Plesk Reinstallation Questions

[ThorstenD]

Dear Community,

I'm currently running Plesk for Windows 10.4.4 on a Windows 2008 SP2 server.
Since my server gets into hardware problems i will have to replace my server by a new one in a few days.

On my current server my Plesk for Windows installation was updated several times (in the meantime 7 version upgrades).

Now I'm asking me about the best way to reinstall Plesk for Windows on my new machine and on how to getting back all my clients/domains/settings/mysql db's etc.

In the past I always used the Plesk Backup tool which was included in some earlier Plesk installations and available through the Plesk Programs in Windows.

But if i change my hardware i would also use the opportunity to change my operating system from Windows Server 2008 to R2.

What would be the best method to perform my hardware and OS change in order to still have all my Plesks data back?

Of course i will take an image of the whole system anyway and if anything else would go bad i could use an universal restored method to restore the images on other hardware.. but this way i will not have a clean new installation (with W2K8 R2) at the end.

Is there a way for a comfortable restore of all the plesk related data (including the DB's, web-contents, users, clients, domains, dns etc...) after a fresh operating system installation?

And would W2K8 R2 (with SP1) be the right choice for Plesk? Or should i further use W2K8 without R2?

My main questions therefore are:

- How to backup and restore afterwards onto a new system (hardware and OS changed) the whole Plesk content?
- Will Plesk 10.x (current 10.4.4) running fine with W2K8 R2 SP1?

I'm looking forward for your input/best practises...

Thanks and regards,

Thorsten

 

[ThorstenD]

Is there really nobody with some experiences or best practises?

- Will it work with the Plesk CP integrated Backup?
- Or maybe with the Migration Tool?

Thanks in advance..

 

[Plesk_kidv]

I would use the Plesk migration tool. Using Windows R2 is a good idea, I would make sure the new server has the same components as your old one too. Meaning if your old server has Horde webmail make sure the new one has it too as not having might prevent the account from being restored. Also, make sure your Server wide spam settings are the same on both servers and make sure the complex password security policy in Windows is the same between both servers. I have seen failed account transfers because of these two items. Once the accounts are transferred over you can use the Plesk reconfiguration tool to migrate your IPs from the old server to the new one.

 

[ThorstenD]

Thanks Plesk_kidv for your feedback.
I was not able to use the Migration Tool because my old server had big hardware issue.
The issue was in regards of the onBoard NIC, but also affecting my PCI(e) slots.
Therefore no network connection was available on my old server and i had to think about other ways.
In the meantime i had success and all my domains, db's, accounts and web-contents are running fine again on my newly installed hardware running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
But the way i had to go to have success was a long one.
Maybe it could be helpful for any others if i share my steps and experiences.

I've started with creating images from my old server running Plesk 10.4.4 and MySQL as the DB Provider on Windows Server 2008 SP2 machine. At the end i didn't used the images to restore the system by using a baremetal restore method, but it gave me some better feeling to just have it.

So here is what i've done with a lot of patience and some issue-fixing.

I've created a backup with Plesk CP Backup Manager (by choosing "Server Repository" and "Server Configuration and Content)
This was step was taking quite a long time, as the backup file grown up to 40GB. Trying to use the multiple volumes backup with a volume size of 1024MB didn't worked for me.

The backup itself was running fine, but took at the end more than 3hours.
Now i've tried to download the backup file through the Backup Manager Download Icon... this was quite horrible, as it took another 3 hours until the "save file as" option appeared from my browser.
Of course the browser was not able to save the file, due a timeout error.
After a trying to change the timeout values i gave it up and just took a copy of the whole \Parallels\Plesk\Backup directory by using Windows Explorer and copy it to an external USB disk.

In the meantime i built my new server with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and installed Plesk 10.4.4 with the exactely same components as it was on the old server installed.

Now i took the whole Backup directory from my external disk and placed it into my new Plesk installation.
While the installation of Plesk on the new server I've chosen the same credentials for admin Login to the CP and for the MySQL admin as i had it on the old server.
And i configured Plesk to use the same shared IP-address as the old server had.

When i logged into my Plesk CP and went to the Backup Manager my copy and pasted Backup (with 40GB size) was showing now with a valid statud in the Server Repository.
I've started now the restore by choosing all availbe restore options and "ask me what to do " for conflicts.

The following warnings and errors occured before the restore-process:

- Warning: Cannot restore Domain template Default Domain of Panel administrator: the name 'Default Domain' is already used in Panel by Domain template Default Domain of Panel administrator.

- Warning: Cannot restore Reseller template Default Reseller of Panel administrator: the name 'Default Reseller' is already used in Panel by Reseller template Default Reseller of Panel administrator.

- Error: Execution of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Plesk\bin\ipmanage.exe" -u "IP-xx.xx.xx.xx -ssl_certificate_ref xxxxxxxxxx -ignore-nonexistent-options failed with return code 1.
Stderr is Certificate does not exist.

- Error:server ""Execution of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Plesk\bin\server_dns.exe" --set "C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Plesk\PMM\tmp/dns01ccf2f942444290" -ignore-nonexistent-options failed with return code 1.
Stderr is Incorrect DNS record values were specified.

- Error:client template "Default Client" Bad Request: Unknown cli utility 'client_template'

- Error:hosting "mydomain.com"Execution of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Plesk\bin\domain.exe" --update soundwerkstatt.ch -fp true -fpauth true -ignore-nonexistent-options failed with return code 1.
Stderr is An error occurred during domain update: An error occurred during changing of hosting settings: The component Microsoft FrontPage support was not installed (this error was shown for each domain)

I've decided to not starting the restore job yet.

At this point I first created another backup on the old server without all the frontpage extensions activated.
On the new server I've removed all the SSL certificates except the default one and another one that was in use.

After i copied the whole backup folder again (this time 80GB) from the old to the new servers backup directory i also had the newly created backup available within Plesk's Backup Manager.

This time I've started the restore process again as already described.

I still had the following warnings and errors:

- Warning: Cannot restore Domain template Default Domain of Panel administrator: the name 'Default Domain' is already used in Panel by Domain template Default Domain of Panel administrator.

- Warning: Cannot restore Reseller template Default Reseller of Panel administrator: the name 'Default Reseller' is already used in Panel by Reseller template Default Reseller of Panel administrator.

- Error:client template "Default Client" Bad Request: Unknown cli utility 'client_template'

But i've chosen to override all data with the one from backup and at the end the restore completed more or less successfully.

I've rebooted the server once the restore has been completed and was able to login through my Plesk CP...
All Clients, Domains and contents and all the server settings have been successfully restored.

Also the MySQL DB's, but for any reason the domains were not able to connect to their DB's.... within MySQL Administrator i had the issue with showing "no options configured".
By pressing the Ctrl Key and loggin in through the "skip" button i was able to see the problem.

For any reason the restore created the data directory within \Plesk\Databases\MySQL but all the MySQL program files within \Plesk\Databases\MySQL51.

I've stopped the MySQL services and the moved the data directory into the MySQL51 folder and also changed the directory and my.ini location configurations, started the MySQL services and it everything was back to normal...

I had to reapply some minor configurations within Plesk like adjusting the language packs, and doing some hosting settings customizations...

Maybe not the most comfortable way, but it worked for me and the end i got everthing running fine again on my new server...

Regards