Question
How do you reboot a cPanel server?
Answer
Rebooting a server can be done through a few different means, and may be required for a few different reasons. Installing a new kernel does require a reboot before the new kernel modules can be loaded. Sometimes, a reboot is required if the server is overloaded. There are two ways to reboot a server through WHM:
1.) WHM -> Graceful Server Reboot
This should be the first step. Graceful reboots are used to ask the server to nicely shutdown any running services, stop the disks from spinning, etc, and gently restart. This is the preferred method of rebooting.
2.) WHM -> Forceful Server Reboot.
This is a last resort. If a graceful reboot is asking the server to restart, forceful is telling it to do so. This option will stop every running process without waiting for a response from the service. This can lead to data loss, and should only be used in the event that the server is overloaded or there are hung processes keeping the graceful reboot from happening.