| Posted by jzukerman, 05-28-2011, 05:39 PM | | I am looking for the proper procedure to switch my reseller account I have with company A to company B. I have about 10 clients with cPanel accounts with roughly 1GB to 2GB of client data that I need to migrate from company A to company B. What are the proper steps to do this? I do not have root level access to either server. I believe Company B offers free account migration. Their site didn't specify only cPanel accounts, or WHM & cPanel accounts.
Here's what I think are the right steps. Please correct me if I am wrong.
1. Create cPanel backups on company A.
2. Transfer cPanel backups to company B somehow (with help of company B support?)
3. Transfer WHM settings (like hosting account packages, and those types of settings).
4. Change the IP addresses for the private nameserver entries at the domain name registrar for my webhosting company domain name.
5. Change the nameserver entries at my clients' domain name registrars (clients should already be ns1.mywebhostingcompany.com and ns2.mywebhostingcompany.com).
6. Wait x period of time and sites should be back online.
7. Transfer/relicense WHMCS.
8. Test everything.
Am I missing something here? I'm looking to do the transfer this weekend. Yes I realize it is a US holiday. But for my clients, most of whom are businesses, their offices are closed, so it would be a good time to do the transfer. I already put in a support ticket with company B to ask them what they believe are the proper steps to do the migration. I just wanted some additional thoughts, tips, or advice on the matter.
Last edited by jzukerman; 05-28-2011 at 05:44 PM.
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| Posted by zdrux, 05-28-2011, 06:05 PM | | It's likely that company B will be able to do a site-to-site transfer of all the files from company A, as well as "restore" your backups from cpanel/mysql.
Just make sure your WHMCS is setup and licensed BEFORE you do the move so you don't get stuck in a funny situation with both sites up, while your whmcs is down because it took them 2 days to get the license or something.
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| Posted by jzukerman, 05-28-2011, 07:08 PM | | Alright. Company B said they can do the transfer. They didn't elaborate so I hope it is a simple process. I'll get the WHMCS setup on Company B in the mean time.
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| Posted by agustan, 05-28-2011, 09:52 PM | | The whole procedure seems correct and should be okay.
As mentioned above, just make sure the WHMCS's license is ready and is setup properly before the transfer process.
If you don't mind, please tell us who is that company B? and who 'was' that company A (once you migrated)?
Anyway, good luck and all the best for the migration process, hope everything works fine after the weekend/U.S. holiday
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| Posted by ModelWebHost, 05-28-2011, 09:52 PM | | You are right absolutely. You don't have to change NS at client's domain names because only IP of your main NS are changed. If B company will shift your data freely then there should be no problem other than renewing of license.
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| Posted by jzukerman, 05-28-2011, 11:06 PM | | Well I pulled the trigger so to speak and started the migration. I haven't tested WHMCS yet (IP address change hasn't propegated to my home office yet). My new provider transferred the cPanel accounts and most WHM stuff, though here are a few things they either forgot or couldn't transfer:
1. Packages in WHM. I had to recreate them. No big deal.
2. Company B only offers 2 private nameservers, while Company A offered 4. So I had to remove the extra 2 nameservers from all of the DNS Zone files. Thankfully Company B allows access to the DNS Zone editor in WHM, while Company A does not (one of a few reasons I wanted to leave Company A).
3. I had to edit the nameservers in the WHM setup to be ns1.mycompany.com and ns2.mycompany.com, instead of companyb's private nameservers.
4. I edited the dns zone file template to remove the creation of the extra 2 nameservers.
5. (not in any way related to Company B) I had to go into the registrar for my client's domains that I manage and remove the extra 2 nameservers from their domains.
I did let Company B know of these minor issues, so maybe they can address them in future migrations. It didn't cause me any pain.
I'll be posting a review of Company B (including their name) in a month or so. Company A, well, I'm not sure I want to give them a review. Lots of things I disliked about their operation, but I'd rather not post those negatives. Just move on.
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| Posted by ModelWebHost, 05-28-2011, 11:10 PM | | Glad to hear that you have configured everything. You should post your experience with previous host so that we can learn something. Also post review of new host B but after sometime so that you can test them fully.
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| Posted by HostXNow_Chris, 05-29-2011, 04:34 AM | | Seems Company B didn't select the option to also transfer the packages too. You shouldn't have had to recreate them.
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| Posted by aodat2, 05-29-2011, 01:40 PM | | Not asking you to tell us bad things or etc about Company A, but it would be beneficial to particular people if they know about it before they signup with Company A. There usually is a reason or a problem before you decide to leave. Do share it with us so that we could at least know who it was and if possible perhaps improve and learn from their mistakes.
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| Posted by AvailHosting-Jeff, 06-01-2011, 12:08 AM | | Step 8 should be step 4. Never migrate the DNS settings until you and your client have verified that all account data and settings have been properly restored. Rushing through the DNS settings could put your clients offline for a considerable amount of time in the event of a misconfiguration.
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| Posted by jzukerman, 06-02-2011, 11:38 AM | | Fair enough. I didn't think until after the transfer that I could test each account by using the server IP address/~username/sitehere
Everything transferred properly regardless. But thanks for the heads up. Hopefully I won't have to do this migration again, or at least not for a long time.
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| Posted by XeHSean, 06-02-2011, 10:12 PM | | Most reseller providers offer free account migration services. This will make it super easy for you to transfer accounts with no downtime
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| Posted by nel$on, 06-02-2011, 10:33 PM | | I think no downtime is not the case. There may be downtime for some users do to DNS propagation.
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| Posted by ModelWebHost, 06-03-2011, 02:25 AM | | This will not actual downtime but some of the site visitors may not access the site.
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| Posted by nel$on, 06-03-2011, 03:09 AM | | So.. when a user can't access his website, the client panel, or his invoices because of a DNS change, what exactly do you call it? It's downtime. The client could be losing pageviews, clients, time, money. It's downtime.
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