Plesk Migrator (zero downtime)

[core2]

Hi

We are in the process of moving one of our server to a new provider. Existing server already has plesk installed. So we purchased a new server (with a temporary new domain) and installed plesk and now we are trying to migrate the files and databases using plesk migrator tool. We are not sure how safe is to use this tool, it would be really helpful if someone can explain the following:

1. Will it make any changes to our existing server?
2. What is IP mapping, will it do anything to the new server?
4. What is the best practice to switch to the new server without any downtime (considering our mysql server perform writes every second)

Any help greatly appreciated!

Thank you

 

[Aleksey Filatev]

Hello!

1. Data on existing server stay untouched. On unix source Plesk Migrator will just install simple Perl application to dump data (read only operations with source Plesk database). On windows source Plesk Migrator will install and run following applications: RPC agent (service on port 10155), rsync server (on port 10156) and dump agent (application to dump data). There are no other changes will be performed.

2. IP-mapping is the mechanism to manage changes of domain IP-addresses during migration. It described here: http://docs.plesk.com/en-US/12.5/migration-guide/ip-mapping.75658/. By default, all domains assigned to shared IP on source will be assigned to shared IP on target. And all domains on dedicated IP on source will be assigned to one of free dedicated IP on target. If there are not enough dedicated IPs on target, shared IP will be used (corresponding warning message will be added into report). So, IP-mapping do nothing on source and on target servers - it allow you to specify which IP-address, existing on target server, should be used for specific domains.

3. The common scenario for highly loaded sites is to perform migration of specific domain, then switch DNS for this domain (target server DNS will be set as master on source server) - this action available only via CLI using Plesk Migrator command set-dns-forwarding, and then sync files (via rsync), databases (via SQL dump) and mail content (via rsync on unix) - Plesk Migrator provide corresponding command(s), available only via CLI: copy-content (it is include all listed actions) or copy-web-content, copy-database-content and copy-mail-content. So, files and e-mails will be actually synced (via rsync), but sync of data stored in database is an issue, because Plesk Migrator has no feature to setup replication automatically, so then you run copy-database-content command, new SQL dump will be created on source and then restored on target. If you want to minimize downtime, I suggest you to setup replication between source and target databases manually after migration, then sync content via Plesk Migrator CLI and run replication. After that all data will be completely synced between source and target servers.

 

[core2]

Hi Aleksey,

Thank you very much for the detailed response . It's very clear now!

Thanks again!