KB-2366 How to use the Migration Tool when Migrating to Appian Cloud

Purpose

Appian now provides infrastructure and a tool to assist with migrating data from self-managed environments into Appian Cloud. Appian will provision an AWS S3 bucket and encryption key in Appian Cloud’s AWS Environment, and provide credentials to securely transfer data into Appian Cloud.

These steps are meant for “Server Based” Appian, not Appian on Kubernetes (AoK).

Instructions

1. Download the migration tool from Forum. Follow the instructions here
2. Ensure you have received the Appian Cloud credentials from your Appian Support contact. Each Appian installation will have a different set of credentials
3. Add the following environment variables to each server of the Appian installation that is migrating to Appian Cloud. For step 3c, set the AWS_REGION environment variable to us-gov-east-1 if your Appian Cloud site resides in a GovCloud AWS region. Otherwise, set it to us-east-1.
   1. export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR_ACCESS_KEY>
   2. export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>
   3. export AWS_REGION=<US-EAST-1 | US-GOV-EAST-1>

   4. Utilize the --dry-run command below to check if the AWS credentials are setup properly

4. Run the migration tool on every server of the Appian installation that is migrating to Appian Cloud
   1. Refer to some example commands below:
      1. ./migrate cloud export
         1. basic command
      2. ./migrate cloud export --help
         1. show the various arguments accepted by the script. Not all commands will be covered in this Knowledge Base article, so it is recommended to run --help 
      3. ./migrate cloud export --dry-run
         1. validate your AWS credentials, and see a list of folders that will be migrated
         2. One of the first log messages should say “AWS Identity found”, and the identity should include “appian-cloud-migration”
      4. ./migrate cloud export -i /home/appian
         1. run a cloud export where Appian is installed at /home/appian
      5. ./migrate cloud export --db-dir <path-to-database-directory>
         1. migrate database data to Appian Cloud. This data should have previously been exported from your database, and stored in its own directory somewhere on one of your servers
   2. Follow the prompts that the migration tool gives you. Enter ? to to get more information about each question
   3. “Application server data” and “engine checkpoints data” only needs to be migrated once. Ensure that it is run on a server that runs the application server or engines, respectively.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each Appian installation that is migrating to Appian Cloud 

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of "server based" self-managed Appian.

Last Reviewed: January 2026