Webscale One - How Migrations Work

Webscale provides initial migration services for new clients. The migration service moves your current site to Webscale One and helps with configurations to make sure it is ready to launch.

Preparation

After a new Webscale One environment is provisioned, an email is sent to the owner requesting information needed for the migration task:

  • Domain(s) to be migrated
  • Path to files on current host (e.g. /var/www or /home/username/www)
  • Control Panel URL
  • Control Panel Username
  • Control Panel Password
  • SSH URL
  • SSH Username
  • SSH Password

Depending on the current hosting, store owners may not have immediate access to all the needed information. The owner should consult with their original developers or the hosting provider asssistance.

At a minimum, Support needs SSH access to dump the store database and sync the site files between the servers. Alternatively — but much less desirable — Support can use a pre-made archive. Many Admin panels, such as cPanel can create such archives.

Initial Migration

Once Webscale support has verified access to the current environment, the migration team will:

  • Dump the existing database(s) to a file
  • Sync the files and database dump to the new environment
  • Copy any SSL certificates that can be accessed
  • Copy any extra frameworks/databases detected such as WordPress blogs
  • Setup and import the database on Webscale One
  • Configure any extra domains or store codes
  • Set the base URLs and cookies to a temporary domain
  • Confirm the site loads
  • Review basic site functionality
  • Turn off all cron jobs until the site goes “Live.” You can test cron jobs manually via SSH.
  • Change any custom symlinks to reflect available folders under /srv/ (like /mnt, /glusterfs)  
  • Activate Redis cache, Redis session, and Varnish for Full Page Caching (for Magento 2 stores).
  • Change any relative symlinks to absolute. (ex.. ../../../env.php to /srv/public_html/app/etc/env.php)

After confirming the site appears to be working as expected, and Webscale Control Panel access is sent, Webscale will request testing by the store owner and/or developers.

Review and Testing

The purpose of the review period is to make sure everything you need is working for your store. The site should be tested as it would normally be used. Any business critical custom scripts or cron tasks should be tested.

During the review and tesing, Webscale recommends the following minimum testing actions be completed:

  • Check categories, product pages, and search results.

  • Add a product to the shopping cart.

  • Verify coupons and special pricing rules.

  • Verify the Magento Admin login process.

  • Check for any Magento extensions that require licenses. Make sure extensions are functioning and do not need an updated license.

Final Switchover

Once the review and testing is accepted and confirmed by the store owner, Webscale Support will request a time for the final switchover. During this final step, the support team will:

  • Set maintenance mode on the previous site to prevent orders
  • Resync the database with a fresh copy from the previous host
  • Clear any cache

Once the domain is pointed to your new environment, the site will then appear live, but due to DNS propagation, this may not be immediate.  

NOTE: It is recommended to schedule the final migration for a low traffic/off-hours time to minimize impact to your customers.


Last modified January 1, 0001