Installing cPanel on a Xen virtual machine from a local ISO
Notes from building cPanel servers as Xen VMs from an ISO stored on the host, and what changed since.
From the archive: first published on mohamedsharaf.net in November 2014. Rewritten and checked in 2026; some details may be out of date.
Back then, the quickest way I found to build a new cPanel server as a Xen virtual machine was to keep the cPanel/CentOS installation ISO on the host itself, instead of downloading it for every new VM:
- Log in to the Xen host over SSH.
- Create a folder for ISO images, for example
/isolib, and download the installation ISO there. - Add that folder to Xen as an ISO library (storage repository).
- Create the VM, attach the ISO as its virtual CD, and install.
Every new server then installed from local disk in minutes.
Today: the cPanel CentOS ISOs are gone and CentOS 6 reached end of life long ago. cPanel now installs on AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux or Ubuntu, with the official installer script: cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest. Keeping a local image library is still a good habit for any hypervisor.