Migrate an existing DotNetNuke portal to windows azure

Question

I am currently moving from my shared host to azure and I have been migrating my asp.net applications to azure/sql azure. For the mvc3/4 sites, I had to change their membership providers to the Universal Membership provider in order to get them to sit on SQL Azure. Now I have to do the dnn sites and I can't quite fathom what strategy to use. I have tried generating the database script with the For SQL Azure option but I get a tonne of errors like

Deprecated feature 'String literals as column aliases' is not supported in this version of SQL Server.

Also, I don't have the option of installing a fresh dnn portal because it would be too much to try to set up 30+ modules and pages.

So I guess my question is what is the best strategy to migrate an existing dnn portal to windows azure?

Answer 1

Migrating an existing site to Windows Azure is fairly straight forward (if a little tedious). If you are not running in a webfarm, then the only known issues exist at the database level. To simplify the migration, you should follow the steps below:

1. Upgrade DotNetNuke - The latest versions of DotNetNuke are already compatible with SQL Azure. This will cover 90% of your problems.
2. Upgrade Modules - You should upgrade all modules to the latest versions. Many modules are already Azure compatible and we continue to work with module vendors to ensure even more are getting updated. You can test an individual module for compatibility by using our Extension Verification Service (EVS).
3. Use the SQL Azure Migration Wizard to generate a db script. At this point you should not have many remaining SQL issues. Cleaning up the scripts at this point should be fairly easy.
4. Install DotNetNuke - Use the DotNetNuke Azure Accelerator to install a clean version of DotNetNuke on Windows Azure. This will provide you a Wizard to walk you through configuring Azure. NOTE If you are migrating to Azure Websites, then use the DotNetNuke install from the Gallery.
5. Migrate DB - Use the scripts you created in step 3 to overwrite the db that was created in step 4. You will also need to add a value in the PortalAlias table for your Azure specific web URL.
6. Migrate Files - Use RDP or FTP to move files from your existing DNN install to the Azure install. Don't forget to update Web.config with your new SQL Connection string (you can just copy the string from the web.config created in step 4).
7. Update DNS - Once you have the site working correctly you can update your DNS to point your domain at the new site.