feat: ZeroTier Central migration

[jakoberpf]

Feature Request

Describe the Feature Request When migrating from the hosted zerotier controller, it would be nice be able to add the already existing networks to the selfhosted controller.

Describe Preferred Solution To my knowledge of how zerotier works, i thought this would be possible by just joining the selfhosted controller to the zerotier network. This could be then done by either the cli in the pod or the UI. But so far i didn't manage to get the UI to show the network if the controller is joined. Or maybe my thinking process is flaud.

Does anyone have any experience with migrating from the hosted zerotier controller?

If the feature request is approved, would you be willing to submit a PR? Yes

[dec0dOS]

Hello, @jakoberpf! I've been thinking for a while about the ZeroTier Central migration but do not have some time to implement it properly. The best way is to implement it on the frontend side, the code just has to get the parameters from the ZeroTier Central network via API and create the same networks with the same configuration on the ZeroUI side.
That may be the problem with CORS, so it may require some additional headers setup from the backend. If you could help with implementing this feature, that would be awesome!

[jakoberpf]

Hey @dec0dOS,

alright so that means we cannot reuse the already created networks form my.zerotier in the self hosted controller but would have to recreate them? That would make it necessary to join all members again in the recreated networks. I could imagine adding the members on the controller by their IDs and assigning the same IPs. Didn't try this route yet, but would you image this to be the migration process.

• Get Configuration of old controller (network, members, ips, ...)
• Create Configuration on new Controller
• Join members on new controller based on IDs and assign IPs
• Remove/Disable members from/on old controller

[dec0dOS]

Hey, @jakoberpf,

Yes, your assumptions are correct. There is no way to fully automate migration from ZeroTier Central because we do not have the controller private key, that is used in ZeroTier Central. The full migration could be possible without rejoining the network on the client-side only from ztncui or any other self-hosted solution.

[JamesTX10]

The full migration could be possible without rejoining the network on the client-side only from ztncui or any other self-hosted solution.

I am using ztncui currently. Is there a way to migrate those networks over to Zero-ui?

[jakoberpf]

@JamesTX10 @dec0dOS Sorry, didn't really got to his yet. I am still on the my.zerotier controller and still planning to make this migration functionality...

[dec0dOS]

Migrating to the self-hosted solution is really painful, as it requires client-side reconfiguration. Even as a zero-ui maintainer, I am currently using the ZeroTier Central for some networks.

[Zeitkind]

Is there a way to migrate from my ztncui? I don't need all those fancy enterprise features, so I'd like to migrate my last bunch of networks and clients to a private server. I have a ztncui running for years, but development seemed to have stopped. I still have about 40 clients on zerotier.com and about another 40 on my ztncui. Every time they changed their license and reduced the free members, I created new networks on my ztncui and re-added all manually. Those 40 remaining are a pita to renew, so I'd really like to migrate them without much problems. Any ideas?

[dec0dOS]

@Zeitkind check the following discussion about the ztncui migration. https://github.com/dec0dOS/zero-ui/discussions/3

You could use your old zerotier controller key, so you don't have to manually reconfigure the clients.

[Zeitkind]

Will read it. Not sure yet, I don't really like nor use docker, I prefer a plain old repository or snap, but prob. try it on a VM host, hmmm.. Any ideas how to migrate from zerotier.com? Almost all clients are private and non commercial, so i don't really need any of those new fancy features, but there are a lot - and a lot of people that have no idea how to set up a new connection.. ^^ My goal is to completely go away from zerotier.com. I like their software, but tbh not their politics and total lack of communication.

[dec0dOS]

@Zeitkind, No, it is not possible to migrate from ZeroTier Central without rejoin on client side as ZeroTier Central controller private keys are unknown https://github.com/dec0dOS/zero-ui/issues/24#issuecomment-944274854

[Zeitkind]

Hmm.. ok, then I have to do it the hard way. sigh.