Migrate your server from another host

Migration means retrieving the files from your current server (world, plugins, configs, mods) and dropping them onto your new onesubnet instance. The game stays identical for players; only the IP changes.

Cause / The problem

Without a complete file transfer, you lose the world, inventories, ranks, and configuration. And if the versions (game, plugins, mods) don’t match exactly between the old and the new server, startup fails.

Solution

1. On the old host, build a complete archive:
   • Connect to the old server via SFTP/FTP.
   • Download the key folders: world/ (Minecraft), plugins/, configs/, mods/, depending on your game. For ARK: Saved/. For Rust: the server/identity folder. For DayZ: mpmissions/ and serverDZ.cfg.
2. Stop the old server before downloading files that are being written, otherwise the backup may be inconsistent.
3. On onesubnet, create an instance of the same game and same version (e.g. Minecraft 1.21.4 Paper, ARK Ascended, Rust). Version is critical: a 1.21 world won’t load in 1.20.
4. Start then stop the new server once to generate the folder tree.
5. Drop your files via SFTP onto the new server (see the SFTP connection article):
   • Replace /world with your world.
   • Replace /plugins with your plugins (same versions).
   • Replace the configs (server.properties, server.cfg, etc.).
6. Check plugin and mod versions: a plugin for Paper 1.20 won’t work on 1.21. Update if needed.
7. Update IP/port references in configs that contain the old IP (remote MySQL database, Discord webhook, external RCON).
8. Start the new server and check the console (no plugin errors, world loads).
9. Communicate the new IP to your players. To keep the same domain name, update the DNS A record to point to the new IP.
10. Keep the old server alive for 7 days while all players switch over, then cancel.

For databases (a rank plugin’s MySQL, for example), export via mysqldump on the old side and import on the new side. See the article on connecting to a remote database.