The Plan

Transferring data from your current CHILI publisher installation to GraFx Publisher is easy. The hardest part is the planning and logistics.

Do you want to transfer all your environments in one go?
Do you want to transfer one at a time?
Are you going to do an initial transfer and then a final transfer?
Will there be multiple transfer phases?

These are the questions you and your team must answer.

In general, most clients follow one of two processes:

Transfer All - transfer one, test, transfer all, test, cutover
Transfer Each - transfer each environment, test, cutover per environment

Transfer All

Best for an integration where there is one main site that uses multiple environments.

The process works by first transferring one environment, and testing a development integration with that one environment. Once the development integration is cleared to work, all other environments are transferred, and the integration is upgraded to handle the new SaaS endpoints. Finally, the integration is scheduled to cutover from on-prem to GraFx Publisher, one final transfer is planned to synchronize files, and the entire production site is switched to GraFx Publisher.

Typically this requires one business day of downtime for the final cutover.

Transfer Each

Best for an integration where there are multiple sites for each environment.

The process works by planning to transfer one environment at a time and testing a development integration with each environment. For each environment, once the development integration is cleared to work with that environment, a cutover is planned. During that cutover, one last transfer is made to synchronize, and then the production site is switched to GraFx Publisher.

Typically this requires half a business day to one business day of downtime for the final cutover for each environment.

Cutover

The cutover is when testing is done and your site is ready to switch all API endpoints from your on-prem install to CHILI publish Online.

At this point, you typically want to do another data transfer from your on-prem environment to your CHILI publish Online environment so all the files are synchronized. This cutover day must be planned with the CHILI publish support team, and will usually require a few hours to one business day of downtime.

Each Cutover Will Cause Downtime!!!

Determine your plan or create a new plan of your own. The Customer Success team will help as best they can, but keep in mind that the choice is ultimately up to your team. Also keep in mind that no matter what you do, there will be scheduled downtime. The final cutover requires files to be transferred and that takes time.

The Process

After you have your plan, the process of transferring data is quite simple.

It requires four simple steps:

Getting a dropzone from CHILI publish
Prepare the data with the Data Migration Toolkit
Transfer data to the dropzone
Notify the Customer Success team when the transfer is complete

Step 1: Getting a dropzone

You will first need to create a ticket on https://mysupport.chili-publish.com/ requesting a dropzone for data transfer.

If you are transferring one environment at a time, then you will need to request multiple dropzone URLs. If you are transferring all environments, then you will only need one dropzone URL. Keep in mind that if you transfer all your environments, but you own less CHILI publish Online environments, you need to note which environments you want to be ignored after the transfer.

The Customer Success team will reply back with a URL for your dropzone — like the link below — with in 1 to 3 business days.

https://chilitennatmigration.blob.core.windows.net/migration-cstest?sv=2019-02-02&si=migration-cstest-72B725F20C&sr=c&sig=ctaDl%2BrzrWQEKsh6Hxs%3df

This URL points to an Azure blob storage. We use blob storage as a temporary space to store your data until you notify the Customer Success team that your transfer is complete. Once notified, one of our SaaS team members will transfer the data from the blob storage to the final environment.

If this transfer is for production, where you are planning to do a cutover, then you need to notify the Customer Success team in your ticket and schedule the transfer from blob to the environment.

Without scheduling, it takes 1 to 4 business days, after you notify the Customer Success team, for our SaaS team to transfer blob to the environment.

The dropzone URL will only be active for a short period. Therefore it is best to make this ticket within a few days before you are ready to do the transfer.

Step 2: Data Migration Toolkit

With the Data Migration Toolkit, you can prepare your local data before you send it to the dropzone.

The tool also has a built in command "CopyEnvironmentToDropzone" to copy data to the Dropzone.

Download the Migration Toolkit (exe file for windows CLI)

Step 3: Notify the Customer Success team when the transfer is complete

After all the data has transferred with no failures, then you will notify the Customer Succes team via the original ticket that all data has transferred.

If you have not scheduled the transfer, it will take 1 to 4 business days for the data to be transferred from the dropzone blob storage to your environment (or environments).

The Customer Success team will reply back with the environment is ready.

Data Migration Toolkit

The "Data Migration Tool Kit CLI" is a command-line application designed to simplify data migration for CHILI publisher. It various commands to facilitate the migration process:

Generating Environment Reports: You can create a report detailing your environment's statistics, such as file size, number of files, and average script execution time. This is done by running the command CreateEnvironmentReport and specifying your environment's path.
Preparing for Migration: Before using the tool, it's important to stop all related services to prevent changes in certain resource files. After running the tool, a report file is generated in the same folder, highlighting key environment data and any absolute paths in resource files.
Converting Absolute Paths: Absolute paths in resource files can cause issues post-migration, especially in cloud environments. To avoid this, the FixAbsolutePathsInDataXml command converts absolute paths to relative ones. It's crucial to backup your data.xml files before this operation.
Data Migration to Cloud Storage: To migrate your environment to a cloud-based storage, use the CopyEnvironmentToDropzone command. This requires the path to your environment and a Dropzone link URL provided by CHILI. It's recommended to perform this operation when your system is under minimal load and has sufficient free RAM (at least 4GB).

In essence, this tool kit provides a streamlined way to prepare and execute data migration, addressing specific needs such as environment analysis, path conversion, and safe data transfer to cloud storage.

Generate report

To generate a report with environment statistics, run the executable file with the CreateEnvironmentReport command and specify the path to the environment on your disk

Example

.\CHILI.Migration.CLI CreateEnvironmentReport -d "C:\chili_data\Environments\test".

Update absolute paths

To update absolute paths to relative paths for all resources, run the executable file with the FixAbsolutePathsInDataXml command and specify the path to the environment on your disk