Introduction

This is the frontend part of quick migrate, a tool for migrating sites more quickly by skipping some steps that are normally done by aegir.

What does quick migrate do?

When Aegir executes a migrate, it normally does the following:

• Put the site into maintenance mode.
• Sync all resources back to the aegir hostmaster with rsync (for remote hosts)
• Make a database backup.
• Copy the data of the resources into the target to which we are migrating
• Create new configuration files that match the new location.
• Run updatedb
• Sync data back to the web fronts
• Remove the old site by removing on aegir and then sync.
• Put the new site out of maintenance mode.

This is fine for small installations, but for big installations with a lot of files, it takes a massive amount of time to sync the data over to the master. Also, if you have a lot of sites, you need double the disk space. Another issue with this is if you have multiple web fronts. A common practice is to use something like glusterFS for the file system, and then have the files directory be a symlink. Aegir breaks this, because it syncs the files over to the master and then syncs it back as a normal folder.

Quick migrate does things a bit differently:

• Put the site in maintenance mode.
• Take a database dump.
• Remove the files folder completely from the aegir host.
• Move the files directory directly on the web host to another location using "mv".
• Sync the data (modules, themes, local.settings.php ...) to the aegir master.
• Move the site to the new platform on the hostmaster.
• Sync the site folder back to the web fronts.
• Move the files directory back to the new site folder
• Delete the old site folder on the web front(s).

The files directory is never backed up to the hostmaster, which saves a LOT of time when doing the migrate. There is a few things to note though:

• You can't move sites from different servers this way. If you need to do that, you need to use the normal migrate process.
• Files are not backed up. Use another means of backing data up!

Installation

Put this module into your sites/all/modules folder of your hostmaster. You will also have to install the companion provision plugin.