Existing A2HA to Automate HA

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This page explains the procedure to migrate the existing A2HA data to the newly deployed Chef Automate HA. This migration involves the following steps:

• Backup the data from the existing A2HA using the following command:

  sudo chef-automate backup create
  

  In case of multiple frontends, execute the above command from any frontend (Chef Automate). The above command saves the backup to the /var/opt/chef-automate/backup location unless you specify the location in config.toml.

• Create a .tar file of the backup created above. It is necessary to have a backup for the .tar directory, or the metadata.json might throw an error.

  For example: tar -cvf backup.tar.gz path/to/backup/20201030172917/ /path/to/backup/automatebackup-elasticsearch/ /path/to/backup/.tmp/

• Create a .aib file from any of the chef automate frontend nodes of A2HA. This creates a bundle of necessary keys, such as pivotal.pem, secret key, etc. Create a bundle for the file, as this might not be included in the normal backup process.

sudo chef-automate bootstrap bundle create bootstrap.abb

• Copy the .tar and .aib files created above to any Automate HA Chef Automate instances. Extract the specific file to the specific location mentioned in the config.toml file. For example: /mnt/automate-backup. It is not mandatory to extract the backup to the specified location, but the restore command should always read the backup file from the location above.

• To restore the A2HA backup on Automate HA, run the following command:

  sudo chef-automate backup restore /mnt/automate_backups/backups/20210622065515/ --patch-config /etc/chef-automate/config.toml --airgap-bundle /var/tmp/frontend-20210624095659.aib --skip-preflight
  

  The above command generates the frontend-20210624095659.aib file in the new Automate HA file. All the services’ habitat release versions can be considered during the restoration process. At the time of restoration, the A2HA restoration will try to find the A2HA habitat pkg version so there can be a possibility of different package versions. To get the error-free restoration, pass the current Automate HA packages (frontend .aib file), which is located in the /var/tmp directory of your Automate HA chef-automate instance.

• Unpack the .aib bootstrap file. The file will let you access the data in Chef Automate and will also let you view the login page.

• Copy the bootstrap.aib file to another automate node and chef node. You can copy this file even if you have multiple automate and chef instances. The secrets restored by unpacking the bootstrap file differ from other automated instances. So, sync all the automate and chef instances.

Important commands and notes

To view what bootstrap includes in the .aib and abb files, run the following command:

tail -n +3 bootstrap.aib | tar -tf -

.aib file only includes keys related data, whereas the .abb file also contains service packages.

To see the service data like secret service, search for it in the /hab/svc directory. This can be required if you want to compare .aib data with multiple FE (In respective chef-automate and chef-server) nodes.

For Example: For secret service cat /hab/svc/secrets-service/data/secrets\_key