Acquia can assist with your migration effort whether it involves migrating infrastructure from one site group to another within Cloud Platform or migrating from another hosting provider to Cloud Platform. When your website needs to be migrated to a new infrastructure in Cloud Platform, Acquia can take the burden off your team and move your code, database, and files for you.

Acquia supports the following types of paid engagement program related to migration:

• Internal migrations with Acquia
• External migrations with Acquia

Internal migrations with Acquia

Internal migration involves migrating your infrastructure in Cloud Platform from one site group to another.

Due to the migration activity, the following changes occur:

• Sitegroup name(s)
• IP address of your load balancer
• Domain Name Server (DNS)
• Elastic IPs assigned to your website

In addition, you must:

• Add the domains attached to your old site group to the Domains page for your new infrastructure.
• Reupload any SSL certificates attached to your old site group on your new infrastructure.
• Note that your old and new applications coexist for a time during the migration process.

Upon successful migration, Acquia deprovisions your old site group and subscription.

Internal migration process

Acquia provisions your new site group on your new infrastructure. Previously used site group names cannot be reused. Your chosen site group name must be 20 characters or less, all lower case, and can contain only alphanumeric characters.

For more information on the general migration procedure, see General procedure.

Internal migration schedule

External migrations with Acquia

External migration involves migrating your infrastructure from another hosting platform to Cloud Platform.

Your migration engagement with Acquia lasts at least 2–4 weeks, depending on the size and complexity of the websites you are migrating, and the availability of your resources to conduct the testing. For information about the available migration sizes, see Professional Services Product Guide.

External migration process

To move your website to Cloud Platform, you must provision your new subscription, codebase, and infrastructure. Acquia sets up your new subscription for you, and grant your team with the necessary access. Acquia performs your migration remotely (and requires administrative access to your website).

For more information on the general migration procedure, see General procedure.

External migration schedule

General procedure

The migration process is typically divided into two parts: the initial migration and the final migration. For internal migrations, an intermediate migration step may also be included based on your need. The duration of the migration process will depend on how much time you will need to test your website on Cloud Platform. The initial migration focuses on copying your code, database, and files to your new subscription, whereas the final migration is a sync of your website’s database and files, including any changes that occurred since the initial migration.

For information about each step of your migration, see:

• Prerequisites for migration
• Migration call
• Granting access to your website
• Initial migration
• Quality assurance
• Intermediate migration
• Content freeze
• Final migration
• Final testing and DNS switch
• Internal migration schedule
• External migration schedule

Prerequisites for migration

The prerequisite for the initial migration is a code freeze. If a code freeze cannot be put in place before the initial migration, an intermediate migration will be required before the final sync. The website should remain in code freeze until after the final migration and the domain name system (DNS) switch to Cloud Platform are completed.

The prerequisite for the final migration is a content freeze. The time required for Acquia to perform your initial migration will provide a guideline for estimating the duration of your final migration.

Migration call

To coordinate the engagement, Acquia will schedule an introductory migration call to discuss the process, access requirements for the engineer handling your migration, and the timelines that you should expect.

Granting access to your website

After the migration call, Acquia will create a proactive ticket, and send you an access request with the details of the Acquia personnel who will need to be granted with an administrative sign-in to the code base that you want to migrate.

Initial migration

In preparation for the initial migration, you will need to coordinate the timeframe of a code freeze with your development team, as any code changes committed to your current production website after the initial migration will be disregarded. Acquia will perform an initial migration of your website’s code, files, and databases to Cloud Platform. After the initial migration is completed, any new development work should be performed only on Cloud Platform.

Quality assurance

After the initial migration is completed, you must perform quality assurance (QA) and regression testing on Cloud Platform using an alternate domain. You may choose to set up a DNS record for this alternate domain for testing purposes. You can also simulate a DNS change locally by modifying the hosts file on your local machine.

During QA testing, you must review all critical website functionality, including public functions, themes, and related media assets to verify that everything is working correctly:

• Verify administrative functions: Creating content, creating users, administering permissions, and other administrative functions
• Verify business critical functions: Form submissions and third party integrations
• Validate themes: Images, CSS, and cross-browser compatibility
• Validate risk areas (possible regressions due to changes made through the migration process): Upgraded contributed modules and new modules

Acquia cannot proceed with final migration until you sign off on testing.

During your QA testing, you should also add any needed custom domains or SSL certificates to your new Cloud Platform subscription.

Intermediate migration

If you cannot implement a website code freeze before the initial migration, Acquia may perform an extra intermediate migration later in the migration process, after you have put a code freeze in place.

Content freeze

Acquia will inform you regarding how long the initial migration took and, based on that information, will provide an estimate of time required for the final migration. You should put a content freeze into effect shortly before the final migration, and keep the content freeze in place throughout both the final migration process and final testing, until the DNS switch is complete.

Final migration

Acquia will conduct the final data migration. This final migration contains the final sync of your files and database, to ensure all content changes made on your current production website after the initial migration are brought over to Cloud Platform (for external migration) or to your new site group on Cloud Platform (for internal migration).

Final testing and DNS switch

After the final migration, you must perform final QA testing to verify that the newly-migrated website is working correctly. If your tests are successful, you will need to repoint your domain names to your new subscription (for external migration) or your load balancers and elastic load balancers (for internal migration). Your Acquia team can provide DNS records if necessary. After the DNS switch is completed, your code freeze and content freeze are over and your website is live.