Parallels Plesk Panel - 11.0 Administrator’s Guide

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Parallels® Plesk Panel

Parallels IP Holdings GmbH

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CH-Schaffhausen

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Phone: +41 526320 411

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Springleaf Tower, 079909

Singapore

Phone: +65 6645 32 90

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underlying technology, patents, and trademarks are listed at http://www.parallels.com/trademarks.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, Windows NT, Windows Vista, and MS-DOS are registered

trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contents

Preface 6

Typographical Conventions ........................................................................................................... 6

Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 7

About This Guide 8

Introduction to Panel 9

Installation and Upgrade Overview ............................................................................................. 11

Installing and Updating Third-Party Applications .............................................................. 12

Ports Used by Panel .................................................................................................................... 13

Licensing ..................................................................................................................................... 14

System Maintenance 15

Changing Your Server's Host Name ........................................................................................... 16

Changing IP Addresses ............................................................................................................... 17

Moving the Virtual Hosts Directory .............................................................................................. 18

Moving the Directory for Storing Panel Backups ......................................................................... 19

Moving the Directories for Storing Mail Data ............................................................................... 20

Switching Between MySQL and MSSQL Database Server Engines .......................................... 21

Using GUI to Switch Between Database Servers ............................................................. 22

Using Command-Line Interface to Switch Between Database Servers............................ 23

Programming Event Handlers to Execute Custom Scripts.......................................................... 26

Automating Administration Tasks with Command-Line Utilities .................................................. 27

Monitoring Status of System Services......................................................................................... 28

Managing Services from the Command Line and Viewing Service Logs ................................... 29

Predefining Values for Customizable PHP Parameters .............................................................. 34

Website Applications ................................................................................................................... 35

Multiple Web Apps in a Single Directory ........................................................................... 35

Hiding Commercial Apps ................................................................................................... 36

Spam Protection .......................................................................................................................... 37

Configuring SpamAssassin ............................................................................................... 38

Optimizing the Task Manager Performance ................................................................................ 39

Cloning Panel in Virtual Environment .......................................................................................... 41

Removing Panel .......................................................................................................................... 43

Third-Party Components 44

Web Deploy 2.0 ........................................................................................................................... 45

1. Install Web Deploy ........................................................................................................ 45

2. Improve the Security Level ............................................................................................ 46

3. Secure the Service with a Valid Certificate ................................................................... 46

4. Activate Web Deploy in Hosting Plans and Subscriptions ............................................ 46

Manual Installation of Web Deploy.................................................................................... 46

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 48

Preface 4

Backing Up Data .......................................................................................................................... 49

Backup Objects: Hierarchy and Volume ........................................................................... 50

Specifying Data for Backing Up ........................................................................................ 53

Defining Properties of Files That Compose Backup ......................................................... 60

Exporting Backup Files ..................................................................................................... 62

Defining How the Backup Process Is Performed .............................................................. 64

Backup Utility Commands and Options ............................................................................ 65

Restoring Data ............................................................................................................................. 69

Defining Objects for Restoration ....................................................................................... 69

Defining How the Restoration Process Is Performed........................................................ 76

Conflict Resolution Rules and Policies ............................................................................. 77

Restoration Utility Commands and Options ...................................................................... 98

Migrating Data ............................................................................................................................. 99

Changing Security Settings for File System Objects and Accounts 100

Panel's Security Policies ........................................................................................................... 101

Windows Accounts Used by Panel to Manage Windows Objects ............................................ 101

Default User Permissions for Disks................................................................................. 101

Windows Accounts Used by Panel to Manage Hosted Windows Objects ................................ 104

Administering Windows Objects Security on Panel-managed Server ...................................... 105

Initial Windows Security Configuration During Panel Installation or Hosting Account Creation

........................................................................................................................................ 106

Browsing Object Security Settings Through Panel GUI .................................................. 106

Customizing Object Security Settings in Panel ............................................................... 107

General Security Metadata Structure .............................................................................. 121

Restoring Disk User Permissions .............................................................................................. 125

Statistics and Logs 126

Calculating Statistics on Demand .............................................................................................. 127

Log Files and Log Rotation ....................................................................................................... 129

Customizing Panel Appearance and GUI Elements 130

Customizing Panel Appearance and Branding ......................................................................... 131

Hiding and Changing Panel GUI Elements ............................................................................... 132

Ways of Changing the Panel Functionality ..................................................................... 133

Changing the Panel Functionality ................................................................................... 137

Changing Web Presence Builder Functionality ............................................................... 172

Customizing Website Topics ..................................................................................................... 178

Adding Custom Website Topics ...................................................................................... 179

Rearranging and Removing Topics and Categories ....................................................... 186

Localization 188

Registering Additional Services with Panel Notifications 189

Preparing a Service for Registration ......................................................................................... 191

Registering the Service ............................................................................................................. 192

Code Samples ........................................................................................................................... 193

Implementation of Plan_Item_Interface .......................................................................... 194

Registration of an Additional Service .............................................................................. 198

Troubleshooting 199

Preface 5

Repairing Panel Installation ....................................................................................................... 200

Detecting Newly Installed Components..................................................................................... 203

Restoring Mail Configuration ..................................................................................................... 204

Reducing Amounts of Notifications from Antivirus .................................................................... 205

Recovering Forgotten Password ............................................................................................... 205

Checking and Correcting Component and Folder Permissions ................................................ 206

Glossary 207

6 Preface

In this section:

Typographical Conventions ............................................................................... 6

Feedback .......................................................................................................... 7

Formatting convention

Type of Information

Example

Special Bold

Items you must select, such as menu options, command buttons, or items in a list.

Go to the QoS tab. Titles of chapters, sections, and subsections.

Read the Basic Administration chapter.

Italics

Used to emphasize the importance of a point, to introduce a term or to designate a command line placeholder, which is to be replaced with a real name or value.

The system supports the so called wildcard character search.

Monospace

The names of style sheet selectors, files and directories, and CSS fragments.

The license file is called license.key.

Preface

Typographical Conventions

The following kinds of formatting in the text identify special information.

Preface 7

Preformatted Bold

What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output.

Unix/Linux:

# cd /root/rpms/php

Windows:

>cd %myfolder%

Preformatted

On-screen computer output in your command-line sessions; source code in XML, C++, or other programming languages.

Unix/Linux:

# ls -al /files

total 14470

Windows:

>ping localhost

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Feedback

If you have found an error in this guide, or if you have suggestions or ideas on how to improve this guide, please send your feedback using the online form at

http://www.parallels.com/en/support/usersdoc/. Please include in your report the guide's title,

chapter and section titles, and the fragment of text in which you have found an error.

Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows Advanced Administration Guide is a companion

C H A P T E R 1

About This Guide

guide for Parallels Panel Administrator's Guide. It is intended for server administrators whose responsibilities include maintaining hosting servers and troubleshooting server software problems.

The guide provides step-by-step instructions to perform server management tasks that require use of Panel functionality other than the GUI and GUI-only tasks that administrators may need to perform only in rare specific situations. Administrators can use several additional tools that are supplied in the standard Parallels Plesk Panel distribution package to add customized automation tasks, back up and restore data, and repair Panel components and system settings. The tools include a number of standalone Windows applications, command-line utilities, and the ability to integrate custom scripting with Parallels Plesk Panel.

This guide consists of the following chapters:

 Introduction to Panel. Describes the main components and services operated by

Panel, licensing terms, and the ways to install and update Panel components.

 System Maintenance. Describes how to change server host name, IP addresses, and

locations of directories for storing virtual host files, backups, and mail content. This chapter also introduces Panel's command-line tools, a mechanism for running scripts on Panel events, and service monitor that allows monitoring and restarting services without logging in to Panel.

 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data. Describes how to back up and restore Panel

data by means of the command-line utilities pleskbackup and pleskrestore, and introduces the tools for migrating hosted data between servers.

 Changing Security Settings for File System Objects and Accounts. Describes the process

of applying Parallels Plesk Panel security rules to file system objects and accounts. Presents examples of commonly used security rules with explanations.

 Customizing Panel Appearance and GUI Elements. Introduces Panel themes that can be

used to customize Panel appearance and branding and describes how to remove specific elements of Panel GUI or change their behaviour.

 Statistics and Logs. Describes how to run calculation of statistics on disk space and

traffic usage on demand and access web server logs.

 Localization. Introduces the means to localize Panel GUI into languages for which

Parallels does not provide localization.

 Troubleshooting. Describes how to troubleshoot malfunction of Panel services.

 Glossary. Explains terms used in this guide.

Parallels Plesk Panel consists of the following main components:

C H A P T E R 2

Introduction to Panel

 Front-end GUI service. The GUI, served with the Internet Information Services (IIS)

server, is the main means of interaction with Panel.

 Panel core. The core processes management requests from the Panel GUI,

command line interface, and API RPC. The core contains scripts, binary files and other resources used to link Panel components with each other and with external services.

 Panel's main database called psa. The database stores information about Panel

objects, such as IP addresses, domains, user accounts, and many others. The database is served by MySQL or the Microsoft SQL database engine.

 Panel's configuration files.

 Panel's log files.

 Command-line utilities. Command-line interface allows integration of third-party

software with Panel, and provides the means to manage Panel through the server console. For more information about the Panel command-line interface, refer to Panel Command Line Reference.

 API RPC. This interface is another way to integrate third-party software with Panel.

It allows to manage Panel objects from remote by sending specifically structured XML packets and receiving responses from Panel. For more information on API RPC, refer to Developer's Guide: Read Me First and API RPC Protocol Reference.

Services Managed by Panel

Panel uses standard packages for the following services:

 IIS as a set of Internet services including HTTP, FTP, and others.

 FTP servers - ServU, Gene-6, used as alternative FTP servers.

 Mail servers - MailEnable, IceWarp (Merak), CommuniGate Pro, or

SmarterMail.

 BIND or MS DNS - used as the domain name server.

 MySQL used to store the Panel's database called psa that is used for administrative

purposes

 MSSQL or MySQL - used as a database server by Panel users.

 Tomcat - used as an infrastructure for servlet and JSP-based applications shipped

in the *.war format.

 JDK (j2sdk) - used as a library for java applications.

 SpamAssassin - used as protection against spam e-mail messages.

 Parallels Premium Antivirus, Kaspersky Antivirus, or IceWarp

Antivirus - used as e-mail antivirus tools.

10 Introduction to Panel

In this chapter:

Installation and Upgrade Overview .................................................................... 11

Ports Used by Panel .......................................................................................... 13

Licensing ........................................................................................................... 14

Files and Directories Used by Panel Installations

Parallels Plesk Panel and its components are installed by default in the directory

C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\ on a physical server, or C:\Program Files\Plesk\ in the Parallels Containers environment. The default installation

directory is referred to as %plesk_dir% in the following list. Some of the subdirectories with corresponding components are listed below.

 %plesk_dir%\admin\ - The core components used by Panel GUI.

 %plesk_dir%\admin\plib\ - Panel's PHP files.

 %plesk_dir%\admin\bin\ - Binary utilities.

 %plesk_dir%\bin\ - Binary utilities.

 %plesk_dir%\etc\ - Configuration files.

 %plesk_dir%\MailServer\ - Mail servers.

 %plesk_dir%\backup\ - Backup files.

 %plesk_dir%\dns\ - BIND name server files.

 %plesk_dir%\MySql\ - Panel's MySQL database server.

 %plesk_dir%\Databases\ - Database servers for serving user data.

Introduction to Panel 11

Installation and Upgrade Overview

In this section:

Installing and Updating Third-Party Applications ............................................... 12

The most common way of installing and upgrading Parallels Plesk Panel is to use the Parallels Installer utility. This utility connects to the Parallels Updates server where the Panel distribution packages are stored. It then retrieves, downloads, and installs Panel. You can download the Parallels Installer utility from

http://www.parallels.com/eu/download/plesk/products/.

For detailed instructions on how to use Parallels Installer, refer to the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide.

For information about installing third-party software services on Panel-managed servers, refer to the section Installing and Updating Third-Party Applications (on page

12).

Installing Panel in Parallels Virtuozzo Containers Environment

If you operate in the Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (PVC) environment, you can use application templates for installing Panel on containers.

When the application templates are installed on a PVC hardware node, they allow you to easily deploy the application on as many containers as required, saving system resources such as disk space.

You can obtain the Panel templates at

http://www.parallels.com/eu/download/plesk/products/ or download them using the

PVC command line utility call vzup2date -z (available on PVC 4 and above).

For more information on installing Panel on PVC, read the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide, chapter (Advanced) Installation to Parallels Virtuozzo Containers.

Checking Potential Issues Before Upgrading to Panel 11

If you use Parallels Plesk Panel 9 or earlier and want to upgrade it to Panel 11, you may encounter problems due to changes in the Panel business model. In particular, it might be impossible to transfer some settings and business objects.

To efficiently anticipate or resolve the problems, we offer a tool called plesk101_preupgrade_checker.php. This checks potential business logic issues with upgrading to Panel 10 and later and gives recommendations that help you fix the possible problems related to transition of Panel objects. You can download the tool and find descriptions of the report messages at http://kb.parallels.com/9436.

12 Introduction to Panel

Installing and Updating Third-Party Applications

To enable basic hosting services and functions on a Panel-managed server, Panel distribution package includes several third-party software applications, that are installed along with Parallels Plesk Panel. These applications are ultimately responsible for providing various hosting services such as DNS, e-mail, FTP, and others.

All software components shipped with Panel can be installed and updated by means of Parallels Installer. These components are listed at

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/release-notes/parallels-plesk-panel-11.0-forwindows-based-os.html#4.

You can also install and manage through Parallels Plesk Panel many other third-party applications that are not included in the Parallels Plesk Panel distribution package. For the complete list of third-party applications currently supported by Panel, refer to

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/release-notes/parallels-plesk-panel-11.0-forwindows-based-os.html#5.

Automatic Detection of Pre-installed Components

Supported third-party applications that have already been installed on a server prior to Panel installation will be automatically detected during installation of Panel by Parallels Installer and integrated as Panel components.

Manual Installation, Update, and Integration of Components Supported by Panel

If Panel is already installed and you want to install an application package or an update that you obtained from a software vendor, you need to do the following:

1. Upload the package to the Panel-managed server and run the package installation program or, when applicable, follow the vendor's installation instructions.

2. Complete the component installation or update by integrating the application with Panel:

a. Log in to Panel as administrator.

b. Go to Tools & Settings > Server Components. The list of the currently

registered Panel components is displayed.

c. Click Refresh under Tools. The list of registered Panel components is

refreshed. The integrated component entry appears in the list.

Alternately, you can use the following command line call to ensure detection of installed components: "%plesk_bin%\defpackagemng.exe" --get --force

Note: For some newly installed applications, you might need to additionally configure the application settings to ensure proper integration.

Installation of Software not Supported by Panel

You might want to install and use on the server other third-party applications not supported by Panel. The applications will operate properly but will not be manageable through Panel.

Introduction to Panel 13

In accordance with Panel security policies, Panel sets permissions for all its partitions to

Service name

Ports used by service

Administrative interface of Panel

TCP 8443, 8880

Samba (file sharing on Windows networks)

UDP 137, UDP 138, TCP 139, TCP 445

VPN service

UDP 1194

Web server and Panel Updater

TCP 80, TCP 443

FTP server

TCP 20, 21, 990

SSH (secure shell) server

TCP 22

SMTP (mail sending) server

TCP 25, TCP 465

POP3 (mail retrieval) server

TCP 110, TCP 995

IMAP (mail retrieval) server

TCP 143, TCP 993

Mail password change service

TCP 106

MySQL server

TCP 3306

MS SQL server

TCP 1433

Tomcat Java service

TCP 9080, 9008

Licensing Server connections

TCP 5224

Domain name server

UDP 53, TCP 53

Panel upgrades and updates

TCP 8447

restrict users' access to each other and to third-party applications which are unknown to Panel. For this reason, to ensure proper operation of third-party applications not supported by Panel, you need to set required permissions in Panel. For more information about Panel security policies, see the chapter Changing Security Settings for File System Objects and Accounts (on page 100).

To enable a third-party application not supported by Panel, allow the psacln and psaserv groups the required access level to required directories of the application.

If you are installing any IIS extensions or COM components that need to be available on customers' websites, we highly recommend that you install 32-bit versions of these applications because websites that Panel creates are 32-bit.

Ports Used by Panel

On servers protected by a firewall, the following ports must not be blocked to ensure proper operation of Panel and accessibility of Panel-managed services.

14 Introduction to Panel

Licensing

After you install Parallels Plesk Panel, a trial license key for 14 days is installed by default. To continue using Panel after the trial license key expires, you should obtain a lease license key or purchase a permanent license key.

A leased license implies that you pay for a limited time during which you can use Panel, say, for a couple of months. During the lease period, Panel will perform free monthly updates of your license key. The lease license includes free upgrades to all new major versions of Panel.

The permanent license implies that you buy a Panel license for a lifetime. A permanent license is updated every three months for free. Upgrading a Panel installation with a permanent license to the next major version requires a separate payment unless you use Software Update Service (SUS). See http://www.parallels.com/support/sus/ for more information on SUS.

Panel license keys have a grace period of 10 days right before the expiration date. During the grace period, Panel automatically performs daily attempts to update the license key automatically. If an automatic update fails, Panel notifies the administrator. If you do not update a license key during the grace period, it expires and blocks Panel functions until you install a valid license key.

Panel defines whether it needs to update the license key using the update-keys.php utility located in the %plesk_dir%\admin\plib\DailyMaintainance\ directory, where %plesk_dir% is an environment variable denoting the Panel installation directory. This utility checks the license grace period and expiration date and tries to retrieve a new license key or blocks Panel.

Panel runs the utility every day as a part of the daily maintenance script. If you want to check for license updates, you can run the script manually by executing the command "%plesk_bin%\php.exe" -d

auto_prepend_file="%plesk_dir%\admin\plib\DailyMaintainance\script.p hp".

You can retrieve and manage license keys through the Panel GUI. The information about current license key and controls for managing license keys are located in Server Administration Panel > Tools & Settings > License Management.

This chapter describes how to perform the following tasks:

In this chapter:

Changing Your Server's Host Name .................................................................. 16

Changing IP Addresses ..................................................................................... 17

Moving the Virtual Hosts Directory .................................................................... 18

Moving the Directory for Storing Panel Backups ................................................ 19

Moving the Directories for Storing Mail Data...................................................... 20

Switching Between MySQL and MSSQL Database Server Engines .................. 21

Programming Event Handlers to Execute Custom Scripts ................................. 26

Automating Administration Tasks with Command-Line Utilities.......................... 27

Monitoring Status of System Services ............................................................... 28

Managing Services from the Command Line and Viewing Service Logs ........... 28

Predefining Values for Customizable PHP Parameters ..................................... 34

Website Applications ......................................................................................... 35

Spam Protection ................................................................................................ 37

Optimizing the Task Manager Performance ...................................................... 39

Cloning Panel in Virtual Environment ................................................................ 41

Removing Panel ................................................................................................ 43

C H A P T E R 3

System Maintenance

 Change server's host name.

 Change server IP addresses. You may need to do this when, for instance, you are

moving your Panel server to a new datacenter, and need to reconfigure the Panel installation to run on new IP addresses.

 Move the directory where virtual hosts reside to another location on the same or

another partition. You might want to do this when disk space on the current partition is running out.

 Move the directory where Panel backup files are stored to another location on the

same or another partition. You might want to do this when, for instance, there is insufficient disk space on the current partition to house new backup files, and you want to move them all to a new, larger volume.

 Move the directories that house mail content to another location on the same or

another partition. You might want to do this when there is insufficient amount of disk space on the current partition to serve a larger amount of mailboxes, and you want to move them all to a new larger volume.

 Switch the database server engine used by Panel.

 Stop, start, and restart Panel-managed services from command line, and access

their logs and configuration files.

16 System Maintenance

Changing Your Server's Host Name

You specify your server's host name during your very first login to Panel. If you want to change the host name later, you can do it through Panel.

Note: Specifying an invalid host name will result in unpredictable Panel behavior and server malfunction. The host name must resolvable from the Panel-managed server, especially if Customer and Business Manager is installed.

To change your server's host name:

1. Log in to Server Administration Panel.

2. Go to Tools & Settings > Server Settings.

3. Enter the new host name in the Full hostname field.

This should be a fully qualified host name, but without an ending dot (for example, host.example.com).

4. Click OK.

System Maintenance 17

Changing IP Addresses

You can switch from an existing IP address on your Panel-managed server to a newly created IP address or to another existing address.

During life-time of a Panel installation, you may need to replace IP addresses used for hosting with other IP addresses. Replacing all old IP addresses with new ones may be necessary when moving a Panel server onto a new network. More often, you may need to introduce more subtle changes in your server's IP address pool. For example, you may need to free up one or more IP addresses currently used for hosting on the server. This will allow you to use the addresses for other purposes or to eliminate them from the server's IP pool altogether.

Every time you replace an IP address with a new one on a Parallels Plesk Panel server, you need to reconfigure Panel and various services to use the new IP address instead of the replaced one.

You can switch from one IP address to another and automatically reconfigure Panel and all hosting services on the server to use the new address by using the Change Server IP Addresses option in the Reconfigurator utility.

Note: By using this feature, you can only replace one IP address with another. You cannot migrate a group of select domains from one or more IP addresses to a new IP address.

 To change from one IP address on a Panel-managed server to another, follow

these steps:

1. Log in to the Panel-managed server as a user with administrator rights by using Remote Desktop.

2. In the W indows Start menu, select All Programs > Parallels > Panel > PP Reconfigurator. The Reconfigurator application window opens.

3. Select the Change server IP addresses option. The IP Addresses Reconfiguring window opens.

4. Under Select the IP addresses to be changed, select the checkboxes corresponding to the IP addresses that you want to change to other IP addresses.

To view the list of domains hosted on particular IP address, click the IP address entry to highlight it. The list of hosted domains using the highlighted IP address is displayed in a window to the right.

18 System Maintenance

5. Map each selected to an IP address of your choice.

a. To map a selected address, click on the selected address entry. The

entry is highlighted.

b. Select the address to map to:

 To map to an existing IP address, select Existing Address option and then select an

existing address entry. The entry information is displayed in the Mapping Information column for the selected IP address entry under Select the IP addresses to be changed.

 To map to a new IP address that will be created during mapping, select Create New

IP address option and then enter the IP address, network mask, and network

interface name. The entry information is displayed in the Mapping Information column for the selected IP address entry under Select the IP addresses to be changed.

6. Click Next.

Panel installation is reconfigured to use the newly specified IP addresses in place of the old ones. All relevant records in the Panel's database are updated, network adapters settings are changed accordingly (the old IP addresses are removed), FTP and web servers are reconfigured accordingly, DNS records are updated accordingly.

Note: If changing IP address fails during execution, all changes are rolled back. When

connected to the server through the Remote Desktop connection, a change of your server’s

IP address will terminate your session.

Moving the Virtual Hosts Directory

This option allows moving the directory where virtual hosts reside to another location on the same or another partition. Use this feature when disk space is insufficient on the current partition to house new virtual hosts, and you want to move them all to a new, larger volume.

 To move the virtual hosts directory to a new location, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Panel-managed server as a user with administrator rights by using Remote Desktop.

2. In the W indows Start menu, select All Programs > Parallels > Panel > PP Reconfigurator. The Reconfigurator application window opens.

3. Select the Change Virtual Hosts location option.

4. Specify the destination directory name. If the directory does n ot exist, it will

be created.

5. Click Next.

During this operation all Panel's services will be restarted.

System Maintenance 19

Moving the Directory for Storing Panel Backups

By using Panel Reconfigurator utility, you can move the Panel backup files storage directory to another location on the same or another partition. Use this option when disk space is insufficient on the current partition to house new backup files, and you want to move them all to a new, larger volume.

 To change location of the backup files directory, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Panel-managed server as a user with administrator rights by using Remote Desktop.

2. In the W indows Start menu, select All Programs > Parallels > Panel > PP Reconfigurator. The Reconfigurator application window opens.

3. Select the Change Plesk Backup Data location option.

4. Specify the destination directory name. If the directory does not exist, it will

be created.

5. Click Next. During this operation, all services will be restarted.

20 System Maintenance

Moving the Directories for Storing Mail Data

You can move the directories that store mail content to another location on the same or another partition. Use this option when disk space is insufficient on the current partition to serve larger data volume or amount of mailboxes and you want to move all mail content to a new, larger volume.

 To move the mail content directories to another location, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Panel-managed server as a user with administrator rights by using Remote Desktop.

2. In the W indows Start menu, select All Programs > Parallels > Panel > PP Reconfigurator. The Reconfigurator application window opens.

3. Select the Change Plesk Mail Data location option.

4. Specify the destination directory name. If the directory does not exist, it will

be created.

5. Click Next. During this operation, Panel's services will be restarted.

System Maintenance 21

Switching Between MySQL and MSSQL

In this section:

Using GUI to Switch Between Database Servers .............................................. 22

Using Command-Line Interface to Switch Between Database Servers .............. 23

Database Server Engines

Panel can use several different database engines to access the Panel's internal database. At any time you can change the database location and select to use different database engine to access the database. To switch from one database server to another, you need to migrate the database to a new database server and configure Panel to connect to the server to access the database. The following database servers are supported by Panel:

 MySQL

 Microsoft SQL

You can use the Switch Database Provider option in Reconfigurator to switch between database servers to access Panel's internal database. Reconfigurator will migrate the Panel's internal database to a new database server and configure Panel to access the database by means of the new database server.

Two methods exist for switching between database servers: by using the Reconfigurator GUI (on page 22) and by using the command-line interface (on page 23). This section describes both of these methods.

22 System Maintenance

Using GUI to Switch Between Database Servers

You can migrate Panel's internal database to a new database engine and configure Panel to access the database at the database server.

 To switch between database servers through Reconfigurator GUI, follow these

steps:

1. Log in to the Panel-managed server as a user with administrator rights by using Remote Desktop.

2. In the W indows Start menu, select All Programs > Parallels > Panel > PP Reconfigurator. The Reconfigurator application window opens.

3. Select the Switch DB provider option.

4. Enter the supported database server engine type in the Server type field.

5. Enter the server address (IP address or host name) and, if different from

default, port number in the corresponding fields.

(The field are available only if MySQL or MSSQL server type is entered.)

6. Enter the new server administrator's login and password.

Note: If you switch to MySQL database in Panel 8.2 or later, note the following:

* if MySQL database was not used as a Panel database provider before, MySQL administrator's login is 'admin' and password is 'setup'. * if MySQL database was already used as a Panel database provider in the past, you should use MySQL administrator's login and password which were used before changing of the Panel database provider from MySQL to another server type.

7. Under Create a new database to locate data in, enter information about the new Panel's database that the data will be migrated to:

a. In the Database field, enter the new database name. For example:

plesk_new.

b. In the Database user name field, enter user name to be used by Panel to

access the migrated database.

c. In the Password and Confirm password fields, type the database user

password.

Warning! By changing the database user password, you also change the Panel administrator's password for accessing Panel. The Panel administrator's password and database user password are always the same (although usernames can be different).

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 To change MySQL database user password, follow these steps:

Option

Parameter

Description

Comment

--new-provider

MSSQL | MySQL

The new database server type.

1. Go to %Plesk_dir%\MySQL\Data.

2. Open the my.ini file and add to the [PleskSQLServer] section the

following line:

skip-grant-table

3. Go to Administrative Tools > Computer Management and start Panel's SQL server.

4. Issue the following in command line:

cd %Plesk_dir%\mysql\bin mysql -P8306 mysql> use mysql mysql> update user set password=password('<as your Panel admin password>') where user="admin";

5. Go to %Plesk_dir%\MySQL\Data.

6. Erase from the [PleskSQLServer] section of the my.ini file the following

line:

skip-grant-table

7. Restart the Panel's SQL server.

Using Command-Line Interface to Switch Between Database Servers

You can migrate Panel's internal database to a new database server and configure Panel to access the database at the database server.

The command for switching the Panel's database servers has the following syntax:

reconfigurator --switch-plesk-database --new-provider=<provider name> -host=<host name> --db=<database name> --login=<database user login> -password=<database user password> [--password=<port number>] [--adminlogin=<administrator login>] [--admin-password=<administrator password>]

See the following table for the command options descriptions.

Options

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Option

Parameter

Description

Comment

--db

Name of the Panel's database on the new database server.

For MySQL and MSSQL databases, you need to specify only the database name on the server. For example:

"--db=psa_new"

--host

Database server IP address or host name.

--login

Database user name used by Panel.

--password

Password used by Panel.

--port

New database server port number. This parameter is optional.

Define a port number if the new database server uses a nondefault port number.

--admin-login

Database server administrator login name. This parameter is optional.

Define the server administrator credentials if you want a new database user created with the username and password specified by the --login and --password options. If the options are omitted from the command, Panel will be configured to use the database user credentials specified by the -

-login and --password options, no new user will be created for the database.

--adminpassword

Database server administrator password. This parameter is optional.

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 To switch between database servers through command-line interface, follow

these steps:

1. Log in to the server as a user with administrator right s by using Remote Desktop.

2. Start cmd.exe.

3. Change directory to the %plesk_dir%\admin\bin\ folder (where

%plesk_dir% is the system variable defining the folder where Panel is installed).

4. Execute the server switch command.

For example, to migrate the Panel's internal database to a new location accessible at c:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\admin\db\psa3.mdb, and instruct Panel to use existing user credentials (login name dbadmin and password dbadminpass) to access the database, use the following command:

reconfigurator --switch-plesk-database --host=localhost “--db=c:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\admin\db\psa3.mdb” --login=dbadmin -password=dbadminpass

Warning! By changing the database user password, you also change the administrator's password for accessing Panel. The administrator's password and database user password are always the same (although user login names can be different).

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Programming Event Handlers to Execute Custom Scripts

Parallels Plesk Panel provides a mechanism that allows administrators to track specific Panel events and make Panel execute custom scripts when these events occur. The events include operations that Panel users perform on accounts, subscriptions, websites, service plans, and various Panel settings.

It works the following way: you create a script to be executed upon a certain Panel event, and then set up an event handler in Server Administration Panel that triggers processing of the event by the script. You can assign several handlers to a single event.

To learn how to track Panel events and set up execution of commands or custom scripts, refer to Parallels Plesk Panel Administrator's Guide, chapter Event Tracking available at

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-administratorguide/59205.htm.

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Automating Administration Tasks with Command-Line Utilities

Parallels Plesk Panel command-line utilities are designed to facilitate the processes of creating various entities in Parallels Plesk Panel bypassing the Panel GUI. Command-line utilities are executed via command prompt opened in the %plesk_dir%\admin\bin\ folder (where %plesk_dir% is a system variable containing the Panel installation directory).

You can see the list of available commands and options by running an utility with --help or

-h command. For more information about command line utilities usage refer to Parallels Plesk

Panel for Windows Command Line Interface Reference at

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-win-cli/.

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Monitoring Status of System Services

You can monitor the status of your Panel-managed server without logging in to Panel. To do this, you need to access your server over Remote Desktop.

A utility called Parallels Plesk Panel Services Monitor is loaded automatically every time Panel starts. To manage the status of Panel's services, open the Parallels Plesk Panel Services Monitor by double-clicking its icon in the taskbar. The look of the icon depends on

the state of crucial Panel services: the icon means that all Panel's services are

functioning, and the icon means that some services are stopped or not working correctly.

Once you open the Services Monitor, you can see the status of all vital Panel's services. The

icon indicates that a corresponding service is working correctly, and the icon indicates that the corresponding service is stopped or is not working correctly.

To stop a service, select the corresponding checkbox and click Stop.

To restart a service, select the corresponding checkbox and click Restart.

To start a service, select the corresponding checkbox and click Start.

Note: You can use Select All and Clear All buttons to select or clear all available checkboxes.

To refresh the list of services and their respective statuses, click Refresh.

To remove all information about Panel sessions from Panel's database and disconnect all users from Panel, click Delete Sessions. This is useful when you need to restart Panel, but some users are still connected to it, and you want to avoid possible data loss or files corruption.

Note: You can also start, stop, restart services and delete sessions by right-clicking the Parallels Plesk Panel Services Monitor icon and selecting the required option from the menu.

To hide the Services Monitor back in the taskbar, click Hide.

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Managing Services from the Command Line and Viewing Service Logs

This section describes how to stop, start, and restart services managed by Panel, and access their logs and configuration files.

Parallels Plesk Panel web interface

To stop the service through command line:

net stop plesksrv

To start the service through command line:

net start plesksrv net start poppassd

To restart the service through command line:

net stop plesksrv net start plesksrv net start poppassd

Panel's log file is located in:

%plesk_dir%\admin\logs\W3SVC<IIS site ID>\ex<date>.log

Panel's PHP configuration file is located in:

%plesk_dir%\admin\php.ini

Internet Information Services log file is accessible at:

IIS manager > Sites/Application Pools > PleskControlPanel

Web Presence Builder

%plesk_dir%\SiteBuilder\_logs Configuration files are accessible at:

IIS manager > Sites/Application Pools > sitebuilder(default) / SiteBuilderSitesWebAppPool

phpMyAdmin

Log files are located in:

%plesk_dir%\admin\logs\W3SVC<IIS site ID>\ex<date>.log

Configuration files are accessible at:

%plesk_dir%admin\htdocs\domains\databases\phpMyAdmin\config.inc.php

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ASP.Net Enterprise Manager

Configuration files are accessible at:

IIS manager > Sites > sqladmin(default)\mssql

myLittleAdmin 2000/2005

Configuration files are accessible at:

IIS manager > Sites > sqladmin(default)\myLittleAdmin

%plesk_vhosts%\sqladmin\myLittleAdmin\2005\config.xml

MailEnable

To stop the service through command line:

net stop meimaps && net stop melcs && net stop memtas && net stop mepops && net stop mepocs && net stop mesmtpcs

To start the service through command line:

net start meimaps && net start melcs && net start memtas && net start mepops && net start mepocs && net start mesmtpcs

To restart the service through command line:

net stop meimaps && net stop melcs && net stop memtas && net stop mepops && net stop mepocs && net stop mesptpcs && net start meimaps && net start melcs && net start memtas && net start mepops && net start mepocs && net start mesmtpcs

Log files are located in:

%plesk_dir%Mail Servers\Mail Enable\Logging

Configuration files are accessible at:

%plesk_dir%\Mail Servers\Mail Enable\Bin\MailEnable.msc

DNS / Named / BIND

To stop the service through command line:

net stop named

To start the service through command line:

net start named

To restart the service through command line:

net stop named && net start named

Log files are accessible through Windows Event Viewer.

Configuration files are accessible at:

%plesk_dir%\dns

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MySQL

To stop the service through command line:

net stop plesksqlserver

To start the service through command line:

net start plesksqlserver

To restart the service through command line:

net stop plesksqlserver && net start plesksqlserver

Log files are accessible through Windows Event Viewer.

Configuration file is accessible at:

%plesk_dir%MySQL\Data\my.ini

SpamAssassin

Log files are accessible through Windows Event Viewer.

Configuration files are accessible at:

%plesk_dir%\Additional\Perl\site\var\spamassassin\3.003001

Dr.Web Antivirus

To stop the service through command line:

net stop DrWebCom

To start the service through command line:

net start DrWebCom

To restart the service through command line:

net stop DrWebCom && net start DrWebCom

Log file is located in:

%plesk_dir%DrWeb\drcom.log

FTP service

To stop the service through command line:

net stop iisadmin

To start the service through command line:

net start iisadmin

To restart the service through command line:

net stop iisadmin && net start iisadmin

Log files are located in:

%plesk_vhosts%Servers\<ID>\logs

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Configuration files are accessible at:

IIS Manager > FTP sites > <IP address>

Kaspersky Antivirus

To stop the service through command line:

net stop kavsvc

To start the service through command line:

net start kavsvc

To restart the service through command line:

net stop kavsvc && net start kavsvc

Log file is accessible through Windows Event Viewer.

Internet Information Services

To stop the service through command line:

net stop iisadmin

To start the service through command line:

net start iisadmin

To restart the service through command line:

net stop iisadmin && net start iisadmin

Web server log file is accessible through Windows Event Viewer.

Website logs are available at:

%plesk_vhosts%<domain>\statistics\logs\<SITE ID>

Configuration is available through IIS Manager.

AWStats

Configuration file is accessible at:

%plesk_vhosts%\<domain>\statistics\webstat\AWStats\cgibin\awstats.<domain>.conf

Webalizer

Configuration file is accessible at:

%plesk_dir%\Additional\Webalizer\conf\webalizer.conf

System Maintenance 33

Plesk Backup Manager

Backup log files are located in:

%plesk_dir%\PMM\<session>\psadump.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\<session>\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\pmmcli.log

Restoration log files are located in:

%plesk_dir%\PMM\rsessions\<session>\conflicts.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\rsessions\<session>\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\pmmcli.log

Plesk Migration Manager

Log files are located in:

%plesk_dir%\PMM\msessions\<session>\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\rsessions\<session>\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\rsessions\<session>\conflicts.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\migration.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\pmmcli.log

%plesk_dir%\PMM\logs\migration_handler.log

Horde

Log file is located in:

%plesk_dir%\tmp\horde

Configuration files are accessible at:

Web interface - IIS manager > Sites > webmail (horde)

PHP settings - %plesk_vhosts%\webmail\horde\php.ini

Application settings - %plesk_vhosts%\webmail\horde\config\

34 System Maintenance

Atmail

Error log is located in:

%plesk_dir%\tmp\atmail

Configuration files are accessible at:

Web interface - IIS manager > Sites > webmail (atmail)

Application settings - %plesk_vhosts%\webmail\atmail\libs\Atmail\config.php

Predefining Values for Customizable PHP Parameters

Panel allows to define custom PHP configuration for a certain service plan, add-on plan, subscription, website, and even subdomain. For this purpose, the Panel GUI exposes 16 most often used PHP parameters that allow customization. The administrator or a customer can set the value of each parameter either by selecting a value from a preset, typing a custom value, or leaving the default value. In the latter case, Panel takes the parameter value from the server-wide PHP configuration.

Using the %plesk_dir%\admin\conf\panel.ini file you can specify what PHP parameters values will be available in the preset and toggle the visibility of the custom value field.

Defining the Preset Values To set the list of predefined values for a certain PHP parameter, add the line of the following type to the [php] section of the panel.ini file:

settings.<parameter_group>.<parameter_name>.values[]=<value>

where

 <parameter_group> - a group of a PHP parameter: performance for the

performance PHP settings and general if the parameter is placed in to the common group. For more information about the groups of PHP parameters, read the Administrator's Guide, Customizing PHP Configuration.

 <parameter_name> - a name of a PHP parameter. Use the same syntax as in

php.ini.

 <value> - a parameter's value added to the preset. Use the same syntax as in

php.ini.

System Maintenance 35

Add such line for each value in the preset. For example, if you want Panel users to choose the value of the memory_limit parameter between 8M and 16M, add the following lines to panel.ini:

[php] settings.performance.memory_limit.values[]=8M settings.performance.memory_limit.values[]=16M

Hiding the Custom Value Fields

To hide the field that allows entering the custom value for a certain PHP parameter, add the line of the following type to the [php] section of the panel.ini file:

settings.<parameter_group>.<parameter_name>.custom=false

where

 <parameter_group> - a group of a PHP parameter: performance for the

performance PHP settings and general if the parameter is placed in to the common group. For more information about the groups of PHP parameters, read the Administrator's Guide,

 <parameter_name> - a name of a PHP parameter. Use the same syntax as in

php.ini.

For example, if you do not want Panel users to set custom values to the memory_limit parameter, add the following line to panel.ini:

[php] settings.performance.memory_limit.custom=false

To switch the custom value field back on, replace false with true.

Website Applications

Multiple Web Apps in a Single Directory

Since Panel 10.4, when a site employs a number of various web apps, a site administrator may apply the following site structure:

 Install a number of apps to the same directory. More specifically, install one app into a

subdirectory of another.

 Use the same document root for a subdomain and a web app.

For example, you can install an online store app to the httpdocs directory of your domain (say, example.com), create a subdomain (say, support.example.com) in the httpdocs/support, and install a help desk system there.

All earlier Panel versions (before 10.4) prohibited such scenarios as sometimes (in very rare cases), the installation of two web apps into one directory could lead to the improper functioning of one of them. If you want to return this restriction back, add the following lines into %plesk_dir%\admin\conf\panel.ini:

36 System Maintenance

[aps] unsafePaths=false

Hiding Commercial Apps

You can hide commercial web applications by default, so that your customers are able to install only free applications. To do this, add the following lines into panel.ini:

[aps] commercialAppsEnabled = false

System Maintenance 37

Spam Protection

SpamAssassin is a rule-based mail filter that identifies spam. It uses a wide range of

heuristic tests on mail headers and body text to identify spam.

SpamAssassin filtering is configured on two levels:

 Server-level configuration is done by Panel administrator.

 Mail directory-level configuration is done by users for specific mail directories.

At the server level, you (as a Panel administrator) can enable or disable any of these two types of filters. Thus, there are four possible situations:

 No filtering is applied:

 both filters are disabled by the Parallels Plesk Panel administrator.

 the personal filter is disabled at the mail directory level.

 Filtering is applied at the server level only.

 Filtering is applied at the mail box level only.

 Filtering is applied at both levels.

When both filters are enabled for a specific mail name, a combined filter is created for the corresponding mail directory. When processing messages, SpamAssassin calculates the number of hits according to its internal rules. A message is considered to be spam if the number of hits exceeds the established threshold, which is set to 7 by default. You can change the threshold in Panel. White and Black lists can be considered special rules, which assign constant hit rates to messages conforming to mail address patterns in these lists:

 If the message source address conforms to the Black list, the message gets +100 hits

by default.

 If the message source address conforms to the White list, the message gets -100 hits by

default.

Sometimes, a message matches both Black and White lists. In that case, it has +100100=0 hits.

If the message destination address is included in the server-wide ignore list, then all messages to this address will go directly to the addressed mail directory.

At the server level, you can configure SpamAssassin to mark messages with a special string if they are recognized as containing spam. At the mailbox level, you can make

SpamAssassin delete or mark the message if it is considered as spam.

Starting from Panel 9.x, the maximum message size to filter is hardcoded in the spam handler and set to 256KB. This value provides normal server loading. Since the

SpamAssassin service consists of perl modules, they may result in a heavy server load

when processing long messages.

You can obtain more information about SpamAssassin at spamassassin.apache.org

38 System Maintenance

In this section:

Configuring SpamAssassin ............................................................................... 38

Configuring SpamAssassin

The SpamAssassin configuration is stored in the spamfilter and spamfilter_preferences tables of the psa database. You can manage it with the %plesk_dir%\admin\bin\spammng.exe utility. It displays help if started without any options.

Server-wide SpamAssassin settings are stored in the following files:

 The

%plesk_dir%\Additional\Perl\site\var\spamassassin\3.003001\updates _spamassassin_org\*.cf files contain configuration details, e.g. White list and

Black list scores are assigned in the 50_scores.cf configuration file.

 The

%plesk_dir%\Additional\Perl\site\etc\mail\spamassassin\local.cf stores server-wide filter settings.

Personal user settings are stored in the file

%plesk_dir%\Additional\SpamAssassin\SpamFilterUserConfigsPath\<mailn ame>\user_prefs.

For more information about the SpamAssassin configuration, refer to the respective documentation at http://spamassassin.apache.org/doc/Mail_SpamAssassin_Conf.html.

To apply changes in the configuration files, you should restart SpamAssassin with the following command:

for /F "usebackq tokens=5" %i in (`cmd /c "netstat -aon | findstr

0.0.0.0:8783"`) do taskkill /F /PID %i

System Maintenance 39

Optimizing the Task Manager Performance

Parallels Customer and Business Manager automates certain hosting providers' tasks such as creating Panel accounts and subscriptions, registering domain names, issuing invoices, and so on. To do this, Business Manager uses its own task manager. This task manager does the following:

 Schedules and runs tasks.

 Stores task details and execution statuses.

 Suggests how to resolve possible task execution problems.

If you want to utilize your server resources better, consider optimizing task manager performance in your environment by changing its settings defined in the %plesk_dir%\billing\task-manager\config\config.ini configuration file. The paragraphs of this section describe the ways to optimize certain aspects of the task manager.

Reducing Disk Space Consumption

If you want the task manager to consume less disk space, you can reduce the size of its own database. To do this, adjust the following settings that define how much information the task manager stores in the database:

 How long task manager stores information about processed tasks. The parameters that

set these intervals for completed, failed and canceled tasks are

completedTasksClearInterval, failedTasksClearInterval, and canceledTasksClearInterval correspondingly.

By default, these intervals are equal to 1 year. If you want to change them, specify the values in the ISO 8601 standard, for example, P1Y for the 1 year interval.

 How much information about each task execution is stored. For troubleshooting

purposes, the task manager writes information about task executions to log files, one file per each execution. The parameter that sets maximum number of stored log files for each task is the maxTaskLogs. Its default value is 5. To make the logs consume less disk space, specify a smaller value of this parameter.

Note: When you set the task removal intervals described above, remember that setting too small values may make troubleshooting difficult since you may not have enough information about recent task executions.

Increasing Task Manager Performance

When you run all scheduled tasks at once, task manager starts processing a certain number of tasks simultaneously. After completing (or failing to complete) the task, the task manager starts another task from the queue and so on. To make processing of multiple tasks faster, increase the maximum number of tasks processed simultaneously. The parameter that sets this number is runAllMaxInstances.

However, when you set a greater value for this parameter, remember that too big values increase the system load and therefore may reduce the Panel performance or even block customer access to the Control Panel.

40 System Maintenance

Increasing Logs Detalization

To make the task manager produce more information that may help you in troubleshooting issues, adjust the logging settings in the following ways:

 Increase the number of execution logs for each task. To do this, edit the value of the

maxTaskLogs parameter. When you set a greater value, remember that this will increase the disk space consumption.

 Increase the verbosity of the logs. By default, the task manager writes only error

information to log files. To get more information on tasks execution, include tasks execution messages into the logs by changing values of the parameters log.info and log.sql to 1.

Important: Including debug information into the task manager logs will reduce its performance; Therefore, we recommend that you include this information only when you troubleshoot certain issues.

System Maintenance 41

Cloning Panel in Virtual Environment

Why Do I Need Panel Cloning?

The popular and efficient way to start offering Panel services is to install Panel in a cloud and then seamlessly scale your infrastructure and install more Panel instances as your business grows. The challenge in this approach is that it is not possible just to copy the same Panel again and again to different virtual machines because of the following:

 Some clouds constantly change allocated IP addresses pools. If a Panel service was

bound to an IP address which was later removed from the system, the service will not be operable.

 Each Panel object, for example, a customer account, should have a unique identifier, so-

called GUID. This requirement is mandatory to avoid conflicts during migration from one server to another or during recovery from a backup. If you simply keep copying Panel, all the instances will share the same GUIDs.

The Panel cloning technology solves these and other scaling problems.

What Is Panel Cloning?

Panel cloning is the technology of copying the same Panel instance to different virtual machines without compromising Panel operability. Two prevailing usage scenarios of the cloning are:

 Fast Panel setup. If you wish to create virtual machines (GoDaddy cloud, Amazon cloud,

KVM, Xen, and so on) with Panel on demand, the easiest way to streamline this process is to create an image of a virtual machine with specifically prepared Panel and then create new machines from this preset as many times as needed.

 Full backup. Cloning is a recovery solution too because almost all Panel data remain in

cloned instances. Thus, you can first copy a prepared Panel to another virtual machine and then start the machine if your original machine becomes inoperable.

The application scope of Panel cloning is wider: For example, you can clone Panel and then safely test new features or configurations on it, but in this section, we will consider only the given scenarios because others are their extensions or combinations.

Cloning and Panel Licensing

Before you start cloning Panel, please contact our sales representatives and provide the range of IP addresses within which your Panel instances will be installed. Our licensing system will activate Panel servers from this range only.

42 System Maintenance

Preparing a Panel Instance for Cloning

If you want to use Panel cloning, you should start with preparing your Panel instance. The following preparatory steps help you reset all environment- and initialization-specific settings (like the IP addresses pool) to prevent copying of unique information to other virtual machines. Omit steps 2 and 3 if your scenario is full backup.

1. (Fast setup, full backup) Instruct Panel to reconfigure its IP pool after restart. After running the following command, a Panel instance will discover actual IP addresses and reconfigure its IP pool each time you restart the corresponding virtual machine.

# %plesk_cli%\ipmanage --auto-remap-ip-addresses true

Note: This step is not mandatory if a virtual machine to which you want to copy Panel uses a static IP address. Moreover, omitting this option will make Panel start faster because Panel will not reconfigure its IP pool on each startup. However, we highly recommend to complete this step if you deploy Panel to a cloud.

2. (Fast setup only, optional) Initialize the instance programmatically or from the Panel GUI. Specify the administrator's information, locale, and other initialization settings using the init_conf command-line utility or the Panel GUI. Read more about the initialization in the Installing Panel > Post-Installation Setup section of the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide.

3. (Fast setup only) Prepare Panel for cloning by resetting some of its data (for example, the administrator's password, see the full list below) and remove the license key on the next start. Note that this utility does not perform cloning, it only modifies Panel settings.

# %plesk_cli%\cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -resetlicense true

When preparing a Panel instance for cloning, avoid restarting Plesk Management Service and shutting down the virtual machine on which the instance is installed.

How to Clone Panel

We assume that you have a virtual machine with Panel and you wish to clone this machine. The cloning procedure consists of three steps:

1. Prepare the Panel instance for cloning using the instructions we provided earlier.

2. If your software for managing virtual machines supports creating copies of virtual

machines, which is normally true, stop (shut down) the virtual machine and create the image copy. Otherwise, if images copying is unavailable, you should use a special shutdown call that resets some instance data and then copy the machine by available means. The shutdown is performed by the following command from the command prompt (Cmd.exe):

sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown

Once you have the virtual machine image, use it as a preset for new virtual machines or as a Panel snapshot.

System Maintenance 43

What Data Are Reset by the cloning Utility?

The following list contains the items that are reset by the cloning utility:

 The IP pool

 Panel GUIDs

 Passwords for all IIS users (Anonymous and Application pool users for the Panel website

and all sites created by Panel: Horde, Atmail, and all customer sites)

 The administrator's password

 (Optionally) The license key

The rest of the data, including the default SSL certificate, remain intact.

Removing Panel

You can remove Panel as any other program in Windows by using Control Panel > Uninstall a Program. For the complete instruction on how to remove programs in Microsoft Windows,

read this article: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Uninstall-or-change-a-

program.

This chapter explains how to install and configure third-party components on the Panel-

In this chapter:

Web Deploy 2.0 ................................................................................................. 45

C H A P T E R 4

Third-Party Components

managed server.

Third-Party Components 45

Web Deploy 2.0

Web Deploy (Web Deployment Tool) is a Microsoft's tool that significantly simplifies migration, management, and deployment of IIS web servers, web applications, and websites.

Here are two reasons to have Web Deploy on your server:

 Simple applications publishing. Web developers who write code in Visual Studio® (IDE)

and WebMatrix® (development tool) can use Web Deploy to publish their applications to a production server. If you would like to give your customers this time-saving and easy-touse publication method, install Web Deploy on your server.

Note: You should not install Visual Studio® and WebMatrix® on Panel servers. This software is installed by customers themselves on their PCs.

 New market for your hosting plans. WebMatrix® helps its users find a suitable hosting

plan in Microsoft Web Hosting Gallery, a catalog where hosting providers advertise hosting offers. If you want your hosting plans to be present in the gallery, one of the requirements is to have Web Deploy.

1. Install Web Deploy

There are two ways of installing Web Deploy - as a Panel component, the recommended way, or manual installation. The first way assumes that you install Web Deploy as any other Panel component, from Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add / Remove Components. If you use Panel 10.4 and earlier versions, the component installation is unavailable, so you should perform manual installation. For the installation instructions, see the Manual Installation of Web Deploy section below.

Note: Microsoft Windows Powershell is required for proper installation of Web Deploy. Ensure that it is installed on server. (It should be available automatically in Windows 2008 R2). Learn how to install the component at http://www.microsoft.com/powershell.

After the successful installation, you are able to check that Web Deploy is discovered by Panel. To do this, log in as the Panel administrator and go to Tools & Settings > Server Components. The new component, Web Publishing, will appear in the list. Additionally, the ability to use web publishing will be added to all existing subscriptions, to the Hosting Parameters tab, and set as not provided by default.

If your customers use MySQL databases for their applications, you should additionally install the MySQL Connector/Net component from Microsoft Web Platform Installer.

46 Third-Party Components

2. Improve the Security Level

During the installation, Web Deploy adds a number of delegation rules to IIS that allow nonadministrators to perform operations on databases and files on their IIS sites. Panel automatically adds an exception from one of the rules, namely, from appPoolPipeline. This exception prevents Panel from changing the .NET version of application pools in IIS. But for this automatic amendment, the version change will lead to malfunctioning of .NET applications that are not compatible with the updated version. Say, if the version has changed from 2.0 to 3.5, some apps that required 2.0 will not run.

In addition to this rule change, we recommend that you set IIS to run applications of each subscription in a separate pool. This setting will guarantee that other pools will continue to operate even if a certain app damages a pool on a certain subscription. You can specify to use separate pools in plan settings, the Performance tab > Dedicated IIS application pool.

3. Secure the Service with a Valid Certificate

During its installation, Web Deploy installs (as needed) and activates IIS Manager service that secures connections to Web Deploy. We highly recommend that you provide IIS Manager with a valid SSL certificate to let your customers verify your server's identity before transferring their data to your server. Learn how to do it in

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/144/how-to-set-up-ssl-on-iis-7/. If you choose not to do it, your

customers will fail to publish their sites if they specify to use a secure connection in publication settings of Visual Studio® or WebMatrix®.

4. Activate Web Deploy in Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Now when you have successfully installed and configured Web Deploy, activate this feature in Hosting Parameters of hosting plans and existing unsynced subscriptions as needed.

Manual Installation of Web Deploy

To successfully install Web Deploy, you should meet the following requirements:

 The target operating system must be Windows Server 2008 or later.

 The server must have Windows PowerShell installed. Windows Server 2008 does not

have this component by default (though 2008 R2 has it). Learn how to install the component at http://www.microsoft.com/powershell.

 The server must have the Management Service role service (Server Manager > Web

Server > Add Role Services, under Management Tools).

The installation procedure is straightforward: In Microsoft Web Platform Installer, find the Web Deployment Tool product and add it to the server. For more information about the

installer, see http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx.

Third-Party Components 47

Alternatively, you can download the Web Deploy binary and run it as administrator. The download link is available at http://www.iis.net/download/WebDeploy.

Note: You should select either the complete installation or select the custom installation and specify the Configure for Non-Administrator Deployments option.

This chapter describes how to back up and restore data by means of the command-line

In this chapter:

Backing Up Data ............................................................................................... 49

Restoring Data .................................................................................................. 69

Migrating Data ................................................................................................... 99

C H A P T E R 5

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

utilities pleskbackup and pleskrestore, and introduces the tools for migrating hosted data between servers.

Backing up by means of the pleskbackup utility is done by issuing a command that specifies the objects to be backed up. The utility creates a backup archive containing settings and content. You can then perform a full or a selective restoration of data, and specify how to resolve possible conflicts that might occur.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 49

Backing Up Data

In this section:

Backup Objects: Hierarchy and Volume ............................................................ 50

Specifying Data for Backing Up ......................................................................... 53

Defining Properties of Files That Compose Backup........................................... 60

Exporting Backup Files ...................................................................................... 62

Defining How the Backup Process Is Performed ............................................... 64

Backup Utility Commands and Options ............................................................. 65

To perform backup of Panel hosting data, you need to execute the pleskbackup utility command composed so that it does the following:

1. Defines the data that need to be backed up.

2. Defines the way of how the backup process will be performed.

3. Defines properties of the files that will be contained in backup.

4. Defines options for exporting backup as a single file.

Note: Only the first component is obligatory, others are optional.

The following sections explain each component meaning and implementation in detail.

The pleskbackup utility is located in %plesk_dir%\bin\ where %plesk_dir% is an environment variable for Panel installation directory. By default, it is "C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk"

To see a complete list of the pleskbackup commands and options, refer to the section Backup Utility Commands and Options (on page 65).

If the command execution succeeds, backup is created in the default server backups location or exported to a file in case exporting options were specified. For details on exporting options, refer to the section Exporting Backup Files (on page 62). If the command execution fails, backup is not created.

You can perform advanced configuration of the backup operation through the file %plesk_dir%/admin/share/pmmcli/pmmcli-rc. For more details, refer to the section Defining How the Backup Process Is Performed (on page 64).

50 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Backup Objects: Hierarchy and Volume

Panel provides opportunities for backing up and restoring nearly all hosting data, which includes its major objects: administrator account, settings for Panel-managed services, reseller accounts, customer accounts, subscriptions, websites, databases and mail accounts. These backup objects are organized into a hierarchy where parent object is always an owner of its children. The hierarchy comprises of four levels: server, resellers, customers and subscriptions. The levels are such that a higher level includes objects on the lower levels but a lower level is completely separated from the higher objects.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 51

You can create either a full or a partial backup. A full backup is the highest-level

Backup Object Type

Configuration

Content

server

This backup level includes the following:

 Administrator's information.

 Web Presence Builder settings.

 SSO settings.

 IP addresses.

 Database server settings.

 DNS settings.

 Mail server settings.

 Antivirus and spam protection settings.

 SSL certificates.

 Reseller plans, hosting plans, and add-on

plans.

 Information about administrator's subscriptions,

reseller accounts, customer accounts and websites.

 Information about user roles.

 Information about auxiliary users who can

access Control Panel.

 Information about mail accounts and individual

settings for protection from spam and viruses .

 Site isolation settings.

 Settings for notification on system events.

License keys for Panel, virtual host templates, website content, error documents, log files, and content of mailboxes.

backup, it includes all data related to a Panel installation. A partial backup includes only backup objects you need, of any of the levels. For information on available options when creating a partial backup, refer to the section Defining Data for Backup (on page

53).

Restoring a backup, in turn, can also be either full or partial. Full restoration recovers all data contained in a backup, and partial recovers a part. For information on available options when restoring data from backup, refer to the Defining Objects for Restoration (on page 69) section.

Each backup object includes the following:

 Configuration defines properties of the backup object and its descendants.

 Content contains binary data related only to the backup object (website content and

content of mailboxes).

This table shows what data (configuration and content) are related to each backup object.

52 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Backup Object Type

Configuration

Content

reseller

This backup level includes the following:

 Reseller information.

 Reseller's hosting plans.

 Resource allotments and permissions for

operations in Panel.

 Allocated IP addresses.

 Information about customer accounts,

subscriptions, and websites with DNS settings.

 Information about user roles.

 Information about auxiliary users who can

access Control Panel.

 Information about mail accounts and individual

settings for protection from spam and viruses.

Website content, error documents, log files, content of mailboxes.

customer

This backup level includes the following:

 Customer information.

 Hosting plans to which the customer is

subscribed.

 Resource allotments and permissions for

operations in Control Panel.

 IP addresses used by customer's

subscriptions.

 Information about websites with DNS settings.

 Information about user roles.

 Information about auxiliary users who can

access Control Panel.

 Information about mail accounts and individual

settings for protection from spam and viruses.

Website content, error documents, log files, content of mailboxes.

subscription

This backup level includes the following:

 Information about a subscription, its owner and

associated hosting plan.

 IP addresses allocated to the subscription.

 Resource allotments and permissions for

operations in Control Panel.

 Information about websites with DNS settings.

 Information about mail accounts and individual

settings for protection from spam and viruses.

Website content, error documents, log files, content of mailboxes.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 53

Specifying Data for Backing Up

(All)

Only web hosting settings

option: --onlyhosting

Only mail

option: --only-mail

(All)

Only configuration

option: -c

(All)

Only configuration

option: -c

(All)

Only configuration

option: -c

Server

command:

--server

(All)

Excluding resellers

options:

--excludereseller or

--excludereseller-file

Excluding customers

options:

--exclude-client

--excludeclient-file

Excluding subscriptions

options:

--exclude-domain

--excludedomain-file

Defining data that should be backed up includes the following:

1. Defining backup level and, unless it is the server level, optionally, selecting which resellers, customers, or subscriptions should be backed up.

2. (optional) Defining which resellers, customers, or subscriptions should be excluded from the backup.

3. (optional) Restricting backup to either only mail or only web hosting settings, and only to configuration.

4. (optional) Defining that log files are excluded from backup.

Generally speaking, the data that can be backed up with one call of the pleskbackup utility are represented by any single cell of the following table.

54 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

All or selected resellers

command:

-resellersname

-resellersid

(All) / (All selected)

Example 1

Excluding resellers

options:

--excludereseller or

--excludereseller-file

Example 1*

Excluding customers

options:

--exclude-client or

--excludeclient-file

Excluding subscriptions

options:

--exclude-domain

--excludedomain-file

All or selected customers

command:

--clientsname

--clientsid

(All) / (All selected)

Excluding customers

options:

--exclude-client or

--excludeclient-file

Excluding subscriptions

options:

--exclude-domain

--excludedomain-file

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 55

All or selected subscriptions

command:

--domainsname

-domainsid

(All) / (All selected)

Example 2

Excluding subscriptions

options:

--exclude-domain

--excludedomain-file

56 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Example 1: With one call of pleskbackup, you can back up hosting data for several resellers (row 5 or 6 in the table, depending on what is more convenient: to list resellers that should be included or those excluded) and restricting the backup data to configuration of web hosting on sites owned by the resellers or their customers (column 4 in the table).

To back up website hosting configuration of resellers with usernames reseller1 and reseller2, issue the following command:

pleskbackup --resellers-name "reseller1 reseller2" --only-hosting -c

Example 2: With one call of pleskbackup, you can back up mail configuration and content of mail accounts (column 5) for all subscriptions existing on the server (row 12).

To back up mail accounts with messages for all subscriptions:

pleskbackup --domains-name --only-mail

The rest of this section explains each option in detail and provides examples of commands.

Defining backup level and selecting objects

To define backup level and select backup objects, the commands of pleskbackup utility are used.

If performing a selective backup, resellers, customers or subscriptions selected for the backup should be specified by their identifiers which are either usernames or IDs. The specification can be done in one of the following two ways:

 Command line specification. The backup command takes objects identifiers as

arguments separated with spaces.

 File specification. The backup command takes the --from-file option which

specifies the file where the identifiers of objects are listed. The file must be in plain text format, and object identifiers are separated by line breaks (i.e., one identifier per line).

Note: If a command contains both specifications, file specification is used and the command line specification is ignored.

 To back up all data related to Panel installation:

pleskbackup --server

 To back up all resellers, customers, or subscriptions:

pleskbackup --<resellers|clients|domains>-<name|id>

For example, to back up all customer accounts:

pleskbackup clients-name

pleskbackup clients-id

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 57

 To back up several resellers, customers, or subscriptions defined in the

command line:

pleskbackup --<resellers|clients|domains>-<name|id> [

<identifier1> [ <identifier2> ... [<identifier n>]]

For example, to back up three resellers defined in the command line:

pleskbackup --resellers-name "johndoe janedoe josephine"

To back up several resellers, customers, or subscriptions listed in a file: pleskbackup --<resellers|clients|domains>-<name|id> --fromfile=<file>

For example,

pleskbackup --resellers-name --from-file="E:\backup lists\j.txt"

Defining which objects should be excluded

Objects that should be excluded from backup are specified by their usernames (reseller, customer accounts) or domain names (subscriptions). The specification can be done as follows:

 Command line specification. The backup command takes objects identifiers as

values of the --exclude-<reseller|client|domain> option separated by commas.

 File specification. The backup command takes the objects identifiers from the file

specified by the --exclude-<reseller|client|domain>-file option. The file must be in plain text format, and object identifiers are separated by line breaks (that is, one identifier per line).

Note: It is acceptable to use both specifications in one command. In such case, all specified objects are excluded from backup.

 To back up all reseller accounts except for several selected resellers:

pleskbackup --resellers-name --excludereseller=<login1>,<login2>[,<login n>]

pleskbackup --resellers-name --exclude-reseller-file=<file>

For example,

pleskbackup --resellers-name --exclude-reseller=johndoe,janedoe

pleskbackup --resellers-name --exclude-reseller-file="E:\backup lists\j.txt"

58 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

 To back up a selected reseller without several subscriptions belonging to

him or her, or his or her customers:

pleskbackup --resellers-name <username> --excludedomain=<name1>,<name2>,<name n>

pleskbackup --resellers-name <username> --exclude-domain-file=<file>

For example,

pleskbackup --resellers-name johndoe --excludedomain=example.com,example.net,example.org

pleskbackup --resellers-name johndoe --exclude-domain-file="D:\backuplists\excl-example-domains.txt"

Restricting backup to only mail or only physical hosting, and to only configuration

The amount of backup data can be further narrowed to backing up either mail or physical hosting content and configuration by using the --only-mail or --only- hosting options, respectively.

Specifying the --only-hosting option results in backing up only website-specific data which includes the following, for each domain with physical hosting:

 website content (including protected directories, web users, MIME types)

 web hosting configuration (including settings of anonymous FTP, log rotation,

hotlink protection, shared SSL, web users)

 installed site applications

 databases

 subdomains

Specifying the --only-mail option results in backing up only mail-specific data which includes the following:

 if used for the partial backup, for each domain included in backup:

 configuration of per-subscription mail settings

 mail accounts

 mailing lists

 if used for the full backup, in addition to previous:

 RBL protection settings

 ACL white and black list configurations

The amount of backup data can also be narrowed in another way: by specifying that only configurations of the selected objects should be backed up. The specification is done by using the --only-configuration option.

Such backups are useful when the objects content is backed up by a third-party system.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 59

To back up mail configuration on subscriptions belonging to a customer: pleskbackup --clients-<name|id> <name|id> --only-mail -configuration

For example,

pleskbackup --clients-id 42 --only-mail --configuration

 To back up websites content and hosting configuration on subscriptions

belonging to all resellers:

pleskbackup --resellers-id --only-hosting

Excluding log files from back up

In case Panel's log files related to the hosted objects are not required to be backed up, they can be excluded from the backup by using the --skip-logs option.

 To back up the Panel configuration without log files:

pleskbackup --server -c --skip-logs

60 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Defining Properties of Files That Compose Backup

Defining properties of the files that will be contained in backup includes the following:

1. Defining that archives with backup object contents should not be compressed.

2. Defining that a prefix should be added to names of the backup files.

3. Defining that backup files should be split into parts of the specified size.

Defining that archives with backup object contents should not be compressed

By default, Panel saves backed up content to compressed .zip archives to save disk space when the backup is stored. However, restoring backups that contain compressed archives requires almost two times more disk space than restoring those with uncompressed files. If you want to create your backups without compression, use the -z option in your backup command.

Defining that a prefix should be added to names of the backup files

In order to better distinguish files that were created during one backup session from another, pleskbackup adds a prefix to backup file name. By default, it is backup, so every backup file name looks like backup_<file-name>.<ext>. The prefix in names of the files that compose a particular backup can be customized by using the -prefix option. The option's value will be added as a prefix to names of files of the created backup.

For example, to create a backup of the server mail configuration so that all files in backup have prefix mail-friday:

pleskbackup --server --only-mail --configuration --prefix="friday"

Defining that backup files should be split into parts of the specified size

The pleskbackup utility is capable of splitting backup files into parts of a particular size, which is vitally useful in cases when the file size is critical. Such cases can be, for example, the following:

 if backups are burnt to DVDs, file size should not exceed approximately 4 Gbytes

 if backups are stored on the FAT32 file system, file size should not exceed

approximately 4 Gbytes

 if backups are stored on FTP, FTP server may have its own restrictions on the size

of a single file transferred to the server

To make pleskbackup split the backup files to parts of a particular size, use the -s|-- split option and specify the required size as the option value. For details on the format of size specification, refer to the section Backup Utility Commands and Options (on page 65). The default value used by pleskbackup if no custom size is specified is 2 Gbytes. The utility numbers file parts created as a result of split by adding numerical suffixes to the file names starting from .1.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 61

For example, to back up a subscription and split backup files into parts of no more than 700 Mbytes:

pleskbackup --domains-name example.com --only-hosting --split=700M

62 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Exporting Backup Files

By default, pleskbackup stores backups in Panel's backup repository located on the server in %plesk_dir%\Backup\.

Panel is capable of exporting the created backup as a single .zip file in one of the following ways:

 to stdout

 to local file system

 to FTP server

To export backup as a single file, use the --output-file option. Particular export mode requires specific option values.

Important: After a backup is exported, pleskbackup removes it from the Panel's backup repository.

The exported file can also be created not compressed and/or split in parts of a particular size, just as the files composing backup in repository (details (on page 60)).

Exporting to stdout

To export a backup as file to stdout, use the --output-file option with the stdout value.

For example, to create backup of a subscription with ID 1 and export it to stdout:

pleskbackup --domains-id 1 --output-file stdout

Exporting to local file system

To export a backup as a file to local file system, use the --output-file option with a <full-path-to-file>\<file-name> value.

For example, to create backup of a subscription with ID 1 and export it to the file domain1.zip located at c:\tmp folder:

pleskbackup --domains-id 1 --output-file="c:\tmp\domain1.zip"

Exporting to FTP server

To export a backup as a file to an FTP server, use either of the following options:

 --output-file=ftp://<login>:<password>@<server>/<filepath>

 --output-file=ftp://<server>/<filepath> --ftp-login=<ftp

You may want to use passive mode FTP connection in case a firewall prevents the export. For this, use the --ftp-passive-mode option.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 63

For example, to create backup of a subscription with ID 1 and export it to FTP server example.com to the storage/backups/ directory, using johndoe as login and jjFh6gsm as

password:

pleskbackup --domains-id 1 --outputfile=ftp://johndoe:jjFh6gsm@example.com/storage/backups

pleskbackup --domains-id 1 --outputfile=ftp://example.com/storage/backups --ftp-login=johndoe --ftppassword=jjFh6gsm

64 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Defining How the Backup Process Is Performed

You can specify the following options for the backup operation:

1. Do not perform the backup if your server does not have specified free disk space.

2. Do not perform the backup if your server does not have enough free disk space to

store the backup content.

3. Temporarily suspend websites during backup.

4. Configure the backup utility to include more details in backup reports.

Specifying disk space requirements for the backup

You can prevent the start of the backup operation if your server has not enough disk space to complete it. To set the free disk space requirements, change the parameters in the file %plesk_dir%/admin/share/pmmcli/pmmcli-rc.

There are two ways to prevent the start of the backup operation:

 Specify minimal free disk space on your server.

If the server does not have the specified disk space, Panel will not start the backup operation. Set the minimal free disk space in MB by changing the value of the FREE_DISK_SPACE parameter. Say, to prevent the backup if free disk space on the server is less than 100 MB, edit the line in the following way:

FREE_DISK_SPACE 100

 Restrict the backup if your server does not have enough free disk space to store

the backup content. If this option is turned on, Panel calculates the future backup size and compares it with the free disk space on the server. If there is not enough disk space, Panel will not start the backup operation. Note that this option can significantly increase the backup time. To turn this option on, set the CHECK_BACKUP_DISK_SPACE to 1. To turn this option off, set the parameter to 0. Say:

CHECK_BACKUP_DISK_SPACE 0

Suspending websites

If your backup will include websites, we recommend that you suspend them during the backup process by using the --suspend option of the backup utility. This will help you avoid possible errors that may be caused by changes done to the site configuration or content during the backup.

The suspension is made up to be as short as possible: each site is suspended only for the time it is being backed up: The site is started automatically as soon as its data are processed.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 65

Defining level of backup verbosity

Command

Argument

Description

--server

Backs up all data related to the Panel installation.

-resellersname

[<username-1>

<username-2> <...> <username-n>]

Backs up all data for the resellers specified by usernames.

Usernames should be separated by spaces and enclosed in quotes.

Can be used with the --from-file option. In such case, resellers specified in the file are backed up and resellers specified as command arguments are ignored.

If no usernames are specified and the -f option is not used, all resellers are backed up.

Verbose mode of backup process is defined by the -v option:

1. No -v option used. The minimum level, only general errors are displayed, like, for example, syntax errors (no or wrong command specified, invalid input parameters), runtime errors and unhandled exceptions, low disk space for backup, and so on.

2. The -v option used. Sets up the maximum verbosity level: additionally includes debugging information and response/request messages to the internal backup utility.

Note: pleskbackup outputs information on its execution to stdout only. If you want to have the backup log saved, redirect the utility output to a file with standard command line means.

 To run a task on creating a complete server backup with maximum level of

verbosity:

pleskbackup --server -v

Backup Utility Commands and Options

Location

%plesk_dir%\bin\pleskbackup where %plesk_dir% is an environment variable for Panel installation directory. By default, it is "C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk".

Usage

pleskbackup <command> [<arguments>] [<options>]

Commands

66 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Command

Argument

Description

-resellersid

[<ID1> <ID2> <...> <IDn>]

Backs up all data for the resellers specified by IDs.

IDs should be separated by spaces and enclosed in quotes.

Can be used with the --from-file option. In such case, resellers specified in the file are backed up and resellers specified as command arguments are ignored.

If no IDs are specified and the -f option is not used, all resellers are backed up.

--clientsname

[<username-1>

<username-2> <...> <username-n>]

Backs up all data for the customers specified by usernames.

Usernames should be separated by spaces and enclosed in quotes.

Can be used with the --from-file option. In such case, customers specified in the file are backed up and customers specified as command arguments are ignored.

If no usernames are specified and the -f option is not used, all customer accounts are backed up.

--clientsid

[<ID1> <ID2> <...> <IDn>]

Backs up all data for the customers specified by IDs.

IDs should be separated by spaces and enclosed in quotation marks.

Can be used with the --from-file option. In such case, customers specified in the file are backed up and customers specified as command arguments are ignored.

If no IDs are specified and the -f option is not used, all customer accounts are backed up.

--domainsname

[<name-1> <name-2> <...> <name-n>]

Backs up all data for the subscriptions specified by domain names.

Names should be separated by spaces and enclosed in quotation marks.

Can be used with the --from-file option. In such a case, subscriptions specified in the file are backed up and subscriptions specified as command arguments are ignored.

If no names are specified and the -f option is not used, all subscriptions are backed up.

--domainsid

[<ID1> <ID2> <...> <IDn>]

Backs up all data for the subscriptions specified by IDs.

IDs should be separated by spaces and enclosed in quotation marks.

Can be used with the --from-file option. In such case, subscriptions specified in the file are backed up and subscriptions specified as command arguments are ignored.

If no IDs are specified and the -f option is not used, all subscriptions are backed up.

--help

Displays help on the utility usage.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 67

Option

Description

--excludereseller[=<username1>,<usernam e2>,...]

Skips resellers with the specified usernames during backup.

--exclude-resellerfile[=<file>]

Skips resellers listed in the specified file during backup.

--excludeclient=[<username1>,<username2 >,...]

Skips customer accounts with the specified usernames during backup.

--exclude-client-file=<file>

Skips customer accounts listed in the specified file during backup.

--excludedomain[=<name1>,<name2>,...]

Skips subscriptions with the specified names during backup.

--exclude-domain-file=<file>

Skips subscriptions listed in the specified file during backup.

Option

Description

-v|--verbose

Shows more information about the backup process.

-c|--configuration

Backs up only configurations of Panel objects, excluding their content.

-s|-split[=<integer>[K|M| G]]

Splits the backup files into parts of the specified size. The parts are numbered by appending numerical suffixes starting with .1.

Size is specified in Kbytes, Mbytes or Gbytes. If none is defined, then interpreted as being in bytes.

If no argument is specified, the default value of 2 Gbytes is used.

-z|--no-gzip

Sets that objects content is archived without compressing.

--only-mail

Backs up only mail configuration and content.

When used with the resellers|clients|domains-login|id commands, backs up configuration of domain-level mail system, and content and configuration of mail accounts.

When used with the server command, backs up also server-wide mail configuration.

Cannot be used together with the --only-hosting option.

--only-hosting

Backs up only web hosting configuration and website content, including site applications, databases and subdomains.

Cannot be used together with the --only-mail option.

--suspend

Suspends sites during backup operation.

Exclude Options

General Options

68 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Option

Description

-f| --from-file=<file>

Backs up resellers|customers|subscriptions listed in the specified file, ignoring those specified in the command line as arguments.

The file should be in plain text format and should contain a list of resellers|customers|subscriptions, one per line.

Used only with the resellers-name, resellers-id, clients- name, clients-id, domains-name, domains-id commands.

Depending on the command, resellers|customers|subscriptions are listed in the file by either usernames or IDs.

--skip-logs

Sets that log files are not saved to backup.

--prefix=<string>

Adds specified prefix to the backup file names.

Used to customize backup file name which is created with the backup prefix by default.

Option

Description

--ftplogin=<ftp_username>

Specifies FTP account username that will be used for uploading backup file to the FTP server.

--ftppassword=<ftp_password

Specifies password that will be used for uploading backup file to the FTP server.

--ftp-passive-mode

Specifies that the passive mode for FTP connection should be used.

Option

Description

--output-file

Exports backup as a single file to stdout and removes backup from Panel's repository.

--outputfile=<fullpath/filename>

Exports backup as a single file with the specified name to a local file system and removes backup from Panel's repository.

--outputfile=<ftp://[<username>[:<pass word>]@]<server>/<filepath>>

Exports backup as a single file to the specified FTP server and removes backup from Panel's repository.

The FTP_PASSWORD environment variable can be used for setting password.

The --ftp-login and --ftp-password FTP options can be used for setting username and password.

FTP Options

Output File Option

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 69

Restoring Data

In this section:

Defining Objects for Restoration ........................................................................ 69

Defining How the Restoration Process Is Performed ......................................... 76

Conflict Resolution Rules and Policies .............................................................. 77

Restoration Utility Commands and Options ....................................................... 98

Restoration levels specified with the -level option

Server

Resellers

Customers

Subscriptions

Selected with the

-filter option

Selected with the filter option

To perform restoration of Panel hosting data, you should execute the pleskrestore utility command composed so that it does the following:

1. Defines the Panel objects to be restored.

2. Defines how the restore process will be performed.

3. Defines conflict resolution rules and policies.

The following sections explains each component in detail.

The pleskrestore utility is located in %plesk_dir%\bin\ where %plesk_dir% is an environment variable for the Panel installation directory. By default, it is "C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\".

To see a list of the pleskrestore commands and options, refer to the section

Restoration Utility Commands and Options (on page 98).

Defining Objects for Restoration

Defining objects for restoration includes the following:

1. Specifying a source backup file.

2. Defining the level of restored objects.

3. Applying filter on the specified level.

Generally speaking, the data that can be restored with one call of the pleskrestore utility are represented by any cell of the following table.

70 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Backup file

<server>.xml | zip

Full restoratio n

All reseller accounts

Selected reseller account s

All customer accounts belonging to administrator

Selected customer accounts belonging to administrat or

All subscriptio ns belonging to administrat or

Selected subscriptio ns belonging to administrat or

<reseller>.xml | zip

Full restoration of a reseller account

All customer accounts belonging to reseller

Selected customer accounts belonging to reseller

All subscriptio ns belonging to reseller

Selected subscriptio ns belonging to reseller

<customer>.xml | zip

Full restoration of a customer account

All subscriptio ns belonging to customer

Selected subscriptio ns belonging to customer

<subscription>.x ml | zip

Full restoration of a subscriptio n

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 71

Specifying a source backup file

The source backup file defined for restoration can be of one of the following types:

 <info>.xml - backup metadata file, in case of restoring from backup located in

Panel's repository.

 <backup>.<zip> - archived backup file, in case of restoring from an exported

backup.

For example, to restore the whole server backup, you choose a <backup repository root>\<server>.xml file, or an exported server backup file. To restore a customer account belonging to a reseller, you choose a <backup

repository root>\resellers\<reseller ID>\clients\<customer ID>\<customer>.xml file.

Defining level of restored objects

Defining level of restored objects allows you to narrow the amount of restored data according to your needs. For example, you may want to restore only subscriptions which belong to a customer or a reseller, skipping all other data not related to subscriptions.

To define the level of restored objects, use the -level option with appropriate value. The option is required, so in cases when you do not need any narrowing but just restoring all data from a backup, define the level equal to the level of file.

 To restore entire server:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\<server>.xml -level server

Note: When the whole server backup is restored, license keys are not restored by default. To restore license keys along with other server content, use the -license option in your restore command.

 To restore entire server with license keys:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\<server>.xml -level server -license

 To restore all subscriptions and sites belonging to a reseller:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\resellers\<reseller ID>\<reseller>.xml -level domains

 To restore all reseller accounts:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\<server>.xml -level resellers

72 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Applying filter on the specified level

In this section:

Backup File Structure ........................................................................................ 72

<info>.xml

Metadata files of full and server-level backups, one per backup, describe configuration and content.

To perform a more selective restore, use a filter (the -filter option) which selects for restoring particular objects of the specified level (resellers, customers, subscriptions). The objects are specified by their names, which are domain names for subscriptions, and usernames for resellers and customers. The specification can be done as follows:

 Command line specification. The restore command takes objects identifiers as

values of the -filter option defined in the following string: list:<item1>,<item2>,...,<itemN>.

 File specification. The restore command takes the objects identifiers from the file

specified as argument of the -filter option. The file must be in plain text format, and object identifiers are separated by line breaks (that is, one identifier per line).

 To restore two resellers from a server backup:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\<server>.xml -level resellers -filter list:JohnDoe,JaneDoe

pleskrestore --restore <upload directory>\<server backup name>.zip level resellers -filter list:JohnDoe,JaneDoe

 To restore two subscriptions owned by server administrator:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\<server>.xml -level domains -filter list:example.com,sample.org

 To restore several subscriptions of a customer defined in a file:

pleskrestore --restore <backup repository root>\resellers\SandyLee\clients\JaneDow\<customer>.xml -level domains

-filter <path to the file>\restore-subscriptions.txt

Backup File Structure

By default, all backups are created in a backup repository located on the Panelmanaged server: in %plesk_dir%\Backup\ folder, where %plesk_dir% is environment variable specifying directory where Panel is installed (if installed to default locations, it is "C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\")

The repository is structured as follows, starting with the content of repository root folder (we omit auxiliary files and folders which are irrelevant for backing up and restoring Panel data using pleskbackup and pleskrestore utilities).

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 73

Archives with content related to server configuration and Panel settings.

clients\

Directory containing the following backup data:

 customer accounts belonging to

the server administrator

 objects related to those accounts

Organization of the directory is the same as that of

<repository>\resellers\<rese ller ID>\clients\.

domains\

Directory containing the following backup data:

 subscriptions belonging to the

server administrator

 objects related to administrator's

subscriptions

Organization of the directory is the same as that of

<repository>\resellers\<rese ller ID>\clients\<client

ID>\domains.

<subscription name 1>.tld

Directory containing data related to all sites hosted under a subscription.

<subscription name 2>.tld

Directory containing data related to all sites hosted under a subscription.

resellers\

Directory containing the following backup data:

 reseller accounts

 objects owned by the resellers

<reseller ID>\

Directories containing backup data of particular resellers, one reseller per directory, and the objects owned by them.

The reseller ID stands for the reseller username.

<info>.xml

Metadata files of the reseller backups, one file per backup, describe configuration and content of the reseller and the objects they own.

Archives with the content.

74 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

domains\

Directory containing the following backup data:

 subscriptions owned by the

reseller

 objects owned by the

subscriptions

Organization of the directory is the same as that of

<repository>\resellers\<rese ller ID>\clients\<client

ID>\domains\.

clients\

Directory containing the following backup data:

 customer accounts owned by the

reseller

 objects owned by the customers

<customer's username>\

Directories containing backup data of particular customers, one customer per directory, and the objects owned by them.

<info>.xml

Metadata files of the customer backups, one file per backup, describe configuration and content of the customer account and the objects it owns.

Archives with the customer content.

domains\

Directory containing the following backup data:

 subscriptions owned by the

customer

 objects owned by the

subscriptions

<subscription name 1>.tld

Directory containing data related to all sites hosted under a subscription.

<info>.x ml

Metadata files of the domain backups, one file per backup, describe configuration and content of the backed up webspace.

ZIP archives containing data related to the hosted websites and mail accounts.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 75

Files of each backup are placed in the repository folders according to the described structure.

If a partial backup is created, its files will be places according to the place the backup objects have in the hierarchy. For example, if backing up domain example.com owned by reseller JaneDoe, its files will be located in the <repository root directory>\resellers\JaneDoe\domains\example.com\ folder. If backing up reseller JohnDoe who owns the subscription joe.info and has one customer Client1 who owns the subscription sample.org, the backup files will be located in the following folders:

1. <repository root directory>\resellers\JohnDoe\

2. <repository root

directory>\resellers\JohnDoe\domains\joe.info\

3. <repository root directory>\resellers\JohnDoe\clients\Client1\

4. <repository root directory>\resellers\JohnDoe\clients\Client1\domains\sample.o

rg\

To distinguish files belonging to different backups of the same object, specific prefix and suffix are added to the file names:

 the backup is added by default, and, if you like, you can change it to your own on a

per-backup basis

 suffix designating the backup creation date is always added to each backup file, the

date format is <yymmddhhmm>. For example, files of backup created on 6 April 2011, 8:58 PM will have suffix 1104062058.

Panel is capable of exporting backup as a single .zip file. Each archive has the same structure as the repository, the only difference is that there is only one <info>.xml file on each level.

In case a partial backup is exported, the resulting file structure is reduced from the top so that the highest level corresponds to the level of the highest backup object. For example, if a backup of a single customer (called, for example, SandyLee) is exported, the resulting file will have the following structure:

zip {

 <sandy lee info>.xml

 <content>.zip

 domains\

 subscription1\

 ...

 subscription_N\

 ...

}

76 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Defining How the Restoration Process Is Performed

When restoring data, you can also do the following:

1. Temporarily suspend websites during restoration.

2. Configure the restoration utility to include more details in backup reports.

Suspending websites

If you are going to restore websites, we recommend that you suspend them during the restoration by using the -suspend option. This will help you avoid possible errors in the restored sites that may be caused by changes done to the site configuration or content during the restoration.

The suspension is made up to be as short as possible: each site is suspended only for the time it is being restored: The site is started automatically as soon as the data are processed.

Defining level of restore verbosity

pleskrestore works in one of the following verbosity modes:

1. Non-verbose mode. Default mode. The minimum level, only general errors are displayed, like, for example, syntax errors (no or wrong command specified, invalid input parameters), runtime errors and unhandled exceptions, and so on.

2. Verbose mode. Restore runs with verbosity level which additionally includes deployer errors, information about conflicts (read about restore conflicts in the section Conflict Resolution Rules and Policies (on page 77)), and so on. Enabled by adding the -verbose option to the pleskrestore command.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 77

Conflict Resolution Rules and Policies

Conflict is a situation when settings in a backup and settings in a destination Panel are such that restoring backup objects leads to an error or unpredictable Panel behavior.

Types of Conflicts

The restoration process can encounter several types of conflicts, which are the following:

 Timing conflicts. An object being restored might exist in the system and its last

modification date might be more recent than the date of backup. Or an object could be deleted from the system later than the backup was created.

 Resource usage conflicts. There are two groups of resource usage conflicts:

 Common resource usage conflict: The total amount of measurable resources

after restoration might appear to be over the limits for this particular user (e.g., disk space limit).

 Unique resource usage conflict: An object being restored requires a unique

resource which is already used by another object in the system or does not exist (e.g., domain).

 Configuration conflicts. It might happen that configuration being restored is not

enabled on the destination server. Two types of cases can happen here:

 Configuration options are not enabled for the domain.

 Required configuration options are not available (e.g., site applications are not

available for the customer, database server is not configured on the host, IP address is not allocated to the reseller, etc.)

Conflict Resolutions

The following types of conflicts resolutions are possible:

 Overwrite. Means that all objects will be restored from the backup files regardless

of their current presence in the system. Overwrite works as follows:

 If an object/setting from backup does not exist in Panel, it is created.

 If an object/setting from backup exists in Panel, it replaces the existing.

 If an object/setting exists in Panel but is missed in a backup, the existing

remains.

 Proceed with current. Means that objects which currently present in the system

won’t be affected by the restoration process. The restoration process will move to

the objects belonging to that one, not touching the object itself.

 Do not restore. Means that the objects which currently present in the system or

were deleted after the backup won’t be restored together with the lower level

objects belonging to it.

 Automatic. Means that configuration option that should be enabled for domain is

enabled automatically.

78 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

 Overuse. Means that objects are restored with the resources overuse. Can be

applied only to objects that belong to a reseller who works in the oversell mode.

 Rename. Means that unique resources for the restored domain are reassigned with

the specified, existing in the system (mapping).

Conflict Resolution Policies and Rules

Depending on the scope of a conflict resolution, we distinguish conflict resolution rules and policies:

 Rule defines the way of how a specific single conflict should be resolved.

 Policy defines the way of how all conflicts of a particular type should be resolved.

Conflicts Resolving Mechanism: Default Policies, Custom Policies, and Rules

The restoration utility brings a set of default, hard-coded conflict resolution policies, which are as follows:

 for timing conflicts - Overwrite

 for common resource usage conflicts - Overuse

 for unique resource usage conflicts - Do not restore

 for configuration conflicts - Automatic

The default policies are always applied during restoration and cannot be changed or overridden.

Applying default policies may resolve not all the conflicts occurred. In such cases, those who perform restore should additionally define custom rules and/or policies that resolve the remaining conflicts. Custom rules and policies are defined in an XML format as described in the section Resolutions Description Format (on page 81).

Simplified presentation of the conflicts resolving during restore is as follows:

1. Administrator runs pleskrestore with specific parameters.

2. pleskrestore detects the conflicts occurred and resolves them with the default

policies.

3. pleskrestore checks if any conflicts remain unresolved.

In case all conflicts are resolved, the restoration continues.

4. pleskrestore stops the restoration and, if run in debug or verbose mode, returns detailed description (in XML format) of each remaining conflict.

5. Basing on the returned description of the conflicts, administrator creates a file that defines a resolution for each conflict (with rules) and/or in bulk (with custom policies).

6. Administrator runs the pleskrestore utility with the --conflicts-resolution option and the file created at the previous step as its argument.

7. pleskrestore detects the conflicts occurred and resolves them with the default policies.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 79

8. pleskrestore processes the remaining conflicts:

In this section:

Custom Conflict Resolutions ............................................................................. 79

In this section:

Conflict Description Messages .......................................................................... 79

Resolutions Description Format ......................................................................... 81

Samples of Policy Description ........................................................................... 89

Samples of Conflict Resolution With Rules ........................................................ 89

Value of message element

Message displayed in Panel GUI

backup__restore__object_vhost

Virtual host

backup__restore__object_plesk_admi n

server administrator

backup__restore__conflict_object_n ame

backup__restore__conflict_object_c omplex_name

a pleskrestore applies resolution rules from the file.

b pleskrestore applies resolution policies from the file to the rest of the

conflicts.

9. pleskrestore checks if any conflicts remain unresolved.

 In case all conflicts are resolved, the restoration continues.

 In case any conflicts remain unresolved, pleskrestore stops the restoration

and, if run in debug or verbose mode, returns detailed description (in XML format) of each remaining conflict.

To have such dump restored, admin should add resolution rules for each remaining conflict to the conflict resolution file and repeat the restoration task.

Custom Conflict Resolutions

This section describes how to implement custom conflict resolutions during restore.

Conflict Description Messages

Conflict descriptions returned by pleskrestore utility contain message elements included for the GUI generation purposes. Despite of the self-explaining character of XML conflict descriptions, values of the message elements may be confusing, so this section describes the meanings of these messages as they are displayed in Panel GUI.

80 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Value of message element

Message displayed in Panel GUI

backup__restore__conflict_object_m ailname

backup__restore__object_ftpuser

FTP account

backup__restore__object_frontpageu ser

Frontpage account

backup__restore__object_webuser

web user

backup__restore__object_domain

subscription name or domain name

backup__restore__object_subdomain

subdomain

backup__restore__object_domainalia s

domain alias

backup__restore__object_client

customer

backup__restore__object_reseller

reseller

backup__restore__object_autorespon der

auto-reply

backup__restore__object_mailalias

mail alias

backup__restore__object_database

database

backup__restore__object_mailname

mail account

backup__restore__conflict_timing_r eason_owner_absent

Cannot restore object: object owner is not specified

backup__restore__conflict_timing_r eason_wrong_owner

Cannot restore object: object owner does not exist in Panel

backup__restore__conflict_timing_r eason_object_already_exists

Cannot restore <object name>: <object name> <object type> already exists in Panel

backup__restore__conflict_configur ation_reason_ip

Cannot restore object: required IP address <IP> not found in owner's IP pool

backup__restore__conflict_configur ation_reason_db

Cannot restore database: required database server <host> is not registered in Panel

backup__restore__conflict_configur ation_reason_site_app

Cannot restore web application: required web application <application name> not found in owner's web application pool

backup__restore__conflict_unique_r eason_name_already_used

Cannot restore <object>: name <unique resource name> is already used in Panel by another <object>

backup__restore__conflict_resource _usage_reason

Cannot restore object: resource limit <limit name> will be exceeded (required: <value>, available: <value>)

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 81

Resolutions Description Format

In this section:

Policies .............................................................................................................. 81

Rules ................................................................................................................. 84

Policies

The file should be structured as follows.

82 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

 conflict-resolution-rules

Required, document root element.

 policy

 Required, contains the policies descriptions. Children, if present, must be placed in

the order shown on the scheme.

 timing

Optional, contains description of policy on resolving timing conflicts. See the structure below. Must be present in the document if a timing policy should be used during the restore. May not be present in the document if no policy required for timing conflicts.

 resource-usage

Optional, contains description of policy on resolving resource usage conflicts. See the structure below. Must be present in the document if a resource usage policy should be used during the restore. May not be present in the document if no policy required for resource usage conflicts.

 configuration

Optional, contains description of policy on resolving configuration conflicts. See the structure below. Must be present in the document if a configuration policy should be used during the restore. May not be present in the document if no policy required for configuration conflicts.

 rule

Optional, contains the rule descriptions. For details on the node structure, refer to the Resolutions Description Format: Rules section.

The policy elements have the same structure:

 resolution

Required, contains a definition of conflict resolution. Structured as follows:

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 83

The resolution element must not be empty, it is required that it contains one, and only one of its children elements:

 do-not-restore

Sets the Do Not Restore resolution, empty value.

 proceed-with-current

Sets the Proceed With Current resolution, empty value.

 automatic

Sets the Automatic resolution, empty value.

 overuse

Sets the Overuse resolution, empty value.

 overwrite

Sets the Overwrite resolution, empty value.

 rename

Sets the Rename resolution, empty value.

 new-name

Required, makes sense only if defined for configuration conflicts. Specifies a name of new configuration that should be assigned to all conflict objects. The value must be a string.

84 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Rules

The file should be structured as follows.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 85

 conflict-resolution-rules

Required, document root element.

 policy

Required, contains the policies descriptions. For details on the node format, refer to the section Resolutions Description Format: Policies (on page 81). The element content must reflect the conditions under which the conflicts were detected.

 rule

Optional, contains a rule description. Must be present in the document when defining conflict resolution rules. Should be present as many times as the number of unresolved conflicts.

At least one of the attributes (conflict-id, conflict-guid) MUST be present.

 conflict-id

Optional, defines ID of the conflict being resolved. Value is integer. The ID should be obtained from the conflict description returned by pleskrestore (the "/conflicts-description/conflict[@id]" attribute value)

 conflict-guid

Optional, defines global ID of the conflict being resolved. Value is string. The GUID should be obtained from the conflict description returned by pleskrestore (the "/conflicts-description/conflict[@guid]" attribute value). If omitted, the conflict for resolution is identified by ID.

 dump-objects

Optional, holds a collection of descriptions of backup objects involved into the conflict and taking the same conflict resolution Must be present in the document in case when different objects involved in the same conflict should be resolved in different ways. May not be present in the document in case when all objects involved in the conflict should be resolved the same way. See the structure below.

 resolution

Required, contains definition of resolution for the conflict, see the structure below.

dump-objects structure:

86 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

 node

Required, contains a description of backup object involved in the conflict. The element contents must be taken from the conflict description returned by

pleskrestore (the "/conflicts-description/conflict/conflictingobjects/node" element).

Structured as follows:

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 87

 name

Required, specifies the object type, value must be a string.

 context

Optional, holds a collection of data specifying the object position in backup.

 path

Required if the context element is present in the document, specifies the location of object definition in the backup metadata. Value must be a string conforming to the XPath notation.

 attributes

Required, holds a collection of the object properties.

 attribute

Required, specifies a particular property of the object (e.g., login, ID, GUID, etc.), empty value.

 name

Required, specifies the property name, value must be a string.

 value

Required, specifies the property value, value must be a string.

resolution structure:

88 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

The resolution element must not be empty, it is required that it contains one, and only one of its children elements:

 do-not-restore

Sets the Do Not Restore resolution for the conflict, empty value.

 proceed-with-current

Sets the Proceed With Current resolution for the conflict, empty value.

 automatic

Sets the Automatic resolution for the conflict, empty value.

 overuse

Sets the Overuse resolution for the conflict, empty value.

 overwrite

Sets the Overwrite resolution for the conflict, empty value.

 rename

Sets the Rename resolution for the conflict, empty value.

 new-name

Required, specifies a name of unique resource that should be assigned to the conflicting objects, value must be a string. Makes sense only for unique resource usage conflicts (mapping of IP, database server, object owner).

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 89

Samples of Policy Description

In this section:

Sample 1: Configuration Conflict with Missing IP Address ................................. 90

Sample 2: Configuration Conflict With Missing Database Server ....................... 93

The default conflict resolution policies are described in the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <conflict-resolution-rules> <policy> <timing> <resolution> <proceed-with-current /> </resolution> </timing> <resource-usage> <resolution> <do-not-restore /> </resolution> </resource-usage> <configuration> <resolution> <automatic /> </resolution> </configuration> </policy> </conflict-resolution-rules>

The following conflict resolution file resolves all configuration conflicts with database mapping. This can be done in case all configuration conflicts beyond default policies appear because a database server defined in the backup is missed on the target Panel installation.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <conflict-resolution-rules> <policy> <configuration> <resolution> <rename new-name="host:192.0.2.12:port:3306"/> </resolution> </configuration> </policy> </conflict-resolution-rules>

Samples of Conflict Resolution With Rules

This reference section contains format specification of conflict resolution rules description, and several examples of conflicts that may appear and their possible resolutions.

90 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Sample 1: Configuration Conflict with Missing IP Address

Backup

Destination Panel

Subscription example.com owned by the reseller with ID 30 has web hosting configured on shared IP address 192.0.2.200.

Reseller with ID 30 does not have shared IP address 192.0.2.200 in his or her IP pool.

In this section:

Conflicts Description .......................................................................................... 91

Conflicts Resolution ........................................................................................... 92

This sample represents descriptions of a conflict which appeared unresolved upon using default policies, and its resolution.

The conflict appears because of the following mismatch in backup data and destination Panel configuration:

The conflict is resolved with IP mapping suggesting that the restored subscription will be hosted on shared IP 192.0.2.34 which is in the owner's IP pool.

Note that the conflict resolution XML contains no conflict resolution policies.

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 91

Conflicts Description

<conflicts-description> <conflict id="0"> <type> <configuration> <reason-description> <required-resource-description> <ip type="shared" value="192.0.2.200"></ip> </required-resource-description> <plesk-object-identifier> <!-- beginning of definition of Panel object that conflicts

with an object in the backup -->

<type>reseller</type> <database-id>30</database-id> <guid>93dbe1b1-cff5-430f-8466-5b810099772f</guid> </plesk-object-identifier> <!-- end of definition of Panel object that conflicts with

an object in the backup -->

</reason-description> <resolve-options> <option name="do-not-restore"></option> <option name="rename"></option> <option name="automatic"></option> </resolve-options> <!-- resolve-options element lists all resolutions that are

possible for this particular conflict. When composing the conflict resolution rule, you should choose one of these resolutions. -->

</configuration> </type> <conflicting-objects> <!-- beginning of definition of backup objects that conflict with

destination Panel objects. Here, it is a domain example.com -->

<node children-processing-type="" name="domain"> <attributes> <attribute name="id" value="25"></attribute> <attribute name="guid" value="0822c175-a10d-459e-bd3ae5cbc497e1f0"></attribute> <attribute name="owner-guid" value="93dbe1b1-cff5-430f-84665b810099772f"></attribute> <attribute name="name" value="example.com"></attribute> </attributes> </node> </conflicting-objects> <!-- end of definition of backup objects that conflict with

destination Panel objects -->

<overview> <!-- beginning of more detailed conflict overview. Here, the

conflict appears because the required IP 192.0.2.200 is not in the owner's IP pool -->

92 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

<message>backup__restore__conflict_configuration_reason_ip</message> <param name="ip-address" value="192.0.2.200"></param> <param name="ip-type" value="shared"></param> <param name="type" value="reseller"></param> </reason> </reasons> </object> </overview>

</conflict> </conflicts-description>

Conflicts Resolution

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <resolve-conflicts-task-description> <conflict-resolution-rules> <policy /> <rule conflict-id="0"> <dump-objects> <node name="domain"> <attributes> <attribute name="id" value="25"></attribute> <attribute name="guid" value="0822c175-a10d-459e-bd3ae5cbc497e1f0"></attribute> <attribute name="owner-guid" value="93dbe1b1-cff5-430f-84665b810099772f"></attribute> <attribute name="name" value="example.com"></attribute> </attributes> </node> </dump-objects> <resolution>

</rule> </conflict-resolution-rules> </resolve-conflicts-task-description>

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 93

Sample 2: Configuration Conflict With Missing Database Server

Backup

Destination Panel

Domain sample.net has database mysql_db2_7469 on the MySQL database server with host name 192.0.2.15 listening on port 3306.

No MySQL servers configured on host 192.0.2.15.

Domain 69.sample.net has database mysql_db1_6319 on the MySQL database server with host name 192.0.2.15 listening on port 3306.

In this section:

Conflicts Description .......................................................................................... 94

Conflicts Resolution ........................................................................................... 97

This sample represents description and resolution of configuration conflicts which appeared unresolved due to the lack of the required database server on the destination server.

The conflicts appear because of the following mismatches in backup data and destination Panel configuration.

These conflicts are resolved with database mapping (Rename resolution) suggesting that the first databases will be restored on the MySQL server with host name

192.0.2.12, and the second to the local MySQL database server.

94 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Conflicts Description

<conflicts-description> <conflict id="0"> <type> <configuration> <reason-description> <required-resource-description> <db-server host="192.0.2.15" type="mysql" port="3306"></db-server> </required-resource-description> <plesk-object-identifier>

<type>admin</type> <database-id>1</database-id> <guid>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</guid> </plesk-object-identifier>

<message>backup__restore__conflict_object_complex_name</message> <name>mysql_db2_7469</name> <type>database</type> <owner-name>sample.net</owner-name> <reasons> <reason>

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 95

<message>backup__restore__conflict_configuration_reason_db</message> <param name="db-type" value="mysql"></param> <param name="db-host" value="192.0.2.15"></param> <param name="db-port" value="3306"></param> <param name="type" value="admin"></param> <param name="name" value="backup__restore__object_plesk_admin"></param> </reason> </reasons> </object> </overview>

</conflict> <!-- =============== begin new conflict description ===============

-->

<type>admin</type> <database-id>1</database-id> <guid>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</guid> </plesk-object-identifier>

96 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

<message>backup__restore__conflict_object_complex_name</message> <name>mysql_db1_6319</name> <type>database</type> <owner-name>69.sample.net</owner-name> <reasons> <reason>

</conflict> </conflicts-description>

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 97

Conflicts Resolution

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <resolve-conflicts-task-description> <conflict-resolution-rules> <policy /> <rule conflict-id="0">

<dump-objects> <node name="database"> <attributes> <attribute name="name" value="mysql_db2_7469"/> </attributes> </node> </dump-objects> <resolution> <rename new-name="host:192.0.2.12:port:3306"/> </resolution> </rule>

<dump-objects> <node name="database"> <attributes> <attribute name="name" value="mysql_db1_6319"/> </attributes> </node> </dump-objects> <resolution> <rename new-name="host:localhost:port:3306"/> </resolution> </rule>

</conflict-resolution-rules> </resolve-conflicts-task-description>

98 Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Restoration Utility Commands and Options

Command

Argument

Description

--restore

<backup_file>

Restores data from the specified backup.

Requires the -level option.

--checkbackup

<backup_file>

Checks integrity of the specified backup file, which is:

 backup digital sign match

 backup file format

 content files integrity

-i|--info

<backup_file>

Shows the backup file description.

-h|--help

Displays help on the utility usage.

Option

Argument

Description

-level

clients|resellers |domains|server

Specifies restoring level.

Required with the --restore command.

-filter

Specifies list of subscription, customer or reseller names for restoring. The object names are listed either in a specified file, one per line, or as the option argument, separated by commas.

-license

Restores Panel license key from the backup.

-verbose

Enables verbose restore mode.

-debug

Enables debugging restore mode.

-conflictsresolution

<file>

Specifies file that describes conflict resolution policies and rules.

-suspend

Suspends the sites being restored.

Location

%plesk_dir%\bin\pleskrestore where %plesk_dir% is an environment variable for Panel installation directory. By default, it is "C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk\".

Usage

pleskrestore <command> [<arguments>] [<options>]

Commands

Options

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data 99

Migrating Data

You can migrate data to Parallels Plesk Panel 11.0.0 from other servers managed by Panel 10 or earlier by using the Panel's Migration Manager function. This function is available in Server Administration Panel > Tools & Settings > Migration Manager if the corresponding component is installed on the server. This component is not included in typical installations.

For detailed information about migrating data to Panel-managed servers, refer to Parallels Plesk Panel Installation, Upgrade, and Migration Guide at

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-installationupgrade-migration-guide/.

Panel has a built-in mechanism for customizing security settings for Windows objects

In this chapter:

Panel's Security Policies ................................................................................... 101

Windows Accounts Used by Panel to Manage Windows Objects ...................... 101

Windows Accounts Used by Panel to Manage Hosted Windows Objects .......... 104

Administering Windows Objects Security on Panel-managed Server ................ 105

Restoring Disk User Permissions ...................................................................... 125

C H A P T E R 6

Changing Security Settings for File System Objects and Accounts

on the server disks. You can specify security rules and then have Panel automatically apply the rules to Windows object security settings. The security files are easily accessible, and once you understand the logic of their use, you will be able to customize security settings on any folder or file found on a Panel-managed server.

Incorrect security settings on Windows objects found on Panel-managed servers may result in a number of server problems including but not limited to unavailability of site applications and services. We recommend that you become acquainted with this section before attempting to modify security settings on folders and files found on Panel-managed server.

Panel creates different Windows user accounts to manage servers and to serve Internet requests by IIS. Panel has to assign the user accounts necessary permissions to access and manage Windows objects on managed servers. When assigning user account permissions, Panel exercises two different security policies towards Windows objects - Disk security and Hosting security. Security settings for all Windows objects on a Panel-managed server are initially configured according to the policies during Panel installation. Compliance with the policies ensures maximum security without compromising server performance. The Windows objects security settings can be further customized. To manage object security settings, Panel uses a flexible system based on Panel's own security metadata files and the DACL inheritance mechanisms implemented in Windows. Security settings can be customized by using the security metadata files and command-line utilities that are distributed with Parallels Plesk Panel.

Warning: Before making any changes to the security metadata, make a backup copy of the metadata file that you want to modify. For information why backing up security metadata files before modifying them is a good idea, see the sections Customizing Disk

Security (on page 110) and Customizing Hosting Security (on page 111).

Parallels Plesk Panel - 11.0 Administrator’s Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Preface

Typographical Conventions

Feedback

About This Guide

Introduction to Panel

Installation and Upgrade Overview

Installing and Updating Third-Party Applications

Ports Used by Panel

Licensing

System Maintenance

Changing Your Server's Host Name

Changing IP Addresses

Moving the Virtual Hosts Directory

Moving the Directory for Storing Panel Backups

Moving the Directories for Storing Mail Data

Using GUI to Switch Between Database Servers

Using Command-Line Interface to Switch Between Database Servers

Programming Event Handlers to Execute Custom Scripts

Automating Administration Tasks with Command-Line Utilities

Monitoring Status of System Services

Managing Services from the Command Line and Viewing Service Logs

Predefining Values for Customizable PHP Parameters

Website Applications

Multiple Web Apps in a Single Directory

Hiding Commercial Apps

Spam Protection

Configuring SpamAssassin

Optimizing the Task Manager Performance

Cloning Panel in Virtual Environment

Removing Panel

Third-Party Components

Web Deploy 2.0

1. Install Web Deploy

2. Improve the Security Level

3. Secure the Service with a Valid Certificate

4. Activate Web Deploy in Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Manual Installation of Web Deploy

Backing Up, Restoring, and Migrating Data

Backing Up Data

Backup Objects: Hierarchy and Volume

Specifying Data for Backing Up

Defining Properties of Files That Compose Backup

Exporting Backup Files

Defining How the Backup Process Is Performed

Backup Utility Commands and Options

Restoring Data

Defining Objects for Restoration

Backup File Structure

Defining How the Restoration Process Is Performed

Conflict Resolution Rules and Policies

Custom Conflict Resolutions

Conflict Description Messages

Resolutions Description Format

Policies

Rules

Samples of Policy Description

Samples of Conflict Resolution With Rules

Sample 1: Configuration Conflict with Missing IP Address

Conflicts Description

Conflicts Resolution

Sample 2: Configuration Conflict With Missing Database Server

Conflicts Description

Conflicts Resolution

Restoration Utility Commands and Options

Migrating Data

Changing Security Settings for File System Objects and Accounts