Migrate cPanel to Virtualmin

We can easily migrate a cPanel server account to a Virtualmin server running on any Vultr VPS. The following steps involve taking a full backup on the cPanel server, then using the “Migrate Virtual Server” option on the Virtualmin server. The cPanel backup can be directly dumped on Virtualmin server with SCP, or the file could be downloaded to your workstation and then uploaded to the Virtualmin server. The SCP method is recommended, as the backup file is transferred from server to server, which generally has very high speed internet connectivity.

cPanel server steps

Login to cPanel.

Navigate to “Backups”.

Select “Full Backup”.

• “Destination”, select “SCP”.
• “notification email”, input an email address where you can receive email about completion of backup.
• “server” field, input the IP address of your Virtualmin Server on a Vultr VPS.
• “user” field, input: root
• “password” field, input the root password.
• “port”, input: 22
• “folder”, input: /root

Click “Generate Backup”. After the backup has transferred to your Virtualmin server, you will get a notification email.

Virtualmin server steps

Login to Virtualmin.

Expand the “Add Servers” menu, and click on “Migrate Virtual Server” option.

In the source backup file, select “local file” and input the backup file name with its path prefix of /root/. For example, if your backup file name is:

backup-3.6.2015_23-16-51_cPanelUserName

… then your source will be:

/root/backup-3.6.2015_23-16-51_cPanelUserName

Note that if you had downloaded the cPanel backup file to your workstation, then here you would select “Upload to server”, and input the path of the file on your PC.

In “Backup file type”, select “cpanel backup.”

• “Domain name to migrate”, input the domain name.
• “Username for domain”, input the cPanel user name.
• “Password for administrator”, input the cPanel password.

For any of these 3 fields, don’t use “Work out from backup” – this feature is known to almost always fail.

In the remaining fields, select the options as deemed fit. Once you have finished customizing, click on the “Migrate Now” button.

Your cPanel server will now be recreated on the Virtualmin server.