Migration from directadmin to cpanel - Why no tools?

[Frankk]

I've been looking around to transfer accounts from directadmin to CPanel and have yet to find a solution that is convenient, by convenient I mean hassle free where you don't need godlike access to both servers. Yet there are tools with which you can migrate from a simple CP Backup file to DA (May not be perfect but at least you get most of it done automatically).

Wouldn't there be a way to reverse engineer the thing to do the same from a DA backup to a CPbackup to create the account, the mail accounts, the DB(s), etc.

I know that CPanel offers a free service for migration but again you need to be on a new server and have root access to both servers, this is not really helping me as I am not migrating my whole server, just a couple of accounts now and then.

There's alot of work involved in doing a manual migration, I can't believe there's not a simpler solution, if there is, PLEASE tell me I'm wrong and show me the way.

[cPanelTristan]

Hello Frankk,

You mention that you aren't migrating the full server, but do you have root (or sudo su / su access from another user to get to root level) for both machines? If you do, you don't have to be migrating all of the accounts over to us to use our migration service. I'd highly suggest emailing us and detailing what you are needing to see if we can assist.

Thanks!

[Frankk]

Tristan,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I run a web hosting company, and sometimes you collect customers coming from all sorts of hosting packages and admin panels. Some offer shell access with su capabilities alot of'em come with just the basic panel with bare minimum (they did not think it was important at the time)

The thing that puzzles me is that a migration tool exists since 2004 for moving away from CP to DA and it uses a simple CPbackup and the tool "transforms" it to a valid DAbackup which you can then restore as a new DA account. The opposite just doesn't exist, the question is why can they do it and we can't, even if it would do part of the job (like tranfering files, mails, sub and parked domains) would be fantastic.

If I had the requested access, then I could simply use the WHM tool to do it.

[brian]

Re-using an account backup that is packaged by third-party software may not offer an optimal solution. Using third-party account backups would exponentially increase the potential for failure due to the possibility of unknown changes being made in the backup package format and this will inherently decrease the reliability of the transfer process.

By requiring root access to the remote system we can directly minimize the points of potential failure to provide a more consistent transfer experience. We also have the benefit, in such a situation, to be able to perform discovery on any critical information we may need regarding the server itself or the control panel installation. Such information may not be inside the third party control panel's backups.

As for the existence of third-party control panels supporting the restoration of cPanel backups, I have to admit that cPanel & WHM produces some mighty fine backups where consistency and compatibility are paramount. This makes such a task for a third party control panel fairly easy. This is especially more so than that of converting backups from control panels that do not have such completeness of information and consistent structure in their backups.

Simply put, producing a valid cPanel backup from the "live" and most up-to-date information on a server with a third party control panel is the most ideal situation for nabbing latest site data. Therefore, that has been our focus.

[Frankk]

You are right Brian, such a solution is not optimal, however if it does 75% of the job for me, then it would be a really good starting point. Most shared hosting solutions don't provide SSH or root access, I do it for some special clients on shared but most of them will never even get close to that level of access.

I find your comments about CPbackups being all neet to be also true, but I don't think that DirectAdmin's are any less. We're talking about 2 professional/commercial control panels, not some open source projects that were since abandoned and taken over by some random peoples.

I also would like to point out that I am not ranting about the lack of such a tool, I am merely pointing out that they have a tool and we don't. I would really like to see conversion tools for the most prevalent COMMERCIAL control panels such as PLESK and DirectAdmin. I think even CPanel itself would find that making the transition easy would be beneficial, Ive seen customers not wanting to switch because they didn't want to reconfigure their mail programs with the new passwords.

I'm not the doctor in a fancy hospital with everything handy, I'm more like the paramedic in the mud with his stretcher, I make the best with what I've got.

[cPanelJeff]

Hi Frankk,

Thanks for your input, and your feedback. The best suggestion that I can make would be to create a feature request here: Feature Requests for cPanel & WHM

If you know of anyone else who would like to see such a feature (and I'm sure there are many, many folks who would), please send them the link to your feature request and ask them to post there to show their support for such a feature. The more support that a request has, the better the chance of it being added to the product.

That said, I can't guarantee than 1000 posts in support of the idea would result in what you're wanting, but posting the request there is the best possible option for requesting newer features/scripts.

Thanks Frankk.