Migrating Facility CMIS to New Server

[amartin]

Hi All,

 

Anyone had to do this process before with migrating Facility CMIS to a new server on a new domain. Advanced say they cannot help with migrations so ideally I am looking for some advice on it from someone who has done it before. From searching old threads it seems michael2k6 is very knowledgeable on this, if you happen to be reading any help would be much appreciated

 

Thanks

[Achandler]

Do this @michael2k6 and then he gets a notification saying he was mentioned!

 

On paper it seems relatively easy if you ask me, though I haven't done it. You would mvoe the DB etc as expected. Then sort out the .CDB file to point to the new instant. I once did a disaster scenario in which I restored the database to a second server and connected to it. It all worked except an issue with an SQL user not created on the new "restored" server, which was easily fixed.

[bobsmith]

I did it about 8 years ago, was pretty easy to be honest.

 

Set up a new SQL server and you can restore the SQL DBs to it.

 

A fresh install of the current Facility version you're using and you're good to go.

[djrscally]

As bob says, it's pretty easy. You can do SQL restores or alternatively take a backup through Facility's backup tool, then make a fresh install of Facility to the server (same version as you take the backup from!), use Facility's restore tool to restore the backup you just took and then you're basically done. Setup new dsn and cdb's and distribute.

[Banjo]

I wouldn't use the SQL backups but the ones from inside of Facility - they work best. You can copy the whole of the folder structure for Facility off the old server to the new server and it will work. Just update your connection files to point to the new SQL instance.

 

If you use Eportal then you will need the installers and licence codes. Its worth backing up your setting xml and copy then over the top of your new install if you have changed ports etc from the defaults.

 

If you publish your eportal externally then you will need to configure IIS and your certificate.

[Matt_Renato]

I don't know if this is still the case as I haven't used Facility for over 5 years, but there were two types of back-ups you could take from within the software, templates and data.

 

If they are still using this setup you will need a copy of both and it's vital that you restore the templates back-up first into your new system before restoring the data. Failure to do so will cause data loss.

[michael2k6]

Oh hello there, this username's not been used in a while! Had to do a password reset.

 

After working for Advanced Learning (previously Serco Learning) for almost a decade (with a couple of years in schools in between), I moved businesses over a year ago. I'll be more than happy to give you a hand though, for a good while I was the chap that would turn up on site for the installs and migrations which is why you're finding threads in my name.

 

What Matt said is spot on, if you have any UDFs you'll need to ensure that you validate your UDFs after template restore and before data restore otherwise your UDF data won't have a field to restore into.

Also, when you take the backups and select templates, you do not need to select any datasets. The individual datasets grey out but when I left, if you clicked select all, the datasets were still selected and you actually ended up with a data backup rather than the templates, which most don't realise until it's too late and they're restored into the new db.

 

I'll more than happily give you some help and advice on this process, without warranty as it's over a year since I left the business and over two years since I last used Facility.

I'll PM you my personal email address now.

 

Michael

[bigdannyb79]

And they wonder why they are losing customers !

 

Shocking service - but amen to using the internal back up and restore features - if you create a new DB and connect to it you ensure you dont have any issues with table owners and permissions down the road as the tables are created for you. They have an install document so I'd just follow that but then just restore templates, confirm UDFs and then restore data as everyone else has said.

 

And dont listen to @michael2k6 he's a glorified salesman these days, he's left he hardcore technical roots behind

[TraylerD]

We did similar a few years ago. We had to setup the server ourselves but as we have 16 years of data we were advised to split it into an Archived and Live databases which the support team did for us.

 

I remember they recommended using Facility built in backup and restore rather than SQL backups, process took a while but we scheduled for a school holiday so noticed no impact to users.

[bigdannyb79]

Agree with that if you have 5+ years of data as some reports do creak when querying massive tables and so moving some of that out works well. Again this can quickly be done using the internal backup and restore and you can easily give your users 2 CDBs to load the archive database as well as live.

[Banjo]

Using archiving always gave us problems, best to create a new DB just for this purpose and put the old datasets in there and tuck away the connection file from users.

[michael2k6]

Agree with all of that. Archiving process just uses another CDB to connect to another DB anyway but tends to confuse staff. Give them a CDB to a live db and one to an archive and name them that way then it becomes obvious (we hope).

 

Another tip is if you have a lot of data and you're going to restore one into a live and one into an archive, do two data backups (and one template backup). You'll need to use the templates one twice, but when you restore a data backup and select only some of the datasets, the entire file is decompressed and processed which takes as long as restoring the entire thing (i think from memory a temp set of tables are created, the entire thing restored, the data moved or tables renamed, datasets not selected deleted - or something along those lines - it takes just as long as restoring all datasets either way). So it's much faster to run a restore file containing only the datasets you want - even if you've told it to ignore the others.