Thank you both. I used Brogan's method. I created a virtual machine, installed the LAMP stack, imported my data and performed an upgrade that way. Then, exported it and imported it to the new host.
Got a double for you. I'm upgrading a XF1.5 to the latest 2.2.8. I'm also moving hosts. Their PHP is higher than XF 1.5 can handle so I'm getting Uncaught ErrorException: array_key_exists() errors.
Is there a workaround here? Pretty sure I cannot downgrade my php install at my host site.