Magento migration projects are herculean tasks that require time, patience, and a great deal of experience to execute successfully.
Even if you can’t be bothered with remaining PCI-DSS compliant and aren’t worried about the security of your online store, the performance benefits you could potentially achieve after a successful store migration should be reason enough to consider re-platforming your online store to Magento 2.
To help store owners transition from Magento 1 to Magento 2, Adobe developed a tool for stores running Magento 1.6.x and above to migrate their data to Magento 2.x. However, while their tool helps you migrate basic things like configuration settings and data from your old database, trying to execute a successful Magento migration project is far more complex. Most stores are usually customized to achieve better design and functionality, and the Data Migration Tool won’t help you migrate any customizations in your existing website over to the new Magento 2 store.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the most common reasons why many Magento migration projects fail and how you can save time and money by avoiding these common pitfalls.
Reasons why Magento migration projects fail
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Failing to plan
By failing to plan, you’re planning to fail — this is especially true when it comes to Magento migration projects. Successful migration to Magento 2 requires a well thought out plan that considers every variable involved in the process while also having contingency plans in place to tackle unforeseen issues.
A well-planned Magento migration project should outline crucial steps such as reviewing existing site data and extensions, building and preparing a new Magento 2 store for the migration, recreating existing functionality on the new store, carefully mapping all old data to the new store, and most importantly, running extensive post-migration tests to ensure all data and functionality have migrated without errors.
Planning a successful Magento migration project without experience is nearly impossible, which is why it’s always best to leave it to the experts and choose an experienced Magento development agency to migrate your Magento store for you.
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Failing to audit
A thorough store audit is one of the most important parts of any Magento migration project. Gaining an understanding of the existing store environment, the design, and functionality will help avoid critical issues at later stages once the migration is well underway.
A thorough store audit must involve a detailed review of the data volume, store structure, functionality, and design. Checking for existing extensions, whether pre-built or custom made, understanding the functionality they provide, and then recreating their functionality either through ready-made or custom extensions in the new store will help ensure that no functionality is lost post-migration.
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Incorrect environment configuration
Choosing the right server environment, in terms of both hardware and software for your new store, is crucial to ensuring that your store operates optimally and gives you top-notch performance without unnecessary downtime.
Depending on the version of Magento 2 you choose, there will be software requirements that you may need to keep in mind while configuring your server to ensure you’re using the correct versions to prevent errors due to incompatibility issues.
Providing the right hardware environment to support your Magento 2 store is just as important as choosing the right software. Although Magento 2 requires a minimum of 2GB of RAM to function, tailoring the RAM, CPU, and disk type and space will be crucial to meeting the demands of your store and ensuring your store functions flawlessly so that your customers have the best shopping experience possible.
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Choosing the wrong Data Migration Tool release
Another common mistake made while attempting to migrate Magento 1 stores is using the wrong version of the Data Migration Tool.
Before you begin your store migration, you need to ensure you’ve checked the version of Magento 2 you’ll be migrating to as the version of the Data Migration Tool you would need to use will depend on that. Once you’ve confirmed your version of Magento 2, you can head over to the Releases page of Magento’s Data Migration Tool GitHub repository to check for available released versions that would match your Magento 2 version.
You could go a step further by checking the composer.json file in a text editor after you’ve installed the Data Migration Tool to verify the “version” entry in the file matches the version you require for your migration.
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Incorrect data mapping
The Magento Data Migration Tool uses mapping files to help you map database attributes between your Magento 1 and Magento 2 databases. By using this mapping file, you can easily change table or field names, ignore table or field names, and adapt the data of a field to Magento 2 compatible format.
In the Map step, the Data Migration Tool reads the map.xml file to check for instructions on how to modify or adapt database attributes and to ignore attributes that may not be relevant to Magento’s core code. By making sure you map your data correctly, you can help prevent your Magento migration project from failing.
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Incorrect config.xml
One of the most common error messages while attempting to migrate a Magento store is the dreaded and often vague Integrity check failed error message. While the actual error message may contain more details specific to the error, it’s usually enough to send you on a wild goose chase scouring everything from Stack Overflow to GitHub searching for matching error reports and possible solutions.
If you have done everything right and mapped all your data correctly, in most cases, an incorrectly configured config.xml should be one of the first places you look after you receive an Integrity check failed error message. More often than not, the config.xml file will be pointing to incorrect data or maybe misconfigured causing the Integrity Check to fail.
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Incompatible theme & extensions
Magento 1 and Magento 2 are vastly different, and running the same version of a theme or extension from Magento 1 on Magento 2 is impossible.
Although the CMS syntax between the two versions of Magento is similar and reworking it is possible, as far as the theme design is concerned, Magento 1 used the prototype JS framework while Magento 2 uses jQuery making it extremely difficult to carry over an existing Magento 1 theme to a new Magento 2 website.
While many store owners may be concerned about losing design or website functionality, an experienced Magento development agency should be able to recreate a website on Magento 2 using a combination of premade and custom extensions and a theme.
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Deltalog errors
A deltalog error usually occurs during the incremental migration of changes to a store’s data. The error simply means that the deltalog tables weren’t found in the Magento 1 database that is being used for the final data transfer.
During the first migration, the Data Migration Tool installs deltalog tables and database triggers in the database of the Magento 1 store that’s being migrated to track future changes and fill deltalog tables for subsequent migrations to the new Magento 2 instance. Deltalog errors are often seen when a copy of a live Magento 1 site is used for the first migration. In such cases, the actual live site doesn’t contain the deltalog and when you attempt to migrate the actual live Magento 1 store, it results in a deltalog error as the Data Migration Tool won’t find the deltalog tables on the live Magento 1 site causing the migration to fail.
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Performance issues
While migrating to Magento 2 is sure to give your website a performance boost, Magento 2 is far from perfect and comes with its own set of bugs and issues. Fortunately, most bugs have a workaround and can be fixed with a few minor tweaks.
Many store owners find that their Magento 2 store doesn’t perform as well as they expected after migration and may experience slow loading times and poor performance on both the frontend and backend. This is because Magento 2 is designed to use Varnish as its caching system and by configuring it to work with Varnish for page cache and Redis for session cache you can unleash the true performance of your Magento 2 site. Using the built-in cache is guaranteed to slow you down and also cause cache invalidation issues that can be easily prevented by using Varnish.
You could even take it a step further and tweak and optimize your website’s JavaScript code for performance and even configure it to work with a CDN for media delivery so that even the largest of configurable products load in a matter of seconds.
Conclusion
A clean migration to Magento 2 is far from impossible as long as you ensure that you are thorough enough to account for all the variables involved in the process.
Tech-savvy store owners operating small stores with a few hundred orders and products without customizations may be successful in migrating their stores themselves. However, for medium to large-sized stores, choosing a vendor that is backed by a team of specialists with experience migrating Magento stores, such as a Magento agency Staylime, will help ensure that your website data transitions smoothly with as little downtime as possible.
Migrating a store to Magento 2 is a long-term investment and needs careful consideration. As a store owner, your time would be better spent developing your business instead of trying to take migration on yourself.
