Magento 2 is finally here, after such a long time. Though the wait was worth it because this latest Magento version is built on some different architecture and is more optimized, fast and user-friendly than Magento 1. So, if you are planning to build a new Magento store or thinking to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2, this blog is here to help you out.
So if you are currently using Magento 1, then the release of Magento 2 will put you in a bit of dilemma and confusion as to whether you should stick to Magento 1 or migrate to Magento 2. In this blog here, I’ll briefly discuss the big data migration process from Magento 1 to Magento 2, and all the key points you need to consider while migrating.
The very first thing you need to be cleared on right away is whether you want to stick with Magento 1 or wants to start the migration to Magento 2 now. Here are some important key things to consider while making your decision.
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Here is some brief overview of the steps involved in the big data migration and transferring of your site from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
Take a good look for the availability of the deisred extensions and themes. Ensure that they are available in Magento 2. Also, do look for unrequired extensions you can drop, along with the database asset you need to migrate or any else asset to drop.
Check out your hosting company whether they have the required capacity to host your Magento 2 site without causing trouble and also if they can sustain and support your Magento 2 site when the traffic scales up.
Create the fresh installation of your Magento 2 and after the installation is done, back up or dump the Magento 2 database as soon as possible.
Now, start the installation of your required extensions on the fresh Magento 2 store.
Install Magento migration tool and ensures that it has the access for both the databases of Magento 1 and 2 to start the migration process.
Stop all the cron jobs and activity in Magento 1 admin panel. And don’t start or resume the activity unless the whole migration process is completed and your Magento 2 site goes live.
Transfer the media files from Magento 1 to Magento 2 manually and use Magento migration tool to migrate all the settings to Magento 2.
Use the migration tool for the complete transfer of Magento 1 database to Magento 2. Though both databases have different structures but the migration tool knows how to transfer properly, so your data remains accessible in the installation of Magento 2.
But if you are using any extension which uses its own data and has different database structure for Magento 2 then while transferring it to Magento 2, use the mapping files which comes with the data migration tool.
Once you are done with the complete database transfer, do reindex your Magento 2 site.
And lastly but not the least, do conduct a thorough testing of your new Magento 2 site.
Now it’s time to migrate the data which uses incremental updates.
Once you are ensured that all the data has been completely transferred to Magento 2 and everything is working fine then it’s to make take your Magento 2 to live now. For this, put Magento 1 site first on maintenance mode, stop migration tool, start Magento 2 cron jobs and point the DNS load balancers to the new production hardware. And voila you are done!
The flowchart displayed down here explains the steps for migration.
This is just an example overview of the overall migration process to help you plan properly.
Here are some best practices to keep in mind.
Now let’s give you an estimate of the professional Migration process time. Any Magento store hosted on VirtualBox VM, CentOS 6, 2.5Gb RAM, CPU 1 core 2.6GHz environment, with database of around 177k products, 355k orders, 214k customers can take around 10 minutes to migrate settings and 9 minutes to migrate the data, and the Magento site has to remain in maintenance mode for few minutes to reindex the Magento 2 site and to change the DNS settings.
The migration tool can be very helpful for migrating the data and settings to Magento 2. But not all your data can be transferred with this tool. There are basically three types of data which need to be transferred manually.
Before installing the migration tool, ensure you have covered all the above steps. Once you are done with all this, use below instructions to start the installation
Log in to the Magento site server as a user with the access to edit and create files
Go to Magento 2 root directory and enter the command (below) to update the composer.json file first
composer config repositories.magento composer https://repo.magento.com
Now enter the (below) command to access the current version of the package.
composer require magento/data-migration-tool:2.0.0
The command will install the version 2.0.0. Of the package. If you want to use any other package, you can set the version in the command.
Wait till the dependencies are installed. Once you are done, enter these below two commands to install the migration tool.
composer config repositories.data-migration-tool git
composer require Magento/data-migration-tool:dev-master
When these commands will be run, it will ask you for authentication keys. For the public key, enter the username and for the private key, enter the password.
This will install Magento migration tool on Magento 2.
In this blog, I tried to explain whether if it’s a good decision to migrate to Magento 2 or not. Also, an overview of the migration process is given in this blog with some tips and best practices for the migration process. Follow this blog to clear your mind for creating a migration plan of Magento 1 to Magento 2.