Symbiosis migration guide

So, you need to migrate from an old Symbiosis server to a new one? You’ve come to the right place! This guide will walk you through how to migrate your whole server, including databases, websites and mailboxes.

Old server

Your old server can be any kind of server (ie, Legacy, Cloud, or Dedicated), as long as it’s running Symbiosis 6 or above. If you’re not sure what operating system you’re running, just give us a shout.

In this guide we’ll call the old server old.vm.bytemark.co.uk.

New server

Create a Cloud Server in just a few minutes! Pick Symbiosis 8 or later as your operating system. Note down the admin password you’re given!
The storage space on your new server should be the same or larger than your old server, otherwise you might not have enough space.

In this guide we’ll call the new server new.default.example.uk0.bigv.io.

Access to your servers

You need access to your old and new servers using an SSH-client like PuTTY. The command-line can be scary, but this guide will walk you through every step.
If you get stuck or aren’t sure about anything, just give us a shout.

Check web application compatibility

The versions of PHP and MySQL might be different on your new server. Ideally, check with your web developers whether or not your websites will be compatible with your new server before you continue.

Symbiosis 8 (Jessie):  PHP 5.6 and MySQL 5.5
Symbiosis 7 (Wheezy):  PHP 5.4 and MySQL 5.5
Symbiosis 6 (Squeeze): PHP 5.3 and MySQL 5.1

Let’s get started!

There are two phases:

Testing the waters. Your old server and websites remain as they are, but you can copy your sites to a new server and test whether they work. There’s no downtime really, so this phase is almost risk-free! You can back out at any point, delete your new server, and nobody will have noticed a thing.
Making the switch. Here you change the DNS records for your websites to point to your new server’s IP address. You might have some downtime!

You are currently viewing Symbiosis user documentation. Symbiosis also has a comprehensive technical reference manual.

How to Bytemark