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Impressed with the migration tool

keat63
I just thought I'd update on my progress with my server migration. I really expected it to be a lot more complex than it has been, but thus far it's been pretty much painless. Of course I had to configure the new server before i could perform any data migration. Hostname, DNS, MYSQL and PHP versions etc, then my 3rd party software like CSF, OWASP and ClamAV This process probably took me a whole day until I was happy that I was ready to go. The first simple domain contained only a few small html files, and only took 5 minutes to migrate. A few domains with imap email only (no html), probably took 15 minutes each. My dev domain with a sizeable database took about 30 minutes. During this time, I made the DNS changes to allow to propogate. I've still two sizeable domains to migrate which I'll do during some quiet time, but don't anticipate any issues. I ran in to one small issue which perplexed me for an hour. I've one domain that forwards a copy of sales invoices to another domain on the same server. Whilst both domains were now on different servers/IP's, I didn't delete the original migrated domain. Subsequenlty these forwarded emails failed to send to the new IP. Server 1 saw the domain on it's self. For anyone who manages thier own server, and is contemplating this task, it's not as difficult as you may think. 10/10

Comments

2 comments

Date Votes
  • ffeingol
    I'd basically concur with you that the transfer system is rock solid. We use it all the time (to retire older servers, for customers to move to different hardware etc.). That only 'gotcha' is accounts with a lot of IMAP mail (depending on your choice of storage formats). If you are using mdir (where each email is it's own file) the migration can take quite a while. It's not really cPanel's fault it's just not efficient to move 1000's (or 100's of 1000's) of little files. Assuming cPanel is the DNS server (old server) using the express option take care of the DNS changes for you.
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  • cPanelLauren
    Thanks for the feedback, both of you! @ffeingol you're right, mail migration is one of the banes of backups and migrations due to the amount of small files. Personally, if the users are using maildir and they have a large amount of mail data, I typically suggest excluding mail on the migration and utilizing imapsync for this later on. It tends to be more efficient, but time-consuming either way.
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