Moving to cloud - Yes or Not?

[LiveG]

Hello,
I have been up self-hosted for a long time, and it is intensive for me to maintain the server and hire experts to solve the complex issue.
For example- Now I am experiencing slowness in my Community (6 seconds entering a topic!), and I need to figure out why.

I would like to understand if moving to the cloud, business, and tech-wise, would benefit me. What are the advantages and disadvantages, and how painful will the migration be?
Thanks!

 

[Marc Stridgen]

I'll let some of those who have already moved answer more than myself, as I understand it can be important to come from customers rather than staff. However just wanted to let you know on the cloud move side of things.

Essentially, you provide us with the files in a zip, and your database in a zip. We then do the move to cloud on a mutually agreed date. The only other thing you need to do is to add records on your domain, or point your whole domain to us (depending on the domain being used).

The brief answer really is, as painless as possible 🙂 

I can get you a ticket opened with our sales team if there is anything else you need to discuss of course

[Randy Calvert]

As someone who went through this year ago… I can talk about my own experience. 

Moving to the cloud has been a good choice overall. I’m very happy with the decision. I no longer need to worry about things like Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. I no longer have to optimize the configurations for each of the systems for performance. I also no longer have to worry about things like firewall tuning and scaling for bot traffic etc. At the end of the day… it’s like using Gmail.  I just simply use the service. 

The hardest part of the experience was simply letting go.  I can’t go play in the database anymore. I can’t go manually edit a file, etc. This was hard at first, but eventually I came to realize that at the end of the day I really did not NEED to.  By not manually playing around in those areas, I’ve had better stability and easier times doing upgrades, etc.  

If you can think of your site being a SaaS solution instead of just another script to install, you’ll have a much easier time. 

Regarding the migration… Olivia and Marc have the process down to a science.  They will communicate exactly what is needed, work with you to agree on a date/time to do the move, explain exactly what needs to be done, etc. In a nutshell, you need to upload a complete copy of your site files (so they have any uploads and 3rd party resources) along with an export of your database.  They will import it and configure their side to handle it.  You can use a temporary address to test to make sure all is good and once ready, change the DNS to their control to make it live to the world. 

We arranged for our site to be taken offline at 3am while I exported everything and uploaded it to IPS. By 8am, I was doing my final testing and go live. 

[Miss_B]

5 hours ago, LiveG said:

I would like to understand if moving to the cloud, business, and tech-wise, would benefit me.

I think that it will benefit you greatly. Seeing your recent topics here where you have to deal with several issues, if you move to the cloud those problems will be a thing of the past.

 

5 hours ago, LiveG said:

What are the advantages and disadvantages

The biggesest adavantage for you will be that you will not have to deal with the tech side of things anymore, but concentrate on building and managing your community. Not to mention the security and the reliability. In short you will have piece of mind.

Regarding disadvantages I don't see any at all. 

[LiveG]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience. It was beneficial.🙏

I am indeed struggling lately with a lot of server-side issues. And it is so frustrating. My community keeps growing, and it won't be better.

1. In the Ipb plan specification, I didn't notice a few critical parameters, like
Cpu, Ram, DB, and the estimated capacity of users needed, so how should I choose the best plan that suits my forum?
Is it AWS? Azure? Should I care at all? Will I have any control/view over the server status?

2. Can i maintain the exact DNS name i have today?

3. Does the support is 24/7?  in any plan? Which scenarios will the support team cover, and which will not?
 

Edited August 16, 2023 by LiveG

[Marc Stridgen]

25 minutes ago, LiveG said:

1. In the Ipb plan specification, I didn't notice a few critical parameters, like
Cpu, Ram, DB, and the estimated capacity of users needed, so how should I choose the best plan that suits my forum?
Is it AWS? Azure? Should I care at all? Will I have any control/view over the server status?

The idea is you really shouldn't care about the environment in any way. Thats our job. Ask yourself, do you want to look at server parameters, or do you want to run a community? Most people, in our experience, play with servers for one of 2 reasons. They either enjoy it (no idea why lol), or they have simply always done it that way. Most fall into category 2. As mentioned by Randy above, most tend to find the idea of letting go harder than it actually is.

In terms of which plan to go for, you wouldnt be lookin at cpu/ram etc. Again, boring. Thats our job. The only consideration is storage, and what features you want to be able to use. You can see all of those here

https://invisioncommunity.com/buy

32 minutes ago, LiveG said:

2. Can i maintain the exact DNS name i have today?

You can indeed. I see you are currently using a subdomain. What would happen, is once you are moved over and you have checked to ensure things are as expected, we would provide you with 2 CNAME entries. You add those to your domain, let us know, and we take care of the rest 

33 minutes ago, LiveG said:

3. Does the support is 24/7?  in any plan? Which scenarios will the support team cover, and which will not?

Support is the same in terms of the software, except you can contact via email if needed. Of course the main change however, is we are in charge of your hardware environment too. So essentially, if you have a problem you contact ourselves unless it's a 3rd party item or something you control yourself such as an external email service if you decide not to use ours.

[LiveG]

On 8/16/2023 at 1:42 PM, Marc Stridgen said:

You can indeed. I see you are currently using a subdomain. What would happen, is once you are moved over and you have checked to ensure things are as expected, we would provide you with 2 CNAME entries. You add those to your domain, let us know, and we take care of the rest 

 

Can you please elaborate on this process?

Today, I have a subdomain DNS forum.mydomain, resolving to my self-host server forum IP.

When you create the new cloud server, the cloud server will be accessible via different IPs and DNS, right?

How do i divert the traffic from my original DNS forum.mydomain to the new Ip server without impacting the forum?

I want to maintain my on-serve as oldforum.mydomain for a month before killing him.

Edited September 2, 2023 by LiveG

[Jim M]

52 minutes ago, LiveG said:

Can you please elaborate on this process?

Today, I have a subdomain DNS forum.mydomain, resolving to my self-host server forum IP.

When you create the new cloud server, the cloud server will be accessible via different IPs and DNS, right?

How do i divert the traffic from my original DNS forum.mydomain to the new Ip server without impacting the forum?

I want to maintain my on-serve as oldforum.mydomain for a month before killing him.

As Marc mentioned, we'd provide you 2 CNAME records to place in your DNS to point your sub-domain to our Cloud. You would need to remove your A (and AAAA) record(s) for the sub-domain on your server in your DNS.

You can certainly create a new record in your DNS to view your community on your server, if you wish. However, I strongly urge to not let your members/visitors/anyone know that it is there. As the community on our Cloud and the community on your server are completely separate at that point and will not talk to one another or update data between. I would advise making the community on your server completely inaccessible if you are just looking to retain a backup for a period of time.

[LiveG]

1 hour ago, Jim M said:

As Marc mentioned, we'd provide you 2 CNAME records to place in your DNS to point your sub-domain to our Cloud. You would need to remove your A (and AAAA) record(s) for the sub-domain on your server in your DNS.

You can certainly create a new record in your DNS to view your community on your server, if you wish. However, I strongly urge to not let your members/visitors/anyone know that it is there. As the community on our Cloud and the community on your server are completely separate at that point and will not talk to one another or update data between. I would advise making the community on your server completely inaccessible if you are just looking to retain a backup for a period of time.

Hi, Understood, 10x.

But why 2 CNAMEs needed?

Is only one CNAME isn't enough?

[Stuart Silvester]

47 minutes ago, LiveG said:

Hi, Understood, 10x.

But why 2 CNAMEs needed?

Is only one CNAME isn't enough?

The second CNAME is for automatic SSL certificate verification and renewal.

[LiveG]

So I have decided to move to the cloud,

Can you please elaborate a little more about the migration process after  I buy the plan?

Do you need FTP access or what more do you need from me along the way? Will you do all the migration for me? its included in the plan price or there is additional fees along the way? What are the risks?

Could you indicate the procedure steps?

Edited September 9, 2023 by LiveG

[Jim M]

Typically, you would just provide us a backup of your database and file set in a secure storage link we provide. Then we move it to our Cloud infrastructure. Very straightforward.

As far as cost, it would be best to talk with our Sales team for finalized information (I am not sales 🙂 ) but most cases, it is included. If you do not have communication open with them, please let me know and I can open one for you.

[LiveG]

28 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Typically, you would just provide us a backup of your database and file set in a secure storage link we provide. Then we move it to our Cloud infrastructure. Very straightforward.

As far as cost, it would be best to talk with our Sales team for finalized information (I am not sales 🙂 ) but most cases, it is included. If you do not have communication open with them, please let me know and I can open one for you.

Thank you.

Once i have delivered a copy of the database, does my forum need to be offline? as the database updates all the time

 

Edited September 9, 2023 by LiveG

[Jim M]

3 minutes ago, LiveG said:

Once i have delivered a copy of the database, does my forum need to be offline? as the database updating all the time.

Correct. Once you take the backup, your community will need to be offline or you would not transfer any content/settings/changes made afterwards.

[LiveG]

4 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Correct. Once you take the backup, your community will need to be offline or you would not transfer any content/settings/changes made afterwards.

Well, its chalenging. What is the date Gap between shutting down my community and being online on the cloud with the original DNS?

Can you please elaborate more about the email service you provide?

Edited September 9, 2023 by LiveG

[Jim M]

18 minutes ago, LiveG said:

Well, its chalenging. What is the date Gap between shutting down my community and being online on the cloud with the original DNS?

We try our best to minimize downtime. More than not, it’s same day, just a few hours between. If you have an extremely large community or something goes wrong though, that can extend the timeline depending on what the issue is.

 

18 minutes ago, LiveG said:

Can you please elaborate more about the email service you provide?

Our email service will send emails from your community through it. It will use our email address as the from and your address as the reply-to though. If that is a concern, you may wish to use another provider.