I have a older server with The Planet and I am now thinking about getting a new one and migrating all sites to that one. However, I am unsure what the best practice is. My current box is running Ensim Pro 3.5 which is old and not very good. The new server will most likely be a dual Xeon with cPanel. I want things to go as smooth as possible of course, but I am unsure how to go about migrating the server without any major hick ups.

To make it simple, I want my hosted websites to work the same way they did on the old server and if possible with no noticeable downtown time.

• The new server will receive a new IP address of course. Can I setup the new server and create all the new customer accounts on it, try everything out first - and then when I am happy with everything unplug the old box and point the old IP address to the new box or is that a stupid idea? Would it be better to point the hosted domains to the new IP address through Server Command instead? If so, why?
  
  
• I am currently using The Planets name servers but I am looking into the possibility of using a custom domain for name servers. I am imagining that this can cause problems, since all the domains need to be updated with the new name servers and what not, but what else is there to think about? Is it a better idea to stick with The Planets name servers?
  
  
• The new server needs a domain associated with it. On my current box I am using srv01.mydomain.com and the plan was to use srv02.mydomain.com or srv01.mydomain.com since the old box is being unplugged anyways later. Can I use the same domain and sub domains temporarily for both of the servers while I am migrating stuff? What's the best practice?
  
  
• Anything else I should consider or think about before starting the migration? Any help or feedback is GREATLY appreciated!

Thank you!

Unless you have a private rack, I am aware of no way to do that -- your IPs are not portable or movable from one server to another.

Personally, going from one control panel to another, I'd migrate the sites gradually so you have time to assess/correct/double check for any little glitches that might result.

I would set the new server's hostname to something different than the first, because if you have both online, you don't want them to be the same.

Are you running cPanel, Nighteye?

I am not running cPanel on the current box, but I will most likely have it on the new one. Using Ensim Pro at the moment.

Is it possible to set the hostname to srv02.mydomain.com on the new server and use srv01.mydomain.com on the current server? The thing is that there are client logins for the webmail, phpmyadmin and what not on srv01.mydomain.com, so it would be a good idea to keep that subdomain up and running on the new one too, right?

You can run different subdomains, or you can set the new box up with the same subdomain and switch the dns over later. Keep in mind that the control panel, webmail, phmyadmin urls are different on a cpanel box.

You might be better off to set the new server up, prepare for the move, schedule the move, warn your customers (let them know what the new URLs are, as well as the positive reasons for the move), execute the move, let your customers know that the move went well (hopefully), and ask them to double-check their sites for any problems that may have been overlooked (I guess this part will depend on the strength of your relationship).

Other problems to consider:

Ensim >> cPanel import works okay, it is not perfect. How many accounts do you need to migrate? We did our last Ensim >> cPanel migration 100% manually (there were roughly 75 sites on that server).

Is data likely to change on the old server during the move? A warning to your customers (including the migration schedule) might help reduce the likelyhood of lost data (busy, dynamic sites will obviously be more of a problem, and may actually require brief shutdown).

What about mail? It might be easier to have your customers retrieve all of their mail from the old server; rather than migrating the accounts while maintaining the service (they can still retrieve mail from the old server until you shut it down; if things are planned/setup correctly).

Advance planning and communication (especially with your customers) will likely make your life a lot easier in the end

Nick

Thank you for your input Nick!

Glad to know that I can setup the same subdomain for the host of the new server and later switch over the DNS, thinking that using the same one will cause less problems after the move. Of course the paths and urls to the control panel, phpmyadmin and what not are not the same. But I guess I could setup the old Ensim urls for those services using aliases? If not, just inform my clients of the new urls to use.

Good communication and good planing is the way to go, the Ensim box has ~25 sites and I will probably try the export -> import feature first on one website first and check for errors before deciding to use it on all websites.

One problem with manual import would be that the e-mail accounts will not work correctly since the clients have setup them themselves with their own passwords. Any suggestions how to solve this using a manual import? I'm guessing that the Ensim export will include the mail accounts and that cPanel will migrate them too when importing the site?

One last thing Nick, did you observe anything that worked completely different when moving over to cPanel?

Keeping the mailservice on the old server is a good idea until all the accounts have been duplicated on the new one. I am guessing that the chance of losing e-mails during the switchover to the new server is minimal since most mailservers resend the email for a day or two if it couldn't be delivered?

Just my 2 cents on top of all the great suggestions so far,

The one thing that you almost always want to do is a MySQL Dump. Hopefully you will never actually have to use the files created from the dump but if you are in a bind and everything goes wrong, you want to have these!

4.5.4. mysqldump — A Database Backup Program
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html

The mail service is the tricky part as Ensim uses sendmail and cPanel uses Exim, totally different programs. You will want to get the customers to take as much mail off the old server as possible as there is no guarantee it will migrate perfectly. If they have backup mail service such a gmail, they can set their old e-mail accounts to forward to gmail and then if any mail gets sent to the old server it wont get lost during the cut over.

A dump of the MySQL databases can easily done with phpMyAdmin, so no need for that other third party program.

I have never used Exim, so I don't know what its strengths and weaknesses are? My plan is to move the web content first, point the DNS' to the new IP to see if things are working before pointing the MX records to the new server, this will be done at night so that as little as possible is lost.

Two questions though, would you recommend going for 1GB or 2GB of RAM to start out with? Planing on getting a Xeon 3040 server and it will initially serve 25 smaller sites, not sure if 2GB is justified at the start... or?

Is 10 mbit bandwidth enough to start with, or is 100 mbit the way to go?

I don't know if the cPanel (exim) import handles the Ensim (sendmail) email accounts correctly, as we decided to outsource all of our email services (and plenty of headaches) a couple years ago. Prior to that, our email account migrations were from Ensim to Ensim. I suppose you could always run a test...

I do know that cPanel renames the databases to something like username_ensimdatabasename (forcing you to run around updating config files), so we manually created and imported all databases during our last Ensim to cPanel server migration. We also tend to use mysqldump whenever we move databases around these days (mysqldump is not a third party utility btw... phpmyadmin is though...). And occasionally, we'll simply tarball the whole /var/lib/mysql/database directory and copy it over to another server (this works great for huge databases).

Nick

Alright, so I'll have to manually change a couple of config files to update the db paths, thanks for the heads up mediast!

Would you recommend going for 1GB or 2GB of RAM to start out with? Planing on getting a Xeon 3040 server and it will initially serve 25 smaller sites, not sure if 2GB is justified at the start... or?

Is 10 mbit bandwidth enough to start with, or is 100 mbit the way to go?

Does cPanel include Spamassasin and ClamAV or something similar?

The 3040 should easily handle 25 small sites, but I would suggest at least 2GB of RAM to start if you intend to grow and/or take on more resource intensive sites... Why don't you go for the 3060 and the current "double down" promotion? That gives you a faster machine, 4GB of RAM and a 100Mb/s connection (I think) for another $60 per month. Keeping in mind that cPanel will also cost you $25 per month...

SpamAssassin may be activated under "tweak settings" on cPanel.

Nick

I too need to migrate to a new server. I'm currently on an old P4 with an old Redhat distribution.

I see that we are now allowed to choose which distribution we want on our server.

Anyone with any insights as to which is the better distribution? CentOS 4 or 5, or Redhat 4 or 5?

Thanks much,

Kenny

We're running Redhat EL 5 on most of our servers now. Have always used Redhat, so I can't comment on CentOS.

Nick

Thank you. That's what I decided on since I'll be able to use Up2date.

My problem with the P4 was getting updated RPM's. Redhat always seems to be far behind on updates. I see a lot of Fedora RPM's out there.

Kenny

The Planet is now offering a Intel Dual Xeon 2.4GHz Processor at $143 for a limited time. Is that server a better choice than the Intel Xeon 3040 Dual-core Conroe Processor? Seeing that the Xeon 2.4Ghz is a 32bit CPU and the 3040 a 64bit, will that make a big impact on performance? Any feedback is appreciated!

Personally with the price cut i would take that deal, i really dont think it will make that much of a difference performance wise, any way you go i think you will be happy, do you know the basic requirements of what you are trying to do, if they are less than that i would say go for it!!