3 separate Sitecore sites at 3 different servers and Need to migrate it to 1 instance on a Single Server

Question

I've 3 separate Sitecore sites at 3 different servers and Need to migrate it to 1 instance on a Single Server so can someone help me with the best possible approach for doing it:

The way I know to do it is :

1. Create a new instance on the destination server

2. Create the IA to support Multisite implementation have the clear separation of all the websites in the IA (having Site1, Site2 and Site3 as 3 different home node, 1 global folder having common fields)

3. Rename the Sitecore Home node as per the new node created in destination server instance and then serialize the node for Site1.

4. Repeat Step 3 for Site2 and Site3

5. Copy the serialization folders and merge it to destination server (this is tricky need a better approach if there exist one)

6. Use the Serialization.aspx from admin and do a revert database so sync all the items into my content tree. (I'm not sure this will be fool proof :( :( :( )

7. Have the code base migrated into same solution for Multisite MVC Area implementation.

Can anyone please suggest if there is any alternate solution apart from above and also if there is problem with above. I'm gonna go with above if there is no better approach.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Renaming items will not be sufficient, especially if you've used any sort of framework to build up all three. If any of your GUIDs collide, you will be overwriting templates/content/media etc. during your serialization steps.

You also may have namespace conflicts in your code or pipeline customizations that may interfere with each other. Moving to a single Sitecore 'Include' structure for your configs may also expose that you've used the same folders/file-names for the config changes as well.

You'll also need to examine any third-party DLLs that you've placed in the bin folder and check whether you have conflicts between the three sites as you will be merging into a single 'bin'.

Also, your Web.config changes may not be compatible with each other. You will need to merge these and test.

You will need to look at how you have done your Sitecore security roles and users as well. Your users need to be merged into a single database and your roles may have different inheritance structures or conflicting names. Content security settings in the tree may be incompatible as well, so you need to take a look at whatever security you set up in the tree as well.

If you've used the rules engine in any way to provide insert options or other rules, you will need to look at whether these rules conflict with each other. Many assume a single site and are not prepped for multi-site/multi-tenancy.

If you have implemented any modules, you need to check for compatibility of the modules between the different sites as they usually have common file names and items.

If you have implemented multi-lingual, you will need to look at the languages implemented and see if there are conflicts. If there are conflicts, can they be merged safely? Do you have fall-back rules in place? Are they compatible between the different sites?

There's probably more...

In general, as @Hishaam Namooya mentions, this is usually a complete re-architecture exercise. You can start with the steps you mentioned, but you will quickly find that you likely have a lot of issues to look through...