Migrating to new server

[Indominus]

Hello all,

While I am somewhat familiar with DirectAdmin I'm not very knowledge about the internal backup / restore features in combination with the license part.

I'm in the process of moving from one ISP & DirectAdmin server (Debian, life license) to a new ISP and server (CentOS, external license).


I'm not able to create a ticket due to the following:
"This is an Internal License on guest login. Please contact your license provider for technical support."

The license provider doesn't offer this type of support.


As for my actual question:
What is the best way to migrate everything to the new server and preserve all data, settings, binaries and their version to the new server?
Do I run into any trouble because of the two different licenses and do I need to have contact with DirectAdmin before I do any of this change?

Apparently the users are created using an admin account (but not the 'admin' account itself). So no resellers.

So I assume and mostly hope that I have to copy options.conf, use the 'Admin Backups', create a backup, transfer and restore it on the new server; pick the new IP and license and all is well.. or..?

More details: DNS/mail server is not being used; mostly just websites (data+database).

Thank you for your time.
Seb

 

[Daniel-Doggy]

First things first.
Admin Backups only contain user data. Not DirectAdmin settings.

The best way to backup the complete DirectAdmin install is to run a System Backup as it will also contain DirectAdmin settings. But keep in mind this backup cannot be restored automaticly. It needs to be done by hand.

And all custom things from CustomBuild will need to be rebuild. Since (As far as I know) CustomBuilds has a settings file but will need to rebuild.

 

[Richard G]

I always install the new server first. If the admin account also has website stuff and mail, backup the admin account via admin backup/transfer.
Since there is a bug and admin packages won't be restored, restore the admin account and then create the packages again manually.

Then I compare settings and compare directadmin.conf and options.conf in custombuild and see to it that they are the same and that is installed what is installed Same for any custon adjustmens or things in /custom directory's which you might have made.

When everything is ready, I do an admin/transfer of resellers first, after that all users. If you don't have resellers you can directly do the admin backup/transfer for the user.

Several things like firewall settings (csf.conf) and some other things can be put over via rsync.

This is one way, there are ofcourse other ways to do the server transferring.

 

[Indominus]

Thank you for your replies! Appreciate it.

"But keep in mind this backup cannot be restored automaticly. It needs to be done by hand."
"Since there is a bug and admin packages won't be restored, restore the admin account and then create the packages again manually."

Any more details or documentation about this part?
I'm quite handy using the CLI so that's not the problem, just not sure what is needed at this moment.
Are we talking about manually extracting the archive/backup files?

If it weren't two different OS versions id think it be more simple to just rsync the complete server

 

[Indominus]

Also, would it be more easy for me to try and migrate the users created by an admin account to a reseller account and then export/import?

 

[Richard G]

Any more details or documentation about this part?

No it's just that if you restore the admin account it will throw an error, I don't remember which one.
But the admin account is restored, only the packages are not. So you have to create the packages manually again. It will be wise in thise case to also double check the presence of the main domain and correct nameservers.

As for your second question, maybe, but you still have to re-recreate the reseller packages in admin manually.
In case of using a seperate reseller account, always first restore admin, then check reseller package, then restore resellr and then all users.