Before you install cPanel & WHM or cPanel DNSONLY™, make certain that your system meets all of our minimum requirements for new installations.
Networking requirements
Component
Minimum requirement
Hostname
A registered fully-qualified hostname that does not match any of your server's domains and resolves to a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address.
IP addresses
A valid IP address.
A valid subnet address.
A default gateway IP address.
A 1:1 NAT configuration if you server resides in a NAT-configured network.
Ethernet device
A properly-configured Ethernet device with a static IP address and fully-qualified hostname.
Warning:
You cannot use an IP address that a DHCP service dynamically assigns to your server.
Firewalls
You must disable OS firewalls before you run the cPanel & WHM installation. When the installation process finishes, configure your firewall with a third-party client. We recommend that you use APF or CSF.
Important:
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CloudLinux™, CentOS, and Amazon® Linux distributions allow you to disable the firewall for the operating system’s installation configuration. We strongly recommend that you use this method.
Deactivate firewalls on CentOS, CloudLinux, and RHEL 6...
Deactivate firewalls on CentOS, CloudLinux, and RHEL 7...
Utilities
You must disable Network Manager before you run the cPanel & WHM installation. The Network Manager service automates the network's settings and disrupts connections to the IP addresses that reside in the ipaliases module.
Warnings:
Disable Network Manager from the server's console to prevent any interruption to network connectivity.
Exercise extreme caution when you run the commands to disable Network Manager. If you do not follow them exactly, your server may lose its network services.
Hardware requirements
Minimum Recommended
Operating system:
CentOS, CloudLinux, or RHEL 6
OS version Processor:
1.1 GHz
RAM:
768 MB 1 GB 2 GB
Disk Space:
20 GB 40 GB
Architecture:
64-bit
Amazon Linux
All versions.
OS version Processor:
1.1 GHz
RAM:
768 MB 1 GB 2 GB
Disk Space:
20 GB 40 GB
Architecture:
64-bit
Hardware considerations
When you choose a server, consider the following questions:
How many sites do you plan to host?
Servers that host a large number of websites with associated email addresses and databases require more processing power, disk space, and RAM.
What kind of web hosting do you plan to do?
You can run cPanel & WHM with the minimum requirements below, but servers that host videos, music, or high-volume applications require more processing power, disk space, and RAM.
Notes: The cPanel & WHM installation and upgrade processes require at least 3 GB of additional disk space for staging purposes.
Before the installation process begins, the system checks to ensure that your server meets these minimum memory requirements. If your server does not meet these requirements, the installation process will return an error message and then exit.
Operating systems
Note: cPanel, L.L.C. supports all of the official production release kernels for these operating systems.
We currently support CentOS versions 6.5 or later.
Notes: Installations of cPanel & WHM on CentOS servers must use CentOS version 6.5 or later.
We recommend that you use the minimal installer, especially if you choose to install CentOS 7.
We currently support CloudLinux versions 6 and 7.
Warning:
We strongly recommend that you install cPanel & WHM on a basic CloudLinux installation. Certain CloudLinux features, such as CageFS, MySQL® Governor, and LVE Manager, modify cPanel & WHM when you install them. Because of this, we also recommend that you customize your CloudLinux installation after you install cPanel & WHM.
Note: For more information about CloudLinux installation, read CloudLinux's Getting Started with CloudLinux OS documentation.
We currently support Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6 and 7.
Notes: Installations of cPanel & WHM on RHEL servers must use RHEL version 6 or higher. cPanel, L.L.C. does not support installation on Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI) systems.
We currently support Amazon Linux.
To install Amazon Linux, follow the instructions in the Amazon Web Services documentation.
Warning:
We only support Amazon Linux on the official cPanel & WHM AMI. To find this AMI, navigate to the cPanel & WHM AMI download in the AWS™ marketplace.
We strongly recommend that you do not install cPanel & WHM on servers that rely on snapshot data (for example, Amazon EC2™ Spot Instances). When these servers revert to use snapshot data, the system detects this action as a uniqueness change. This behavior causes these servers' cPanel & WHM licenses to lock due to the uniqueness changes for that server's cPanel & WHM license. A locked license disables a cPanel & WHM server.
Disable SELinux
If your server runs an operating system from a source other than the cPanel & WHM installer, you must disable SELinux to make your system compatible with cPanel & WHM.
To disable SELinux security features, use one of the following methods:
Use the graphical interface to disable SELinux while you configure your operating system, and then reboot the server.
Edit the /etc/selinux/config file to set the SELINUX parameter to disabled, and then reboot the server.