--- title: "Migrate a game server without losing players | StreetHosting" description: "A plan to migrate a game server without losing players: lower the DNS TTL early, SRV for Minecraft, a rehearsal, a maintenance window, Discord and rollback." url: "https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players" type: "page" language: "en-US" --- Infrastructure · 9 min · Intermediate Published on Sep 28, 2026 · Updated on Sep 28, 2026 # How to move a game server to a new machine without emptying the community In a well-run migration the files almost never get lost, but the players do. This guide lays out the timeline, DNS, rehearsal, maintenance window, Discord announcements and rollback plan so the community gets through the move without noticing. By [Equipe StreetHosting](https://streethosting.com.br/en/autores#equipe-streethosting) · StreetHosting infrastructure and support team [Migration](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/topics/migration) [Backup and recovery](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/topics/backup) [Network, DNS and domains](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/topics/networking) [Community and game modes](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/topics/community) Summarize with: [](https://chat.openai.com/?q=Summarize%20the%20key%20points%20of%20this%20StreetHosting%20guide%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players.%20Highlight%20the%20step-by-step%20instructions%2C%20the%20prerequisites%20and%20the%20most%20common%20mistakes. "ChatGPT") [](https://claude.ai/new?q=Summarize%20the%20key%20points%20of%20this%20StreetHosting%20guide%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players.%20Highlight%20the%20step-by-step%20instructions%2C%20the%20prerequisites%20and%20the%20most%20common%20mistakes. "Claude") [](https://www.google.com/search?udm=50&aep=11&q=Summarize%20the%20key%20points%20of%20this%20StreetHosting%20guide%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players.%20Highlight%20the%20step-by-step%20instructions%2C%20the%20prerequisites%20and%20the%20most%20common%20mistakes. "Google AI Mode") [](https://x.com/i/grok?text=Summarize%20the%20key%20points%20of%20this%20StreetHosting%20guide%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players.%20Highlight%20the%20step-by-step%20instructions%2C%20the%20prerequisites%20and%20the%20most%20common%20mistakes. "Grok") [](https://www.perplexity.ai/search/new?q=Summarize%20the%20key%20points%20of%20this%20StreetHosting%20guide%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players.%20Highlight%20the%20step-by-step%20instructions%2C%20the%20prerequisites%20and%20the%20most%20common%20mistakes. "Perplexity") Share: [](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=Migrate%20a%20game%20server%20without%20losing%20players&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players "Share on X") [](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players "Share on Facebook") [](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players "Share on LinkedIn") [](https://wa.me/?text=Migrate%20a%20game%20server%20without%20losing%20players%20https%3A%2F%2Fstreethosting.com.br%2Fen%2Fguides%2Finfrastructure%2Fmigrate-game-server-without-losing-players "Share on WhatsApp") For agents: Copy as Markdown [.md](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players.md) In this guide 8 sections * [Why players disappear during a migration](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#por-que-jogadores-somem) * [The two-week timeline](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#cronograma) * [A stable address: domain, TTL and SRV](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#endereco-estavel) * [The dress rehearsal](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#ensaio) * [The maintenance window](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#janela) * [Communication on Discord and in game](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#comunicacao) * [The rollback plan](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#rollback) * [Where to migrate to](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#para-onde-migrar) Quick answer To **migrate a game server without losing players**, treat the move as a community event, not just a file copy. Have players join through a domain, with an SRV record on Minecraft Java, lower the DNS TTL at least 48 hours ahead, rehearse the entire migration on the new machine, schedule a short maintenance window announced on Discord, and decide in advance under what conditions you roll back to the old server. ## Why players disappear during a migration[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#por-que-jogadores-somem) In a carefully run migration, files almost never get lost. Players do. Anyone who follows Minecraft, FiveM or Steam server communities sees the same four reasons every time: * **Old address saved in the client:** whoever stored the numeric IP in their server list or favorites tries the old address, finds the server offline and concludes the project is dead. * **An announcement nobody read:** a single Discord post the night before reaches a fraction of the community. Weekend-only players find out about the move when the server is simply gone. * **Lost progress:** a forgotten final sync or a badly planned rollback wipes out hours of building, economy or character progression. It is the single biggest reason players leave for good. * **A bad first night:** lag, a broken plugin or wrong permissions during the first peak hour. Players forgive half an hour of maintenance, but they do not forgive an unstable week. The technical side of changing machines, with data sync and the DNS switch, is summarized in [how to migrate a server without downtime](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-server-without-downtime). This guide covers everything that happens around it, which is exactly what decides whether the community arrives intact on the other side. ## The two-week timeline[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#cronograma) A smooth migration starts well before the scheduled day. The timeline below works for communities of any size. On a small server you can compress everything into a week, but the order of the steps stays the same. | When | What to do | Why | | ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | 14 days before | Order the new machine, install everything and make the first copy of the data | Time to make mistakes without pressure | | 10 days before | Full rehearsal with the staff, timing each step | Find out how long the real window takes | | 7 days before | First announcement with the date, Brasília time and estimated duration | Reach players who rarely log in | | 2 days before | Lower the domain TTL to 300 seconds | Old caches expire before the switch | | 1 day before | Reminder on Discord and notice inside the game | Nobody is caught off guard | | Switch day | Freeze, sync, switch DNS, test and open | Short, predictable window | | Up to 7 days after | Old server preserved, with a notice pointing to the new address | Rollback plan and rescue for anyone who got lost | Paying for both machines for a few days is the cheapest insurance in the whole operation. A week of overlap costs a fraction of the monthly fee and avoids the worst-case scenario: canceling the old server and discovering the next day that a folder was missing. ## A stable address: domain, TTL and SRV[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#endereco-estavel) The best migration is the one where players do not have to do anything. That only happens when they join through a name, like play.seudominio.com.br, instead of an IP. If the community still uses a numeric IP, create the domain now and promote it for weeks before the move. That way the next migration already finds everyone at the right address. The TTL is the time, in seconds, that DNS resolvers keep an answer before asking again. The detail that catches a lot of people: the new value only takes effect after the old one expires. If the record had a TTL of 86400, which is one day, lowering it to 300 two hours before the window does nothing, because part of the internet will keep sending players to the old IP for up to 24 hours. Lower it 48 hours in advance and, once everything stabilizes, raise it again to something like 3600. Minecraft Java has one extra feature, the SRV record. It tells the client which machine and which port host the server behind a name, which lets you hide the port and change the destination by editing a single record. The step by step is in [custom domain for a Minecraft server](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/minecraft/minecraft-custom-domain). Each game stores the address differently, and that changes what you need to do: | Game | How players store the address | What to do | | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Minecraft Java | Name or IP in the server list | Domain with A and SRV records; the switch is invisible to anyone using the name | | Minecraft Bedrock | Address and port typed in | Domain with an A record and the same port on the new server | | FiveM | Server list, Cfx.re short link or connect command | Domain in the connect command and check the short link after the switch | | Steam games | Favorites by IP and port | Announce the new address; old favorites stop working | If your DNS is on Cloudflare, the game server record has to stay DNS only, with the gray cloud. The Cloudflare proxy handles web traffic and does not forward the game connection. ## The dress rehearsal[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#ensaio) The rehearsal is the full migration done with a copy of the data, without telling anyone and without touching the live server. It reveals three things no plan on paper shows: what was left out of the inventory, how long each step really takes and whether the new machine holds up at peak hour. 1. Copy the current data to the new machine. 2. Bring the server up with the same game version and the same plugins, mods or resources. Updating can wait until after the migration. 3. Join with the staff through the direct IP and test everything that depends on data: inventory, permissions, economy, land protection, homes and vehicles. 4. Time the final copy, the database restore and the boot. The total plus a margin is the length of your window. 5. Write the runbook for the switch, with the commands in order and the name of whoever runs each step. On large worlds, the copy is the slowest step. The way around it is to do the full copy days ahead with rsync and, on the day of the window, run the same command again, which transfers only what changed. A world of tens of gigabytes that took hours the first time usually syncs in minutes the second time. Using rsync is covered in [transferring files to a VPS with SCP and rsync](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/vps/transfer-files-to-vps-scp-rsync). Do at least part of the rehearsal during the community's peak hour, with the staff and a few trusted players online. An empty server shows no bottlenecks at all. ## The maintenance window[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#janela) Pick the time by looking at your own online player data, not a guess. It is usually the early hours of a weekday. Avoid the eve of an event, the start of a season and any date when the staff cannot stay up watching the result. On the day, the sequence is always this: 1. In-game warnings 30, 10 and 1 minute before. 2. Close entry and shut down the old server. From here on nothing in the data changes anymore. 3. Run the final file sync and generate the final database dump. 4. Bring up the new server with the whitelist on and test with the staff. 5. Point the domain record to the new IP. 6. Open entry, announce it and watch the first peak hour. Never leave both servers open at the same time with the same data. Anyone who joins the old one during the switch plays in a world that will be discarded, and that progress vanishes. The old server has to be frozen before the final sync. ## Communication on Discord and in game[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#comunicacao) A single announcement reaches nobody. The same message needs to appear in several places, with the same text and the same time, so nobody gets two different versions of the story. * **Pinned announcement:** in the announcements channel, with the date, Brasília time, estimated duration and the address that keeps working. * **Reminders with a mention:** the day before and one hour before. Mentioning the player role only at those two moments keeps the community from tuning out the notices. * **Inside the game:** a scheduled automatic message in the days before and the maintenance date in the description that shows up in the server list. * **Status during the window:** short messages like we have started, we are testing and server open. Silence during maintenance breeds rumors. * **After the switch:** the old server stays up for a few days with the whitelist on and the new address in the kick message, to rescue anyone who had the IP saved. If some loss of progress is unavoidable, say exactly how much playtime was lost and why. Transparency costs less trust than players finding out on their own. Message templates for maintenance and for incidents are in [Discord announcement templates](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/discord-bots/discord-announcement-template). Agree beforehand on who on the staff answers on Discord and who watches the server, so nobody tries to do both at once. ## The rollback plan[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#rollback) The rollback plan is decided before the window, with a cool head, not at three in the morning with the chat on fire. It needs to answer three questions: under what conditions we go back, until when, and who decides. * Objective criteria: TPS below 18 on Minecraft or an unstable tick on FiveM for more than 15 minutes, database error, failing logins or missing data * A set deadline, for example up to two hours after opening * One person with the authority to decide, with no vote in the middle of the night * Old server shut down and intact, with no file deleted * TTL still low, so the DNS rollback takes effect in minutes The short deadline exists for a concrete reason. Once players start building, buying and leveling up on the new server, going back to the old one erases that progress, unless you copy the data back first. Within the first few hours, the loss is small and easy to explain. After a full day, it is almost always better to fix the problem on the new server than to go back. Once the deadline has passed, still keep the old server preserved for a week before canceling. ## Where to migrate to[](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#para-onde-migrar) If the destination is a VPS, two details help the timeline. Activation happens within 60 seconds after payment, so the rehearsal can start the same day you order. And with root access you install the exact Java, database and runtime versions the old server was using, without depending on what a control panel offers. The choice of line depends on the game. Minecraft, FiveM, CS2 and Rust concentrate the simulation on a single main thread and get more out of a high clock, which is the case of the [Ryzen VPS](https://streethosting.com.br/en/vps/ryzen) with a Ryzen 9 9950X at up to 5.7 GHz and DDR5: 4 vCPU and 8 GB for R$ 118.00 per month, or 6 vCPU and 16 GB for R$ 222.00. Projects with many light services running together, such as bots, websites and databases, get more vCPU per real on the Xeon line, which has 6 vCPU and 8 GB for R$ 77.00. Both lines are listed in the hub for [VPS in Brazil](https://streethosting.com.br/en/vps), with a datacenter in São Paulo and Anti-DDoS included. The game-specific technical steps are in [migrating a Minecraft server to a VPS](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/minecraft/migrate-minecraft-server-to-vps) and [migrating a FiveM server to a VPS](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/vps/migrate-fivem-server-to-vps). With those and the timeline in this guide, the community only notices the migration through the announcement. In this guide * [Why players disappear during a migration](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#por-que-jogadores-somem) * [The two-week timeline](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#cronograma) * [A stable address: domain, TTL and SRV](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#endereco-estavel) * [The dress rehearsal](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#ensaio) * [The maintenance window](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#janela) * [Communication on Discord and in game](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#comunicacao) * [The rollback plan](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#rollback) * [Where to migrate to](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-game-server-without-losing-players#para-onde-migrar) ## Frequently asked questions How far in advance should I lower the DNS TTL? At least the current TTL value before the switch, and ideally 48 hours. If the record had a TTL of 86400 seconds, resolvers can keep the old IP for up to a day after you lower the value. Once everything stabilizes, set the TTL back to something like one hour. Does an SRV record help when migrating a Minecraft server? It helps on Minecraft Java: players join by name, without typing a port, and switching machines becomes a single DNS record edit. Bedrock does not read SRV, so it needs an A record and the same port on the new server. How long should the maintenance window be? The time measured in the rehearsal plus a margin of half that value. With the big copy done days earlier and only the final sync on the day, most servers fit in 30 to 60 minutes. Announce the estimated duration and post on Discord if you need to extend it. When is it worth rolling back to the old server? When a criterion defined before the window is met, such as a low tick rate for too long, a database error or missing data, and within the agreed deadline. Once players have put hours into the new server, going back means losing that progress, which is why the deadline has to be short. How do I reach players who saved the old server IP? Leave the old server running for a few days purely as a notice, with the whitelist on and the new address in the kick message and in the server list description. Repeat the address in a pinned Discord message, because IP-based favorites in Steam games do not update on their own. Next step See VPS plans Root VPS in Brazil with NVMe and Anti-DDoS. [See VPS plans](https://streethosting.com.br/en/vps) [See Ryzen VPS Ryzen 9 9950X VPS in São Paulo with root access, NVMe and gamer Anti-DDoS.](https://streethosting.com.br/en/vps/ryzen) ## Related guides [Infrastructure Advanced How to migrate a server to another provider with no downtime Switching hosts is scary because you might lose data or go offline. With preparation, testing and DNS under your control, the cutover happens with minimal interruption for your users. 3 min Read guide](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/infrastructure/migrate-server-without-downtime) [Minecraft Intermediate Custom domain for a Minecraft server: DNS and SRV A numeric IP works, but your own domain builds trust and makes a future migration easier. The trick is the SRV record on the right port. 2 min Read guide](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/minecraft/minecraft-custom-domain) [Discord bots Beginner Discord announcement templates: how to write one people read Most server announcements die on the first line. This guide breaks down the anatomy of a notice that works, when to mention everyone without burning your audience, and gives you six ready-made templates for the cases that keep coming back. 10 min Read guide](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides/discord-bots/discord-announcement-template) [← Back to the Guide Center](https://streethosting.com.br/en/guides)