Having confusion while upgrading from Magento 1.9.0.1 to Magento 2

[sergey_sherstob]

I have a website on Magento 1.9.0.1 on one Linux server with PHP 5.6 and I need to upgrade it to the latest version and install it on another Linux server with PHP 7.2. So, I'm very confused about my next steps. I know that I can't upgrade PHP to the latest version on the first server as Magento 1.9 doesn't support that. So, do I need to upgrade it first to Magento 2.0 (I've read somewhere that it does support 5.6) or I can't upgrade it straight to the latest version? I also have some confusion about transferring the data. Do I need to create a separate copy of the original database or I can just repoint it? I appreciate any help

[Mukesh Tiwari · Accepted solution]

Hi @sergey_sherstob 

Magento 1.9x latest versions support Php 7.2 version.

If you are upgrading your existing website from 1.9.0.1 to latest 1x version or from 1.9x version to Magento 2x, never do it directly on production server.

You should do upgrades on a separate server or a test/staging environment. 

I am assuming that you are planning to upgrade from 1.9x to Magento 2x version. 
For this you should create a separate server instance with Php 7.2 and then proceed with the data migration.

Read following articles
PHP 7.2 support 
https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/migration/migration-tool.html
https://github.com/magento/data-migration-tool

[sergey_sherstob]

Hi @Mukesh Tiwari,

Thank you for your reply.

I've read the migration tool docs, but still confused a little bit. It's not very clear in the docs so do I have to have both websites on the same server? Is it important to have a working Magento 1.9 instance on the server? If not, I can possibly just copy Magento 1.9 files and database to the Magento 2.x server and use the migration tool there. Let me know what you think.

[sergey_sherstob]

I was able to do the migration successfully even I had PHP 7.2 installed on the server and didn't upgrade PHP for the other version. If I understood it correctly, the whole migration tool is mostly about copying the data between databases.

[Mukesh Tiwari]

Hi @sergey_sherstob 

You are right. The migration tool is about copying data between databases.

On Magento2 you have to build theme and custom modules from scratch or you may purchase extensions and themes.