Migration (from self-hosted to cloud): Keep site offline, or just lock it so users can't post?

[David N.]

Has anyone here done a migration from self hosted to Invision Cloud services? 

The process is:

1. Take self-hosted site offline.
2. Make a backup of all files + db and give to Invision. 
3. Invision recreates the site on the cloud. 
4. I change my DNS to point to the cloud.
5. I take the cloud site online.

My concern is that the entire 5 step process can represent a lot of time offline, which means a loss of ad earnings, and potentially a bad message to Google for search indexing. 

To avoid this, I am considering turning my self-hosted site back on right after I complete step #2, albeit locking the forum entirely so that new members cannot register, and no one can post new replies, topics or reactions. 

What do you think? 

[Jim M]

It is best to keep the site completely offline to avoid losing any data after you take the backups, this could be anything from setting changes, to password changes, etc... This could be anything a user can change. If you’re worried about offline timeline, please reply back to our migration team and they can give you an outline of what to expect. 

[David N.]

Thank you Jim, I suppose I would also have to prevent users from being able to change password, display name, email, signature etc. I could live with losing a few minor account setting changes.

I wish the forum had a "read only" mode where visitors could see pages but couldn't make any changes. 

[Randy Calvert]

What I did was took the site offline at 1am Eastern.  I provided a backup of the database and all site files.  Marc did the import first thing in the morning UK time so I was up and running by 8am. That included taking time to solve a few bugs related to third party plugins  and that I had an old Cloudfront distribution that was preventing IPS from creating the same one on their side. It would have been done an hour or so earlier outside of those issues. 

While you could technically turn the site back on read only… you would lose anything that happens since that export.  For example, private messages… topic view counters, and as noted earlier password resets etc. 

I simply used the offline board as a way of knowing the DNS change took effect. By having the old board offline, once people saw the site back they knew the maintenance was complete. 

[David N.]

Thanks for sharing your experience Randy, I appreciate it. Do you mean you were up and running by 8am Eastern?

[Randy Calvert]

Yes… Marc started the import first thing in the morning UK time, which is around 5 hours past Eastern time.

I had an email at 5:04am saying the migration was done.  I was checking the site starting at 6:45 and fixing minor issues on the temporary URL. 

By 7:10am, I had given the OK to switch the temporary address to the permanent one. It took about an hour to figure out why it was failing (I had a prior AWS Cloudfront distribution associated with my domain) which was preventing IPS from creating one.  Had I not had that issue, it could have been up much faster.  I technically could have been online faster also but I was not up till around 6:30 to check on progress. 
 

Olivia and Marc have migrations down to a science.  They do good work. 🙂 

[David N.]

Thanks again. I suppose that after that it can take a day or two for the DNS to propagate right? 

[Randy Calvert]

Nope.  For anyone who had not recently been to the site, they pickup the change almost as soon as you submit it. For those who have recently visited, it’s typically cached a few hours. (Lower your TTL in your domain dns settings to reduce that time to something like 500 seconds.)

As a hint… if you’re having them host your DNS… give them all of your existing DNS records ahead of time like your MX record for mail etc. 

[David N.]

Ok great thanks a lot for all that information, much appreciated. I wasn't aware that it was an option to have them host my DNS. 

(I currently have my DNS hosted by GoDaddy.)

[Randy Calvert]

By having them host the DNS, they can serve both www.domain.com and domain.com. (This is called the apex.)

Because they use AWS’s Cloudfront, they have to control DNS to point domain.com to www.domain.com.  (They don’t use a single fixed IP address so it’s how they solve having multiple addresses for the apex.)

[Dll]

Set the TTL of your dns to 5 minutes a few days in advance, then the propagation will be much faster.

[David N.]

Just now, Dll said:

Set the TTL of your dns to 5 minutes a few days in advance, then the propagation will be much faster.

Great to know, thanks. 

[Marc Stridgen]

Taking days for nameservers to change over, is very very unusual these days. It tends to be a matter of minutes.

[David N.]

Just now, Marc Stridgen said:

Taking days for nameservers to change over, is very very unusual these days. It tends to be a matter of minutes.

Great, thank you Marc, that's reassuring. 🙂 

[Marc Stridgen]

1 hour ago, Jamynee said:

Great, thank you Marc, that's reassuring. 🙂 

No problem at all.  Any other questions, please feel free to ask. I know you had a couple in your ticket which I hope I have addressed. If not, I shall see you when you are over on cloud 🙂 

[David N.]

4 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

I know you had a couple in your ticket which I hope I have addressed.

Definitely, thank you for your continuous support @Marc Stridgen! 🙂