I am tired of my server owner's network (Burst) always being down and want to switch to someone with another network.

How hard is it to transfer everything and could it be done easily with telnet access by the new server admin?

You can always use the backup options, it's quite easy really.

Your new host may be able to help you transfer your accounts over. I'm presuming that you are using CPanel/WHM if you are with Burst, so if you choose another provider who uses CPanel/WHM also you can use the CPanel transfer system which should work for most of your sites. :)

HTH,

Jo

If a transfer was to take place, do the Email accounts get transfered as well?

I have one customer with 100 email accounts.. and telling him he has to recreate them will not be a happy day.

Let me ask a followup,

With this transfer option, once the site is transferred, will it be active and fully functional seamlessly?

By that I mean, SQL databases transfer, email addresses and everything?

should be.

I just did this very same thing. The only thing you need to be aware of is that you will need to collect your email from 2 places whilst the DNS resolves. You can point your A records to your new server to speed this up...but typically you should collect mail from 2 places for at least a couple of days.

Apart from that...it truely is seamless....with the right host of course.

Simon

Hey, I have transfered a lot of my resellers sites and it collects everything! Probally one of the nicest tools ever. However, for very large sites, 400 mb + it seems to have problems.

I am going thru same process of moving clients off burst ;)

I have the help of the techs at new noc to transfer sites and a BN forums member (who transfered out) is willing to help me if needed.

I am going to share the walk-thru he made as it is awesome!!!
(hope he don't get mad)
Ready to transfer server providers?
24-48 hours before transfer:

1. Login to old server as root
2. cd /var/named
3. perl -pi.bak -e "s/14400/900/g" *.db
4. /etc/rc.d/init.d/named restart

Here we have edited every single dns zone and created a .bak of each (just in case you need to revert). Changing the TTL from 14400 (24 hours) to 900 (15 minutes) means that as soon as you make a change to a dns zone, it will take affect everywhere within 15 minutes as opposed to 24 hours. This will be helpful after transfering the account because we want the sites to be pointing to the new server ASAP so that file changes, new emails, etc all get to the new server and don't get "lost." Make sure that you do this though atleast 24 hours before starting the transfer, that is how long it will take the internet to "find out" that they need to check the dns server every 15 minutes instead of 24 hours. (I hope that made sense)

READY to Transfer? Here we go:

1. Login to WHM, click on copy multiple accounts
2. Fill out the info
3. Select the accounts to transfer, if you chose select all at the bottom note that you will assign every account it's own ip address unless you manually unselect assign ip address to the side of every account.
4. Sit back and relax

Transfers have completed, let's make the change happen! Here we go:

1. Login to old server as root
2. cd /var/named
3. perl -pi.bak -e "s/[oldip]/[newip]/g" *.db
4. /etc/rc.d/init.d/named restart

This will point all the sites to the newip. Hopefully most of your sites are on a shared ip. For all the accounts that are NOT on a shared ip you will need to copy the .db.bak for that domain to .db and edit it to reflect the new IP.
MAKE SURE that you restore the back up file (.db.bak) for the old server's hostname and namesevers, otherwise your DNS will be useless.

Transfer completed. Sites are functioning on new server, now transfer the nameservers! Here we go:

Be sure to set up your NEW nameservers on the NEW server (see setting up nameserver). WHM will only add an A record for the oldips (until you transfer the nameservers with the registrar) so you need to edit the DNS zone to reflect the new ips.

Submit the ip changes to your registrar and give it 48 hours to update. Within 48 hours your DNS will be served off your new server, thus you can cancel that old server with that host you couldn't wait to leave.


If you have resellers, copy all the files in /var/cpanel that reference resellers and anything ending in .accts to the new server.

GOOD LUCK! If ANY setup does not make sense to you I would suggest that you do some research or ask for some help before jumping in.