I have been putting off the upgrade of my server for some time as I was expecting it to take some time and CentOS 6 has no official stable upgrade path to 7.
If I was using Debian I would have performed a dist upgrade but my preferred OS is CentOS due to the long support cycles, as I was not able to do an inplace upgrade I have had to do an upgrade by migration/transfer.
Basic Procedure
- Backup Server and Contents
this is not exactly required as we are moving by transfer so the old server will still be available
just good practice to have a backup. - Check all settings on the original server and make sure everything is working as expected.
- Prepair and install the new server
- Install Plesk, configure and add any additional extensions that are required
- Migrate the sites
- Update the Domains to point to the new server
- Check everything is working
Preporation
- Backup existing server and all content, take notes of all settings.
- Ensure that the destination server has the required amount of disk space.
- Make sure you have a Licence for the new server that meets your current requirements.
Install Plesk
Install Plesk on your new server this is a relatively simple process, during the install you should install all the feature that you have on the old server for example you should add all the PHP versions you already have, make sure you install the migration agent
Once you have completed the install you will need to login and make sure you have added your licence and run through the panel to make sure every thing is configured as you need it and services are working as required.
You will also need to ensure that you can SSH from the destination server to the source server so make sure you can SSH, I normally make sure I can connect to and from each server.
Migrate Sites
To start the migration of the site go to the tools and setting page and select the Migration & Transfer Manager from there you will then be able to start a new migration,
select Start a New Migration
- Set the Source panel type, in this case Plesk
- Set Source IP address, the IP of your old server
- Set Root login, this is normally root
- Set Root password, this is your root SSH password
- Set Temporary directory, this can normally be left as is providing you have space to export things like your largest database
Under the Transfer settings there are 2 options,
- Migrate all Plesk data.
- Only manually selected resellers, customers, and domains.
You can migrate every thing or just a subscription/domain as I am moving the entire server I am selecting Migrate all Plesk data, and Synchronize the content of domains after migration.
Once all the options have been selected and set you can start the migration, once started it will prompt you to confirm the IP mapping of sites from the source to the destination server, check that you are moving the sites to the correct IP, this is normally quite good at working things out automatically for you so the default may be ok for you.
Once the migration has completed you should see on the destination server that you now have the subscriptions from the source server you should be able to use the site preview in the panel to check on the sites to make sure they are loading.
After you have all the content on the server I always run the plesk repair tool this can help to identify potential issues and will make sure that the configuration on the server are looking good, login as root and run ‘plesk repair all -n’ this will run the repair tool and highlight any potential issues that may need to be fixed.
Update Domain DNS
If you are using Plesk as a DNS server then update the glue records for your domain/s to point to the new server, if the DNS is managed externally then update the records on the external system
Check Sites
After the DNS has propagated check on all the sites to make sure they are working, after you are happy all is working have a chill out and treat yourself to a jack and coke.