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Migrations & Releases

Database Migration & Deployment

Moving data and shipping code are the two operations that can lose a business its afternoon. Both are rehearsed before they are performed.

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Overview

The rehearsal is the work. The cutover should be boring.

Migrations fail in the same few ways: character encoding nobody checked, a foreign key that was never enforced and turns out not to hold, a dataset that behaves differently at full volume than in the sample, or a DNS change made before anyone verified the destination. Every one of those is discoverable in advance by doing the migration once, on a copy, at full size — which is why we do exactly that before touching anything live.

Deployment is the same problem at a higher frequency. If shipping a change is a manual process that only one person knows, it will be deferred, batched into something risky, and eventually done at the worst possible moment. Automating it — with a staging environment that genuinely matches production, and a rollback that has been tested rather than assumed — turns releases into a non-event.

Capabilities

What's included

  • Platform migrationBetween database engines or hosting platforms, with encoding, constraints, and types verified.
  • Host & server movesSite and data moved to new infrastructure with a rehearsed, reversible cutover.
  • Schema migrationsStructural change applied incrementally and reversibly, without a maintenance window where avoidable.
  • Zero-downtime cutoverSequenced so the switch is a DNS or config change, not an outage.
  • CI/CD pipelinesAutomated build, test, and deploy so shipping is routine rather than an event.
  • Staging environmentsAn environment that actually matches production, which is the only kind worth testing in.

How We Work

Our approach

  1. 01

    Inventory

    What the data actually contains — encodings, constraints, volume, and the assumptions nobody wrote down.

  2. 02

    Rehearse

    A full migration onto a copy at production volume, timed and validated end to end.

  3. 03

    Cut over

    Executed to a written runbook with a rollback path and an agreed abort point.

  4. 04

    Verify

    Row counts, spot checks, and the business flows exercised before the old system is retired.

What You Get

Commitments

2x
Rehearsals

Minimum, at full production volume, before any live cutover.

Runbook
Written First

Every cutover follows a written plan with a defined abort point.

Tested
Rollback

The reverse path exercised, not assumed to work.

Common Questions

Questions we get asked

Will the site be down during the migration?

Usually not, or only for seconds. The sequencing is designed so the final switch is a DNS or configuration change rather than a copy operation. Where a window genuinely is required, you get the duration in advance from the rehearsal.

What if something goes wrong mid-cutover?

The runbook has a defined abort point and a rollback path that has been exercised beforehand. Deciding how to reverse a migration while it is failing is not a plan.

Can you set up deployments for a team already building?

Yes, and it is one of the higher-value things to fix. Pipelines, staging, and rollback can be introduced without pausing feature work.

Get in Touch

Plan the move
before you make it.

Tell us what you have and what it needs to do. We respond within one business day with a scope and a price.

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