I am migrating our forum from Rackspace to AWS. I can't seem to find documentation about the migration process. I will need to have two installations running so I can test before I switch AWS to live. Not sure if I can promote test mode to live. Please can someone point me in the right direction to get more information. Thank you!

Take a look at:

You can also look at the following regarding running a test instance...

Thanks! I followed the steps to migrate the database data and server files to AWS.

I am getting a connection refused error when accessing from the EC2 IP address. Is it possibly related to the "board_url" setting in the conf_global.php file?

I want to test it before using a domain name.

If you are getting connection refused from your mysql instance, you would need to contact your hosting company regarding this issue.

Thanks, I have migrated the database and files to AWS and it is working using an elastic IP address.

When we decide to point our forum domain name to AWS, I will need to move the database and server data again.

Is there a way to add a message on the current site to let the users know that the site will be down for a specific timeframe? I want to give them a heads up.

You can use the Announcement feature within the modcp to do this.

 

Is there a way to add a message on the current site to let the users know that the site will be down for a specific timeframe? I want to give them a heads up.

As Randy mentioned, I would create an announcement to state when you're going to do this. When it comes time to actually perform it though, I would recommend turning your community offline in ACP -> System -> General Configuration (it allows you to put in a message that it is currently offline). This will allow you to perform the transfer and not lose any content.

Okay great, I will use that feature!

Is there a good way to figure out when the forum has the least amount of users online? I want to determine the best time to migrate the forum.

Sorry, we do not explicitly have a stat on that. However, you can go to ACP -> Statistics -> Online Users. This will give you a graph of a period in time which you can estimate when that may be for your community.