I have few dedicated servers and VPS across many leading vendors. (Wired Tree, LiquidWeb, lpdedicated.com). I usually have four medium e-commerce sites per Hybrid servers and one of my customer, as it is often the case, spent money advertising and received a lot of traffic and orders. It was great for him but my other customer started complaining. So, I had to find a solution fast while minimizing down time and have everyone happy.

It has been in my mind to try Liquid Web new cloud server hosting, http://www.stormondemand.com/. I thought that my situation would be ideal to solve the problem on hand. So the traffic continued to slow down the existing server (cpu intensive due to db transactions), and I immediately move the second biggest e-commerce site to LiquidWeb. I left the busy site alone since they were getting orders and let just say that you don’t want to interrupt that process.

Below, I have outlined the steps I took to move a site from an existing hybrid vps server (WHM) to a Cloud server (WHM). The transition was very smooth and I am very happy to know that my customers are happy and I can rely on a vendor such as LiquidWeb. Our mutual goal is to provide top notch service. I now have the ability to meet the growing demands of my customers and continue providing reliable web hosting that match our excellent web master services. Thank you LiquidWeb!

These were the steps. (let me know if you want more details)

1. In WHM, I immediately lowered the TTL value for the domain and A record. I lowered them from 14400 to 300.

2. I ordered the new cloud hosting from LiquidWeb
A) An easy process which took about ½ hour.
B) WHM was really setup when I first login. I made some standard changes to make it more secure.
C) I immediately sent request to “support” about wanting an additional IP address (I received a 15 minutes response). The ticket creation is within the cloud control panel which makes it very convenient.
D) The cloud control panel (in networking option tab) allowed me to request the IP (wrote down the IP).
E) In WHM, I added the new IP address.

3. I set a friendly message in old server for visitors to come back again in two hours (this is to backup the e-commerce database). I immediately did step 4.

4. From the new SET UP server and WHM, I copied the account from another server.

5. WHM copied all settings from the other server and apply an available IP address

6. Re-installed the SSL in the new server

7. Set rDNS for user’s domain within the cloud hosting control panel. I also added/updated entry for the domain in WHM

8. I immediately verified and edited the A record on the old server to point to the new server location.

9. It took approximately about 2 hours for the DNS propagation to take place.

10. The moved was smooth and customer was taking order as soon as the propagation took place.

PROS
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1. Fast migration
2. Liquid web team are very helpful and courteous. The ticket system is fast! The guys are available 24/7 and ready to listen for any issues.
3. The cloud server control panel is easy to navigate. See screen shots below.
4. The servers are very fast! Excellent options to configure the server in any way you want to. The default installation of WHM/Cpanel is clean and flexible enough to implement any owner’s preferences.

CONS
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1. This is going to sound weird but I can not find one right now. Stay tune or come back later and ask me.
2. Perhaps, I wish some bandwidth was included. Like 25-50 or even 100gig per month.

Screen shots
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