WHM/cPanel account transfer/Server move
by Gabi SolomonThere comes a time when you find a better deal for you’re hosting and you will like to move you’re clients to the new server. It would be perfect to do that without you’re clients even realising that there was a server move. This will also mean that you will minimize downtime, bounce emails, and data loss.
Here is a small tutorial how to do that using WHM and Cpanel. But you can apply this principles to any control panel you might be using. Remember, this requires that you have root, or know your clients logins and passwords.
The first step to do the transfer is to modify the TTL (time to leave) for each account you want to transfer. To do that you must go through the folowing steps :
1. Click on the Edit DNS zone in the DNS Functions section ( You will find this in you’re WHM ). Select the account you want to transfer and click edit button.
2. In the domain zone you will see a field with the text @ IN 14400 SOA somewhere to the top of the page, that tell the dns servers that th record for this domain is valid for 4 hours, and because we want rapid response we will shorten that time to 1 hour. To do that modify the 14400 to 3600 ( the number is in seconds )
3. The same thing applyes to the TTL record that you will find someplace below SOA record. Modify that from 14400 to 3600 as well.
4. In order to tell the dns servers this is a new update increment the serial number by one ( this may be done by the WHM automaticly, but increment it by one just to be sure )
After you have done this for all acounts you can take a well deserve break. You must now wait some time for the new settings to be picked up by dns servers.
After the 4 hours have past you are ready to start the transfer. First login into the new server WHM and there under the section “Transfer” you will see several options to do the transfer.
First of all you have multiple accounts transfer. This is a fast way of transfering acounts, but it has the disadvantage that it have a risk of loosing data in the transfer, especially is there are big websites/databases to transfer. Moving one account at a time seams to minimize this problem. This tutorial will show you using the second method : one by one transfer.
There are 2 options for the second method :
1. if you have the root access on the old server
2. if you know the clients user and pasword from the old server.
Decide wich option work for you and folow this steps to do the transfer :
1. The first thing is to determine if the website is static ( only html pages ) or dinamic ( using databases ). If it is dinamic you will need to shutdown that database first for one hour in order to do the transfer. The reason for this that we don’t want users to modify the database while doing the transfer and the modification not showing up on the new server.
2. Now select the option you decided to do the move and fill in the old server ip adress, username and pasword. You must also click whether to give this new account an ip on the new server. Then click setup button.
The server will then start to transfer the account via FTP by packaging the acounts files and database.
CAREFULL !! do not hit the browser stop,refresh or back button while the server does the transfer because it will determine data loss. After the transfer is done you will receive a message on the screen sayin the acount is transfer.
3. Next go to Edit DNS Zone again ( from the new server this time ), select the account just transfered and click the edit button. and change the nameservers information to you’re nameserver information instead of the default one. And also increase the serialnumber and hit save.
4. This next step is meant to redirect the new account to the new server. Go to Edit DNS Zone on the old server this time and change all the IP’s from the old server ip to the new server IP, increase the serial and save.
And you are done for one acount. In one hour the website will work on the new server.
Repeat all this steps for all the acounts you want to transfer. After all acounts are transfered you have one more thing to do : modify you’re nameserver ip address at you’re register and put the new ip’s.
This is all. Now you have transfered all the accounts even if you’re nameservers have’nt propagated.
Hope this articles helps you and i am waiting on you’re coments.
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