Why does my migration fail?

Migrations and Transfers
Email Hosting – Troubleshooting
Richard Chambers
Published: 8 August 2022
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Our Migration Centre is designed to make migrations as simple as possible, automating the process so that you can bring your sites to us efficiently and quickly.

However, sometimes these migrations can run into problems that result in errors which disrupt and prevent sites being brought across. Below are a few examples of common errors encountered during migrations, and how to go about fixing them to minimise disruption to your move. 

cPanel migrations

Our cPanel migration tool uses the default backup facility available within cPanel to generate and move across a full account backup and convert it to a package on our side.

A common error seen is a migration idling at the stage ‘Waiting for cPanel Backup’. During this part of the migration, we've sent a request to the cPanel server to generate a backup file that we can use for the migration and upload it to 20i. Our system is waiting for confirmation of that upload so it can then proceed. 

Depending on the size of the website(s) being moved, the backup can take some time to complete. However, it’s not expected that this should take a long period of time, especially if the site or sites being moved are small. In some cases, the cPanel backup process may be stalled on the server you’re migrating from, and it would be best to check the cPanel server and see why the backup has not been received by us.

The most common reasons this can occur are:

  • The account was over quota or suspended and the backup process was aborted
  • The firewall on the server blocks outbound connections and the FTP upload to 45.8.227.0/24 is blocked
  • The cPanel server has a high load average and so cPanel is automatically throttling the backup, but it's still ongoing
  • It's just a very large site and the backup process is still in progress. We'll start the import as soon as its received.
Plesk migrations

Our Plesk Migration tool connects via Plesk API to request a backup. This backup is then moved over via FTP, extracted and imported to bring the site across. So Plesk API access needs to be enabled on the Plesk setup you’re migrating from to allow the tool to work correctly. If you’re having difficulty migrating your site due to the migration failing right away, this is the likely cause. Check with your current host to confirm that Plesk API access is available for your account.

Alongside this, much as with cPanel backups, when we request the backup to be generated our system idles until confirmation the backup is ready. As such, if something on the system prevents the backup completing it can stall at this phase. Make sure your account has enough space for a backup, and that our IPs - 45.8.227.0/24 - are whitelisted so that this can complete.

WordPress FTP Migrations

The following conditions should be met for the WordPress FTP migration tool to migrate a site. These conditions are usually met by default, unless you've made changes to your WordPress installation.

If your migration fails, adjustments may need to be made to allow the migration tool to work correctly:

  • The migration tool looks for the directory with the wp-config.php configuration file. If you’ve manually moved the wp-config.php file to another directory (sometimes done for security) then you’d need to move it to be with the rest of the core WordPress files.
  • File and directory permissions should be consistent with WordPress best practice: i.e. directories set to 755 and files set to 644
  • Our IPs used for the FTP migration tool should not be blocked. Please whitelist IP range 45.8.227.0/24 to avoid this. 
  • Ensure the website's domain name points to the correct web host. If the nameservers for the domain name don’t point to the right host then the migration will fail.

If you’re having trouble diagnosing what’s wrong, please feel free to contact us.

Heart Migrations

Migration from Heart need Heart Internet Reseller API access. We use the API to communicate with Heart’s side and generate the necessary backups to bring your site across.

For full details on how to access this, see our guide on migrating from Heart.

If these details aren't available to you, or your migration fails immediately after entering the details, it’s likely the case that your account doesn’t have sufficient API access and you’ll need to contact Heart support to confirm this.