# Migrate data from Koa version to Sumac version **URL:** \ **Category:** Tutor Help\ **Tags:** koa, sumac, migration\ **Created:** [November 1, 2025, 4:13pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486 "2025-11-01T16:13:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vuthehuyht](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/vuthehuyht/32/7089_2.png) [@vuthehuyht](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/vuthehuyht)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2025, 4:13pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/1 "2025-11-01T16:13:41Z")
Hi everyone, I currently have an Open edX **Koa** instance deployed using the **native (Ansible)** installation. I am planning to upgrade to **Sumac** and migrate the deployment to **Kubernetes**. The application upgrade part is manageable. However, I am unsure about the **data migration** process for: - **MySQL** (edxapp, ecommerce, credentials, etc.) - **MongoDB** (modulestore) My main concerns are: 1. **Data integrity** (especially course structure, user progress, and grades) 2. **Minimizing system downtime** during migration I’m looking for: - Recommended migration steps or workflow when upgrading from Koa → Sumac alongside moving to K8s - Any best practices or lessons learned from real migrations - Whether it is safe to dump/restore databases directly and run migrations, or if the upgrade needs to follow intermediate releases If anyone has done a similar migration, I would really appreciate your guidance or references. Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![sarina](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/sarina/32/2308_2.png) [@sarina](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/sarina)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2025, 2:16pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/2 "2025-11-05T14:16:39Z")
Hi @vuthehuyht - regretfully Koa is so old, and the Ansible deployment so deprecated, I’m not sure who would know anything about this. Searching “koa migration” yielded a bunch of results: [Search results for 'koa migration order:latest' - Open edX discussions](https://discuss.openedx.org/search?q=koa%20migration%20order%3Alatest) You might also search for posts that describe the migration from the old-style deployments to Tutor deployments. ---
**Author:** ![arunmozhi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/arunmozhi/32/3600_2.png) [@arunmozhi](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/arunmozhi)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2025, 11:08pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/3 "2025-11-09T23:08:13Z")
@vuthehuyht Hi, we recently did a Juniper to Sumac migration and the way we did it was just getting hands on with DB dumps. The steps were broadly 1. Dump the MySQL/MariaDB 2. Dump the MongoDB 3. Create a test instance of Sumac with all the plugins that we needed 4. Dump the Sumac’s DB 5. String manipulate the Juniper DB’s dump to set the collation to utf8mb4 to match the Sumac dump 6. Load up both the dumps into indepdent instances of MySQL 8 7. Use [Atlas](https://atlasgo.io/docs) to do a `schema diff` between Juniper & Sumac 8. Apply the diff on the Juniper DB instance → This migrates the old juniper data to match the sumac schema. 9. Dump the migrated Juniper data. 10. Manipulated the dump to include some stuff like `TRUNCATE` statements for tables that had default data on Sumac and some custom SQL to migrate Django’s internal tables. 11. Load up the dump onto the Sumac instance 12. Run `tutor init` and a few edx-platform management commands to update things like course overview, index..etc., The instance we migrated had about ~12 Gig’s uncompressed MySQL data and ~30 Gig’s of MongoDB data. The MongoDB migration itself was fairly straight forward, it required creating some custom script to migration course overview data onto MySQL. We ran multiple tests on staging data and then still had adaptations to make for production data and estimated about 6-8 hours of migration time. Despite some challanges that came up during the actual migration, we were able to get everything migrated with about 8-10 hours of downtime (I am a bit fuzzy here). ---
**Author:** ![vuthehuyht](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/vuthehuyht/32/7089_2.png) [@vuthehuyht](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/vuthehuyht)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2025, 3:20am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/4 "2025-11-10T03:20:42Z")
Thank for your reply. About handling the upgrading of MySQL, I agree with that. However, I still get some issues about dumping MongoDB. According your way, you export data on Mongo in Juniper (it seems Juniper use mongodb verion 5) after that you import into Mongo version 7 on Sumac version, right? During the migrating data, do you get any issues? ---
**Author:** ![arunmozhi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/arunmozhi/32/3600_2.png) [@arunmozhi](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/arunmozhi)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2025, 5:10am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/5 "2025-11-11T05:10:23Z")
The MongoDB was migration was eventless. There are 2 ways to do it, IIRC mongoexport & mongodump. One of them is a binary archive dump and that’s what we used for the migration. We did do a JSON export of the modulestore collections after the migration, because we needed to update some URLs in the content to point to the MFE URLs instead of the old LMS based ones. But that’s only needed if the content needs to be updated. What issues do you run into? ---
**Author:** ![vuthehuyht](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/vuthehuyht/32/7089_2.png) [@vuthehuyht](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/vuthehuyht)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2025, 3:30am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/6 "2025-11-21T03:30:00Z")
I haven’t tried your solution, and I haven’t encountered any issues when migrating data on MongoDB. However, I have a small problem when migrating data on MySQL. The schema of several tables has changed between Koa and Sumac due to customizations. After migrating all the features I customized from Koa to Sumac, I created an empty database for Sumac, imported the old data from Koa into the MySQL server, and finally used dbt to transform the data for tables whose structure has changed. Did I do it correctly? ---
**Author:** ![arunmozhi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/arunmozhi/32/3600_2.png) [@arunmozhi](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/arunmozhi)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2025, 7:35am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/migrate-data-from-koa-version-to-sumac-version/17486/7 "2025-11-21T07:35:21Z")
@vuthehuyht I don’t know enought about dbt to say if it happened correctly. If your instance is working as expected, then that should be it. 🙂