Atomicorp

I am a 1and1 customer, with a server that is a couple of years old and running Fedora Core 2 with the latest version of Plesk (8.0.1). I have kept up-to-date through the channels here at ART (thank you very much) and Fedora Legacy, but now that FC2 is EOL, I need to consider upgrading.

1and1 provides a server re-image feature that will give me a "clean" setup of FC4 (or SUSE 9.3) with Plesk 8, but since I only have one server, I have to make sure to back everything up carefully before I re-image and blow it all away - I have no option to migrate site-by-site and revert back if necessary.

I've been doing backups (at the client level) via the Plesk Backup utility, but I haven't done much verification that those backups are reliable, and I'm really not certain that those backups are enough to cover everything I need to restore from a fresh image.

I do have a test server that I've built at home for experimenting, but I can't really test this process because I don't have access to the same kind of re-image process or the structure of the image that 1and1 will provide, and I don't have a full Plesk license that will let me back up and restore multiple clients and sites. The test installation of Plesk that I have only allows 1 client, website, e-mail address, etc.

My question for all of the knowledgeable and experienced people here is - what is the best method / process to backup all of my data, re-image the server, and restore everything? Are the client backups enough to get all my sites up and running once the server is re-imaged? What about server-level configurations like client templates, etc.? How do I back those up?

I am not a linux guru, but I know enough to tar up files and back up databases - I'm just not 100% sure that I know where everything is located and what needs to be preserved.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

The migrator and the backup utils are both very reliable, the only gotcha here is that you can only restore a psa-backup to the same version you backed it up on. So you'd have to restore a 7.5.4 backup to a 7.5.4 system.

If you're running Plesk 8 I'd use pleskbackup to create a single backup of your whole server (all clients, domains, etc.) and use pleskrestore to restore on your newly imaged server.

See the Backup/Restore Utilities Manual on http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/plesk8/docs/ for more information and examples.

There's a few options for you here. Regardless of what you do BACK YOUR PSA.KEY UP FIRST

1. Back up in 7.5.4, upgrade to 8 and pray it works. Worst case scenario is the upgrade fails and you reimage and fresh install 7.5.4 (you will need to do this manually as 1and1 no longer offers the FC2/7.5.4 image)
2. Email Swsoft for a temporary license (they will give you one if you explain what you're trying to do) and migrate off to your local machine. Reimage and migrate back
3. Rent a server for a day or two and migrate off then reimage and migrate back. ewebtricity over at http://www.1and1faq.com has one he rents daily
4. You CAN extract manually from 7.5.4 backups but it's VERY tedious.

Keep in mind that while FC2 is EOL as far as RedHat goes, support for it won't be ending anytime soon.

Highland wrote:Keep in mind that while FC2 is EOL as far as RedHat goes, support for it won't be ending anytime soon.

EOL as far as Red Hat and Fedora Legacy are concerned. Are your saying SWsoft will provide updates for things like OpenSSL vulnerabilities for FC2?

You'll definitely be out of luck on any sort of vulnerability updates for the EOL'd OS's. I plan on continueing to maintain the build environments for rhel3, rh9, fc2, and fc3 after the end of the year. However, the primary focus will be on FC4, FC5, FC6, and CentOS4/RHEL4.

Right. And no one patching vulnerabilities means I'm jumping ship. Soon all our servers will be running CentOS.

Im right there with you, Im standardizing all my stuff on CentOS4, I've finished up everything but gotroot.com

Thanks for the input everyone. I was sceptical of the Plesk backup / restore tools, but it sounds like that is the way to go. I guess the only other things I'll need to update manually are the extra stuff I've installed from ART - qmail-scanner, clamav, etc.

My plan at this point is to:

• Do a full backup using the Plesk backup utitlity
  Copy the file to my backup FTP space
  Re-image the server
  Make sure Plesk is up-to-date
  Restore from the backup file using the Plesk restore utility
  Install qmail-scanner, clamav, spamassassin, etc. from ART

If I'm missing something, please let me know.

You might want to think about moving to CentOS in the process. Fedora Core releases are only maintained for ~2 years (Red Hat and Fedora Legacy maintainance combined). FC4 was released in june 2005, so it will be EOL in ~1 year, while CentOS 4 will receive security updates till something like 2012.

On the other hand, CentOS 5 is probably out in a couple of months (early 2007 probably) and you could always move from FC4 to CentOS 5 later.

It did occur to me that I'm upgrading to a release that has already been transferred to Fedora Legacy, and I'll probably be looking to upgrade again soon, but It's the path of least resistance for me since 1and1 provides an image process for it. I'm not sure how I would upgrade to CentOS, since I only have access to the server via SSH (can you do it that way?).

I also just realized that the FC4 image includes PHP5, which I've not yet tested on all my sites and applications. I'm still using PHP4, but have been meaning to test everything and upgrade to PHP5 - it looks like I'll have to do that first.

Sounds like AOOI (Atomic Offline OS Installer) could be of use to you.

I wrote an installer (AOOI) specifically to put CentOS 4 on 1and1 boxes, its under the Projects page.

Sweet!

Scott, I stumbled upon your site some time ago and although I have not posted much in the forums, I have read and learned a lot from the resources you provide here. Thanks a ton for all your work. It's been a big help (and that goes for the regular contributors, like breun, too!).

I'll take a look at the AOOI, and consider that option. CentOS sounds like a much better system going forward. I had heard of the OS before, but only in the last few days have I read up on it and realized that it's sourced from RHEL.

A couple of questions come to mind. I assume that I'll have to manually install Plesk once I've upgraded to CentOS. Will my backup file include my Plesk key, or will I need to back up and restore that seperately? Since I've always used the Plesk installation and keys provided by 1and1, I've never really dealt with installing or configuring that part of it. Also, are there any issues with using the 1and1 Recovery Tool (I've had to do that once or twice) once I've upgraded to CentOS?

Thanks again for all the help!

When you run pleskrestore you need to specify the -license option to also restore your license. Just check the Backup/Restore Utilities Manual I pointed to earlier in this thread, it's all in there.