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VPS and Dedicated Hosting: Restore or Transfer cPanel

If you need to transfer or restore a cPanel account for your VPS or Dedicated server, there is a powerful tool within the WHM panel to perform these tasks. For more information on logging into your WHM panel, please see VPS & Dedicated Hosting: Log in to WHM.

This article is about transferring or restoring from another server or restoring after a re-image. For more information about restoring from your cPanel generated backups, please see VPS & Dedicated Hosting: Restoring Backups.

From within the WHM panel, visit the Transfer or Restore a cPanel Account tool:

You can choose from 3 options available:

Restore from a local cpmove file
Select this option if the full cPanel backup file already exists on the server in one of the predefined locations such as /home or /root. Information on how to manage backups with SFTP can be found below:
Upload a file to restore
Select this option if you want to upload your backup file to the server and restore it from within this tool. This works with smaller backups. For larger backups use the Restore from a local cpmove file option.
Transfer from Remote cPanel Account
Select this option if you want to transfer a cPanel account directly from a remote cPanel server. You will need the IP address (or domain name) of the remote server, the cPanel username, and the cPanel password.

Please note: This tool is only available in cPanel 90 or later. Earlier versions of cPanel instead use the Restore a Full Backup/cpmove File tool to restore a backup and the Copy an Account From Another Server With an Account Password tool within your WHM panel to transfer your account directly from a remote cPanel server.

Restore a Full Backup/cpmove File

Similar to the more modern tool, this provides you with 2 options to restore:

Restore with Username
Select this option if the full cPanel backup file already exists on the server in one of the predefined locations such as /home or /root. As with the modern tool, this can be done using SFTP.
Restore with File
Select this option if you want to upload your backup file to the server and restore it from within this tool. This works with smaller backups. For larger backups, use the Restore with Username option.

Copy an Account From Another Server With an Account Password

With this tool, you will need the IP address (or domain name) of the remote server, the cPanel username, and the cPanel password.

If you do not already have a cPanel backup, you can generate a new backup from within your cPanel account. To learn more about how to do this, please refer to cPanel documentation.

On bluehost VPS and Dedicated accounts, a new backup can be generated through your bluehost panel:

Login to your bluehost account.
Go to the Hosting tab, and then the cPanel sub-tab.
Under the Files section, click on the Backups icon.
Click on the Download a Full Account Backup button.

In the event that you do not have enough space on your drive for the backup, you can also use the SCP option to save the backup to another server. Using SCP would be a simple way to copy a backup directly to another bluehost VPS or Dedicated server.

Please be aware that if you have uploaded any backups to your server to restore from, it is strongly recommended to delete those backups to free up space from your drive once the account restore has been completed.

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