Can cpanel/WHM support multiple servers?

[Zack Perry]

In our current shared Web hosting setup, we have multiple servers, each one provides a specific service, e.g. Web hosting is done by Web server hosts, email services are provided by email hosts, FTP service is provided by FTP server hosts, DNS are provided by DNS servers.

We plan to consolidate most of our current bunch of physical servers to just a couple of new machines. So, instead of using phyiscal servers for a specific service, we will use virtual machines for the same purpose. As part of our consolidation planning, we are looking into cpanel and WHM.

But, all our documentation review so far has given us an impression that your software requires to run all services (except perhaps DNS, with the use of the DNS ONLY software module) on the same machine. Is our understanding correct? Please let us know.

Thanks,

--Zack

[JawadArshad]

In the current setup, no default cPanel feature allows provision for complete management of multiple servers using a single WHM interface. Check similar thread links at the bottom of the page as well for further insight.

[cPanelTristan]

You can run MySQL off the server and connect multiple servers to that remote MySQL server, so both DNS (using DNS Only) and MySQL can work on separate machines clustering to the MySQL and DNS Only machines.

For email, you could setup the cPanel machines as secondary MX and then route emails to an email only machine in a clustering setup as well. This isn't the default setup and you'd have to make configurational changes to get it to work, but it can be done.