Why Upgrading to EasyApache4 Will Make Your Life Easier

I’d like to talk about some of the great new features coming to your WHM/cPanel servers. One great feature, in particular, is EasyApache4. EasyApache is a software available on your WHM/cPanel server that allows you to rebuild your Apache/PHP environment with different versions and modules of Apache and PHP. EasyApache4 is the updated version of EasyApache which comes with a ton of new features to make your life easier.
The biggest new feature in EasyApache4 that I feel you guys will love is the fact that it allows multiple versions of PHP to be installed. No longer are you limited to just having one version of PHP on your server. You can now set PHP versions on a per account basis, ranging from 5.4 to 7.1. I feel this feature is going to help a lot of website resellers further expand their offerings by allowing their customers to pick whichever PHP version is best suited for their website.
Another great feature about EasyApache4 is that it is RPM based, which means the updates are automatic and rebuilding is much faster. No longer will you need to go through the grueling time-consuming process of rebuilding your Apache/PHP stack every few weeks to secure yourself from the latest vulnerabilities. The automatic update process is done every night when your server downloads and installs the latest packages that are released by cPanel. Also since its now RPM based, rebuilding your profiles can be done in less than a minute.
This makes the EasyApache4 way faster than the previous EasyApache3. EasyApache4 includes PHP7 support for people looking to have the latest and greatest offering from PHP. PHP7 has huge speed improvements over PHP5 and can increase speeds by 30-40% on existing websites.
If you are still running EasyApache3 and would like to update to EasyApache4 to get all the latest and greatest features that WHM/cPanel has to offer, you can run the following script from command line to update your own server: /scripts/migrate_ea3_to_ea4
This will automatically update your EasyApache3 installation to an EasyApache4 installation. If you are having compatibility issues with the software there is also a way to uninstall EasyApache4 and revert back to EasyApache3.
/scripts/migrate_ea3_to_ea4 --revert --run
While EasyApache4 is terrific and I recommend it to all new users, there have been a few downsides that I have seen which might prevent you from wanting to update right away. With the new version of EasyApache, you are forced to use version 2.4 of Apache. Apache 2.2 is no longer supported in this version so if you need it for whatever reason, you are out of luck.
The other big feature that I noticed was missing was FCGI. It looks like they have disabled the option to have all your websites run on FCGI globally on the server. The way they are doing things now is you must pair FCGI with PHP-FPM, and set it up manually for each account. This can be a tedious process for those who have hundreds of accounts on their servers. Do not fret though as I hear in the new 60 version of WHM/cPanel this will become all automated and available. They are also going to put global FCGI back as an option due to all the requests from their users for it.
Looking for a step by step on how to migrate how to migrate EasyApache 4 profiles between cPanel servers? Check out this guide.
If you have any further questions about EasyApache or want to get it installed on your server, give us a call at (800) 561-2656 (Option 2) to speak with your GigeNET support team.