This article is only relevant when advised about a server migration which may impact your service.
Planned server migrations will copy all customer data from one server to another, including email addresses and mail stored on the server, websites and files as well as databases.
As these are quite a major tasks, we have some pointers where things may not work fully after the change and these are usually commonly occurring problems which are easily resolved.
- Use of Third Party Name Servers
- If
you use name servers from a third party such as CloudFlare, you will
need to manually update your DNS records to the new server IP. This IP
will be found within the notification we sent out advising of the date
of your migration.
- If you have a dedicated IP, you will also
need to make the same change but the IP cannot be confirmed until after
the site has been migrated. This can be found within cPanel on the
statistics panel to the left.
- Use of Third Party Mail Servers
- If
you use mail servers from a third party such as Google Mail, you'll
need to ensure that you have set your MX entries correctly in cPanel to
"remote". This will prevent the server overwriting any unexpected MX
records when set to "local" or "automatic" where it expects the server
to be the only MX entry.
- Outbound Email Authentication
- If
you send mail via the server, you will need to ensure that your mail
client is configured to use SMTP authentication following the move. This
will be required for improved security. If you receive a message that
your client cannot send mail following the change, please alter your
account settings accordingly. Often seen as a checkbox with "my outbound
server requires authentication" or "authentication: password" in your
outbound server settings.
- Outbound Email SSL
- In addition to authentication required for outbound email, we will
also require connections to be secure to the server from the migration
date. This means using SSL or TLS via port 465 or 587 respectively. We
also recommend secure connections for incoming email on ports 993 and
995 but this is not compulsory at this time.
- MySQL User Passwords
- If
you get an error after migration regarding your MySQL password, it is
possible you are using an old format and this will need to be reset in
cPanel within the MySQL icon.
- Direct Use of IPs
- Should you be using the server IP directly in applications or remote
clients, please remember to use the new value after the migration is
complete. The old server will remain online for a short time after.
- File Uploads
- We recommend turning off the ability for your sites or users to
upload new data just before the start of the migration window. When data
is copied, this may mean that some data uploaded immediately after is
not copied. We will do all we can to limit this.
- PHP Version
- Our
default PHP version will be the latest stable after the move, if you have set an
older or newer version, you will need to change these via the Multi PHP
options in cPanel after the move.
- MySQL Password
- If
you are using an old MySQL user password, this will need to be reset in
cPanel after the migration to ensure it uses the new password standard.
This can be done by simply saving the password for the same value in
cPanel and any database connections will work normally thereafter.
Should you have any issues that are not resolved by checking the above, please do contact our support team and we will be happy to assist further after the migration window has passed.
