Offer Application Migration to make PHP 7 Upgrade Easier
While I'm glad to finally have the ability to upgrade to PHP 7, it's very frustrating and time-consuming to have to clone every application in order to make that happen.
That means new IP addresses, new FTP user accounts, new IP Whitelisting setup, SSL certificate setup, reconfiguring the SMTP mail add-on...and of course, DNS propagation time. What a hassle!!
Please develop an auto-migration tool to move an application (or server) to a new server, rather than clone it, keeping the abovementioned settings intact.
This would also help for Digital Ocean server downgrades -- rather than cloning to a new (smaller) server and having to reconfigure everything, we could just migrate to a new server keep all the old settings intact.

-
Tevya Washburn - FS commented
I think we need a CloudWays users (or clients) group on Facebook, or something. Some way we can talk about things like this, and give it exposure for more people to vote it up. I REALLY want PHP 7. But I REALLY don't want to go through the hassle it's going to be right now, moving over 60 sites on 6 servers to new servers just to get there.
-
Rob commented
+1 to Andrew and Tevya's recommendations.
-
Tevya Washburn - FS commented
OR... even a "Upgrade to Debian 8" option would be good enough. It wouldn't help with the other cases like DO server downgrades, but would get us to Debian 8 so we can have PHP7. I wouldn't mind if there were half an hour or hour of downtime while everything is rebuilt, as long as I could schedule it and don't have to go through the cumbersome process Andrew describes.
PLEASE give us an upgrade path without all that pain. I assume it's better for us to be on Debian 8 for other reasons as well. So don't make us go through a alot of hassle and work, just because we became customers before Debian 8/PHP 7 was an option.
-
Don commented
Agree. We need a better way to do this things. How about being able to create a new server and assign the IP from an existing server if desired?
-
Timm Stokke commented
> That means new IP addresses, new FTP user accounts, new IP Whitelisting setup, SSL certificate setup, reconfiguring the SMTP mail add-on...and of course, DNS propagation time. What a hassle!!
Indeed – this is a huge pain in the ass, and not something I'm at all keen on dealing with. I was very disappointed to learn this is the "recommended" approach. Please re-consider!
-
Amit Singh commented
Totally agree with Andrew. I badly need this feature, please add this feature.