LiquidFiles Documentation
LiquidFiles Documentation
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Migrate from LiquidFiles v3.x to LiquidFiles v4.x

LiquidFiles v3.x uses CentOS 7 as it's underlying operating system. CentOS 7 is End of Life on the 30th of June, 2024. If you have a LiquidFiles v3.x system running after that it will still work as expected. The problems is if there's a system vulnerability detected after the 30th of June, 2024, your system will be vulnerable and not fixable.

In order to get to a supported release, you will need to migrate your system to LiquidFiles v4.x, that uses Ubuntu 22.04LTS.

When migrating from LiquidFiles v3.x to LiquidFiles v4.x, since the underlying operating system changes from CentOS 7 to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, it's not possible to do an in-place upgrade. In order to migrate from LiquidFiles v3.x to LiquidFiles v4.x, you will have to do a fresh install of LiquidFiles v4.x and migrate your data across.

Or alternatively, if you're using a physical server and wishes to use the same hardware, it is also possible to use the builtin backup and restore functionality to restore a LiquidFiles v3.7.x backup onto a LiquidFiles v4.x system. Please see the migration options below for more information.

Also please note that migration is only possible from LiquidFiles v3.7.x. If you're currently using an older release, you will first need to update to LiquidFiles v3.7 and then migrate to LiquidFiles v4.x.

Overview of steps involved

The preferred method is that you install a new LiquidFiles system and migrate the data across. This is the safest migration method as it will give you an automatic fallback option. If the migration for whatever reason is not successful, you can just simply continue using the previous LiquidFiles v3.x system until you can retry the migration. Using this method, it's also easy to do a staged migration where you can try out the migration but still keep using the older v3.x system. Once you've verified that everything works as expected, you can repeat the migration and move the v4.x system into production.

The steps involved are:

  1. Update the source LiquidFiles v3.x system to the latest v3.7.x version.
  2. Download the latest LiquidFiles v4.x version from https://license.liquidfiles.com/downloads
  3. Install LiquidFiles v4.x using the relevant Installation Instructions.
  4. Follow one of the guides below to migrate your data.

Migration Guides:

  • Web Based Migration — This is the guide for most migrations.
  • Console Based Migration — A very similar alternative to the Web based migration, if you have access and prefer to use the console.
  • Installation First Migration — If you want your destination system to use a separate data disk or use NFS storage as data storage, you have to install the LiquidFiles system so you can configure the data storage options first, before running the migration.
    You can also use this if you've previously run another migration to test and then do the final migration using the multistep migration method.
  • Restore From a Backup — If you're running LiquidFiles on dedicated hardware and want to continue using the same hardware, or if you cannot establish a network link between the source and destination system, follow this guide.

Also, please see the Migration Overview for a detailed overview how the migration works.