The Penguin Forums

As recently e-mailed to all resellers, we will be offering cPanel reseller accounts very shortly (in approx 1 month) and would like to offer the opportunity for feedback on this platform. This will enable us to try and tailor packages to suit as many of your requirements as possible and also will provide a basis where we can discuss what is required for migrations to be performed from your existing account over to cPanel. Please therefore feel free to ask questions in this thread.

As we have had a number of enquiries already with regards to migrations, I will try and outline the options available for moving to this platform.

Firstly, whilst we can seamlessly move accounts between our existing Ensim/Parallels Pro servers, when moving to cPanel there will be changes required to some sites due to the differences in the hosting platforms.

The main difference is in the pathnames for scripts (if present) on accounts as the path to the webspace changes from /var/www/html to /public_html and so any scripts using this absolute path will need to be adjusted accordingly. This is something that must be manually changed and so can be performed by yourself or requested as a service from us.

There may also be differences in the installed perl modules, especially if you have requested a custom module be installed for one of your sites/clients. Whilst we currently have to charge for custom perl module installations due to the amount of work this requires by our server management staff, we have no plans to charge for this on the cPanel platform as modules are deployed in a much simpler manner and so do not take us anywhere near as much time. We may even make automated perl module installations available to resellers so they can be installed as required.

With regards to the actual migrations, the specific format and cost for this (if any) has not yet been finalised, however the options will likely be as follows:

You can order a new account and move domains over as required, cancelling your old account when completed. This requires no work from us and so there is no cost associated with this.

We can set up a reseller account on the new platform and migrate the sites over - this should normally retain all of the e-mail accounts & passwords, etc however any scripts installed may need adjusting as described above. You can then perform the script changes yourself, or we can go through your sites and make the required changes for you, however this may be chargeable.

Alternatively, we can perform a fully professional migration for you, handling all aspects of the transfer for you. This obviously is very resource intensive and would be fully chargable.

Whilst we are happy to provide assistance with migrations, please do appreciate that this is a new platform and so services provided on migrations can only be offered at no cost where they do not hinder our normal work as otherwise this is not financially viable for us when it prevents other jobs from being performed, as was found when we migrated a number of our own direct customers over.

DNS / Nameservers

When migrating accounts, the cPanel reseller platform will be running from our new DNS cluster. This therefore means that there will be a change of nameservers required to move accounts over. If you are using our generic reseller nameservers (web-dns.net) then you can update the domains nameservers one at a time if required as they are moved over. The new platform has a single pair of nameservers that will not require an update in the future as the DNS cluster is designed to service all servers, not just a single one as is currently configured and so any accounts moved between servers in the future for any reason will be seamless from a DNS perspective.

If you have custom nameservers set up for your reseller account, these can certainly be retained, however it will mean that consideration has to be given when moving your domains over. If they are all to me moved in one go, there is no issue with this as we/you will just update the IP's for your nameserver records. If you are moving sites individually, this will require that the DNS is manually updated for each domain in the meantime until all sites are moved over. We will be offering as standard a 30 day concurrent period where you can have both reseller accounts in place and will also provide DNS management on the existing Parallels platform at no cost for this timeframe if it is needed to move accounts due to this.

We have had some quetions with regards to the assistance that we will provide with migrations. We have to be realistic in the amount of support that we can provide that is not chargable as there is no actual benefit to us from moving the accounts over to the new platform as many prices have dropped under the new proposals and we are offering far more resources.

The amount of work required is dependent on the configuration of the sites. The two main things that need adjusting when a site is moved is the path to the webspace that is used in any scripts - this is currently /var/www/html and it changes to /home/public_html with cPanel and so just requires that this be manually updated where it is specified in any scripts. Additionally, database names, usernames or passwords can change when the sites are migrated and so these again would need adjusting in the scripts for the new accounts. For sites with plain HTML then generally nothing at all should be affected.

Once any site is moved, the nameservers need to be updated to move this to the new platform then as all future accounts will run from our new DNS cluster and so never require a nameserver update again.

We have the facility to perform a complete automated migration of sites over to the new platform - this will move mailboxes, etc including preserving their passwords as well as website content and databases. This provides a very quick move of sites and then just requires that the site be 'adjusted' to ensure that database details and script paths are correct. We are happy to perform migrations of site sin this way for you, however please appreciate that dur to the time involved to manually check sites and adjust scripts then we would have to charge for the time taken if you require this to be performed for you as well.

We are aiming to have our cPanel reseller platform live some time next week. The server is being deployed over the Easter weekend as part of some other upgrades and we will hopefully then be in a position to start moving accounts over as required.

Our cPanel platform is now online. We are finishing configuration and integration with our client area this week and will then be in a position to start migrations and to allow new account orders on this platform as well.

Our cPanel platform is now operational and integrated into our client area and following some final testing, we will be starting to arrange migrations in the next few days for resellers who have requested this.

Please note that cpanel works in a different way to the existing Parallels Pro reseller system - cPanel requires that you have a hosting account set up on the server and then reseller facilities are then allocated to this account in a separate control panel. You cannot just have an empty reseller account set up with no domains in it. This therefore means that you would normally have your main/company website set up as the main account and then all clients created afterwards. You will therefore have to provide us with the domain name that you wish to use for your reseller account when this is set up.

It would be recommended to move your main domain over first of all so that you can test out and become used to the new control panel for a few days, then we can move the rest of your sites over so that you can adjust scripts & databases as required when they are migrated.

If you have requested a migration then you will have a ticket on hold - if you update this with the domain name that you wish to be used for your reseller account then we can create this for you on the new platform. Please also iindicate on the ticket if you have custom nameservers set up as this will need to be taken into account.

Following the migration of a many resellers to cPanel, I'd like to outline what work has been required for resellers as part of the migration process.

The cPanel migration tools copy the majority of the site over from your existing reseller account. In some cases, e-mail aliases are not copied, however these are very easily checked between servers and added back in if required.

MySQL databases are copied over, however these require on cPanel for a new database username and password be set for the database(s) as cPanel supports multiple MySQL users per site. This new database username, password and datebase name needs to be reflected in your scripts.

Aside from that and altering the path in scripts as detailed further above, the migration process is very straightforward with no major issues encountered.

As all interested reseller have now been migrated, our free assisted migration service has now been completed. If any resellers who are usign Parallels Pro wish to mveo to cPanel, this will now be looked at on a case by case basis upon you raising a support ticket if you are interested in doing so.