CWP to CWP Migration (upgrading RHEL7 to 8) - What a mess!

I'm sharing this information for others who face a similar challenge.

Recently I migrated 3 CWP servers from RHEL7 to Rocky Linux 8.

What a mess!

If you upgrade from same host name to same host name (separate machines) the whole CWP to CWP migration process doesn't work since SSH keys can't be successfully exchanged, so we're off to manual mode.

Backed up all the accounts from old servers and then copied them to new servers.
Trying to restore those backups is clunky as the "NEW Backup (Beta)" - Restore Account requires a new directory to be created before it will see the backups... even though I put them into /newbackup and it was also there in the Restore area.

Restoring some backups just didn't work. The error was "Failed to restore backup" with no further information. Nothing in the logs.
Once you try to restore a backup once it often won't let you restore the same account again - even if it is deleted and directories are removed. I ended up restoring some accounts to alternat CWP servers just to get them working again.

Then PHP.... geez what a nightmare!

The PHP Switcher works fine, but the PHP Selecter and PHP FPM is a clunky mess.
Often when building PHP FPM, when complete I refresh the page and it shows nothing installed!

I won't discuss mod security not working properly, I just disabled it for the affected accounts which wouldn't even load their home page (plain index.html).

Yes I did reach out to Support. They told me to purchase a support plan. WTF.
Backup and Restore should work out of the box without dramas.

Disappointed.

Hate to say it, but support is correct.
You're asking them to do sys admin work.

Why did you name the new server with the same hostname?
You never do this, because it will always cause conflicts.

You could have name it something like hostname2 temporarily, moved the accounts, shut the old server down, then rename the new server to the old hostname and update your DNS A records.

The Backups & Restores are meant for the same server, so if a client deletes something, a restore can be done.

Backup and restore should work out of the box. If there are issues it should show what the issue is, not "an error occurred".

What we did when upgrading from CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8 was bring up a temporary server (with a different hostname), used the CWP to CWP Migration tool to move the accounts, imaged the server (for backup), then did a fresh install of AL 8 and migrated the accounts back over.

Yes, it was a pain.
But no data was lost, and it was done within our maintenance window.

Backup & Restore is a great tool if a client messes something up, you can restore their website backup to how it was the previous day, week, month, etc.

That's a great idea, I will do that next time.

Overall the CWP product is good, it's just lacking in some key areas that would really make life easier.