Seeking Centos 7 with Free IPA migration advice

Hello all. I am hoping to get some general advice to get started. I have a centos 7 network running free ipa for directory services. I want to start to migrate over to the latest Rocky Linux. Currently I have one centos machine that is running free ipa and it is also running my dns and dhcp. I was thinking I could get a new machine running the latest Rocky Linux and set it up as another ipa machine. Then start to migrate the other machines on the network over to Rocky. Can Centos and Rocky co-exist as IPA replicas? Is there a better approach? I am reluctant to try to migrate my centos ipa server since currently there is no replica running if anything gets crushed.

Any migration advice welcome…

Rocky Linux and CentOS 7 can co-exist as replicas, but not for very long. You should immediately start to migrate once you’ve added a Rocky Linux 8 replica (you should not jump two major versions when migrating if you are planning to use Rocky Linux 9). Otherwise, you will run into some issues with them running together.

The general idea goes like this:

  • Enterprise Linux Y system is installed and enrolled as a client
  • Enterprise Linux Y system is added as a replica
  • Change CRL to Enterprise Linux Y system and adjust settings on Enterprise Linux X CA master and new Enterprise Linux Y replica for pki-tomcatd and httpd
  • Test user is created to ensure DNA range is adjusted
  • Verify DNA range
  • Stop first Enterprise Linux X IPA services, remove replica, uninstall, power off.

If you have two IPA replicas you’re trying to migrate, you’d then continue:

  • Second Enterprise Linux Y system is installed and enrolled as a client
  • Second Enterprise Linux Y system is added as a replica
  • Test user is created again to ensure DNA range is adjusted
  • Verify DNA range
  • Stop second Enterprise Linux X IPA services, remove replica, uninstall, power off.

I have an example of the migration process here: FreeIPA — Linux Guide and Hints

For going from Rocky Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 9, Red Hat’s official documentation works as well.

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