Upgrade from Moutain Lion server to El Capitan server

[einarso]

I feel it is about time to upgrade my Mountain Lion server to El Capitan. I am running a few websites (private) on the server (WordPress and ZenCart), and I am handling the e-mail for a few domains. This is just a hobby - so all problems I run into takes me forver to fix.

Reading some older threads it seems like the BEST CASE scenario for the upgrade, is to follow these steps:
1) Upgrade to El Capitan through App Store
2) Purchase Server app in App Store
3) Open the new Server app and all previous settings are in place.

I am running a Time Capsule Backup from my airport, so I guess I can get back to ground Zero in case I have major troubles.

Is there anyone who have upgraded and can share if everything went OK and/or if there is anything I should do before I start the upgrade?

As said before - I have a few WordPress installations and a ZenCart installation, running with Sequel Pro on top of MySQL 5.5.29.

 

[glenthompson]

I recommend a CCC clone of the drive in addition to the TM backup. If things go south you can boot from the clone drive and continue running while you figure out the problem.

 

[einarso]

Well - this was a total disaster. Got problems with php, apache and sql after upgrading. Lost much of the DB in mysql and all e-mail for the last couple of years.

Luckily I took glenthompsons´advise and purchased CCC and had a clone of the old server, and using ccc was actually easy and it worked flawlessly!

To much to fix, so I opted for the "easy" solution. Set up a new clean install of El Capitan, set up php, apache and mysql, and did the manual labor of copying all relevant files, emails and databases, from my old server to the new. Took me probably 15 hours, but everything is working perfectly right now (except one minor fact - not able to send e-mails from outside my private network - but that is a topic for a new thread).