Atomicorp

This is a Virtuozzo container and its mounting is uniform to others. Parallels has finally addressed the issue and stated that there were sufficient INODES even though this has seldom been a problem in the past. I generally assign the maximum "everything" to a container with one or two containers at most per dual processor server. We do this primarily for the ease of backups, bouncing for whatever reason, and less hardware power cycles.

Parallels further discovered based on my report that the Health Monitor does not update if the container configuration (memory and disc space) are changed after the installation of Plesk 10.

As far as beginning a local migration (using a dump file instead of GUI to GUI) Parallels reports that Plesk has ALWAYS reverted back to the Tools Menu instead of showing the progress as a percentage bar. They state that to determine the progress one has "always" used the Backup Manager. Well, no. This isn't true. Plesk 8 and 9 don't behave this way and in any event a prompt indicating that a migration was in progress would be expected.

I'll create a new dump file later tonight. I may reinstall Plesk on the container first and then we'll see what happens. I'll report my results for the benefit of others.

KrazyBob wrote:Parallels has finally addressed the issue and stated that there were sufficient INODES even though this has seldom been a problem in the past.

I guess the problem was an insufficient number of inodes? Glad a root cause was found for your problem.

Thanks for the help and support! The current container has 700000 INODEs assigned and uses only 50%. I must admit that given the error code I was not inclined to look towards INODEs.
Parallels recommended setting INODEs to at least 2000000. I hurt my back shoveling snow today and I learned a long time ago not to work on computers while drinking or taking doctor prescribed pain killers

Although I credit the migration manager of Plesk I also fear it. As an intermediate Admin I know that I am often incapable of handling the many errors that arise. This is an easy server to migrate with only 48 domains. But I have many more servers to do with ~500 domains each. Frequent application vault errors, inconsistencies, and everything else that a migration brings up makes me cringe. I can say with certainty that Parallels has learned many things as a result of the errors I've caused or found I actually don't mind posting even my own errors so that others like me might learn.

I only wish that the migration process had better error handling. I've actually been a prolific programmer for over 30 years and know the value of testing for errors. Having to wait an hour(s) bites. Bit it's better than Ensim! Parallels reported that the dump file was corrupt yet I had no indication of this. Add the disc space error that was actually a lack of INODEs masquerading as a MySQL or Zend issue is just baffling. But I've learned one more thing to check, so it hasn't been a waste. I still love Plesk, although the new interface bites. We'll see how my resellers like it, along with the end-users.

I'll jump back into this in the morning. More snow on the way anyway, so plenty of time.

Unless you are commited DO NOT upgrade. I did and am now working to downgrade to Plesk 9.

Ten is a disaster and full of bugs and confusion. Migration manager full of bugs and errors. I had a professional migrate my sites and still have issues and bugs and it took them a week having to do many things manually.

Don't be their beta tester for a buggy CP if your business relies on it.

I too have read this numerous times and I am not yet committed. But are there others here that share this opinion, and if so, why?

KrazyBob wrote:I too have read this numerous times and I am not yet committed. But are there others here that share this opinion, and if so, why?

I had many issues and still after more than a week after migration am finding things that went wrong.

Email accounts that lost the ability to access and could not reset passwords. Plesk was not remembering passwords on newly created accounts...just a lot of things.

I am considering CPanel who are just now starting Plesk 10 migration to Cpanel. They offer free migrations.

I had plesk 8.5 and it worked fine. All I really wanted was a faster server and more memory etc. Unless you have a compelling reason to upgrade stay with what you have. If you really need to upgrade or move consider Cpanel and also look at this company. acunett.com as they have done real well for me in the support area and also offer servers.

We've covered this in some other threads, for anyone making changes that they don't have complete comfort/visibility in to:

Set up a test environment.

There are a whole bunch of free / low cost virtualization technologies out there that you can use to duplicate your existing production server and run various actions (upgrades, removes, etc). I personally use a combination of Vmware workstation on my desktop, and a central KVM server (this is part of CentOS, so if you have a dedicated box you have KVM already) for everything. These have snapshot buttons that let you revert the whole thing to the way it was before in a few seconds. Really, the amount of work you need to do to get this in place is trivial.

The Atomic secret sauce, aside from our build system automation is that I can run 4 or 5 different complex update scenarios in a few minutes. Regardless of the product, ASL, Plesk, php, mysql, etc. Successful integration takes time and testing, no single product is going to be superior across every environment in every configuration.

To that end, if you are an ASL customer you may have noticed that our licensing supports this practice completely. In addition to your ASL server license you are can (and I encourage you to do so) run ASL on:

1 additional server for Quality Assurance (aka the update testing mentioned above) and
1 additional server for Development

Thank you, but I think I've missed your point There seems to be a consensus that upgrading to Plesk 10 is problematic and many opt to go no higher than Plesk 9.5. That's what I'd like to read more about. I already have Virtuozzo and the ability to restore. I also have several hardware KVM Over IP switches. For me this comes down to whether or not Plesk 10 is stable and worth the migration hassles. I have Plesk 8.1, 8.3, 8.6, and 9.3's to migrate. I do a fresh install on a clean server for a reason. But I've just lost more than a week on two issues. So that's my question -- Plesk 9.5 or Plesk 10?

Thanks for all the help here.

Point being that there issues that are going to come up with any product. Ive seen Plesk 10 upgrades go off without a hitch. Ive also seen updates to something as simple as the mv command kill a box. Why take the risk of not knowing when you don't have to?

BTW KVM as in the virtualization system, not as in the remote keyboard system. If you're not familiar with it, its like vmware (full hypervisor). Redhat standardized on it over Xen in RHEL 5.4+ so all CentOS boxes 5.4 and up have it now.

I am already doing what you propose then. On an vacant server I test using Virtuozzo. At such time that the migration completes without errors, or correctable errors, I can move the IP's over from the production server. But therein presents another issue and that's users reporting errors with passwords and such after migration. How would one know unless making the switch and going live? I'd prefer to go to Plesk 10 and be current but don't want to be a guinea pig and lose customers.

KrazyBob wrote:Thank you, but I think I've missed your point There seems to be a consensus that upgrading to Plesk 10 is problematic...So that's my question -- Plesk 9.5 or Plesk 10?

Thanks for all the help here.

The real question is do you have to upgrade at all? Is your current system stable and delivering service to your customers? I can only speak from my personal experience but for me Plesk 10 was a nightmare. 150 domains moved and lots of hitches...and still not done ironing out problems with emails.

If you do move don't leave anything about emails to chance. Make sure of your configurations. In less than one week my default IP wound up on two blackslists because of email configurations etc.

Well see, here's the thing that I am sure you've experienced. Customers demand the latest and greatest. I cringe when they demand like PHP 5.3.5 before we even know if 5.2.17 is stable. Developers like Joomla are requiring more and more current releases of PHP and mySQL regardless of how web hosts feel. Even parallels has stopped supported Fedora on Virtuozzo because of too frequent of upgrades.

As a compromise we try to have one or two severs that are cutting edge, but a bulk of our business is dedicated server resellers. They hear from their customers.... blah, blah, blah. Add to this offerings like ***** and their $49 VPS with Plesk 10 (a reseller control panel! Read the fine print!) and up to 100Mbps of bandwith (Right. The customer will be allowed to suck bandwidth 24/7/365 instead of using a CDN). So yes, upgrading is part of life. I'm fine staying on my private server with Plesk 8.6. I think that we all know the numbers game and keeping customers happy.

But Plesk is also not going to support Plesk 8 much longer. One has to upgrade. I love the fine people here and the sharing of information. But we've still got to stay out in front of EOL.

KrazyBob wrote:Well see, here's the thing that I am sure you've experienced. Customers demand the latest and greatest. I cringe when they demand like PHP 5.3.5 before we even know if 5.2.17 is stable.

I am in a different market. I sell design and hosting to end user customers who don't know PHP from TEA! In that regard my motive was a faster server and more space. I had no customer complaints but I could tell it was bogging down in speed due to anti spam filters etc. on emails and took a pro-active move to a faster server. Plesk was just the tool to migrate but I had to lease with a newer version. After the fact I found I could have requested 9.5 instead of 10...water under that bridge.

You do not need to upgrade your CP in order to keep up with newer releases of PHP, MySQL etc. I don't think there is anything in your Plesk that will mind the newer versions. My prior server was Plesk 8.5 and I kept it up to date with upgrades to components all the time. My only issue was hardware out of date.

Not every "upgrade" is really and "upgrade" if you get my meaning!

Unfortunately we are being pressed to move to Plesk 10 and I really don't want to.

There's nothing wrong with 8.6 (which is what we use on all our systems). The only features we don't have that I need are Apache 2.2.x and the new SiteBuilder.

so on that note 10.x forces the installation of sitebuilder regardless of if you use it or not. Sitebuilder is not compatible with PHP 5.3.x, and an upgrade will absolutely break it.

I've been talking with parallels about the right way to handle that condition, and they've indicated that sitebuilder that is compatible with 5.3 is forthcoming. In the interim the options are to either tag php 5.3.x as Conflicts with plesk greater than version 9, or just skip that and break all the sitebuilder installs out there.