Installation & activation

Upload the module, activate the addon, and add a license key. ImpulseDB Postgres is fully license-gated — until your key is verified, only the Dashboard tab and Diagnostics → License work, and orders are refused.

Time: ~10 min · Requires: WHMCS 9.0+ · PHP 8.2–8.4 · ImpulseCore 1.61.13+

1. Prerequisites

• WHMCS 9.0 or later on PHP 8.2, 8.3 or 8.4.
• ImpulseCore 1.61.13+ — the shared Impulse addon. ImpulseDB Postgres depends on it for licensing, project membership, hook dispatch, the cron runner, audit, and the Security & Maintenance pipeline. Install and activate impulsecore before activating ImpulseDB Postgres.
• ionCube Loader 13+ for your PHP version. The distributed module files are encoded.
• File access to the WHMCS server to upload the release, and ideally a system cron entry for ImpulseCore’s cron runner (step 6).
• A VPS provider account with an API token that can create and destroy servers: Vultr, Hetzner Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or Proxmox VE.
• A DNS provider account — Cloudflare (recommended), AWS Route 53, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode or Hetzner DNS. Used for per-server and per-database hostname records and Let’s Encrypt DNS-01 challenges.

You do not need an SSH key. Database servers are managed through a scoped Admin Proxy on each server. SSH is a HIGH RISK break-glass option that is off by default (Settings → General & Access → Break-Glass Access); turn it on only for rescue work.

Verify ionCube first

Run php -m | grep -i ionCube with the PHP binary your WHMCS uses: /opt/plesk/php/8.3/bin/php on Plesk, /opt/cpanel/ea-php83/root/usr/bin/php on cPanel, or /usr/bin/php (whatever which php returns) on a plain Linux server. No output means the loader is missing — enable it under Tools & Settings → PHP Settings on Plesk or in WHM’s PHP extension settings on cPanel, or install the loader from ioncube.com and add its zend_extension line to php.ini.

2. Upload the files

Extract the release archive into the WHMCS root:

cd /path/to/whmcs
unzip /tmp/impulsepostgres-<version>.zip

You’ll get the standard layout: modules/servers/impulsepostgres/ for the server module, modules/addons/impulsepostgres_addon/ for the admin UI, and includes/hooks/impulsepostgres_hooks.php. There are no cron scripts to install — the module’s background tasks are registered with ImpulseCore’s cron runner:

• provision — every 2 minutes, advances every in-flight resource (dedicated servers, shared servers, replicas) through setup → DNS → Let’s Encrypt → online.
• usage — hourly, samples database size and connections, enforces storage quotas, takes a pg_dump backup of every active database, and prunes expired backups.
• alert_detection — hourly, flags oversold capacity, stalled tasks, provisioning failures, an expiring license and self-signed certificates.
• pg_upgrade — every 5 minutes, runs PostgreSQL major-version upgrades customers requested and you approved.

Make sure the WHMCS web user can read everything, then move on.

3. Activate the addon

1. System Settings → Addon Modules.
2. Find ImpulsePostgres in the list and click Activate.
3. Set Access Control → Full Administrator (or whichever admin role(s) should see the addon).
4. Click Save Changes.

What activation does

Activation creates the module’s core mod_impulsepostgres_* tables (the rest are created the first time you open the addon), seeds four example plans flagged “(Example — configure before selling)” that you can edit or delete, seeds default settings, and registers the module with ImpulseCore. ImpulseCore finds the module’s SecurityCollector, SecurityActuator, ServerCollector and ServerActuator classes on its own, so the Security & Maintenance pipeline picks the module up on its next cron run.

License gating

Until your license key is verified, every tab except the Dashboard and Diagnostics → License shows a License Required notice linking to ImpulseCore’s Licenses page, new orders fail to provision, and the client area shows a license notice.

4. Enter your license key

Licensing is handled by ImpulseCore:

1. Open Addons → ImpulseCore → Modules & Licensing → Licenses.
2. Paste your license key (starts with IPGRES-) into the ImpulsePostgres row.
3. Click Save. ImpulseCore validates the key against the licensing server and records your WHMCS install’s domain the first time it validates — you don’t enter the domain anywhere.
4. The row shows the license as active, with the registered domain. In the addon, Diagnostics → License shows the same status, tier and features, with a link back to ImpulseCore.

A successful check is cached for 24 hours. If the licensing server can’t be reached, the license keeps working for a 7-day grace period.

5. Walk the Setup Checklist

Back on the Dashboard, the First-Time Setup panel detects what’s configured and what’s missing, and marks which steps are required. Each item links straight to the right form. The main ones:

• License key.
• WHMCS server IP (so the firewall and pg_hba.conf on each database server admit the WHMCS host).
• VPS provider connection — see the providers guide for the per-vendor steps.
• DNS hostname template, DNS provider and Let’s Encrypt email.
• Plans configured (and, optionally, synced to WHMCS).
• Provisioning cron and usage & backup cron — these read ImpulseCore’s cron status and link to it.
• Break-glass SSH keys — only required if you turn break-glass SSH on.

The panel hides itself once every item is done.

6. Install ImpulseCore’s cron entry

The module has no crontab lines of its own. Its tasks run whenever ImpulseCore’s runner ticks. Open ImpulseCore → Operations → Cron → Automation & Setup for the exact line to add to the system crontab — it runs modules/addons/impulsecore/cron/runner.php every 5 minutes with your PHP binary:

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /path/to/whmcs/modules/addons/impulsecore/cron/runner.php

Replace /usr/bin/php with your PHP binary (see the ionCube check above) and /path/to/whmcs with your install directory.

No system cron access?

ImpulseCore also runs due tasks whenever WHMCS’s own cron fires, so the module still works without the line — tasks just run on WHMCS’s schedule instead of every few minutes.