Moving all accounts from one server to another like cpanel does

Changing TTL is an option, indeed, but I'm not sure anymore if that helps if big providers only pull once every 4 hours on the big DNS servers.
Some time ago I change TTL to 5 minutes a couple of days before transferring and it still took 2 hours to resolve with my isp. So this added to my confusion.

How can you have all the data if you leave the web server and mysql still running on the old server while you do the transfer? Are you running just static sites?
Mostly yes. there are a couple of forums, but they are from our country. And since I do movements on night time, there is no activity at night. Also when they get moved (same as webshops) I notify them, just like other customers way up front, so on forums they can post a message to not post anything that night or something like that. We never had data loss until now.
Moving almost never happens unless we move servers which does happen only once every 3-5 years. I can lower TTL, will be faster then, but still we don't loose data.

then suspend the user so that the data is frozen and no changes are made.
This could also be done on an automated process. However, I presume this is the downtime it takes then. I don't use this because during this time the website isn't visible or reachable by anybody, not even by Google. If this indeed takes a couple of minutes, it's no problem, especially at night time.

After you explained how you did it, it seems also a good way to me, but since we don't have a lot of dynamic stuff and never had issues I'll keep doing it my way for the time being. I will just try SSL again.

Guys why life is so complicated ? :)
Because otherwise we could not create feature requests. :D
 
It seems Active8 User sent me this link but later removed it. Is this link still valid
That is pretty close to what I described above. However you don't have to modify the conf file. Just uncheck domains directory and email data.
 
I normally skip the domains directory and email data and rsync the home directory after restoring the users on the new server and after all the data has been synced I then change the dns.

If you use the automatic way you will have some down time or data will not be complete. When I move accounts there is less than 5 minutes of down time and no missing data.

That is exactly what cpanel transfer tool do (when you move cPanel to cPanel) it creates backup of the account without home dir move the file extract the account part it then rsync home dir the and then import bases... then change dns record in the end on the old server to point to new IP if you choose to do that (express transfer) and suspend old account with account moved page notify users to flush their dns

And can do that with multiple accounts simultaneously if you choose to that (it was set by default to 4)

Also during extract move the account to less used volume and create symbolic link /home2/user if user was on home2 but on the new server is in /home/user so the user scripts work out of the box

Also allow overwrite of zones in a cluster if such is used by multiple servers

All this with typing old server name and root password in the tool, click fetch to get accounts list, 1 click to select account/s to move 1 click to select to express dns (per account) 1 click to confirm and start the process
....

I will vote for such tool

Also support trasfers from DirectAdmin - I never tested it (only crazy customers will move from DirectAdmin ) :)

Plesk - I tested it with ~70GB account backup generated backup on parts of 512 move then and the do similar to what cpanel transfer script do currently on DA.... P.S. if I remember correctly it can move plesk 10 in which all domains are in one account to separate accounts
 
Last edited:
If that is the way its done I would vote for it too. I am not familiar with the way Cpanel does it. I have seen some other migration tools that simply shut things down and the migrate the whole account. If the account has 50 GB of data then its going to be down for a while. Most of the time when I move an account the user doesn't even know anything changed.
 
then change dns record in the end on the old server to point to new IP if you choose to do that (express transfer) and suspend old account with account moved page notify users to flush their dns
I've done that in the past when transferring forums to other servers or preparing new servers to already get the hostname persent. That works good.

Anyway, if somebody creates a request for it, I will vote for it too.
 
Back
Top