Question Plesk for Linux on AWS EC2 instance: problems with backups with EBS snapshots

[Arek H.]

hello

The problem I have is just tangentially related to Plesk but I would welcome any feedback from the community - hopefully someone have had similar problems and can provide solutions.

I manage a small amount of Plesk for Lunux on AWS EC2 instances and I use daily EBS snapshots as my main backup solution. I have to admit I have a serious problems with actually restoring from such backups - whether I attach restored volume to existing instance as root volume; or boot up a new instance from AMI created from EBS snapshot - these usually start as totally non responsive; show up as 0/2 checks passed and there is no SSH access or any other service available.

When attached as secondary drive to an instance, I can see and access the data on the volume from snapshot but obviously getting mySQL database dumps through file migration is tricky and time consuming.

My working theory is that, since root volumes are large (100+ GB in size), the snapshots are inconsistent due to the time it take to "snapshot" such volume. I personally restored successfully smaller instances with ca 30 GB in size from EBS backups with no problems, but the bigger the volume the higher the risk of getting unresponsive root volume in recovery.

I guess my question is.. has anyone had similar experiences and how did you resolve it? Is my little theory correct?

Is it possible to have Plesk setup with something like SYSTEM volume with all executables and DATA volume with web and email user data directories?

 

[Bitpalast]

Regarding your question about a Plesk image: No this is not possible, because the major part of Plesk is associated with the specific host name and IP address of a machine, and of course a lot of the software depends on the operating system. You can create an image, but if you restore the image to a different system, it has to have the same OS and you will then need to at least update host name and IP address of the Plesk installation, licence information and you will need to run reconfiguratons on at least incoming and outgoing mail servers and of course the two web servers. It is probably less work to simple create a new installation and restore the content from a backup.

Regarding your qeustion on AWS EC2 and EBS snapshots: This is not related to Plesk, it needs to be handled by the provider of the platform or software.