You should be able to do that if you are in effect just swapping hardware.

Bring up the new server, make sure you have all the same ports open, etc. Do a final backup of the JSS database out of the old server. Shut it down. Make the new server have the same IP and DNS name as the old server. Import your database from the backup on the new server. You might have to also though grab the Tomcat SSL certs from the old server too though.

@chriscollins

We're looking forward to changing the DNS name, we can keep the old IP. What problems would happen by changing the DNS name?

That would be bad, r.e. changing the hostname. You may end up requiring a re-enroll of all of your devices since the JSS certificates would be changing. Since you have so few devices currently enrolled, it would probably be best to start from scratch, set it up the way you want it now (and the way you know you'll want it for a long time) and then re-enroll those five devices.

5 devices are not worth the headache of moving them. Just spin up the new server and re-enroll them. If you had 500, that would be different.

@bmarks @millersc

That's my plan now, new DNS and IP.

We just added 30 test machines to the current JSS after posting this. I'll just enroll all the machines to the new JSS during our yearly summer re-imaging.

This is why a single DNS service name is highly recommended for use. It gives you a single contact point, and then you can redirect it wherever you want. It is worth integrating this into any Casper design, as it comes in extremely handy for situations such as this one. Also consider moving your database into it's own server too.

I'm about to do this process for about 300 devices. The plan is to move over the entire distribution point data and restore a DB backup on the new JSS. After that we will shut down the old server and change the hostname on the new server to match what the old servername was.

Is that what others have done? Any potential stumbling blocks I should be aware of? My understanding is that the APNS cert etc would be carried over in the database.

If the clients are looking to an alias are there certificate mismatch issues due to the actual tomcat server having a different hostname?

My tomcat cert skills are extremely minimal.

No, as you would make a tomcat ssl certificate for the DNS host name rather than the server name. It then only becomes an issue connecting to the server directly, which ordinarily you wouldn't do.

@andrewseago has an excellent JNUC video on how to set up the Casper backend.