Migrating Two Servers

[Ben-Orbital]

Right,

We have two cpanel servers, one with 450 domain names and the other with just over 1000 domain names hosted. The boxes are having issues, so we have bought two new Dell servers to replace the old hardware.

The question i have is what is the best way to move the information fron one server to the new one. We used the migrate accounts feature to move all the sites accross, but had issues with taking ages and also it made all the zone files local again, where as we have some that point www elsewhere.

We havent tried the backup on old server and use the restore feature on the new one. Wondering whether or not people have used this successfully and if its worth it?

Just wanting a little bit of advice on what people think the best path is really, as we have alot of customers on the servers and want to migrate with least possible problems

Cheers in advance for any advice.

Warm Regards,
Ben

 

[ramprage]

Are these just mass domains or are they actual user accounts? With some proper planning this should go relatively smoothly. First you'll need to prep and prepare the new systems making sure they match the old boxes, EG MYSQL versions (mbox or maildir) formats, and other things.

I wouldn't use the WHM transfer feature for that many accounts. Instead I'd use some custom scripts for migrating the accounts over.

 

[jenlepp]

I just migrated three servers, about 340 accounts each, to new boxes and I did use the WHM transfer feature. For the most part, it went well - you really have to babysit the thing, though, and I ran into some problems with large databases (and some not large databases) transferring half the tables and leaving the other half. A few failed, but I just packaged those up manually.

So, it wasn't terrible, but I wanted the very least propagation for each site that I could get (I had brought down ttl to 399 so it took at max 15 minutes for people to go from one server to another), and that seemed to be the only real way I could accomplish that. The Zone files with special info I had to fix manually after transfer, which kinda sucked.

Just my experience.

 

[Stefaans]

This thread may also be of value:
http://forums.cpanel.net/showpost.php?p=166997&postcount=7

 

[HelloAdam]

Hey,

When transfering accounts, I use the transfering of accounts via SSH, which graps each users MySQL, Mail, Home dir and so on.

Link in my sig..

From,
Adam

 

[Andrew-TGM]

Helloadam..

will your way keep the current IPs for the accounts?

 

[Salman75]

Here is a good article

http://bobcares.com/article46.html

 

[t9clkclnr]

IP's dont remain

IP's wont be kept during this a manual migration nor a WHM migration.

I personally have migrated between 3 servers and manually scp'ing the gzip files is so much more efficient. No time outs on larger accounts.

then all you do is perform a restore on those files in the home directory from WHM. It will save you time and frustration vs. using the WHM method to transfer which will hang time and time again if the account is more then 300MB.

Hope this helps.