Migration- and Transfer Manager and NTFS 3.0 junctions

[oeni4711]

Hi,
I've migrated a test site from Plesk 9.5.4 (Windows Server 2003) to Plesk 11.5.30 (Windows Server 2008 R2).
I noticed that it seems that NTFS junctions are not (fully) supported.
We use a lot of junctions as we provide the same context for various clients and junctions allow us to save a lot of disk space.
In detail we host 88 GB native size which sum up to almost 5 TB when junctions targets are treated seperately.
So I faced some issues:

• disk space on source server
  As the source content is collected by creating a ZIP file our disk run out of space.
  I guess this was due to junctions were followed and content was copied instead of just storing junction itself.
• disk space on target server
  With a modified test domain I was able to migrate but disk usage was much higher than it should be.
  I guess this is due to next issue, see below.
• junctions are not created
  Instead of creating junction as on source server PMM created the directories and its content.
  This is why disk space usage is much higher than native disk space usage on source server.

For me it looks like that PMM can't deal with junctions.
Or is it my fault?
I wonder if there is some more "comfortable" solution that deleting all junctions on source server prior migration and re-create them on target server afterwards.
Best regards,
Olly

 

[IgorG]

As far as I know Plesk doesn't support junctions. Now it is managed as folders therefore you can see increasing of disk space usage.

 

[oeni4711]

Hi Igor,
well, if Plesk doesn't support junctions, how does the Plesk backup work?
I wonder how a restore could work as even Microsoft itself uses a lot of junctions within Windows itself.
E.g. FTP users created get their home directory created in "C:\inetpub\vhosts\<domainname>\<path_specified_during_account_creation>".
But automatically a junction <username> is created in C:\inetpub\vhosts\Servers\<internalserverid>\localuser.
So if Plesk doesn't know how to deal with junctions, what is contained in backup and what will be restored?
If Plesk isn't aware of junctions in case of restoration two directories containing the same content will be restored, double the required space.
And if some content is changed by FTP user, where is it done? In user's home directory or in IIS' localuser directory?
Best regards,
Olly