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How to migrate Drupal websites to the cloud for improved performance and security

Lakshya Sharma September 5, 2023 0 4 min read

Table of Contents

Introduction

Migrating a website from a traditional hosting model to the cloud can be intimidating. It can also be time-consuming and expensive, depending on how big the website is. But migrating your Drupal site to the cloud has many benefits that make it well worth the effort: improved performance and security are just two of them. In this article, we’ll look at what you need to know before starting a migration project, then walk through several different scenarios for migrating your Drupal site into an AWS environment using AWS Migrate Tools (AMT), including moving core codebases, content types and nodes.

What are the benefits of migrating to the cloud?

Cloud services are more secure.

When you host your Drupal website on the cloud, it’s protected by advanced security measures. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a service called AWS Shield that provides protection against DDoS attacks and ensures availability of your data even if there are issues with the network or infrastructure in place.

Cloud services are more reliable.

When you use a cloud provider like AWS or Microsoft Azure to host your Drupal website, their massive networks allow them to provide high availability for both software layers as well as hardware components such as servers and storage devices–which means that your site will never go down because of some technical issue in one location or another! You can focus on developing great content without worrying about building out expensive redundancy systems yourself because these companies already have all those bases covered for you at scale across multiple regions around the world (e..g., North America West Coast vs East Coast).

Migrate Drupal sites with Drupal Migration

Drupal Migration is a Drupal migration tool. It’s also a Drupal migration plugin, module and framework.

Drupal Migration is an open source project that helps users migrate their websites from one host to another with minimal downtime. The toolkit includes everything you need to get started with migrating your content from one server to another in just minutes:

A command line interface (CLI) for running automated migrations
An API for automating parts of the process manually or through other tools like Ansible or Jenkins
A web-based interface for managing settings and viewing reports

How can I migrate Drupal core?

Drupal core is the basic system that runs Drupal. If you want to migrate Drupal core, you need to download the latest version of your current web host (or get one from a different provider) and then upload it onto your new cloud server.

After migrating Drupal core, there are several benefits:

You can make improvements before migrating other modules or themes because they may not work after moving them over.
You’ll be able to test out how well everything works together before making changes elsewhere in your site.

How can I migrate Drupal modules?

The Drupal Migration module is an open source tool that allows you to migrate your Drupal site’s content and configuration to a new server or cloud platform.
To use this module, you must first install and enable it on both your old and new servers. Once enabled, you’ll be able to run migration processes from the command line or with a GUI interface.

How can I migrate the site itself?

To migrate your Drupal site, you’ll need to:

Migrate the Drupal site to a new host. This is where you move all of the files and database from your old host to the new one. You can do this manually or through an automated tool like UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy (both are free). If you’re doing it manually, make sure to keep track of which files go where in case something goes wrong later on.
Import the database into the new host’s MySQL database server by following instructions provided by them (or just Google “importing mysqldump file into [your cloud provider]”). Make sure not to skip this step–it will make everything easier later on!

Migrating to a cloud-hosted platform improves performance and security.

Migrating to a cloud-hosted platform improves performance and security. Cloud hosting allows you to scale your website up or down as needed, so you can quickly handle spikes in traffic or reduce costs when traffic is slow. This flexibility also makes it easier for you to comply with changing regulations around GDPR, PCI compliance and more because you won’t have any hardware or software that needs updating onsite at all times.

Cloud hosting providers use advanced encryption techniques that are more secure than those used by many on-premises solutions (and even some hosted solutions). They also offer 24/7 monitoring of their systems so that if there’s ever an issue with your site’s security or performance, they’ll be alerted immediately so it can be addressed right away–in most cases before anyone notices anything wrong!

Conclusion

Migrating your Drupal site to the cloud is a great way to improve performance and security. It also makes it easier for you to manage your website, since there’s no need to install any software or maintain servers yourself. By using a service like Drupal Migration, you can migrate your Drupal core files, modules, themes and other content with just one click!