Migration/Transfer to Plesk 11.0.9 is very slow especially emails & mssql database

[vprasad84]

Hi,

I have a server running plesk 9.5.2 with more than 500 domains & more than 50GB of it's contents. The total domains website+db data is more than 25GB & emails more than 25GB. I need to transfer all these domains including the content to the new server (plesk 11.0.9) & upon completion of transfer, i will swap the server ip addresses so that my clients connect to the same server ip address but everything on the new server. I intend to perform the migration in a single activity & would take downtime of 24-36 hours for the same preferably over weekend. Now whenever i try to transfer a domain from old server to new using the migration manager, i observe that the transfer is too slow. for e.g i tried transferring a domain which has a 20MB of website files, 200MB of mssql database & 1.2GB of mailboxes thus the total domain content sizing upto 1.5GB. The process was on for 6 hours & at the end of these hours it was still processing the emails restore. I observed that the migration manager transfers the website data very very fast but when it comes to transfer the databases & emails, it is very very slow. It takes more than 10 minutes just to write 10-12 emails in the users mailbox which are hardly more than an MB in size. Same goes with sql where after waiting for 15-20 minutes you see that the mdf file in backend hardly grows by an MB. Now when i took a test domain which has only website say 500MB of data (files in httpdocs) but no email accounts or ms sql database & now when i try to transfer this domain to new server, it happens within minutes. This concludes that it transfers the website data very fast. Since we do not have much databases on the current server, it is ok we let plesk transfer it taking it's own time but for emails we cannot opt for this solution. It will take a week to complete the project & it is impossible to have so much of downtime. The connection between the source & destination server is via a cross cable & 1Gbps ethernet bandwidth.

I can manage the email content transfer via some other way & this way i want plesk just to restore the email accounts & settings in the mail server i.e only configuration but not email data. So during the transfer of domain when i opt the option 'All configuration and content except mail' but then plesk restores only website but it does not create the email accounts at all in the mailserver. It just creates the domain.

I read this article http://kb.parallels.com/en/114489 & tried modifying the migrmng.exe.xml in plesk 11 as below

<Providers backupProvider="" restoreProvider="" SkipMailMsgBackup="true" SmartRestore="false" >

(default configuration is SkipMailMsgBackup="false" SmartRestore="true)"

& restarted the transfer after restarting plesk servicies but then the plesk behaves the same way to restore the emails. Please suggest me a quickest way to complete the migration task. Is there any parameters in plesk where i want plesk to transfer all the content & configuration except the mailboxes content or data. Please help.

 

[IgorG]

Speed of mail migration has been dramatically increased in MU#37 - http://kb.parallels.com/115537

 

[vprasad84]

hi,

thanks for the update but since this fix wasn't available earlier, I completed migration using another workaround. This may be helpful to someone looking for migration.

During the migration firstly on the source server in OS firewall level, block all traffic except for new server i.e no one should be able to connect to source server except new server. on source server stop all the services of mailserver. Rename the entire mail storage folder of your smartermail/icewarp/mailenable whichever mailserver you got & then start the mail services on source server & this way a new mail storage folder will be created on source server which will be empty. Now start the migration from new server. Since the mail storage folder is empty i.e with no emails, plesk migration will migrate all the email ids along with the passwords/forwarding & other configuration quickly within 5-10 minutes as it do not have any data to copy which takes the longest time. After migration is completed by plesk, stop the mail server services on new server & copy/replace the original mail storage folder (renamed folder on source server with lots of data) & upon finishing the copying process start the services. This way all email ids are migrated (using plesk migration) & mail data folder can be copied in regular way (via unc path/nfs).Thus migration was completed within 2-3 hours with mail data around 100GB. If i had attempted to do via plesk utility, it may have taken months or a year even.

Prasad Vadke

 

[InderS]

Hello,

speed can be depended on firewall. Try disabling firewall. Also you can just use backup option of setting and configuration. Then take backup of vhost, mails and dbs and use ftp to transfer them to new server. After that restore them manually and run plesk reconfiguration to check file permissions.