For Philip Müller, Head of Technology at S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting, the self-hosted Redmine instance was a double-edged sword. While it was a powerful and well-set-up tool for project management and IT support, its maintenance was becoming a significant drain on internal resources. .
S-IT is a specialized software and consulting company for digital wiring-harness development. The company combines deep domain expertise in electrical systems with modern software development and Siemens Capital know-how. OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers, and wiring-harness manufacturers commission S-IT for Capital deployments, system integration, plugin development, and custom software solutions to optimize their engineering processes.
"The maintenance overhead of managing a self-hosted Redmine was getting too high," Philip recalls. "The time our team spent on routine administrative tasks, server updates, and especially managing custom plugins was time not spent on value-adding customer projects."
The tipping point came during a broader company initiative to migrate away from their on-premise server infrastructure. Their self-hosted Redmine was the last remaining application server, and it presented a clear opportunity to modernize their operations and eliminate the final piece of on-premise hardware.
From this case study you will learn the following:
- Redmine maintenance challenges
- How to find stable and secure Redmine hosting?
- How to migrate from on-premise Redmine to dedicated hosting
- Benefits of Redmine migration
Juggling disconnected tools and an expensive On-premise Redmine
"We have reached a key infrastructure milestone by migrating the last of our on-premise applications, Redmine, to the cloud. This allowed us to fully decommission our legacy application server environment, completing our shift away from on-premise hosting" explains Philip Müller. Their IT team lacked the dedicated resources to maintain the server, leading to frequent downtime and annoying bugs with custom plugins that were difficult to resolve. When new Redmine updates were released, applying them was a source of anxiety rather than an opportunity for improvement.
Furthermore, "To prevent having to adopt new tools and processes we wanted to just move Redmine to a managed cloud solution instead of going for completely new tools like JIRA/Confluence or Linear" Philip notes, highlighting the constant need for Redmine upgrade/update.
Philip Müller Head of Technology
S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting The maintenance overhead of having to manage a self-hosted instance of Redmine was getting too high. The time spent on maintaining Redmine was better used in value-adding customer projects instead of routine administrative tasks.
The Path Forward A Managed All-in-One Redmine Solution
Faced with the decision of what to do next, the team evaluated their options. The goal was clear: reduce maintenance without disrupting established workflows.
"To prevent having to adopt new tools and processes, we wanted to simply move Redmine to a managed cloud solution," says Philip. "The alternative—migrating to completely new platforms like Jira or Linear—would have been a massive and unnecessary disruption."
The search for a Redmine hosting provider led them to RedmineUP. They were already familiar and highly satisfied with the company's Agile and Checklists plugins, which were integral to their project planning. This positive existing experience was a significant factor.
Furthermore, RedmineUP's pricing model was a perfect fit. "We have a large number of external and technical users," Philip explains. "A per-user pricing model would have been prohibitively expensive. RedmineUP's structure was cost-effective for our use case."
Philip Müller Head of Technology
S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting The highlight was the seamless migration from authentication via a locally hosted active directory to a OIDC-based Entra ID login through a custom RedmineUP plugin. Together with the support for custom domains, our users did basically not realize that there was a migration.
- Enhanced Project Management and Reporting. S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting heavily utilizes the Agile plugin for project management, breaking down large tasks using different trackers and leveraging time logging for estimates. The influx of support tickets now serves as direct input for project prioritization. Additionally, they use the RedmineAPI to create custom reports and charts for trending, providing critical business insights.
- Single Sign-On for Cloud Redmine. S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting has multiple applications their employees use besides RedmineUP Cloud, like a CRM system, sales tools, and communications platforms. SSO with Azure AD would allow them to manage user access for all these applications centrally. This reduces administration and ensures consistent access controls across the organisation.
How to migrate from self-hosted to web-hosted Redmine
During a 15-days free trial of RedmineUP Cloud, Philip Müller decided to discuss all requirements with the account manager by email.
This section outlines the process of migrating a self-hosted Redmine instance to a hosted Redmine platform, like RedmineUP. It emphasizes the importance of planning, data backup, and testing before transitioning users.
Key Stages:
- Data backup. This crucial step involves creating a database dump and copying your Redmine attachments. Scheduling the backup for a low-activity period (e.g., Friday evening) is recommended.
- Migration process. Securely send the backup files to RedmineUP.
- Data transfer and testing. After data transfer, Etienne checked SSO authentification and the whole system with workflow.
Migration to hosted Redmine requires careful planning, data backup, exporting your current Redmine data, importing it to the new platform, and thorough testing before users are migrated.
The communication in preparation of the migration was great. We received answers from the RedmineUP team promptly and our questions got answered with all required details. Overall, the whole process was a charm and certainly did result in the feeling of having made the right choice with RedmineUP
Migrate to secure hosting
Don't waste your time on Redmine maintenance. Hire experts and focus on your projects
Benefits of Redmine SaaS
The migration to RedmineUP cloud proved to be a success. Philip Müller highlights the key benefits they experienced:
- Always available Redmine. RedmineUP hosting comes with Service Level Agreements (SLA 99.9%) guaranteeing high uptime percentages. This translates to minimal downtime and improved project management workflow.
- IT team gets a break. Shifting server management tasks such as security updates, backups and performance optimisation to the hosting provider frees up the IT team to focus on core business needs.
- Enhanced security. The RedmineUP team specialises in server security, intrusion detection, firewalls, and regular vulnerability patching to minimise the risk of security breaches.
- Boost Redmine performance. The improved functionalities facilitated better communication of project goals, leading to increased team performance.
- Optimize Redmine for agile workflows. The Agile plugin and Kanban boards empowered the business team to manage tickets effectively, enhancing communication and project workflow.
The checklists and agile plugins are used extensively in our organisation. Our whole project planning and management is done through the agile boards.
Ready to Simplify Your Redmine Experience?
For S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting, moving to RedmineUP Cloud was more than just a technical migration—it was a strategic decision to streamline their entire operational backbone.
A big thank you to Philip Müller, for sharing his valuable insights! We wish her a stable and secure work in the cloud.
Cloud-based solutions like RedmineUP Cloud handle server maintenance and software updates automatically. This eliminates the need for in-house IT teams to manually install updates, reducing the risk of downtime during the update process.
The familiar interface, seamless data migration, and enhanced functionality have resulted in improved team collaboration, communication, and overall performance for the S-IT Application Engineering & Consulting.
