Is it safer to cancel the Sitecore package installation?

Question

We have migrated from Sitecore 8 to Sitecore 10.1. During the content migration, we used Sitecore packages.

I've observed that smaller packages install quickly, but larger packages (above 200MB) take an extensive amount of time. While tracking the Sitecore logs, I noticed that the 'Installing item:' message appears to complete within a couple of hours.

However, the Sitecore package installation window continues to show the 'installing' message for another couple of hours, with no further 'Installing item:' entries in the Sitecore logs. Eventually, the successful installation package message is displayed on the Sitecore package window.

My question is whether it is safe to cancel the package installation window if I don't see any more 'Installing item:' entries in the Sitecore log. Additionally, I usually rebuild indexes after installing a large package.

Answer 1

The sitecore dialog windows sometimes get frozen and take a long time to report back on completed operations. I have noticed this on a few things like basic publish (if publishing from non publishing instance) and also deploying marketing definitions.

I would recommend the following:

1. Open up a separate window and load <your-domain>/sitecore/admin/jobs.aspx

2. Trigger smaller install package

3. Observe job starting and finishing in jobs queue

4. Confirm finish in jobs viewer matches the entries you have found in the logs

If everything matches up then it should be safe to assume both logs and jobs viewer are a safe source of information for completed jobs.

As a further precaution, you could reload sitecore client (ad it does after a package install completes) and spot check items are there in the content tree.

As an aside, another way to move large volumes of data between instances is to use the sitecore serialization tools.

In the content tree:

1. Navigate to parent item
2. Go to developer tools
3. Serialise tree
4. Find serialized items on disk
5. Copy files to new environment
6. Navigate to parent item in new destination
7. Revert from disk

The above process is covered in another more detail in this blog post. It is quite old, but I believe still very relevant: https://briancaos.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/migrating-huge-amounts-of-sitecore-content-use-the-site

Finally, it you might also look into the new sitecore CLI, which also has tools to serialize and migrate data between instances.

Answer 2

It is safe to close but Sitecore continues to install the package in the background even if you close the window. You can check the progress in this link domain/sitecore/admin/jobs.aspx