Server Migration Checklist

Server Migration Checklist for Engineering Teams

Migrating a server is a critical task that requires meticulous planning and execution. It’s not just about moving data from one place to another; it’s about ensuring that the application maintains its performance, security, and availability throughout the transition. This checklist is designed to guide you and your teammates through the comprehensive steps involved in a successful server or host migration for an application. By addressing each point, we can mitigate risks and ensure a seamless migration process for our clients.

Access and Monitoring

• Who Needs SSH Access?

  Identify the team members who require SSH access to the new server for deployment and maintenance tasks.

• Uptime Monitoring:

  Set up uptime monitoring tools to check the application’s availability and performance, such as Pingdom.

• Reboot & Alert Checks:

  Perform a test reboot of the server to validate that all services and applications restart correctly. Verify if this action triggers any monitoring alerts as expected.

Database Management

• Database Restoration Documentation:

  Ensure there’s up-to-date documentation on how to restore the database(s) in case of failure.

• Deployment and Restoration Validation:

  Confirm that at least one other team member can successfully deploy to the new server and restore the database.

• Production-to-Staging DB Restoration:

  Validate the capability to restore a production database onto a staging environment. This is crucial for debugging and testing.

Email and External Services

• Email Sending:

  Ascertain whether the application needs to send emails. If so, decide if we should use an external email service or connect to a client’s SMTP server.

• Additional Databases:

  Identify if the application relies on additional databases like Redis, Memcache, etc., and ensure they are properly set up.

Job Scheduling and File Storage

• Delayed Jobs:

  Determine if the application requires any background jobs to be run (such as Delayed Job) and set them up.

• Cron Jobs:

  List and set up any cron jobs required by the application.

• Large File Storage:

  Check if the app needs to store any large files and plan storage solutions accordingly.

• File Migration:

  Ensure that all existing uploaded files (e.g., images, PDFs) are migrated to the new server.

Application-Specific and Client Testing

• Legacy URL/Domain Redirects:

  Examine the existing server for any URL or domain redirects configured outside of the application, like in Nginx or Apache, and replicate them on the new server.

• Client Environment Testing:

  Have clients test the application in various environments (staging, production, etc.) to validate functionality and performance.