Info for migrating from cPanel to VM

General Discussion
1

The new company I started working for wants to change data centers and possibly hosting platforms. They currently run cPanel with about 50 sites on it. I have been giving input as a very happy vm customer and they are considering it as their new control panel. So, I have a few questions for people who have used the migration tool to convert from cPanel to VM. Joe/Jamie feel free to chime in here, but I would also really like to hear from others who have been through this process.

  1. Any problems migrating and if so, what was it and how hard was it to fix.
  2. All sites have their own SSL Certs, does the migration handle this?
  3. They are worried about current customers not liking or being able to figure out the VM interface. (I have a meeting with them to show them the interface of my box). They did not like the VM demo site, which doesn’t seem to be getting reset as its currently (I just checked) all in Russian.
  4. How does the migration handle things like installed software/apps on the cPanel server?
  5. How hard is the migration process (probably related to #1)
  6. Is there anything special (tips/tricks) they need to know going into the migration.
  7. Is there any ‘dry run’ or ‘emulation’ test they can run to see how VM will handle the migration.
  8. Do Joe/Jamie help if there is a problem? They have always been good to ME when there was a problem with my vm.
  9. How long will it take for the migration?
  10. How does the migration work? Do they point it to their cPanel, work off of a backup or ?
  11. They have a target time period of 2 hours to make the transition (50 sites), is this feasible?

I think the answers to these questions along with my personal demo to them will be very helpful for them to make an informed decision. They are tired of cPanel and its problems. On another note, the data center I currently use (I just found this out) no longer supports cPanel and have moved to VM!!! Awesome job guys! This data center is one of the best in Portland, OR. and hosts many of the downtown businesses.

Thanks much,
Steve

2

Hi Steve,

First off, a buddy of mine recently migrated 25 servers from cPanel and he said it worked great (his exact words were "it worked without a hitch").

Outside of that – I know I’m skipping a few questions here, but my recommendation is that when you’re dealing with production sites, you simply can’t beat actually running the migration and knowing/experiencing exactly what you’ll run into.

What you might consider doing is setting up a Linux server in the free VMware Server software (I have one running on my desktop, for example) – and after doing a fresh install of your distro, run the Virtualmin install script, and then practice the migration.

Then you don’t have to rely on the experiences of others for your production data, you can say to these folks “I ran the migration, we saw these issues, and it takes 1 hour to complete”.

You’d also be able to show it to them, so they don’t have to try and read the Russian on the demo site :wink:

The migration would be done using the cPanel backup tarballs. There some info on that here:

http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/id,virtualmin_for_cpanel_users/

I hope that helps… have a good one!
-Eric

3

Hey Steve,

I’ll chime in, but hope others will, as well.

2) All sites have their own SSL Certs, does the migration handle this?

Yes, they should. Let us know if they don’t, and we’ll fix it.

3) They are worried about current customers not liking or being able to figure out the VM interface. (I have a meeting with them to show them the interface of my box). They did not like the VM demo site, which doesn't seem to be getting reset as its currently (I just checked) all in Russian.

We can’t change what they’re used to, but I can fix the demo site. :wink:

It is a very real problem that our problem set is complicated…and when it comes to complicated software, “intuitive” means “what I’m used to”. We’re confident that if people spend some time learning Virtualmin, they’ll like it better than cPanel. But many folks don’t want to expend that effort and time–and I can’t blame them. Sometimes what you know is better for you than a better product that you don’t know.

What we can say with absolute confidence is that Virtualmin Professional is the most powerful tool on the market. There is simply nothing else that does more. But, if someone only needs what a competing product does, and they’re familiar with it, then maybe Virtualmin is not the right solution for them.

4) How does the migration handle things like installed software/apps on the cPanel server?

This one is tricky. It brings them over, and they should continue to work with little or no modification, but it doesn’t bring them under control of the Virtualmin Install Scripts interface (which is bug-like, but hard to avoid, since it’s impossible for us to know exactly how it was installed and whether we can safely pretend like it was installed “our way”).

5) How hard is the migration process (probably related to #1)

It should be about like restoring a backup. cPanel migrations are the best tested, and so are expected to be pretty reliable. We welcome bug reports, and Jamie fixes problems pretty fast…usually in time for you to make use of the fixed version for the rest of your restores.

6) Is there anything special (tips/tricks) they need to know going into the migration.

Plan it just like you would any other system migration: shorten DNS TTL, so when you change IPs it’ll take up faster, plan to add redirect rules in Apache if a few hours of unavailability due to DNS propagation is unacceptable, be sure to test the new system before relying on it.

7) Is there any 'dry run' or 'emulation' test they can run to see how VM will handle the migration.

Just run it and test it. If it fails, delete the virtual server and try it again, after talking to us about any errors or problems. You’ve got to plan for some time for testing anyway before you flip the switch–even if you were going from one machine to an exactly identical one, you still need to test to be sure all necessary data has come over correctly. Moving from one system to a pretty distinctly different one means you have to test a little more heavily and expect more issues to be resolved. But it shouldn’t be too bad–cPanel is a more limited system than Virtualmin, and so the differences you’ll generally see are just more capabilities and somewhat more modern practices (our group policy, for example, is a bit more modern than cPanel and takes advantage of modern Linux systems), but functionality should generally go in the “more” direction rather than “less”.

8) Do Joe/Jamie help if there is a problem? They have always been good to ME when there was a problem with my vm.

Let’s just say you’ve never received special treatment just because we’ve known you for a while. How we’ve treated you is about how everyone is treated. We try pretty hard to make sure everybody is happy with our products. If they aren’t, we apologize for wasting their time, and give them a full refund.

9) How long will it take for the migration?

That depends on so many factors that it’s impossible to say.

For 50 sites plan for 10 days, and be pleasantly surprised when it’s done in a couple of afternoons.

4

I left off the last two. Oops.

10) How does the migration work? Do they point it to their cPanel, work off of a backup or ?

Migrations are done using cPanel backups.

11) They have a target time period of 2 hours to make the transition (50 sites), is this feasible?

No. But it wouldn’t be feasible going from cPanel to cPanel, either. It just takes longer than that to move from one server to another…dealing with IP addresses, testing of applications, etc.

The raw time of migrating could certainly be that short, if the data is small–but testing takes human time, and making sure DNS does the right thing is also tricky. And, of course, if you really want to insure uptime, you need a redirect on all of the old sites to insure that they get redirected to the new, even if a client gets the old DNS information.

5
They are tired of cPanel and its problems. On another note, the data center I currently use (I just found this out) no longer supports cPanel and have moved to VM!!! Awesome job guys! This data center is one of the best in Portland, OR. and hosts many of the downtown businesses.

Awesome! I’m always happy to hear it. If they aren’t already in our partner program, be sure to let them know that we’d be happy to set them up. Even if they’re generally using Virtualmin GPL (which we’re totally happy about) being able to sell upward to Professional for their customers that need it might be a nice additional revenue stream.

6

Thanks for the quick replies, I know she is reading the answers. One good thing is that all of these sites are running an application called ClearCart (www.clearcart.com) which is shopping cart software, so if we know that works then most of the sites will work as is as most of them ONLY run that software (thats what the server is FOR). We plan on doing a dry run sometime on my vm box. The data center seemed to think it would take over a 100 hours for them to do the migration, and at $150/hr that isn’t feasible. Maybe the DC isn’t using the VM PRO. He also thought that going from Exim to dovecot would be problematic. Hopefully the dry run goes smoothly and we won’t need their ‘assistance’. :slight_smile:

Thanks again,
I love VM and Im sure she will too.

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The data center seemed to think it would take over a 100 hours for them to do the migration, and at $150/hr that isn't feasible.

Yeah, that’d be a costly migration, indeed!

But, I understand their concern, if they’ve not dealt with it before. Things sometimes have a way of ballooning into nightmare proportions when you least expect it. But, we stand by you on migrations–if they don’t work, it’s our hours spent fixing the underlying problems, not yours trying to workaround bugs. That said, you should expect the migration to take a couple of runs through to actually get it all working perfectly–we get better support every time someone does a migration, and we’ve done hundreds of them now so they’re pretty good, but things go wrong. Plan for a couple of iterations, where you send us a bug report and a backup that exhibits the problem wait a few hours, and then try it again. If you try to “power through”, rather than just asking us for help, you’ll probably end up exhausted and angry with us. We see that sometimes…folks imagining we’re like every other control panel vendor and will ignore their bugs for a few months until the next release. :wink:

We plan on doing a dry run sometime on my vm box.

Excellent plan.

Maybe the DC isn't using the VM PRO.

Migrations work on Virtualmin GPL, as well…obviously without the Professional features, so it’s a little less fun to upgrade into. Hopefully they know we’ll help them if they run into any problems doing migrations into Virtualmin Professional.

He also thought that going from Exim to dovecot would be problematic.

I don’t believe that causes any issues, in general. Scott recently did a migration that seems to have had some issues with IMAP folders, but we haven’t actually figured out the details of that one yet. If the mailboxes don’t use IMAP folders, there definitely won’t be any issues (and if they do have folders, get in touch with us in the ticket tracker and we’ll help you work out what needs to be done to make the migration).

8

Joe, you do know you and Jamie rock, don’t you? =)

Thank you for that build of confidence there. I know you view problems like I do, an opportunity to learn. I hope the money is starting to come in because you guys sure deserve it. You run your customer service like she runs hers. great support

-Steve

9

i have no experience in migrating cPanel.
However I did use cPanel as I did Plesk.
Im happy I switched to VM Pro. I found the panel very intuitive.

The other panels have many bright colors but frankly I like the Blue Framed VM theme better as it gives a clearer look on things.
What I had to get used to is that VM gives way more power than the other panels.

I also have a demo running in English at www.izihost.biz
Feel free to look around and good luck on migrating.