How to Migrate your website to a dedicated server

Moving your shared or VPS hosting to a dedicated server or switching to another provider can be done for a number of reasons. For example:

You may want to increase the functionality, speed, and security of your server and website.

You might not be satisfied with your existing provider or have a discovered another, more powerful hosting solution

Or, you might simply want to make your website completely yours with full control and performance

Whatever the reason is, the problems remain the same: Migrating your website without any downtime, because you know downtime in a website means

Loss of sales,

Loss of revenue

Negative customer feedback and

Visitors’ negative experience

But worry not; there are ways that can help you easily migrate your website without even a minute of downtime and server issues, and the broad answer is ‘Planning’. With proper planning, strategy and execution, you can absolutely migrate your website to a dedicated server while keeping your website working and running smoothly throughout the process.

Let us understand how and the step-by-step guide for the same:

A dedicated server is a physically deployed resource at chosen data centers that are specifically configured just for your website and application. This implies that, in contrast to other hosting options like shared or VPS, you are not required to share any of your bandwidth or resources with other users. Thus, it enhances the performance, speed and privacy of your server. The dedicated server is considered one of the top-class and reliable hosting services across the globe due to its uptime guarantee and ability to manage and handle any type of complex website or application. Additionally, it provides you with full control with root access to ensure that users have access and the ability to customize every part of the server as if the server were physically available to them.

Having a dedicated server for your website and application hosting offers you multiple benefits and features that are only possible with it:

Performance: Most of the reason behind choosing the dedicated server is accelerating the speed and performance of the online business. Since the server provides isolated and fully private hardware resources, it drastically enhances your website loading time, response speed and overall performance.

Control: You can alter every element of your server and have total control over it when you have a dedicated server. From software installation to changing the operating system or installing a custom OS, the dedicated server with its full root access helps you do all of these without any hassle.

Security: The isolated environment of your dedicated server lowers the risk of any kind of server attacks because it always stays private and secured. In addition, it comes with robust security measures such as advanced firewall protection, Anti-DDoS tools and physical data protection at data centers with CCTV and manual monitoring to ensure the optimal security

Scalability: This is a feature that almost all dedicated server hosting plans offer. This means that you can begin with a small number of resources (CPU, RAM, storage, etc.) based on your company’s needs and gradually increase them as your business expands.

When it comes to website and server migration, there are lots of fears that stop us from taking risks and limit us from growing. Let’s first discuss some of these typical worries before moving on to the methodical, downtime-free migration process.

Website will be down for days or hours: It is one of the concerning fears for businesses who are already doing good on their website and are afraid that if they tried scaling their server hosting, it might result in hours of website downtime and could affect their sales and visitors’ feedback.

Losing data during migration: Another fear website owners face before server migration is that they can lose important data in the process of migration and this fear is not just rooted in some imagination but in reality.

SEO rankings affect: If a website has put so many years of effort into SEO and secured top rankings in the search engine, their fear comes from the fact that what if they migrate their server and face any negative ranking results?

Server management complication: Implementing and managing an all-new advanced server is a challenge in itself for a few businesses, especially if they are planning to get the unmanaged dedicated server.

While all these fears are relevant and grounded in reality, whether it is about losing data, affecting SEO, or downtime issues, with proper planning, strategy, and step-by-step execution, they can be easily managed effectively.

Now that we have understood all the basics about migration, dedicated hosting benefits and common fears around the migration, let us now come to the main part of the blog: How do we migrate the server without any downtime

The process of migrating your website to a dedicated server starts with understanding your website needs and requirements. Asking some of the following questions helps you understand your requirements and gives more clarity to your vision:

1. What exactly am I trying to achieve with the new hosting?

Why: Assist you in precisely defining the ROI and expectations

2. What is the monthly or daily traffic of my server?

Why: This will help you choose the right resources

3. What type of site do I run and how can a dedicated server help me with that

Why: Make your website and hosting requirements and complexity clear.

4. How much of each resource do I need (CPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth, etc.)?

Why: Help you customize your server resources

5. Do I need custom software or an application?

Why: Enable you to be clear from the start if you want full control

6. Where are most of the targeted customers?

Why: Help you choose the right and nearby data centers for the deployment

Once you get all these answers, this will lead to a better and clearer migration process. Additionally, when you answer these questions, you understand what exact resources you need so that you can avoid getting under- or over-provisioned.

You’re now clear with your requirements and must already have a server provider in mind from whom you want to get your dedicated server. Hosting services from different providers are not of the same caliber. So, choose your provider very strategically.

Before finalizing the server provider, you can create a checklist of services that you must need from a provider and ensure that most of your checklist is ticked with your chosen provider. The following items can be added to your checklist:

Support service offering

Uptime guarantee

Deployment speed

IP address choices

Data center options, etc.

As we discussed the fear of losing data during migration, here we will eliminate that fear strategically by backing up everything from our existing server hosting. The backup service helps you save all your data and information in the cloud or other storage systems, depending on the server provider policies.

This ensures that even if you lose any critical data during the migration, you won’t have to worry, as your data will be secured somewhere else safely. But what would be taken as a backup? Well, it includes everything that is currently hosted on your website and server, including

websites files like HTML, CSS, JS, images, etc.

Databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.

Email accounts,

SSL and other certifications

Configuration files and .htaccess

We’re now done with all the pre-migration processes; now let’s just deploy the new server

We will do this step by step. Till this step, either you would have already purchased the server or you’ll now purchase it.

Once purchased and having received confirmation by the provider, we will start with installing operating systems of our choice or even ask the provider to install one by themselves

You’ll now set up a web server, database server, PHP and other scripting languages, SSL certificate and firewalls or basic security configurations. In essence, in this stage, our main focus is to make our server fully ready, and it should be just one click away from going live.

It might first feel overwhelming, but with proper support services and control panels like cPanel and Plesk, it’ll become easier. You can also install monitoring tools to keep monitoring the server health and security after migration.

You’re not launching a new website nor you starting a server hosting; you’re migrating. This means any small server configuration issue may result in heavy losses. Just to avoid such mistakes and issues, it is advisable to test the server rigorously multiple times before making it live.

To test your new server, you can use a staging environment with a temporary domain and subdomain. You can ensure if

All files on the server is loading correctly

databases functions well

plugins, themes or third-party apps are workings properly

Speed and performance are as per the expectation

This is the most important and the main part of the process, as this is where and how we will migrate our older website to the newer server.

This involves multiple steps and step-by-step guidance

First, you will gather all the necessary information about the older and newer servers, including IP addresses and any specific DNS records

Next, you’ll export the DNS records from your existing provider. This is not hard; all the providers offer a way to export the DNS records

The exported records will be now required to import the newer server, which is almost ready to go live

Now, in the next step

Once you’re done with all the steps listed above successfully, then congratulations, you have completed your migration process. However, it may take anywhere from a few minutes to a full day for these changes to take effect. So, it is recommended that you do not make any content changes during this time, as visitors can access any of the servers (older or newer) during this time.

However, the migration process has been completed; you need to follow some post-migration steps as well to ensure the performance and uptime without any interruption. This includes monitoring the new server hosting for its performance and server resources, broken links, missing files or slow speed.

As you have already migrated your website to a new server, you don’t need the older one, so it’s time to clean up the older hosting slowly. You don’t need to rush; instead, take your time and start cleaning the server at least a week from migration. This ensures that every single detail and piece of data has been imported and finally, there is nothing in the order server that is relevant to your business.

Everything has been done till this step and the only thing left is

Optimizing your new server for SEO,

Setting up a backup facility,

Installing necessary tools for security and other requirements

Using a CDN for a global audience and

Optimizing database and performance.

In conclusion, migrating your website to a dedicated server with zero downtime is a challenging task but possible with strategic planning and execution. This involves understanding the business hosting requirement, choosing the right server provider, setting up the new server, updating the DNS setting through the domain registrar and then finally optimizing the server to meet all the requirements. The process comes with some major fears and dealing with it requires patience and proper support service

When you choose Amaze Servers for your dedicated server hosting needs, we will not only offer the best quality server plans with a maximum uptime guarantee but also help you migrate your server without any hassle step by step. Whether you’re looking for a Thailand dedicated server or a Dubai dedicated server, we have a team of experts who will do everything in the process so that you feel relaxed while your website is migrating into something more powerful, more controlled and more private. Contact us now and start hosting your website all over the globe with the same speed in every corner of the world.