Transfer Tool

Valid for versions 118 through 122

Version:

118

124

Last modified: October 22, 2024

Overview

If you have root access or privileges with the sudo or su commands, you can use this interface to copy one or more cPanel accounts, packages, and configurations from a source server to a destination server.

Before getting started

If you only possess user credentials and do not have root access or privileges, use WHM’s Transfer or Restore a cPanel Account interface (WHM » Home » Transfers » Transfer or Restore a cPanel Account).

If you only want to transfer a cPanel license’s IP address from one server to another, read our Only Transfer IP Address documentation.

If you have root access or privileges and want to copy one or more cPanel accounts, packages, or configurations from a source server to a destination server, review the following tips before you use the Transfer Tool feature:

Warnings

• Do not shut down or restart any processes on either server during the transfer and restoration process.
• Do not start a transfer during a system update (upcp) or start a system update during a transfer. The system update will fail.
• If one of the accounts that you wish to transfer uses Microsoft® FrontPage® on the source server, we strongly recommend that you disable FrontPage for that account before you attempt to transfer the account. cPanel & WHM does not support FrontPage, and the restoration process does not restore FrontPage-specific files and directories.
• Due to networking requirements, you cannot run an IPv6-only cPanel & WHM server. You must have at least one IPv4 address.

DNS transfers

• The Transfer Tool feature replaces the source server’s files with the destination server’s zone files when the following conditions are true:
  • The destination server resides in the same Domain Name System (DNS) cluster as the source server.
  • The source server and the DNS nodes use the Synchronized Changes DNS role. For more information about DNS clusters, read our DNS Cluster documentation.
• The Transfer Tool feature does not transfer the DNS zone templates. If custom DNS zone templates exist on the source server, the system ignores these zone templates when it recreates the account on the destination server. For more information, read our The Transfer Process documentation.
• Account transfers process AAAA records differently than A records.
• The destination server will not alter AAAA records that point to servers other than the source server or servers related to the source.
• A destination server without IPv6 enabled will strip locally-managed AAAA records that pointed to the source server.
• A destination server with IPv6 enabled will point any remote-related AAAA record to the account’s shared IPv6 address in the domain’s locally-managed zone file.

Data transfers

• The server disregards the Restrict document roots to public_html Tweak Setting setting during server transfers. The Transfer Tool retains any pre-transfer public_html/ directory structures, even those that place addon and subdomains document roots outside of the primary website’s document root. However, after the transfer, addon and subdomains that the restored user creates will adhere to this setting.
• Do not use the skip-name-resolve setting in your server’s MySQL® configuration. This setting can cause problems on any server. It will create more problems on source MySQL servers during account transfers.
• To use this feature, we strongly recommend that your source and destination servers are able to communicate over port 2087. For more information about the ports that cPanel & WHM uses, read our How to Configure Your Firewall for cPanel & WHM Services documentation.
• This feature does not transfer Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) configuration information for an account. The user will need to reconfigure 2FA on the new server.
• If you experience problems with session timeouts, increase the number of seconds in the Number of seconds an SSH connection related to an account transfer may be inactive before timing out setting in the System section of WHM’s Tweak Settings interface (WHM » Home » Server Configuration » Tweak Settings).
• We do not recommend that you transfer accounts with calendars or contacts data from a server that runs cPanel & WHM version 120 or later to a server that runs cPanel & WHM version 118 or earlier. If you do this, you will need to manually copy and import the accounts’ calendars and contacts data once the transfer has completed.

Important notes about account transfers from Plesk

The system will not transfer any email addresses from Plesk to cPanel & WHM that contain a plus sign (+) in the email username. The system will also not transfer any FTP accounts that contain an underscore (_) in the username.

To transfer accounts from Plesk, first change any forwarded domains to physical hosting accounts. To do this, run the following command as the root user:

/usr/local/psa/bin/domain --update example.com -hst_type phys -login "example" -hosting true -ip 127.0.0.1 -passwd "12345luggage"

• example.com represents the forwarding domain.
• example represents the new account’s username.
• 127.0.0.1 represents the new account’s IP address.
• 12345luggage represents the new account’s password.

If you need to convert several forwarding domains into hosting accounts, open a support ticket and our migration team will contact you.

Perform a transfer

To transfer one or more cPanel accounts, packages, and configurations from a source server to your destination cPanel & WHM server using the Transfer Tool, perform the following steps:

1. Prepare the source server.
2. Select what to transfer to your destination server.
3. Manually configure what isn’t automatically transferred.

Live Transfer

Use the Live Transfer feature to reduce downtime during account transfers. The interface enables this feature by default. The Live Transfer feature moves cPanel accounts to a new server and performs the following actions on the source server:

1. Updates the account’s A record to point to the destination server.
2. Changes the domain’s nameserver entries to point to the destination server.
3. Updates the email routing configuration’s MX records so that mail arrives at the destination server.
   Note:

   If the domain uses remote mail servers, the system will not update the MX records when it transfers the account.

4. Sends requests for certain services to the destination server. For example, the system can redirect web and mail traffic to the destination server.
   Note:

   • Mail services redirect to the child node, if applicable.
   • To disable service proxying, unsuspend the account on the source server.
5. Copy the mailbox data from the source server again.
6. Suspends the transferred accounts on the source server. For more information, read our What Happens When You Suspend an Account documentation. The system performs changes on the source server in the /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/xferpoint directory.
   Note:

   If you do not want to use this feature, you can use the swapip script to update the transferred accounts’ nameserver records.