Web Hosting Server Migration Process

OCS Hosting Service Migration team offers a variety of website migration services. This include migrating the data from your old host to OCS Hosting platform or between our regions. To get the most efficient migration possible with as minimal downtime or business disruption as possible, let our engineers handle your cPanel or Plesk migration.

Below is a brief outline of how this work and the part you need to play for the process to work.

HOW THE MIGRATION WORKS

We have split the process into seven phases:

  1. 1. Pre-Migration Planning
  2. 2. Initial Migration Phase
  3. 3. Migration Phase
  4. 4. Post-Transfer System Testing
  5. 5. Final Synchronization
  6. 6. DNS Migration
  7. 7. Certainty Follow Up

PRE-MIGRATION PLANNING

An engineer from the Migration Department will send you login credentials request to your source server.

We always encourage our customers to give as much as information as they can than less as this will definitely shorten the time to complete the migration process and for your business to spring back stronger.

If needed, additional request may be required from you to properly migrate your data if needed.

INITIAL MIGRATION PHASE

Needs Assessment and Migration Feasibility Review

At this stage, a Senior System Administrator from the same migration team will run an audit on your source server, access the information and begin to formulate the best approach for the process.

Among the things to check will be the transfer speed, disk space, CPU and RAM usage and other critical aspects of the source server.

Migration Phase

Initialization Of The Transfer Process

Once the details review is completed and an authorization from you to proceed in obtained, the migration process itself will be initiated.

During this phase, we will start moving your data into our own infrastructure while continually updating you at each stage until completion.

Post-Transfer System Testing

Post file’s transfer, we will work with you to make sure that everything is functioning as they ought from your end. You will also be ask to check any custom configurations that were requested by you during the first step of the migration.

It is a recommended practice at this stage, to completely compare the two servers on both ends to ensure that everything was migrated properly.

Final Synchronization

Once the testing stage is completed and assured, the team will perform another synchronization at our own end. What this does is to update all files that have changed or are new to the destination server post testing stage.

This will ensure that any changes made to the original website are carried over, a stipulated step that we have come to know will save you and your team time down the line.

DNS Migration

Once a confirmation is obtained that the final sync was completed correctly and that you are happy with the result so far, DNS migration transfer will be initiated.

It is simply about is pointing your domain(s) over to our network. This is refer in-house as the ‘bridge-over’ and if necessary, will coordinate with your own team to complete the DNS changes.

Your site, application or anything that relies on the Migrated System is expected to be functioning optimally at OCS Hosting Service platform. If it is a website, it will be reachable on the net.

Certainty Follow Up

After the migration is finally completed, our validation team will follow-up with you to ensure that all process are running optimally and also to answer any other questions you may have. You can go in for a quick chat at anytime.

YOUR ROLE

Please, do not cancel with your old hosting provider until your data has been migrated successfully.

In fact, don't tell them you will be canceling your hosting account with them or they may prematurely terminate your site out of spite and cause downtime when you try changing web hosts.

BACKUP YOUR DATA

If you want to migrate your site hosted by another company to OCS Hosting Service, you will need to use cPanel's backup features to backup your data.

Our Migration team will need it to restore your accounts.

Before backing up though, please declutter and remove every trash or files you don't need.

To backup your cPanel account at your current host:

  1. Log in to your former host cPanel account.
  2. In the Files section, click Backup Wizard.
  3. Click Backup.
  4. Click Full Backup.

This will backup your applications, databases, as well as the email accounts you have set up on cPanel and create an archive of all the files and configurations.

GET A NEW HOSTING ACCOUNT

Visit www.ordercloudserver.com/web-hosting and select a hosting package.

Our order/billing system will guide you through the process.

If you run into any issue while creating your new hosting account, please do let us know so we can assist you.

UPDATE YOUR DNS RECORD

If your domain name is registered with us, we will update your records automatically.

If your domain name is registered elsewhere, you will need to make the following changes by yourself or contact your registrar for help updating your DNS.

To see the DNS records that are linked to your OCS Hosting Service account, please log in to your cPanel, scroll to Domains then Zone Editor.

This feature allows you to create, edit, and delete DNS records that your website needs to be online.

There are several different types of records reside in a domain’s zone file but you need to look for: A, CNAME (Canonical Name Record), MX (Mail Exchanger) and TXT (Text Record).

These along with your name-servers need to be updated either at your domain registrar or DNS provider's dashboard.

Our name-servers are:

					ns1.mydnsnode.com
					ns2.mydnsnode.com
					ns3.mydnsnode.com
					ns4.mydnsnode.com

Before making these changes, please lower your Time to live (TTL) to something like 300 seconds or 5 minutes.

TTL is a numerical value that determines how long a DNS cache server can serve a DNS record before reaching out to the authoritative DNS server and getting a new copy of the record.

But before that, do ensure that you have contacted our Migration Team about the migration, have provided the information needed to access your source server and that a date/time has been fixed for the migration.

You can contact our Migration Team by visiting https://dash.ordercloudserver.com/submitticket.php

Once you have submitted the information, you will be contacted with the date and hour for the migration.

If you do not know the information regarding your former server that we will be migrating from, please contact your old host and ask them to provide you with it.

FAQ

HOW LONG DOES A MIGRATION TYPICALLY TAKE?

It is often difficult to calculate the actual time it will take to move your files and data.

A wide range of variables affect this including the amount of data being moved, the complexity of the data, the speed of the network at the source and the distance between the old location and OCS hosting infrastructure.

Because of these variables, it is not possible to provide a 100% accurate time for completion as factors that wasn’t foreseen in the beginning processes such as network slowdowns, increased configuration times, and other tweaks can come into play.

However, we do strive to keep you continually updated and will expeditiously complete the migration within the shortest possible time.

WILL YOU TRANSFER MY EMAILS?

Yes. All account data is copied: website files, email, databases, and etc.

WHO DO I TALK ABOUT INTENDED, ON-GOING AND COMPLETED MIGRATION?

There are several ways to reach us. You can either submit a ticket to the migration team, or alternatively initiate a chat with one of our operators.

Please note that when our billing system is being upgraded, it may be off the grid for 5 minutes.

WHAT LEVEL OF SERVER ACCESS DOES A MIGRATION REQUIRE?

That will depend on the kind of migration.

For dedicated server or VPS, our migration scripts requires root -level permissions exist on both servers (the source servers and the server we are migrating to).

If you are on shared hosting account, we will need your control panel:

  1. username
  2. password
  3. SSH port number (if different from 22)

If you your current hosting package doesn't have shell privileges, your username, password and control URL will do.

HOW MUCH WILL A MIGRATION COST?

The initial migration is $67.00 unless a special authorization is granted by the billing department.

First time shared hosting customers have free migration for 1 website, while VPS and bare-metal server customers have free migration for 30 websites.

When applicable, we will quote you a rate for the migration but generally, it won't cost more than 6-7 cups of good coffee.

WILL MY SITE HAVE DOWN TIME DURING THE MIGRATION?

Typically you will not have downtime upon switching the DNS to our server. But this is completely dependent on keeping your service online with your current provider as network propagation takes place.

The premise here is, if the service is up on both ends, the user will see your site online at one of the locations. Generally though, DNS propagation should complete within the 24-48 hour period after the actual change is posted.

If you are unsure what this is, propagation is the time during which your DNS zone data is spread throughout the internet after the initial change. Some ISP’s refresh their cache continually, others, less often. So, while this occurs, some users will still see your account hosted with the old network, others with ours.

WHAT TYPE OF MIGRATION TESTING DOES OCS HOSTING SERVICE DO?

Initially we do test for speed to ensure the file transfers will complete in an acceptable time frame. If you are moving actual websites to us, we will test a handful of them post migration via a test link on the server, this is cross-referenced to the error log files to ensure there are no apparent issues.

WILL YOU MIGRATE MANUALLY CREATED DATABASES?

Sadly, no. Our migration script only copies databases that a user created within the cPanel or Plesk.

The only recourse at this point is to recreate the existing database on our systems using our MySQL or PostgreSQL database wizard.

If you are ready to move to a better web hosting platform, please visit our migration request page to start.