Moving an AC Gold site from one server to another

[VIPER7]

I am currently in the process of migrating a slew of websites from one server to another and would like to request some general guidance on how to move an AC Gold site to another server. My old server has Windows Server 2008 and the new one Windows Server 2012. I don't think it should be a big deal but here are my general thoughts:

1. Backup DB on old server and restore on new server (SQL 2008 R2 on both machines so no change here)
2. Copy entire folder structure of AC Gold site on old server and copy to new server
3. Setup new site in IIS on new server
4. How do I reconnect the DB in web.config as the new server has a different SQL name?

Anything else I need to be aware of during this migration?

Thanks in advance for anyone's reply!

Best Regards,

Dennis

[calvis]

On your SQL server it might simplify things by changing the new server to the old name after you restore your databases. That way you don't have to mess around with your database configs.

[VIPER7]

Ok, thanks! That certainly makes sense. I am guessing the database config would be the biggest hitch? I don't have to go through any .exe installation of the AC Gold software, do I? I should just be able to copy the entire web file and folder structure from the old server to the new server, correct? Thanks again!

[VIPER7]

I guess my next question would be - Is there a way to temporarily unencrypt the web.config settings so the DB connection string parameters are in plain text? And then once you get the site moved to the other server, then re-encrypt once everything is up and running on the new server? Thanks!

[calvis]

I am sure there is a way to decrypt, but if you just change the server name to the same as previous then you don't have to worry about all that. But if you need to do that a brief Google search pulls up lots of articles on how to do that.

Here is another thing I found useful...when you are making the transition to the new server use the app_offline.htm feature in ASP.NET to direct your users to a maintenance page. I do this by setting up a new website and just placing that file in there with the appropriate verbiage, and change the ip address when I am ready to do my work.

see: http://geekswithblogs.net/Vipin/archive ... nance.aspx

[VIPER7]

Excellent and thanks again for your guidance! I did actually find out where to change it in the AC admin on the old server. So, it'll be unencrypted until I get it to the new server, and then I can just turn the encryption back on. Unfortunately, it would be a lot more work for me to rename the server since I've already migrated so many websites there successfully configured with the new name. Should have looked this up though before moving a bunch of sites. Again, thanks much for your reply!

[Naveed]

You can configure the encryption from the "Admin -> Configure -> Security -> Database" page (~/Admin/Store/Security/Connection.aspx). You can also edit the connection string to point to a different database etc. So, if you want not to encrypt the database.config file, just uncheck the encryption option.