Acquia Migrate Accelerate FAQ¶

What level of expertise is required to use AMA?¶

Acquia Migrate Accelerate (AMA) lowers the barrier to entry for site builders to perform Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 migrations. However, your Drupal 7 site might have issues such as data model issues, which make the migration challenging and may need to be resolved. AMA provides insight into some of the changes that you need to make to your Drupal 7 site to migrate successfully, and insight into issues that you need to resolve on your Drupal 9 site. The changes in Drupal 7 tend to be data integrity problems that also affect the Drupal 7 site, such as missing values for the required fields.

Finally, after you complete the migration with AMA, custom modules and your custom theme need to be rebuilt as they cannot be migrated.

How is AMA different from the Drupal migration tools?¶

AMA extends Drupal’s powerful migration system by adding an intuitive user interface. It also provides support for hundreds of the most popular contrib modules. AMA automatically migrates you into Drupal 9 best practices, and includes data integrity checks with automatic suggestions on how to resolve migration messages to save your team’s countless hours.

For example, many competing files and media modules of Drupal 7 get their data migrated into Drupal 9 core’s media module. The data is then available through the Media Library.

Is there anything I can do to prepare for a successful migration?¶

Yes, you can do the following:

1. Check whether your site has a sites/sites.php file. If the file is available, ensure that the default domain name of your source environment is configured to use the site directory that you want to migrate. If there’s only one site directory, AMA uses that one. Otherwise, it uses the default. If there are multiple site directories and none is specified as default, the migration environment fails to create successfully.
2. Check whether your repository has a WELCOME tag. If the tag is removed, create a dummy “welcome” tag to avoid issues. The dummy tag can be empty with only a text file.
3. Check whether you’re following Drupal and Acquia Cloud best practices for Setting the private file directory on Acquia Cloud. If your site’s private file directory does not follow these best practices, it may cause issues.
4. Disable any modules that you are no longer in use for your Drupal 7 site. This reduces the opportunity for errors, and also reduces noise on your Drupal 9 site.
5. Analyze which content you want to migrate to your Drupal 9 site, and which content you don’t need. You can choose specific content types for migration in the AMA UI. You can also change your content selection later.
6. Read Acquia Migrate Accelerate Overview and Using Acquia Migrate Accelerate documents. These documents help you understand what to expect and how to use the product.

Does AMA support multilingual migrations?¶

Yes.

Does AMA support multi-site migrations?¶

AMA does not officially support multi-site migrations. However, you can migrate one site at a time with AMA.

How do I get access to AMA?¶

AMA is included with all Acquia Cloud Enterprise subscriptions. It is not available for Acquia Cloud Professional or Site Factory subscriptions. Reach out to your account manager to request the addition of AMA to your subscription. Then, ensure to set up the correct permissions for any non-admin users.

Which parts of my site will AMA migrate?¶

AMA generates a Drupal 9 codebase with the modules that you need to recreate your Drupal 7 site. After the codebase is generated, AMA helps you migrate your configuration, content types, and content to the new site. AMA does not migrate custom modules, views, or your custom theme. You can recreate them on your Drupal 9 site.

What is included with AMA?¶

AMA includes a CD Environment specifically for your migration. This environment does not count against your CD Environment entitlements. AMA also includes a new Drupal 9 application with a new database and filesystem. You will also have access to the AMA module, and the Recommendations Engine that identifies the best Drupal 9 equivalents for your Drupal 7 modules.

Which sites are the best fit for AMA?¶

1. Your site must be on Drupal 7 to use AMA.
2. AMA does not officially support multi-site migrations; single sites are the best fit for AMA.
3. Sites that use many of the top 100 contrib modules benefit most from the Recommendations Engine.
4. Sites with complex data models and/or a lot of content benefit the most from AMA’s logic and automation, as it saves a lot of time.

Which sites are not a good fit for AMA?¶

1. Sites that have a lot of custom code benefit the least, as AMA cannot migrate custom code.
2. If your site does have a lot of custom code, AMA provides you with automated recommendations for the Drupal 7 contributed modules that you did use.
3. While different sites may benefit to different degrees, AMA helps every Acquia customer migrating from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9.

Can I make changes to my site’s architecture or data model during the migration?¶

The migration to Drupal 9 is a good opportunity to re-envision your site. AMA helps you perform a lift-and-shift migration from your Drupal 7 site to a new Drupal 9 site, and does not give you the opportunity to make big changes as part of the migration process. You can make changes to your site after you migrate everything you want to carry over to your Drupal 9 site.

Which modules are included in the Recommendations Engine?¶

The Recommendations Engine automatically includes the recommended migration path for every Drupal 7 module that is Drupal 9 compatible. Acquia updates this list regularly as more Drupal 7 modules are ported to Drupal 9. Acquia’s team has vetted the upgrade path for a subset of these modules, and includes patches to improve the migration as needed. The team has vetted over 200 Drupal 7 module upgrade paths so far, and is actively vetting new ones. Sometimes, certain modules claim to be Drupal 9 compatible, but they are actually not compatible. AMA’s Recommendation Engine also handles this for you.

Will I have visibility into the output of the Recommendations Engine?¶

Yes. After your Drupal 7 site runs through the Recommendations Engine, a Drupal 9 codebase is generated, and it includes the modules that you will need for your Drupal 9 site. The Modules tab in the AMA UI shows you the original Drupal 7 modules, with the Drupal 9 equivalents. The modules that are vetted by Acquia are automatically installed and enabled. Acquia is confident that they correctly migrate data for the vast majority of sites. You will have the opportunity to enable the recommended modules that are not vetted by Acquia. They are already downloaded using Composer, but not yet installed in Drupal.

Will AMA preserve the configuration of my Drupal 7 contributed modules (with a Drupal 9 equivalent) in the new Drupal 9 codebase?¶

Yes. AMA will automatically include these modules and automatically install the ones that Acquia’s team has vetted.

Can I migrate Views with AMA?¶

No, AMA cannot migrate views because Drupal cannot migrate views. However, it migrates everything you need to recreate your views.

Can I migrate from another CMS to Drupal 9 with AMA?¶

No. AMA is specifically designed for Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 migration. Acquia recommends Acquia Migrate Re-Platform for migrations from other CMSes to Drupal 9.

Which environment does AMA migrate from?¶

AMA makes a copy of your Drupal 7 site’s production database and filesystem, and uses the copy as the migration source. Therefore, your production site does not have to support extra load during migrations.

How do I get new content from my D7 site to my new D9 site?¶

Acquia knows that you’re always adding new content to your Drupal production site. To get the latest content to your in-progress Drupal 9 site, use the Refresh button in the Acquia Cloud UI to copy over the live production database and files to the migration environment. If you make significant changes to your Drupal 7 site (beyond adding/editing content), you may want to create a new migration environment to ensure that you include those changes in your Drupal 9 site.

Can I create new content directly on my D9 site during the migration?¶

No. Your Drupal 9 site remains in the “Read Only” mode until you promote your site to Dev or Stage, and remove the AMA module. This is by design — your Drupal 7 production site is the source of record for new content to prevent data loss on your new Drupal 9 site during the migration process.

You can create and tweak the configuration. For example, you can create views on your new Drupal 9 site. If you need to create a new migration environment, Acquia recommends that you export your configuration before doing so, to avoid having to repeat this work. You can re-import the exported configuration to your new migration environment.

What happens when I click the “Promote” button?¶

When you click the Promote button, you can choose to promote your site to Dev or Stage. After selecting an environment, the Drupal 9 site is copied and promoted to the selected environment. The AMA module remains installed, but you cannot do migration activities on the promoted Drupal 9 site. The migration environment continues to exist, ready to do additional migration activities, if you choose to do so.

How do I disable the AMA module when I’m done with my migration?¶

When you are done with the migration, the AMA UI indicates that all migrations have completed. In addition, your migration should meet the following criteria:

1. Either there are no migration messages, or all messages only describe warnings about changes from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9.
2. You’ve manually verified, at least through spot checking, that the data in the Drupal 9 site is complete and accurate.

At this point, you can promote your migration environment into your ACE subscription’s Dev or Staging environment using the Promote button in the Cloud Platform UI. After completing this step, uninstall the AMA Drupal module in the environment you promoted it to. This removes AMA-specific database tables and disables the “Read Only” mode.

I got 80 - 90% of my data migrated, but I’m not sure how to finish the last 10-20%.¶

The last 10-20% of a migration may require you to port your custom modules, or work through issues with your Drupal 7 site that are highlighted on the Messages tab in the Migrate UI. You may need to engage with Professional Services to work through these final pieces of the migration.

Where can I learn more about working with a CD environment?¶

Working with CD environments.

What should I do with my site when I’ve finished using AMA?¶

When you’ve finished migrating your site with AMA, you should do a final refresh of the content, and then promote your site to Dev or Stage using the Promote button in the Cloud Platform UI.