SugarCRM Server Migrations Demystified

Perhaps one of the more interesting administrative tasks you might be required to undertake as a SugarCRM administrator is that of moving your installation from one server to another.  Your reason for needing to do this will likely relate to the retirement of the current server or perhaps simply moving from a hosted environment to an in house deployment.

Regardless, what makes the task interesting is the perceived complexity one might face in accomplishing the task. However, there is no reason to be nervous or worry.  Many of the potential challenges can be attributed to a handful of issues, mostly related to system configuration.


Let us begin with the most common issue: PHP configuration.


It is unlikely that the software configuration of the new server is an exact match of the system from which you are moving away.  This may seem like a minor issue, but in reality, this is the most common oversight in these type of operations.  To avoid the frustrations (and lost time) such an oversight might cause, you should first check the version of PHP and configuration (PHP.INI) on the new server and make sure that it is compatible with the version of SugarCRM you are currently using.  


A list of compatible versions of PHP, per SugarCRM version, is available on the SugarCRM web site.  Your findings might require you to either downgrade or upgrade the version of PHP on the new server prior to migrating the instance.


Often times administrators get themselves into trouble because in addition to migrating the instance to a new server, they also want to simultaneously upgrade SugarCRM to its most recent version.

SugarCRM Troubleshooting: SMTP Problems on Hostgator

Here is a good example of a problem where its source could have more easily been discovered by having shell (or similar) access to the server hosting SugarCRM.

While in the process of attempting to configure SugarCRM to use a GMail account, the following error was continually encountered: 

Can't connect to '{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}' as user 'user@gmail.com' with password 'xxx': Can't connect to gmail-imap.l.google.com,993: Connection refused.  

Changing user names, passwords, etc. all resulted in the same error. However, using the same credentials on a locally installed copy of the same version of SugarCRM worked flawlessly.

Things got more mysterious when the output of phpinfo() on both systems appeared to match each other, thus eliminating a previously encountered problem I detailed in an earlier post. Having eliminated all other variables, I was left with one final one: connectivity/firewall issues.