Upgrade from 7.1.7 => 7.5.x , Is it a fool's attempt?

[pchammer]

In the past, I've been scared to death of upgrading over an upgrade over an upgrade over an upgrade...

Is the updater within Plesk 7.1.X stable enough where I won't be sorry I upgraded later on?

I originally installed 7.1.1 (I think) and did upgrades as needed with the updater to stay current with the 7.1.X series.

7.5.X has features I very much need (like qmail management of non-existent users), but it's not worth it if it's going to break my machine.

Thoughts?

 

[ALGORYTHM]

the upgrade of 7.1.6 to 7.5.2 broke my install, i'm still recovering!

it seems the perl version was incorrect so the upgrade started but failed and took all the services with it.

however some people have managed it cleanly.

 

[pchammer]

If I had another physical machine, I'd gladly migrate between machines onto a clean install, but it's a colocated server....that's not an option, let alone changing all the IPs on my customers

Anyone else?

 

[smtalk]

I suggest you to wait for Plesk 7.5.3. Plesk 7.5.2 have a lot of bugs.

 

[pchammer]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the stability of the release isn't much my concern as much as the upgrade process.

I have 7.5.X servers already running pretty well, but they were INSTALLED that way. I'm scared to death to take a production server and "gamble" that the upgrade procedure is flawless based on SW-Soft development.

Again, the issue here is will the upgrade process screw me...I think there are yes' and no's among us, but I wanted a little feedback from others that have experienced this.

Thanks!

 

[pchammer]

I'd much rather do a fresh install if I had access to another machine in the colocation facility.

 

[normanb]

I just completed upgrading two different servers running 7.0.4 to the latest 7.5.3 without any problems. I practiced the upgrades on the workstation that I am now typing this on, CentOS 3.4, using the Plesk yum sources provided by art. Once this worked out, I moved to the live systems.

The first machine was running CentOS 3.3 with a hotfixed version of Plesk 7.0.4.

I first backed up my Plesk using psadump.

Then I updated the OS to the new 3.4 version of CentOS. Tested the plesk, all ok.
I then changed my yum.conf to point to the PSA-7.1 art channel. (The latest channels can be found here ).

I then ran "yum upgrade psa".

When that was completed, I tested the plesk admin panel. I did not have a 7.1 key for this server so I just checked to make sure that I could login to the admin console. I then changed my yum.conf to point to the psa-7.5 channel and ran the "yum upgrade psa" again.

Again, once the upgrade was completed, I tried logged into the Plesk admin panel. This time however, I used the "retrieve keys" button from the license management screen to upgrade and install the proper license key. I then tested email to and from several of the accounts on different domains. This was my first upgrade that did not mess up the mail quotas. Once I was satisfied with the updates, I backed up plesk again using psadump.

The second server is running RH9 with Plesk 7.0.4. Again, backup, update the OS, test plesk, change yum.conf, upgrade to 7.1.x. This time I had a 7.1 key and tested the console. Then, changed yum.conf to the psa-7.5 channel, upgraded, logged into the admin panel, retrieved new keys and tested the system. Once I was happy that all was working, I then ran psadump again.

I have three email accounts on the RH9 system that have 100-700 emails in them. I did not lose any emails at all, which I was not as fortunate going from Plesk 5.x to 6.x. I think that between the files provided by SW-Soft and the work that art puts into his yum archive made this the easiest upgrade that I have done yet.

Next, I upgrade my RH9 system to CentOS, but that will have to wait for me to finish some other projects first.

For me, the upgrade was quick, simple, and worked flawlessly. We have been running the upgraded servers for a week now without any complaints....Well, other than "what are all the new things on the admin panel", but that is just some user training.

 

[jamesyeeoc]

From reading the forums for the last couple of years, my impression is that the people who have the most problems with upgrading Plesk are also the ones who generally have installed non-Plesk supported versions of key components.

I personally (see my tag line) don't like upgrading either, but on my latest server I did do the 7.1 to 7.5 to 7.5.2 upgrades and so far (crossing my fingers) all is well.

But I also try to keep my servers rather conservative (still using RH9). There are so many people looking for hosting, that I generally make sure I don't take on any clients who want cutting edge stuff, unless they want to pay for dedicated server plans.

I heartily recommend using ART's yum repository, he is the GOD!