Newbie needing to do a migration between servers

[Reg65]

Hello,

I'm new to D.A. so perhaps this is something that most people know however I have been tasked with moving a number of our own internal servers to an AWS server which are all managed by D.A. We are doing this for a couple of reasons the main one being that the servers we are moving from are no longer being maintained and therefore are very old and a security risk and the secondary reason is we are moving much of our infrastructure to AWS anyway.

I have been given a D.A. license to use for the new server which I have successfully setup and installed on AWS. I don't know if there is more to do than to just change the IP address at directadmin.com for that license but it seemed to have worked.

The next thing I am required to do is copy the user accounts/domains from several servers (5 of them) onto one AWS server.

Once they are copied I am not to change the DNS straight away as we have to go through some internal protocols with the stakeholders before switching the DNS however I am required to check that all worked on one or two domains before the DNS is switched.

Does someone know the steps involved to do all this? I saw one article that I thought suggested that I need to coordinate with the DA staff but it was updated and from reading the update I wasn't sure but it could be construed as suggesting that is no longer necessary.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Reg

 

[floyd]

The best way to check the make sure the sites are working properly before changing DNS is to change the hosts file on your own computer to point the domains to the new ip address.

 

[Deleted member 55561]

The best way to check the make sure the sites are working properly before changing DNS is to change the hosts file on your own computer to point the domains to the new ip address.

Agreed.

In Windows you will want C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

In Linux, personally using Linux Mint it's /etc/hosts

You will need to run the text-editor using Administrator privileges.

 

[Reg65]

Thanks but I think you are missunderstanding the question, I really am a newbie. I am as aware as anyone that you test things before changing DNS, this is 101 of site migration. What I don't know is how to do the migration in DA. These are the sorts of things I am concerned about because I don't know...

• Is it as simple as backing up sites/users on one server and restoring them on another?
• Do I do this through downloading a backup through FTP on one server and then upload the backup files to the new server again through FTP and doing a restore?
• Are there complications from backing up several severs worth of sites and users and then restoring them onto one new server in DA (ignoring system limits like space, RAM, bandwidth etc., just DA issues)?
• Do I need to tell the staff at directadmin.com that I moved all these sites/users so that they can do something as well for the move to work?
• The "TO" DA version is the latest as of about a week ago. The "FROM" DA version is 1.52.1. Are there going to be issues between these versions?
• I tried connecting with SSH on the "FROM" servers with the admin account I was given and that didn't work, is this normal or is there something I need to know to make that work or should I even bother? I'm more of an SSH person than FTP when possible but maybe that's something I should just forget about for this.
• And, the big one: What don't I know that I don't know about DA that's going to bite me part way through the migration process?

Basically what are the steps and what are the gotchas as far as DA is concerned? I'm fine with normal system issues, I deal with those often enough, but I have no idea what the DA issues are going to be nor what are the preferred methods to make it as easy as possible.

 

[floyd]

The best thing is to pay somebody who knows what they are doing. To task you with doing this is unfair to you. Your company wouldn't hire an accountant to work in human resources.

 

[Active8]

Is it as simple as backing up sites/users on one server and restoring them on another?

As long both server have DA sure, but you didnt mention the used php or database of both of the servers

Do I do this through downloading a backup through FTP on one server and then upload the backup files to the new server again through FTP and doing a restore?

That is possible, but there are many way to accomplish this

Are there complications from backing up several severs worth of sites and users and then restoring them onto one new server in DA (ignoring system limits like space, RAM, bandwidth etc., just DA issues)?

You have to choose the IP address of the new server when restoring from the old backup files, dont forget to check NS values to bu used when restoring (I assume that your DNS is on the new server and not at your provider), check also SPF values

Do I need to tell the staff at directadmin.com that I moved all these sites/users so that they can do something as well for the move to work?

No

 

[Reg65]

The best thing is to pay somebody who knows what they are doing. To task you with doing this is unfair to you. Your company wouldn't hire an accountant to work in human resources.

Thank you for the concern but I guess I should have mentioned that I am a software developer and have built my own computers and have managed (somewhat) servers (once upon a time) so I'm not exactly tech deficient in my skills so I can probably handle this just fine, I just never had the occasion to touch on DA before.

 

[Reg65]

@Active8 This is what I really needed, thank you!

I came across an article that suggested that I would have to work with the staff at directadmin.com (on their site) but then the article was updated and I couldn't tell from the update whether working with them was still required or not so this is really helpful. And of course that open ended thought lead me to think "What else is unknown that could be a problem?" and I think you have answered all my concerns, so thanks again.

I work with PHP and MySQL (as a Drupal developer in recent times) all the time and have set them up on servers countless times and have already setup DA on the new server with multiple versions of PHP to handle the fact that most of the software being ported probably won't run on PHP 7+ so I didn't mention it because that's an area in which I have a reasonable degree of competence and confidence.

I also took the bet that DA for the most part will port the DBs so I wasn't too concerned about it but if I was wrong please let me know.

 

[floyd]

But you said "I really am a newbie." A newbie should not be tasked with doing something this important.

 

[Reg65]

But you said "I really am a newbie." A newbie should not be tasked with doing something this important.

A newbie with DA for sure. Not with migration of websites between servers which is probably why I got the task which is also why my questions are all DA specific.

I'm pretty comfortable with the issues of just migrating websites between servers manually having done it countless times, just not through DA which for the most part seems to do most of the work for you. But, it's also been my experience that anytime you are removed from being on the ground level in a process (and DA is a layer between me and being fully hands on) you can run into "gotchas" that are hard to fix because you are removed from being able to dig down to where you can get to the root of things. Hence, all the questions but I'm pretty comfortable now with the information that Active8 has supplied.

 

[floyd]

Its still done pretty much the same way except DA will do a lot of the configuration for you.

Create the usernames and domains that you need.

Upload the web site data to /home/<user>/domains/<domain name>/public_html

If you need databases then you will have to create them through DA and then import the data.

Create any email addresses you need.

 

[Reg65]

@floyd Perfectly clear, thank you.