Convert your installation

Before you begin:

Back up your installation.
Ensure that you have the required access to the PE infrastructure nodes in your installation.
- To convert PE by using PIM on your primary server, you must log in to your primary server as the root user.
- To convert a PE installation that includes remote infrastructure nodes, the machine running PIM must have root SSH access to those nodes. You can configure SSH, or use the -b flag to pass the SSH key or SSH credentials when you run the convert command.

To convert your installation by using PIM:

Download the latest version of PIM.
Go to the Puppet Installation Manager download page and download the binary for your operating system.
Create a JSON file containing the relevant parameters for your PE installation.
For examples illustrating the JSON properties required for different PE architectures, see Creating a conversion parameters file.
Start the conversion.
In your terminal, navigate to the pim directory and run one of the following commands, replacing parameters.json with the actual file name (including the file path, if necessary):
- To run the conversion without debugging and without configuring SSH, use a command like the following example:
```
./pim convert parameters.json
```
- To enable debug logging, add -d or --debug. For example:
```
./pim convert parameters.json --debug
```
- To pass an SSH key or SSH credentials for accessing remote nodes, use the -b flag as shown in the following examples:
```
./pim convert -b user=root -b private-key=~/.ssh/ssh_key parameters.json
```
```
./pim convert -b user=root -b password=ssh_password parameters.json
```