How do I migrate web files from a Plesk 8 installation (on a slaved HDD) to a Plesk 10.4.4 installation?

Question

Due to Plesk 8 being at end of support our host setup a new installation of RHEL and Plesk 10 on a new hard drive. They then slaved the old drive to the new so that we could migrate all our files using SSH. I am having challenges correctly migrating the sub domain files.

The path to subdomain root folder in Plesk 10.4.4 is confusing as I don't know where to copy the files to. The path to the files on the slaved drive is /mnt/old-drive/var/www/vhosts/domain_name.com/subdomains/SUBDOMAIN_NAME/, meanwhile on the new installation I have /var/www/vhosts/SUBDOMAIN_NAME.domain_name.com.

There is an httpdocs folder in the /var/www/vhosts/domain_name folder but none in the /var/www/vhosts/SUBDOMAIN_NAME.domain_name.com folder.

Where do I copy my subdomain files to?

Answer 1

It probably would go easier if you run Plesk Migration and Transfer Manager from your Plesk 10 installation (in "Tools and Settings" menu) and make it moving all content from your old server to the new one. The tool shall put all files in appropriate locations.

If you still want to move files manually, then just be sure all your subdomain docroot folders are within /var/www/vhosts/domain_name.com/ folder. Plesk 10 has flexible confgiuration for docroot location, so you can pick the folder when re-creating subdomain in UI.

The '/var/www/vhosts/SUBDOMAIN_NAME.domain_name.com' folder would only include system configuration files, but not actual web content.

Answer 2

I've struggled myself upgrading from Plesk 8 to version 10.x.x, and would highly recommend first performing a full backup under Tools & Settings, and then using the Plesk Migration Tool versus manually copying files yourself, since Plesk stores many settings inside databases. In most cases, it's a completely automated and transparent process, with no configuration required.

Also, if you obtain a license to version 11, which I've found to be reasonably stable at the time of this answer, you can benefit from the help of free migration assistance from Parallels, which can save hours if you do run into problems:

http://www.parallels.com/support/plesk/free11assistance_toc/