Overview

The migration roughly consists of 3 phases

1. We set a date for migrating your server, and 5-7 days before this date you receive our information email with specifics
2. We migrate your server to the new infrastructure and tunnel all traffic from your old IP addresses to the new server - you now have 15 days to update your DNS records
3. 15 days later your old IP addresses stop working, and the migration is effectively complete

1. The Information Email

Approximately one week before the actual migration date of your server we will send you an information email specifying which servers will be migrated at which date and time (UTC). We will also ask you how you want your server to be migrated and we kindly request that you respond in a timely manner.

If you don't mind a little downtime, we would like to remind you that you can migrate your server yourself by suspending it and then re-provisioning it on the new infrastructure. This effectively means you have 3 options for migration.

2. The Migration

Option 1 - Do-It-Yourself: Some downtime involved

You can quite easily migrate your server to the new infrastructure already today, and don't have to wait for your turn in the migration process. In order to move your server, simply:

1. Suspend your server
   - This allows you to keep all settings and data in Webdock as-is (with the exception of monitoring which you may need to re-enable)
    
2. Please make sure all the suspension operation steps have completed 100%, after which Provision a new server from the suspended snapshot on our new EU infrastructure
    
3. Update your DNS records
    
4. For LAMP and LEMP stacks: Re-run the Server Identity tool and Run the Certbot SSL tool once your DNS records are updated
   - This is required as your Webdock URL alias will have changed during this procedure
    
5. If you have set up ForwardMX or Postmark, repeat the setup procedure. Just go through the initial setup steps and wait for the verification email to arrive.  You should only need to update the Postmark DKIM DNS record.  If you get a message that the domain already exist, contact Webdock support and we will sort you out.

You will never pay "too much"  doing this - as soon as you suspend your original server you will be refunded in full for any server time you have already paid for - and when you create the new server a new billing period starting the following day begins

Option 2 - Keep your data in synch: Some downtime involved

Your second option is that we do the migration for you and keep your data in synch. What we mean by this is that we will stop your server on the old infrastructure, move it to the new, point your old IP addresses to the new infrastructure and then spin up your server.

This ensures absolute data integrity as traffic to your site has been halted in the interim. Users will see your website / app as being down during the migration window. Downtime will typically be as long as we can compress and then stream your server via. a 1Gbps connection, decompress it and spin it back up - meaning that if your server image is e.g. 5GB this would mean about 1-2 minutes of downtime.

You should choose this option if you e.g. run a web shop or some other application which collects and stores user data in any fashion.

Option 3 - Two copies of your site will be running for a short period of time: No downtime whatsoever

This option is for "normal" static websites which do not collect any mission-critical data and where it is OK that the server effectively runs in two seperate places for a short period of time.

The process here is that we take a snapshot of your running server and then stream it over and spin it up on the new infrastructure - once it has spun up we tunnel the traffic from your old IP to the new one and then stop the server on the old infrastructure.

This means that any logs on the new server will show a "gap" corresponding to the time taken to stream your server to the new infrastructure. This gap will typically be as long as we can compress and then stream your server via. a 1Gbps connection, decompress it and spin it back up - meaning that if your server image is e.g. 5GB this would mean about 1-2 minutes.

3. Update your DNS records

Once migrated your old IP addresses will now work for 15 days. You can always get a reminder of the deadline by looking at your main server info screen in Webdock where there will be a link to this information.

You can find some general guidelines on how to update your DNS records here.

If you are unsure what to do or need help with updating DNS records, our support staff is willing and ready to help you any way we can. We will even do the updates for you if you give us access to your DNS control panel. So don't sweat it - you have at least two weeks to update your DNS (which is a deadline we can extend if you ask us to) and we will help you through this process painlessly :)