I've looked all around and can't seem to find one useful thread on how your expected to upgrade your server. What is the proper way to go about upgrading a server's OS? I currently have a few boxes that have RHEL3 with Plesk 8.1.1 on them that (although I'd like to upgrade to RHEL5) I'd like to upgrade to RHEL4 while I wait for Plesk to officially support RHEL5.

Is this basically a server restore? Or do I put in a request with sales? Is it easier to request a second server and migrate that way? If I do choose a second server, can I keep my IP addresses?

Naturally I'd like this to go as smooth as possible. I'd appreciate anyone's input. Thanks.

PS: It sure would be helpful if there was a formal spec or guide provided for updating servers. Having over "50,000" I must imagine that OS upgrades are performed quite frequently so there must be some sort of process in place.

Disclaimer- I'm in no way a Plesk expert, I know nothing about where you've stored your critical data or what you've done to your server. As such, I'm in no way an authoritative source as to the hows and whats to protect your critical data- that is ultimately your responsibility.

However... some options may include:

Plesk has a backup/restore tool built in, just the same as cPanel and others.
It would stand to reason that Plesk settings/content backed up under Plesk on RHEL3 should restore to Plesk under RHEL4 without any issue.

Alternatively, you could add DiskSync, and backup *everything* from your server, and then only restore the data you need to get things back into operation.

Ultimately the process is under your control, and you take all responsibility for your data.

I just wanted to let you know there are a couple options that may provide the functionality you require.

What does RHEL4 have vs. RHEL3 that you desperately need right now?

There is no easy way to upgrade OS without downtime or cost and effort, so if I were in your shoes looking to go to RHEL5 I might wait to avoid double-downtime and/or double-cost.


If you purchase a second server and overlap them a month you can do the upgrade with no downtime, and you can be sure the new server/OS/cp install is perfect before going live with it. But all your IP addresses change.

If you do the restore to reload the OS on a production server, it will probably go ok and be completed in a couple hours, but there is always a chance that something will go wrong either during the reload or post-install and you could have everything on the server down for many hours.

I would say the best way is to do a server <> server transfer and get a new server. If you want to keep your IP's then you can try a PSA dump and then have your current master slaved, put the new drive in and psa restore. If there are any problems that are not fixable then you can just revert to the old drive.