Redundancy Suggestion for cPanel/WHM

[LifeSteala]

Hi guys

I am posting this as a suggestion. I would have no idea how easy/hard this may be but it could be very possible. I’m not sure.

This is about redundancy. I know there are many other ways of ensuring that no customer data is lost. Clustering, RAID etc. This is an approach I feel cPanel/WHM can provide.

When you order a new server for example, you would typically install an OS, followed by cPanel. You start using the server, creating accounts. All this is stored on the local hard drive. You restart for some reason and bam, it doesn’t start. PANIC!!! Customer’s data is gone. Well not really but essentially it is if there are no backup solutions in place.

My idea is that cPanel/WHM can provide a software based redundancy solution. Take this for example. You build a new computer which contains a 40gb hard drive. You partition it so 10gb of it is used for the Operating System and applications. The other 30gb space would then be used for raw data. After a month lets say a virus infected your computer. So, you would format C drive, the 10gb partition and reinstall the OS. Your data is safe and your still usable on the other partition.

cPanel could deploy something like this. On a server which has a 250gb hard drive you would partition it so OS and cPanel (and any other application) is on one partition. On the secondary partition, you would store user account data, mysql databases, and a special cPanel config file. This should be the mount point /home.

cPanel stores the mysql databases in flat files which should be stored on the /home partition.

This config file would store the location of the databases, and the hosting account along with customers raw data. So, when you need to re-do the server, all you do is format the primary partition, reinstall the OS, cPanel. cPanel should then ask you if you wanted to use a previous config file or start a new configuration. This file would configure cPanel to use existing data. No need to backup data when something has gone wrong where the server won’t startup. No need to restore anything since cPanel is re-configured with existing data by this special config file.

I think that cPanel should have some separation which improves redundancy via software and not hardware.

That’s all, looking forward to your comments.

 

[nickp666]

my question is, what stops you from partitioning your main drive the same way as you mentioned? cPanel doesnt actually do the partitioning for you, so you already have the ability to do so

 

[LifeSteala]

Hi

Nothing is stopping me, but what I am saying is that IF you had to reformat your main drive, you'd have to reinstall cPanel. Then you have to restore accounts. My suggestion eliminates the need to restore accounts. Hope that makes sense.

 

[rkm11]

my question is, what stops you from partitioning your main drive the same way as you mentioned? cPanel doesn't actually do the partitioning for you, so you already have the ability to do so

But what if you have to reinstall your OS? I believe he wants an overlay that cPanel can clamp down onto if the mount for / (lets say a separate hard drive from /home) suffers a crash, everything from /home is preserved and ready for near immediate replacement.

I might be wrong as but this sounds like a cool idea (would take a lot of work to be supported by cpanel)

 

[cPanelKenneth]

But what if you have to reinstall your OS? I believe he wants an overlay that cPanel can clamp down onto if the mount for / (lets say a separate hard drive from /home) suffers a crash, everything from /home is preserved and ready for near immediate replacement.

I might be wrong as but this sounds like a cool idea (would take a lot of work to be supported by cpanel)

The feature is already there. It is called 'backups'

 

[nickp666]

Hi

Nothing is stopping me, but what I am saying is that IF you had to reformat your main drive, you'd have to reinstall cPanel. Then you have to restore accounts. My suggestion eliminates the need to restore accounts. Hope that makes sense.

There is plenty of software out there for mirroring drives, IMO that is out of the remit of cPanel themselves, thats baseline system setup.

I'm sure you'll agree, cPanels time is better spent developing the existing features rather than going into something that other people can undoubtedly do far better.