Moving a online Magento from a server to another (including domain, emails and magento files)

Question

I have tricky situation (for me at least) that I have not been in before.

We are going to take over a customers hosting of Magento, the domain and the emails (only one email).

This is something we do usually with websites, but I have never done it for a Magento. Moving one that is not online, no problem. But the issue I'm thinking about is actually moving on that is online, meaning that if I for example take a copy of the webshop at 08.00 and get it up on another server at 09.00 there will be one hour gap, between the versions.

The only solution I see here is to take the webshop offline while we're moving it. Meaning that it would be offline for 2-4 hours or more.

Is there a smoother way to do this?

I was thinking about another option as well. Taking it offline while coping the ftp and mysql to another server, and then make the current registrar point to the new server.

Any suggestion how other people doing while a webshop is online to keep up everything fresh?

Answer 1

Here is my ZERO downtime procedure:

Best option is to create a master-slave replication between your two MySQL servers.

When you setup replication use rsync to make Magento filesystem copy. Meanwhile do not add images or modify filesystem. If you cannot use rsync, just copy it via FTP (rsync would be better).

When filesystem copy is done just switch to the new Magento. The MySQL replication will break, but you do not care since old version must be put off-line.

Summary:

1. Setup MySQL master slave replication
2. Stop working on backend or doing filesystem operations
3. Rsync filesystems / FTP filesystems
4. Shutdown your old website and switch to the new server
5. Shutdown old mysql server or just stop replication

With this steps you will have zero downtime.

MySQL Replication information: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/replication-howto.html