1. Moving the old database

The first thing we have to do is to create a backup of our magento community database and create a new database (for example, magentoee) and then dump there the backup we made. At this moment we have an exact copy of the original database.

Now it’s important to go to the core_config_data table and modify the web/secure/base_url and the web/unsecure/base_url rows (entering there the new url address).

2. uncompressing the enterprise edition and adding custom modules

Now you have to uncompress your magento enterprise edition wherever you’re going to test it. This is like if it were a new Magento EE installation.

Then you have to copy all the custom modules you installed on your current magento. Be careful with this, because these modules can be usually found on /app/code/local or /app/code/community, but maybe these modules added some files on the design directory or added some js files. I would recommend to download the extensions again with this tool and install them manually (i.e. descompress them) on our magento ee directory.

note: don’t forget xml files that turn on modules in app/etc/modules

3. Themes and media

Now it’s important to copy our original /media and theme directories to the new magento ee directory.

4. updating our magento to the EE

To start updating our magento we only need to go to the base url of the magento EE installation. Given that Magento is going to find a local.xml, then it will start automatically updating the database. It will take a few minutes to update all the database.

After that, your new Magento EE shop will be accessible. But there are a few things you have to take into account:

• All your users will need to update their passwords (the password encryption is different on the EE)
• You’ll need to test everything in order to be sure that everything works fine on the new environment

I’ll be updating this guide in order to cover all possible issues when updating from Magento Community to Enterprise.