Moving Servers

[ibaker]

I am looking into moving servers however the problem is the distance and the amount of data.

Currently the server is in Australia and will be moving an XF site to a server in the US. The database is 400meg and the "internal_data" folder is 1.4gig. The rest of the site files add up to about 150meg.

The upload rate I get to the US server is only about 150kb/s so it is going to take quite a few hours to do it which means the site will have to be closed down for that amount of time.

The database at 400meg is going to be a headache in not only uploading it but to then import it into a new one...I have previously used MySQLDumper due to the size of the import...all this is going to take some time to do.

The general files is nothing and can be done whilst the site is open as these don't change or get added to but the database and the internal_data folder will be the killers in time.

Any suggestions on how I can minimise the down time of my site to do the migration...thanks

 

[MagnusB]

Disable attachments a while before starting the migration, seems that seems to be the biggest bottle neck. Then you can upload that, and when you are good and ready, you only have the 150 mb + 400mb database to worry about.

Failing that, it could be possible for you to "outsource" the upload to someone else as well, preferably someone you trust

 

[ibaker]

Thanks MagnusB, disabling attachments is a good idea but what else is there...avatars (I can live with losing any that are changed during the migration), what about new user registrations, apart from avatars is everything to do with this contained just in the database?...anything else?

 

[MagnusB]

Ohh, avatars as well, forgot about that. Yeah, everything regarding users are in the database, AFAIK, except for attachments and avatars. I just took a look at it, and it seems you have to remove the permission (just set Never upload avatar and attachments to post to your primary group, should sort it for everyone).

If you have some other file upload system on your site, you might want to disable that as well. What you want is to prevent any changes to the internal_data folder, so you can move that prior to closing down your site, as I guess that is so big it will take quite some time to both download and upload to your new host. That way you can transfer your files prior to transferring your database, then you can close down your site, change the DNS and upload the database and import that, as you probably have the time to do this while the DNS updates around the world.

 

[CTXMedia]

Can you not do a server-to-server file transfer? If they are both web servers they should have much more bandwidth capability than your ADSL at work/home.

Gzip everything into one (or multiple) packages, place then within the public side of your current web hosting and then wget from the destination (new) server.

 

[Carlos]

If you have CPanel as your server backend, this can easily be solved by a migration tool.

 

[ibaker]

Thanks but the cPanel migration will take forever...I tried it once and it took twice as long as doing it manually myself

 

[Jake Bunce]

Definitely do server to server. Basically this:

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/how-to-backup-and-restore-your-forum-linux-windows.359/

But once you have the .tar.gz backup file you can transfer it via sftp. Using SSH to the old server you can run the sftp command to connect to the new server, then use the put command to transfer the file.