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If you are still using CentOS 7.9, it's time to convert to Alma 8 with the free centos2alma tool by Plesk or Plesk Migrator. Please let us know your experiences or concerns in this thread:
CentOS2Alma discussion
Upgrade from 9.5.x to 11.x ?
- Thread starter repa
- Start date
I want to accomplish the same goal 
My idea was to upgrade first to 10.4 which is the latest version supported on Debian 5.0 (Lenny), then do the dist-upgrade to Squeeze 6.0 and then finally upgrade to Plesk 11.x.
I managed to do this when upgrading from 7.5.4 on Etch to 9.5.0 on Lenny and it went quite smoothly but I'm not sure if newer versions of Plesk support this.
The cleaner way would probably be to use the migration manager (I would also like to use the opportunity to change distro to Ubuntu LTS), but I'm worried about the time needed to do this. I have over 400 GB of data which would probably take whole night to transfer. And when the transfer is complete, the data on the new server would already be obsolete (mailboxes, SQL databases etc. would surely change in the meantime). Of course I cannot afford to shutdown the original server for the whole migration process which would take many hours.
I noticed the migration manager now uses rsync so I was wondering can the migration manager be run multiple times so it would only transfer the differences on the second run which would only take a few minutes? Or maybe just use the rsync manually after migration manager finishes the job and transfer /var/qmail/mailnames, /var/lib/mysql (excluding psa directory of course) and hope for the best?
My idea was to upgrade first to 10.4 which is the latest version supported on Debian 5.0 (Lenny), then do the dist-upgrade to Squeeze 6.0 and then finally upgrade to Plesk 11.x.
I managed to do this when upgrading from 7.5.4 on Etch to 9.5.0 on Lenny and it went quite smoothly but I'm not sure if newer versions of Plesk support this.
The cleaner way would probably be to use the migration manager (I would also like to use the opportunity to change distro to Ubuntu LTS), but I'm worried about the time needed to do this. I have over 400 GB of data which would probably take whole night to transfer. And when the transfer is complete, the data on the new server would already be obsolete (mailboxes, SQL databases etc. would surely change in the meantime). Of course I cannot afford to shutdown the original server for the whole migration process which would take many hours.
I noticed the migration manager now uses rsync so I was wondering can the migration manager be run multiple times so it would only transfer the differences on the second run which would only take a few minutes? Or maybe just use the rsync manually after migration manager finishes the job and transfer /var/qmail/mailnames, /var/lib/mysql (excluding psa directory of course) and hope for the best?
Hello, add1.
It's a good idea. Have you tried it?
We are working now on implementing similar approach to reduce downtime. I'll share results when we finish.
Here's an update if anyone cares...
No, I didn't try the rsync idea because the migration itself is broken. The domain administrators are not transferred correctly - they don't have any privilege, but they should have at least "Create and manage mail accounts". I cannot manually change over 500 domain administrators.
Also, the migration is extremely slow - I tried migrating a mail-only domain with 870 users and it took more than 15 minutes only to create users in database without any actual mailboxes transferred. The transfer itself (about 8 GB of data) took 1:44h! Also the progress bar in migration is broken - it's stays at 50% for a loooong time, so it's basically unusable.
If I extrapolate this numbers, it would take 90 minutes only to migrate mail users without mailboxes and about 70 hours to transfer the mailboxes (we have more than 300 GB of them). Unfortunately there's no option to only transfer mail users without mailbox content so we could transfer that separately (this takes about 6 hours using 'native' rsync).
Another show stopper in Plesk 11 is the fact mail user has access to "File sharing" option when they login to panel. Why on earth would anyone want that for a MAIL USER? I also cannot see any option to disable this under roles or anywhere else and even if there is such an option, how would I change it for about 5000 users?? Another thing that is beyond my comprehension is why a mail user has all those options available in panel at all (Home, Mail, File Sharing, Account)? They only need options under "Mail" tab (vacation, forward, change password) and NOTHING else. This would surely cause a lot of confusion for users and unecessary support costs for us.
Not to mention that a plain mail user can see all account information under "Account" tab, like number of mailboxes, traffic, disk space used etc. etc. What were you thinking??
So basically, Parallels took a perfectly good (OK, there is always room for improvement) functioning panel version 9.5 and decided to make a totally new product which bares no resemblance whatsoever to the old product?
If you're trying to lose a customer who paid you thousands of dollars in 10 years of using Plesk, this is the perftect way of doing it.
In my opinion the correct way would be to keep the old panel line (9.x) supported in the future and develop radical new features in a different product (I don't care if you call it Plesk 15 or SMB or whatever), but I know this is not about to happen, so the only option I see is to migrate users to a different panel before June when your support for 9.5.4 ends.
No, I didn't try the rsync idea because the migration itself is broken. The domain administrators are not transferred correctly - they don't have any privilege, but they should have at least "Create and manage mail accounts". I cannot manually change over 500 domain administrators.
Also, the migration is extremely slow - I tried migrating a mail-only domain with 870 users and it took more than 15 minutes only to create users in database without any actual mailboxes transferred. The transfer itself (about 8 GB of data) took 1:44h! Also the progress bar in migration is broken - it's stays at 50% for a loooong time, so it's basically unusable.
If I extrapolate this numbers, it would take 90 minutes only to migrate mail users without mailboxes and about 70 hours to transfer the mailboxes (we have more than 300 GB of them). Unfortunately there's no option to only transfer mail users without mailbox content so we could transfer that separately (this takes about 6 hours using 'native' rsync).
Another show stopper in Plesk 11 is the fact mail user has access to "File sharing" option when they login to panel. Why on earth would anyone want that for a MAIL USER? I also cannot see any option to disable this under roles or anywhere else and even if there is such an option, how would I change it for about 5000 users?? Another thing that is beyond my comprehension is why a mail user has all those options available in panel at all (Home, Mail, File Sharing, Account)? They only need options under "Mail" tab (vacation, forward, change password) and NOTHING else. This would surely cause a lot of confusion for users and unecessary support costs for us.
Not to mention that a plain mail user can see all account information under "Account" tab, like number of mailboxes, traffic, disk space used etc. etc. What were you thinking??
So basically, Parallels took a perfectly good (OK, there is always room for improvement) functioning panel version 9.5 and decided to make a totally new product which bares no resemblance whatsoever to the old product?
If you're trying to lose a customer who paid you thousands of dollars in 10 years of using Plesk, this is the perftect way of doing it.
In my opinion the correct way would be to keep the old panel line (9.x) supported in the future and develop radical new features in a different product (I don't care if you call it Plesk 15 or SMB or whatever), but I know this is not about to happen, so the only option I see is to migrate users to a different panel before June when your support for 9.5.4 ends.
Have you read these documents before upgrade?
Administrator's Guide to Switching to Panel 10 - http://download1.parallels.com/Ples...or-guide/plesk-switching-administrator-guide/
Customer's Guide to Switching to Panel 10 - http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP10/10.4/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-switching-hosting-customer/
I'm sure you would find a lot of answers there about a new Plesk business model.
Administrator's Guide to Switching to Panel 10 - http://download1.parallels.com/Ples...or-guide/plesk-switching-administrator-guide/
Customer's Guide to Switching to Panel 10 - http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP10/10.4/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-switching-hosting-customer/
I'm sure you would find a lot of answers there about a new Plesk business model.
Yes, I have read it many times, but I don't know how does this apply to my problem?
I'm talking about transferring ONE SINGLE DOMAIN with ONE ADMINISTRATOR! And if Plesk cannot properly transfer one domain, how can I expect it to transfer 500 domains with 5000+ accounts? I'm not talking about any subscriptions, clients, resellers, etc., but only ONE domain with ONE administrator (and 870 mail users).
Well, I know how it upgrades 500 domains, I tried that before trying the migration (9.3 -> 10.4 -> 11.0.9). And it failed even more miserably than migration - some of mail users had accounts, some didn't, most of the administrators weren't upgraded at all, so it was a complete disaster!
If you expect me to manually tinker with 500 domains, I might as well transfer them to another panel with more predictable results.
I'm talking about transferring ONE SINGLE DOMAIN with ONE ADMINISTRATOR! And if Plesk cannot properly transfer one domain, how can I expect it to transfer 500 domains with 5000+ accounts? I'm not talking about any subscriptions, clients, resellers, etc., but only ONE domain with ONE administrator (and 870 mail users).
Well, I know how it upgrades 500 domains, I tried that before trying the migration (9.3 -> 10.4 -> 11.0.9). And it failed even more miserably than migration - some of mail users had accounts, some didn't, most of the administrators weren't upgraded at all, so it was a complete disaster!
If you expect me to manually tinker with 500 domains, I might as well transfer them to another panel with more predictable results.
For more predictable results we suggest to use pre-upgrade checker - http://kb.parallels.com/9436
