manage.get.gov/docs/operations/data_migration.md

Registrar Data Migration

The original system has an existing registrar/registry that we will import. The company of that system will provide us with an export of the data. The goal of our data migration is to take the provided data and use it to create as much as possible a matching state in our registrar.

There is no way to make our registrar identical to the original system because we have a different data model and workflow model. Instead, we should focus our migration efforts on creating a state in our new registrar that will primarily allow users of the system to perform the tasks that they want to do.

Users

One of the major differences with the existing registrar/registry is that our system uses Login.gov for authentication. Any person with an identity-verified Login.gov account can make an account on the new registrar, and the first time that person logs in through Login.gov, we make a corresponding account in our user table. Because we cannot know the Universal Unique ID (UUID) for a person's Login.gov account, we cannot pre-create user accounts for individuals in our new registrar based on the original data.

Domains

Our registrar keeps track of domains. The authoritative source for domain information is the registry, but the registrar needs a copy of that information to make connections between registry users and the domains that they manage. The registrar stores very few fields about a domain except for its name, so it could be straightforward to import the exported list of domains from escrow_domains.daily.dotgov.GOV.txt. It doesn't appear that that table stores a flag for active or inactive.

An example Django management command that can load the delimited text file from the daily escrow is in src/registrar/management/commands/load_domains_data.py. It uses Django's object-relational modeler (ORM) to create Django objects for the domains and then write them to the database in a single bulk operation. To run the command locally for testing, using Docker Compose:

docker compose run -T app ./manage.py load_domains_data < /tmp/escrow_domains.daily.dotgov.GOV.txt

User access to domains

The data export contains a escrow_domain_contacts.daily.dotgov.txt file that links each domain to three different types of contacts: billing, tech, and admin. The ID of the contact in this linking table corresponds to the ID of a contact in the escrow_contacts.daily.dotgov.txt file. In the contacts file is an email address for each contact.

The new registrar associates user accounts (authenticated with Login.gov) with domains using a UserDomainRole linking table. New users can be granted roles on domains by creating a DomainInvitation that links an email address with a domain. When a new user finishes authenticating with Login.gov and their email address matches an invitation, then they are given the appropriate role on the invitation's domain.

For the purposes of migration, we can prime the invitation system by creating an invitation in the system for each email address listed in the domain_contacts file. This means that if a person is currently a user in the original system, and they use the same email address with Login.gov, then they will end up with access to the same domains in the new registrar that they were associated with in the original system.

A management command that does this needs to process two data files, one for the contact information and one for the domain/contact association, so we can't use stdin the way that we did before. Instead, we can use the fact that Docker Compose mounts the src/ directory inside of the container at /app. Then, data files that are inside of the src/ directory can be accessed inside the Docker container.

An example script using this technique is in src/registrar/management/commands/load_domain_invitations.py.

docker compose run app ./manage.py load_domain_invitations /app/escrow_domain_contacts.daily.dotgov.GOV.txt /app/escrow_contacts.daily.dotgov.GOV.txt

Transition Domains

We are provided with information about Transition Domains in 3 files: FILE 1: escrow_domain_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt -> has the map of domain names to contact ID. Domains in this file will usually have 3 contacts each FILE 2: escrow_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt -> has the mapping of contact id to contact email address (which is what we care about for sending domain invitations) FILE 3: escrow_domain_statuses.daily.gov.GOV.txt -> has the map of domains and their statuses

We need to run a few scripts to parse these files into our domain tables. We can do this both locally and in a sandbox.

OPTION 1: SANDBOX

Load migration data onto a production or sandbox environment

WARNING: All files uploaded in this manner are temporary, i.e. they will be deleted when the app is restaged. Do not use this method to store data you want to keep around permanently.

STEP 1: Use scp to transfer data

CloudFoundry supports scp as means of transferring data locally to our environment. If you are dealing with a batch of files, try sending across a tar.gz and unpacking that.

Login to Cloud.gov

cf login -a api.fr.cloud.gov  --sso

Target your workspace

cf target -o cisa-dotgov -s {SANDBOX_NAME}

SANDBOX_NAME - Name of your sandbox, ex: za or ab

Run the scp command

Use the following command to transfer the desired file:

scp -P 2222 -o User=cf:$(cf curl /v3/apps/$(cf app {FULL_NAME_OF_YOUR_SANDBOX_HERE} --guid)/processes | jq -r '.resources[]
| select(.type=="web") | .guid')/0 {LOCAL_PATH_TO_FILE} ssh.fr.cloud.gov:tmp/{DESIRED_NAME_OF_FILE}

The items in curly braces are the values that you will manually replace. These are as follows:

• FULL_NAME_OF_YOUR_SANDBOX_HERE - Name of your sandbox, ex: getgov-za
• LOCAL_PATH_TO_FILE - Path to the file you want to copy, ex: src/tmp/escrow_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt
• DESIRED_NAME_OF_FILE - Use this to specify the filename and type, ex: test.txt or escrow_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt

NOTE: If you'd wish to change what directory these files are uploaded to, you can change ssh.fr.cloud.gov:tmp/ to ssh.fr.cloud.gov:{DIRECTORY_YOU_WANT}/, but be aware that this makes data migration more tricky than it has to be.

Get a temp auth code

The scp command requires a temporary authentication code. Open a new terminal instance (while keeping the current one open), and enter the following command:

cf ssh-code

Copy this code into the password prompt from earlier.

NOTE: You can use different utilities to copy this onto the clipboard for you. If you are on Windows, try the command cf ssh-code | clip. On Mac, this will be cf ssh-code | pbcopy

STEP 2: Transfer uploaded files to the getgov directory

Due to the nature of how Cloud.gov operates, the getgov directory is dynamically generated whenever the app is built under the tmp/ folder. We can directly upload files to the tmp/ folder but cannot target the generated getgov folder directly, as we need to spin up a shell to access this. From here, we can move those uploaded files into the getgov directory using the cat command. Note that you will have to repeat this for each file you want to move, so it is better to use a tar.gz for multiple, and unpack it inside of the datamigration folder.

SSH into your sandbox

cf ssh {FULL_NAME_OF_YOUR_SANDBOX_HERE}

Open a shell

/tmp/lifecycle/shell

From this directory, run the following command:

./manage.py cat_files_into_getgov --file_extension txt

NOTE: This will look for all files in /tmp with the .txt extension, but this can be changed if you are dealing with different extensions. For instance, a .tar.gz could be expressed as --file_extension tar.gz.

If you are using a tar.gz file, you will need to perform one additional step to extract it. Run the following command from the same directory:

tar -xvf migrationdata/{FILE_NAME}.tar.gz -C migrationdata/ --strip-components=1

FILE_NAME - Name of the desired file, ex: exportdata

Manual method

If the cat_files_into_getgov.py script isn't working, follow these steps instead.

Move the desired file into the correct directory

cat ../tmp/{filename} > migrationdata/{filename}

STEP 3: Load Transition Domain data into TransitionDomain table

Run the following script to transfer the existing data on our .txt files to our DB.

./manage.py load_transition_domain migrationdata/escrow_domain_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt migrationdata/escrow_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt migrationdata/escrow_domain_statuses.daily.gov.GOV.txt

OPTION 2: LOCAL

Load migration data onto our local environments

Transferring this data from these files into our domain tables happens in two steps;

IMPORTANT: only run the following locally, to avoid publicizing PII in our public repo.

STEP 1: Load Transition Domain data into TransitionDomain table

SETUP In order to use the management command, we need to add the files to a folder under src/. This will allow Docker to mount the files to a container (under /app) for our use.

• Create a folder called tmp underneath src/
• Add the above files to this folder
• Open a terminal and navigate to src/

Then run the following command (This will parse the three files in your tmp folder and load the information into the TransitionDomain table);

docker compose run -T app ./manage.py load_transition_domain /app/tmp/escrow_domain_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt /app/tmp/escrow_contacts.daily.gov.GOV.txt /app/tmp/escrow_domain_statuses.daily.gov.GOV.txt

OPTIONAL COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS: --debug This will print out additional, detailed logs.

--limitParse 100 Directs the script to load only the first 100 entries into the table. You can adjust this number as needed for testing purposes.

--resetTable This will delete all the data loaded into transtion_domain. It is helpful if you want to see the entries reload from scratch or for clearing test data.

STEP 2: Transfer Transition Domain data into main Domain tables

Now that we've loaded all the data into TransitionDomain, we need to update the main Domain and DomainInvitation tables with this information.

In the same terminal as used in STEP 1, run the command below; (This will parse the data in TransitionDomain and either create a corresponding Domain object, OR, if a corresponding Domain already exists, it will update that Domain with the incoming status. It will also create DomainInvitation objects for each user associated with the domain):

docker compose run -T app ./manage.py transfer_transition_domains_to_domains

OPTIONAL COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS: --debug This will print out additional, detailed logs.

--limitParse 100 Directs the script to load only the first 100 entries into the table. You can adjust this number as needed for testing purposes.