cPanel Deployment Project Plan
A Visual Guide for Migrating urbanmicro.com to a New Azure Server
Project Vitals at a Glance
4
Day Project Timeline
Oct 1, 2025 – Oct 4, 2025
B2s
Recommended Azure VM
2 vCPUs | 4 GiB RAM | >40GB SSD
1
Website to Migrate
urbanmicro.com
Phase 1: Infrastructure Deployment
The initial phase focuses on provisioning a robust and secure foundation on Microsoft Azure. This involves creating a virtual machine that meets cPanel’s requirements and configuring the network to allow necessary traffic while maintaining security.
Required Network Security Group Rules
| Service | Port | Source Access |
|---|---|---|
| WHM | 2087 | Administrator IP |
| cPanel | 2083 | Any |
| Web | 80, 443 | Any |
| 25, 110, 143, 465, 587, 993, 995 | Any |
This table highlights the critical ports that must be opened for cPanel and related services to function correctly. Restricting access to sensitive ports like WHM and SSH to your specific IP is a key security measure.
Phase 2: Installation & Hardening
With the infrastructure in place, the focus shifts to software. This phase covers the automated installation of the cPanel & WHM suite, followed by essential first-step security configurations to protect the server from common threats.
Key Hardening Actions
- 🛡️ Enable and Configure cPHulk Brute Force Protection.
- 🔥 Install and Configure ConfigServer Security & Firewall (CSF).
- 🔑 Change default SSH port and consider key-only authentication.
Project Task Distribution
This chart illustrates the number of distinct tasks within each project phase, showing how the workload is distributed across the deployment lifecycle. The “Go-Live” phase involves the highest number of individual steps, requiring careful coordination.
Project Timeline by Day
This visualization breaks down the 4-day project, allocating one full day to each major stage, from initial setup and migration to final monitoring and decommissioning.
Phase 3: Website Migration Flow
This is the core operational phase where the `urbanmicro.com` website is moved. The process involves a careful sequence of backing up data from the old server and restoring it within the newly created cPanel account on the new server.
Phase 4: Go-Live & Decommission
The final phase involves making the new server live to the public. This is achieved by updating the domain’s DNS record. After a monitoring period to ensure stability, the old server is permanently removed to complete the project.
Go-Live Checklist
- ✓ Conduct Pre-Go-Live testing using local hosts file.
- ✓ Update domain’s A Record to the new server IP.
- ✓ Run AutoSSL in cPanel to secure the site with HTTPS.
- ✓ Monitor site and server performance for 24-48 hours.
- ✓ Stop, then permanently delete the old Azure VM.