Backing up/restoring (different servers, different hosting co's)

[cjraven]

Hi all,
First Plesk license, startup hosting company. Debian + Reloaded 7.5.4

I have a customer who is presently with another provider - also running Plesk 7.5.4. I have his reseller login/paas and he's asked me to migrate all his stuff across. Migration manager is out of the question because I neither I nor my customer have root on the source box. There are 70 domains to come over, and not being able to use Migration Manager is dissapointing to discover.
Two questions then:
1. If Migration Manager is out of the question, will I have to manually move every one of the 70 domains?

2. I decided to make a backup of just one site from within Plesk on the source machine, and restore it onto my server. No good, because source IP data is contained within the backup. How can I work around that issue when I backup this site? - and is any mysql data contained within that Plesk backup?

Regards & TIA for any help!
-Colin

 

[phoenixisp]

You should probably use the psadump utility. It will backup the entire source server including databases, email, etc. No problem with IPs either because psadump has IP mapping. Check out the documentation:

http://download1.sw-soft.com/Plesk/Plesk7.5/Doc/plesk-7.5r-backup-restore-html/index.html

 

[cjraven]

Thanks for the reply. Unless I'm not understanding what you advised correctly:

I don't have shell access on the source server where the data currently resides, so unless I'm missing something, that seems to prevent that utility from being used no?

What would happen if I just ftp'd the entire site over? what items would I miss?

 

[jamesyeeoc]

Right, without 'root' access the PMM won't work properly.

FTP'ing the site files is fine, but what about databases, current email, webmail folder contents... and of course, any custom config files for the domain

 

[cjraven]

yes exactly, there's my concern.

I can't use PMM, no root. I can't use psadump, no shell.
Now of course I can do a an FTP + manual sql dump, for the single db (in the case of this site) from within Plesk, but is there still stuff I'm missing by doing FTP and a mysql dump? - and iif so, how in the world can I get it from an uncooperative hosting provider that is making this (deliberately) as complex and inordinately difficult as it can possibly be?
Thanks for all the help guys, this is extremely trying.

 

[DaveNET@]

Hi.

I have your same situation exactly. I bought a Plesk reseller and the host that the reseller used refuses to help me. I even offered to PAY them to run the Plesk dump routine. Their answer was "Why should we help you move away from our service? That would be a stupid business decision." To which I replied that they already lost the business, it was gone. I was offering to let them reap one last bit of revenue before the account was closed.

So I'm using the Plesk backup utility on each domain to backup the files and then reloading them on my server. What a pain. Fortunately there are only about 20 domains.

David

 

[cjraven]

Argh - "I feel your pain"...I mean really

In this case there are over 50 domains and we're doing it manually. The client isnt happy, but is finally resigned to the reality of the situation.

I dont want to be critical of Plesk in any way, its basically a superb piece of coding, but I would (for what its worth) offer one suggestion to them. Given that (in a situation like such as this which can't be that uncommon) if you have the client login on the old machine and have assigned him a login on the new, he now has equivalent permissions on both sides, so some kind of migration routine - with automation - should be possible.

This needed some diplomacy - and some small giveaways - to keep the client happy. I really feel as though this should have been possible without root access on the old box. That defies the whole concept of being able to move clients around somehow, or at least it sure feels that way.

As always, just my $0.002 worth.