Migration Manager Advice

[Robin McDermott]

I am migrating from Plesk 10.4 to 12.5.30. I have never used the migration manager and am trying to decide if I should give it a try, but need some advice/have some questions:

1. I would like to transfer all of my data to my new server now and spend the next week or two testing the transferred sites before going live. What do I need to do to prevent the sites on the new server from instantly going live? In the transfer precheck, I get this message:

Warning: The component bind is not installed on the destination server. The DNS service will be unavailable and DNS settings will be lost. All customers' websites will be down. Please install bind. Note that this may take a few minutes. 22 domain(s) will be affected.Install the component.
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If I don't have the component bind installed, will it give me more control over the DNS cutover? I am on a Perr1 network and use my server as the master for the DNS and Peer1 Servers as the Slave.

2. Is there any way to determine how long it will take? Will I get an estimated transfer time before giving it the final go-ahead to start the process?

3. What will the load be on my source server?

4. What exactly gets transferred? Databases? Wordpress set-ups and configurations? Installed programs at the root of a domain (several of my sites use Miva Script and require the miva engine that is installed in the cgi-bin directory with configuration data in the config directory. I also have non SQL databases at the root of several domains that need to get transferred. (I do understand that the databases will need to be updated just prior to cutover.

In the past I have set up each domain manually and then FTP's from server to server to copy the relevant data. I have great hope that the migration manager will make the job easier, but an a little nervous about using it.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Robin

 

[eug]

hi Robin,

1. If primary DNS is now running on your current Plesk 10.4, you defenitely need to setup DNS on new server (then DNS zones will be transferred during migration) and then your new Plesk 12.5 server will act as primary DNS when transfer will be completed.

In general, from DNS standpoint, the process shall look like

a) Make sure that TTL parameter for records in current DNS zones on Plesk 10.4 is set to very small value (it's measured in seconds, so smth like 300 or 600 will work well)
b) Install bind on target server in order to complete this dependency
c) Go with migration
d) When transfer is completed, you will need to change IPs for the records in DNS zones on source server so that the records start pointing to new server IP. Having TTL set to very small value, the switch of resolving from old to new server will happen quite fast
e) After that you (or customers that own domains) will need to edit registrar records to replace old server IP with new server IP in there
f) When registrar does, after some time (may be up to few days), the change of NS will be propagated within network and then you can shutdown DNS that is still working on old Plesk 10.4 server
g) Your secondary DNS servers shall be configured in Plesk DNS template on target node and in registrar NS records accordingly

2. Transfer time is function of several factors, such as amount of subscriptions, how much data in every subscription and what is network bandwidth between target and source server. For now Plesk migration tool does not give accurate estimates on time of migration - it is point for improvement in 2016 - but 22 subscriptions shall go pretty fast, maybe 0.5 - 1 hour.

3. The load on source server will be close to zero. There are no any heavy resource-consuming processes run by migration tool. Usually site owners cannot mention that something is happening unless they are switched to new server IP.

4. The transfer includes everything what Plesk knows about. All databases that were setup with Plesk, all applications and their settings (including Wordpress) - if these settings were managed through Plesk CP. If there are any web applications that were setup by customer aside of Plesk with databases that were not registered in Plesk - then these applications will be transferred as webspace content and databases will not be migrated. The settings that were applied through Wordpress admin panel (Plesk does not know about these settings) will not be transferred as well.

If you have time, you can do test migration and then (before you switch DNS to new server) check that it is all right for transferred sites by setting "new.server.numeric.IP <site.domain.tld>" in hosts file on your local system for the sites you want to browse/check - one by one, of course.

If you have any issues while doing migration, you are welcome to file request for free migration support at http://www.plesk.com/plesk/#migrate

 

[Robin McDermott]

Thank you so much eug!

I have made some progress but the process is stopping due to errors. Will create a new thread with info from the error log.