This is the instruction for restarting the VPS or Dedicated server using the WHM panel or SSH connection. Dedicated server users can restart their servers directly from the client account, but if that is not enough, you can learn how to do this in alternative ways.

Why is it necessary to restart the server?

There are several reasons why and when to restart the server. This is most often because of software update or when you want to test the ability to reboot the server. If you do not have a test server for measurement and testing, the restart on the production server starts at least activity hours, or during the night.

Ultimately, a restart can be a solution to the big problem when no other option yields results.

There are several ways to restart the server:

Restart Dedicated server from a client account

The dedicated server users can easily restart their server directly from the client account. You do not need to use WHM or SSH here, it’s enough to log on to your client account and go to the server service you use.

Here you can restart the server by clicking on the Reboot button:

Note: Reboot is applied in the case when the problem can not be solved otherwise. During the restart, your site and e-mails will not work.

How to restart WHM services?

If the situation permits you, you can restart certain services in WHM without restarting the entire server.

Just log in to your WHM panel and type “restart” in the search box.

In the search results below, you can see the Restart Services section where you can restart separately: DNS Server, FTP Server, HTTP Server (Apache), IMAP Server, Mail Server (Exim), PHP-FPM and SQL Server (MySQL).

This option is recommended if you have identified the “culprit” for the problem on the server and you know that restarting this service will restore the server to the function. For example, if you have a problem with the Mail Server, you will not restart the entire server, but only Exim.

Example: To restart the Mail server, click Mail Server (Exim), and then click Yes. Immediately, the mail server will be restarted.

How to do System Reboot from WHM?

Unlike the restart service, System Reboot will start restarting the entire server and all services on it. Keep in mind what this means and distinguish two ways in which to do this.

In both cases, you need to log on to WHM and type “restart” or “system reboot” in the search box. The section you are looking for is System Reboot.

• Graceful Server Reboot – this is a useful option because this restart method allows the server to first close all “user-level” processes and save information about it before the system restarts.
• Forceful Server Reboot – this mode restarts the server regardless of processes that are active. Any errors that can occur when restarting in this way will be ignored here.

Pay attention and always apply the way that your situation allows. Do not apply Forceful Server Reboot unless you need it.

How to restart services via SSH?

When it happens that you are unable to access via WHM and thus restart the services, try to connect to the server using SSH. If the connection is correct, you can restart the individual services using the command in the following model:

• For servers with CentOS, CloudLinux ™, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6, or Amazon Linux, use the service path (replace the service with the name of a specific service):

/etc/init.d/service restart

• For servers with CentOS 7, CloudLinux 7, or RHEL 7, use the following command where the service-name name of the service you want to restart is:

systemctl restart service-name.service

How to run System Reboot via SSH-a?

Leave this way as the last option:

• Log in with SSH
• To restart the server, type the following command:

sudo reboot
Keep in mind that it’s easiest to type in these two words mentioned above, make sure you’ve checked other solutions well before that.

Be careful before any decision

If you do not have a developer that maintains your site and administrator to maintains server for you, be careful when deciding to restart the server. Users can come up with the idea to restart a server when a site does not work due to an error in the program code of the site, so keep in mind that the restart in this case will not solve the problem. In particular, in this case, the problem will be solved by updating the code on the site.

Adriahost provides the service of Dedicated and VPS servers from one of the best data centers in the world. The offer includes both servers running Linux and servers that support Windows operating systems. Depending on the needs of clients, a WHM/cPanel control panel is available, but operating systems such as Ubuntu, FreeBSD or CentOS can be installed upon request.

For questions and assistance, feel free to contact us using our contact form.