Offline Migration

[espressofrap]

Hi. I would like to ask if it is possible to to do an offline migration. Our source instance is running Azure DevOps Server 2019 (on-prem) without any internet connection. We are planning to migrate some projects from it into our Azure DevOps Services instance (cloud). Is it possible to first extract the project from our AzDO 2019 instance into a folder, bring that folder to in internet-connected device, and run the migration tool there to "upload" it into AzDO Services in the cloud? Thank you!

[MrHinsh]

We don't currently support this!

Work has been underway for some time to enable it with a FileStore Endpoint. However, progress is slow.

[espressofrap]

Hi @MrHinsh . Thank you so much for your prompt reply on this.

[gereon77]

Hi @espressofrap,

I just read this and have to add 2 cents. Exactly this use case is already working at our company. As the migration tool is acting as a tfs-client-tool (it reads work items and writes them to a new location) the only thing you need is a migration machine inside your company which has access to your on-prem instance and to the cloud. Run the tool from such a machine and it will work as desired.

Best regards,

Gereon

[MrHinsh]

@gereon77 I understood that the onsite TFS instance that @espressofrap has is not connected to the internet. It would then be impossible to run a migration.

[espressofrap]

That's correct. our TFS instance is inside an air-gapped environment, so there's no way for us to "somehow" connect to the internet, even using an intermediary server. Thank you for taking the time to reply, though. @gereon77 @MrHinsh

[MrHinsh]

We have been working towards offline, but its a hard slog as much of the code is tightly coupled.

[gereon77]

That as well means all of @espressofrap 's contributors which have access to the instance (i guess they somehow work with it) don't have access to the internet? That's a tough environment to work with... I don't see any reason why the TFS itself would need an active internet connection or are there new features I don't know where the source TFS is directly talking to the target?

Our TFS is as well air-gapped but our migrations run.

[MrHinsh]

TFS itself does not but if you want to migrate using our tool from TFS to Azure DevOps you need a machine that has access to both TFS & Azure DevOps.

[gereon77]

Ok so there isn’t nothing I missed and in fact every of our developer machines would be a possible migration machine. It’s hard to trust they all work offline…

[espressofrap]

Yep, that's the reason why we are trying to move out our dev environment to Azure DevOps. Coz, even though our TFS works in our air-gapped env, along with its self-hosted agents, the experience is very limited as there are a lot of things we cannot do. Heck, even our developer machines don't have internet connection. 😵

[philipverlinden]

@MrHinsh we're currently looking for a solution to import a backlog on an isolated on-premise Azure DevOps 2022 server. For this we will be looking at a file-based export and import. Just checking here if this would already be possible now with the tooling? Thank you!

[MrHinsh]

No its not possible.

[pcleckler]

Anyone attempted this?

1. Partial migration of an Azure DevOps Server instance to Azure DevOps Server Express
2. Backup of the Express databases
3. Restore the Express database backups to an air-gapped environment installation of Azure DevOps Server Express
4. Migration of the ADS Express instance to a full ADS environment

[MrHinsh]

You have a few options:

1. Clone the collection, including only the projects you intend to migrate.
2. Move the collection to the new location.
3. Restore it there.

That said, in my experience with engineering teams using Azure DevOps, genuine air-gapped requirements are extremely rare—typically limited to defence or nuclear contexts. Even then, it's often used as a fallback when securing the environment is perceived as “too hard” rather than impossible.

Not implying that’s your situation, but I do work with defence and government clients who successfully use Azure DevOps Services.

[pcleckler]

Step 1 is clone the collection, but to where? With no offline solution, that would seem to be only another instance of Azure DevOps.