Migrating your data to a new server can seem like a complicated process, but it doesn’t have to be! Using the Transfer Tool inside the WHM interface let's you follow this process to get your sites moved to a new system:
- Create a new cPanel & WHM server
- Login to that new machine, accept the EULA, and work through the initial setup wizard
- On the new server, open Transfer Tool in WHM and fill out the connection details for the old server where you want to move the accounts from.
- Once the tool connects you’ll be able to see all the cPanel accounts, and you choose to migrate just one or all the accounts on the server to the new machine with just a few clicks.
That’s it! That’s the basic process for migrating your cPanel accounts to a new server.
After you’ve completed the migration you can test the sites to confirm they are working well on the new server. Once you’ve done that you can update the DNS to point to the new machine, and your sites are now running on a brand new server.
Of course there are more advanced options if you need them, and you can review those in the documentation link for the Transfer Tool above.
If you have time to do some additional preparation, it would be a good idea to check the following:
- Ensure your sites are using an up-to-date PHP version before the migration, or check that they are compatible with the latest version.
- Confirm your sites will work with the latest MySQL version on the new machine
- Ensure you have control over the DNS so you can update that after the migration
- Decide if you want to use the Live Transfer feature of the Transfer Tool to help minimize downtime
What data gets moved?
All cPanel account data gets moved as part of the migration including:
- Secure transfer of emails and email account credentials
- All website content
- Databases and databases users, passwords, and privileges
- Any additional users created through Manage Team
It really is a comprehensive tool to move your entire cPanel account to a new machine.
If you’d also like to move your server configurations you can do that through the Transfer Tool as well. You can see a list of the configurations that can be moved at the following link: Service Configurations.