hosts/clients, it’s also possible your database has grown quite a bit over time which can slow things down a bit.
