Crowd Migration to new Server, with a twist

[joe bednarz]

We are migrating all of our self-hosted Atlassian applications to new servers and I'm trying to do this incrementally.  All of the applications are currently installed on a single server (don't ask... wasn't my idea, nor ideal... I know).  One approach that I'm thinking might work is to do the following:

1. Create new <Atlassian App, e.g., Crowd> on NEW server
2. Backup/export all data, and stop OLD Crowd instance
3. Import all data into NEW Crowd instance and Start
4. Configure tomcat on OLD Crowd server to proxy_pass/reverse_proxy to NEW Crowd server and restart tomcat on OLD server
5. Repeat for all Atlassian apps...

Then, create a proxy front end (ngnix, IIS, apache, etc.) that once all Atlassian applications are moved to their new respective server, proxy translates OLD server name/applications to NEW server names/application.  Decommission OLD server.  Finally, create DNS record for proxy front end to look like the OLD server name on the domain, i.e., ping OLD, gets response of proxy server.

I know apache can be set up to do this, but what about Tomcat?  Can I have tomcat running on one server, and the application reside on another?

Anyone have any experience doing something similar?  Is this the best approach? 

Appreciate your thoughts and advice.

Thanks!

[joe bednarz · Accepted solution]

I've not found any documentation about setting up tomcat to proxy.  The way we are currently planning to do this is:

* put a web server (IIS, Apache, whatever) on the server and only listen for specific ports, 8095 for Crowd, 8080 for JIRA, etc.

* set up proxy pass and reverse rules to the new server, one at a time, as each application is stood up on the new servers

Thanks.