Skip to main content

Backups before Centos7 to AlmaLinux8 Migration

Answered
Lionel R.

Hello Everyone !!  Please advise me on the best way to protect my files:

  • We have 1 dedicated server and 1 VPS from Hostgator. They both use cPanel and WHM.
  • cPanel & WHM version 110 will be the last version that supports CentOS 7. Support for version 110 will end July 31, 2024

Hostgator assistants told me they will handle the whole process. They are going to migrate it to Almalinux 8:

So you need not worry. I would recommend you not to process it from your end, and let the admins handle the procedure.

I don't really trust their abilities to make changes without destroying things.

I was reading other posts and making a list of possible things to backup.
Please help me to finish it, so I can act as soon as they tell me they are going to migrate, because they are as dangerous as a monkey with a knife.

  1. "/home/" for most of the user data.
  2. "/var/lib/" for the databases.

Also I have some doubts:

  1. Should I tell my boss to purchase Jetbackup for incremental backups? Or should I use the classic backup system provided by WHM? Our databases are waaaay too heavy.
  2. Should I make sure my web pages don't break when using +PHP 7.4? Our sites are just vainilla PHP, no frameworks.
  3. Should I migrate my servers from mySQL 5.7 to mySQL 8.0 first?
  4. How do I protect the rest of the configuration of the entire server, which I know how to configure from WHM (domains, accounts, FTP, DNS, packages, etc) ?
  5. Is there something called "snapshot"?
  6. What else do you recommend to backup?

Excuse my English and thank you for reading this, since I do not posess great knowledge as a system administrator because I come from web development area.

Regards,
Lionel R.

Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • Andrew
    Translate

    Why don't you handle the upgrade yourself then or hire a professional to do the work for you?

    I would do the old school way and run a manual cPanel backup of all ccounts including system config files then store those off-site till the upgrade is completed.

    • PHP 7.4 and up are still supported by Almalinux so you should be good to go there.
    • Alma doesn't support MySQL 5.7 so yes you need to upgrade this beforehand either to MySQL 8 or to MariaDB 10.4+
    • cPanel doesn't support snapshots

    Andrew N. - cPanel Plesk VMWare Certified Professional
    Do you need immediate assistance? 20 minutes response time!* Open a ticket
    EmergencySupport - Professional Server Management and One-time Services

    1
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Hey there!  I'll go through and answer what I can for you.

    A flat-file copy of /home and /var wouldn't be enough to properly restore the sites and databases.  You'll want to create account backups.

    1 - That's entirely up to you.  The WHM >> Backup Configuration tool has an "additional destinations" tab where you can send the backups to a remote server so they aren't stored on your machine, but if you want additional control over the backups, JetBackup is a great tool.

    2 - Yes, I would test and upgrade things as much as you can now before making the change.

    3 - If possible, yes.

    4 - I would only worry about this if you'd made customizations to the server.  When they transfer your settings they can also move all the configurations listed here: https://docs.cpanel.net/whm/transfers/transfer-tool/#service-configurations

    5 - cPanel doesn't have a snapshot tool to take an image of the whole machine

    6 - As long as you have full account backups, that will contain everything necessary to restore the accounts to a new machine if necessary.

    1
  • Lionel R.

    Thanks a lot Andrew and cPRex for your help !!! Now I have a better idea of how to handle this!

    1
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    You're very welcome!

    0

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Didn't find what you were looking for?

New post