Great, I will create a feature request.
Here are the reasons why I'm looking to take manual control of the DNS updates:
- We are moving sites from a regular Centos-based cPanel server to a CloudLinux-based one and we have discovered that there are a few things that can go wrong in such a migration. So we want to be able to troubleshoot on the new server before the site is live on it, especially as we get to know CloudLinux and our PHP configurations on the new server.
- We want to minimize downtime during site migrations. While the Transfer Tool has this aim, I believe it leaves open some chance for data loss while the site is still live on the old server after the databases have been dumped, and in my experience can leave a data-heavy site offline for quite some time. I think I can improve on it by doing the entire migration and then taking the site offline for a final data sync before bringing it online on the new server.
- We have observed cases where the zone file was not transferred in a migration using the Transfer Tool, and the site came online with a newly-generated template-based zone file. Not sure of the steps to reproduce this, unfortunately.
- The WHM Transfer or Restore feature gives the option to change only the cPanel-provided A records, but we have some zones where some of those A records point to other servers and should not be changed at all as part of the website migration.
Thanks for asking. If you have any suggestions regarding any of these hurdles, I would be interested in them!