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chrisdeinlein
Participating Frequently
December 12, 2017
Question

Migrating to a new server

  • December 12, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 4112 views

We have CF9 and want to move to CF 2016, but on a new server.  I have been trying to digest the CF2016-Migration-Guide.  I am not real familiar with CF, but I am pretty familiar with Windows Server, IIS, etc...

The migration guide is catered for someone doing an in-place upgrade and there appears to be some sizable gaps on steps if you are moving to a new server.

I have successfully:

- Installed CF 2016 on the new server

- Copied the neo*.xml files from the old server and allow them to migrate

- Copied the \Inetpub\wwwroot files and folders from the old server to the new

- Copied the database folder that the datasources point to from the old to the new

What I am missing:

- Do you I need to recreate the ColdFusion Collections or is there a way to migrate them?  (note: recreating wouldn't be horrible, but I am not sure what folder was specified on the old server when you tell the collection to index)

- I am not sure if I a missing anything else.  If I hit my website on the new server, it appears to be missing some style sheets; the header and footer load; and I get a 404 error in the middle of the page.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Charlie Arehart
Community Expert
Charlie ArehartCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 13, 2017

Happy to have helped, Carl. And to the discussion about cfcollections and indexing, I think you guys (Dave and Chris) may now be on the same page.

Bottom line, Chris, you just wanted to import the collections. It really is just a matter of copying them over. Your question was, "where?". The CF2016 Admin Collections page now has has a folder name listed at the top: all collections go into there. In earlier versions, you could set the location for each collection. Just put them in there, then refresh this page, and they should appear.

You do not need to "index them". That button (as has been clarified) is for if you want to populate some collection by reading text files and "indexing" the database with their contents. We can assume that's already done in your Solr collections.

[Grr. I habitually hit ctrl-s, and this web forum saved my not-yet-complete post. If that got emailed to anyone, that's a bummer. I realize that those seeing this on teh web UI wouldn't even notice, if you read this after I finish now editing it.]

BTW, Chris, you don't indicate in your first note if these "collections" are indeed Solr or Verity. To be clear, While CF9 had both (and earlier releases had only Verity), CF10 and above have only Solr. CF9 was a transition between point when folks were to migrate the collections from Verity to Solr (and there was a tool for doing that), and then change their code (since the CFINDEX, CFSEARCH, and CFCOLLECTION tag operations are not identical between the two.)

Are you confirming that all you had was Solr collections? Hoping so, or perhaps you may have asked about that.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)
C
chrisdeinleinAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 14, 2017

I had both Verity and Solr.  I copied my Solr collections.  The folder appears to be:  C:\ColdFusion2016\cfusion\jetty\multicore\collections. I don't see a folder listed at the top, but if I create a test collection, that is where it puts it.

Thanks.

Charlie Arehart
Community Expert
Charlie ArehartCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 14, 2017

Sorry, Chris. It’s on the next page down in the Admin, “Solr Server”. And yep, the default in 2016 is C:\ColdFusion2016\cfusion\jetty\multicore. Then in that as you found is the Collections folder, and you put them in there.

I found also (like you) that when I put a collection in there, it was not “picked up”. But restarting the Add-on service (not CF) caused them to show up in the Admin.

Perhaps as useful, on that same Solr Server page, there is an option at the bottom to migrate solr collections, but it’s designed for pointing at the collections folder within another CF instance. I confirmed it’s NOT enough to point to a folder that HAS a collections folder with solr collections folder within it.

/charlie

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)
D
Community Expert
Dave WattsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 12, 2017

I don't think it's a good idea to copy the neo*.xml files from CF 9 to CF 2016. Instead, you can simply export your configuration using the ColdFusion Archive functionality. You do need to have an Enterprise or Trial license available to do this, but I seem to recall a way to temporarily set your license back to Trial to get this. Of course, if copying the files worked for you, I guess you can skip this.

I'm a little worried when you mentioned "the database folder" because you should be using a real database server, and that should ideally be somewhere else. File-based databases are not very good for production use.

The actual locations of the CF collections doesn't really matter.

It looks like you have some IIS virtual directories on the old server that aren't on the new one.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC
C
chrisdeinleinAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 12, 2017

Copying the neo*.xml is part of the Adobe suggested migration.  So what is your concern about that?  The Migration program reads the old files and applies the settings to the new files.  I didn't overwrite the new files with the old.

Unfortunately, I have CF 9 Standard, so I don't have the archive option.   i guess I could try flipping back to a trial, but I hope that doesn't break my production server.

Database folder:  The developer has some Access databases that CF uses.

>>The actual locations of the CF collections doesn't really matter.

When you go to index, it wants to know the folder you are indexing. (If I understand it correctly). Not where the collection is stored.   I don't know what folder she specified for indexing on the older server.  It apparently doesn't store that information.

Thanks for the tip on the virtual directories. I should have thought to check that.  I will check that and clean it up.

D
Community Expert
Dave WattsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 12, 2017

I didn't know that was now part of a suggested migration, to be honest. And if it works for you, that's all that matters!

I would move those Access databases to MySQL or something. Access is just not good for CF.

As far as the indexing goes, no, the folder being indexed is not intrinsically part of the collection itself. It's controlled by the use of CFINDEX or a manual index operation from the CF Administrator. So you'd need to go to the old server and run some searches to find out where the files are that you want to index.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC
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