Panel for Windows provides support for MySQL databases while IIS-based web server nodes in PA do not. This means that to transfer customer databases, you should first add support for MySQL to a target IIS node.
7. Run the transfer process (on page 75).
Once all preparation steps are completed, you can run the transfer. In this step, the tool transfers all subscriptions from your Panel servers to PA nodes.
8. Finalize the transfer (on page 75).
In this step, the system creates new PBAS subscriptions associated with the ones transferred to PA nodes. In addition, DNS zones in PBAS are updated with new servers’ IP addresses.
In this chapter:
1. Import Plans to PA ... 68 2. Connect PA to PBAS ... 68 3. Generate the Transfer Data and Configuration Files ... 70 4. Configure the Tool ... 72 5. Check for Possible Conflicts ... 73 6. Install MySQL on IIS Web Server Nodes (Windows Servers) ... 74 7. Run Transfer ... 75 8. Finalize Transfer... 75
1. Import Plans to PA
As the ppa-assimilate tool does not perform the transfer of service plans to PA, you should create the corresponding service templates manually. In addition, if you served resellers through PBAS and want to transfer them to PA, you should also create one reseller template which will be used by all resellers.
To import plans to PA from PBAS:
1. Log in to PA.
2. Create service templates in PA that correspond to hosting plans in PBAS (including the ones owned by resellers).
For detailed instructions on how to do this, refer to the Plesk Automation: Operations Guide, section Creating Shared Hosting Templates.
3. Assign provisioning attributes to the plans.
The provisioning attribute is a tag that links a plan and nodes on which the services included in the plan can be set up. Learn more about attributes in the Plesk
Automation: Operations Guide, chapter Setting Up Your Business Offer.
Each Panel subscription includes support for a number of services, such as web hosting, mail services, and database services. The subscriptions from your hosting solution will be relocated to PA service nodes using the standard provisioning workflow: PA will match the attribute of a service with attributes of service nodes. If PA does not find a match, a subscription will not be relocated.
You can assign attributes in the Administration Panel > Products > Service Templates >
select a template > Resources > select a resource > Provisioning Attributes.
4. For resellers on shared servers, create a reseller template in PA which will be used by all of the transferred resellers.
For detailed instructions on how to do this, refer to the Plesk Automation: Operations Guide, section Creating Reseller Templates.
Note: You can create a template with only one resource type - Client accounts.
5. For resellers on dedicated servers, create reseller templates in PA which will include all resources for hosting subscriptions, plus the Client account resource.
Set the limit on all included resources (except Disk space) to Unlimited. As for Disk space, you can set it to unlimited or to an actual amount that your new dedicated server provides.
For detailed instructions on how to do this, refer to the Plesk Automation: Operations Guide, section Creating Reseller Templates.
2. Connect PA to PBAS
To be able to sell PA services through PBAS, you should connect the PA management node to your PBAS instance and create service plans linked to the PA templates.
These service plans will represent corresponding PA templates in PBAS. Thus, when a customer subscribes to a plan in PBAS, PA will create a subscription to the template linked with this plan.
To connect PA to PBAS:
1. Log in to PA as the administrator.
2. Set the following system settings in System > Settings > System Properties:
Ability to add domains from customer CP - Enabled.
Domain registrar status default value - Ready.
Allow using of several dots in domain name - Enabled.
Allow to move domains between subscriptions - Disabled.
Customers management from POA UI - Disabled.
IDN Domains Support - Enabled.
Ability to remove domains from customer CP - Disabled.
3. Allow access to PA Public API from the PBAS server by adding the server’s IP address to System > Settings > Public API > Allowed Networks.
4. Log in to PBAS as the administrator.
5. Register the PA management node by running Service Director > Parallels Automation Manager > Nodes > New Node.
When setting the Reseller Service Template parameter, specify the reseller template you created in step 3 of 1. Import Plans to PA (on page 68). This reseller template will be used for all resellers on shared servers.
6. Wait until the list of service templates from PA is propagated to PBAS. You can check the list at Service Director > Parallels Automation Manager > Service Templates.
7. For each PA service template (excluding the ones owned by resellers on dedicated servers), create the corresponding service plan in Billing Director > Product Manager >
Hosting Plans > New Hosting Plan. You will be prompted to provide a number of plan options:
In Select a Plan Type step, set POA as the plan type.
When specifying PA nodes, choose your PA management node.
In Service Templates step, specify the PA service template that corresponds to the created plan.
8. For each reseller on shared servers:
1. Log in to PBAS on behalf of a certain reseller using Account Director > Reseller Manager > Resellers > select the reseller > Login to RCC.
2. Create plans by copying those hosting plans (created in step 4) that correspond to the former reseller’s plans. You can do this in Billing Director > Product Manager
> Hosting Plans > New Hosting Plan > Create a copy of the Provider’s existing hosting plan.
9. For each reseller on dedicated servers:
1. Subscribe each reseller to the corresponding reseller plan created in step 4 of 1.
Import Plans to PA (on page 68).
Important: This operation can be done by the reseller representative only. They should subscribe to the plan through the PBAS online store.
2. Log in to PBAS on behalf of a certain reseller using Account Director > Reseller Manager > Resellers > select the reseller > Login to RCC.
3. For each PA service template that corresponds to former reseller’s plan, create a service plan in Billing Director > Product Manager > Hosting Plans > New Hosting Plan.
You will be prompted to provide a number of plan options:
In Select a Plan Type step, set POA as the plan type.
When specifying PA nodes, choose your PA management node.
In Service Templates step, specify the PA service template that corresponds to the created plan.
10. Log in to PA as the administrator.
11. For the DNS resource type in Products > Resources > DNS > Activation Parameters tab >
Edit, set the First nameserver parameter to the PBAS server. This means that all DNS zones will be managed by the PBAS DNS server (by default they are managed by the PA DNS server).
Note: By default, the DNS resource type is included in all shared hosting templates.
If you use another resource type for DNS services, perform the step for this type.
3. Generate the Transfer Data and Configuration Files
In this step, you create two files needed to complete the transfer to PPA:
A transfer data file.
This is an XML file that defines the list of transferred subscriptions and specifies new plans (created on the previous step 3. Connect PA to PBAS (on page 68)) for them.
A transfer configuration file.
This file contains various communication parameters such as IP addresses of all involved servers, administrator credentials, and so on.
Both files are created with the help of the plesk_to_ppa_migrate.pl tool which is a part of the PBAS distribution.
To generate the transfer data and configuration files:
1. Log in to your PBAS server over SSH as root.
2. Generate a transfer list file:
plesk_to_ppa_migrate.pl -prepare-migration The tool will generate the migration_list.txt file.
3. Configure the transfer process by editing the migration_list.txt file. This file is used to map the plans (created in the previous step 3. Connect PA to PBAS (on page 68)) and the former PBAS plans used for subscriptions you want to transfer. It also allows you to set the exact list of subscriptions to transfer.
The example of the file with comments is given below:
# Plan mapping. The plans are grouped by owners - the provider and resellers.
# In this section, define the mapping between former plans used for transferred subscriptions and new plans (connected to PA) with which the subscriptions should be associated after the transfer. Each line in this section should contain the former plan’s Series Key and new plan’s ID separated by the “->” symbol.
# Note that for the former plans, the tool automatically takes plans with the latest ID based on their Series Key.
# Provider
7 (Plesk Domain)-> 16 12 (Plesk Client 11)-> 20 14 (Plesk Client 9)-> 20 16 (Plesk Domain 9)-> 20
# reseller John Doe
37 (Plesk Domain 3 res)-> 21 38 (Plesk Domain 2 res)-> 22
# The list of subscriptions to transfer. If you don’t want to transfer a certain subscription either remove it from this list or comment it out with “#”.
# Provider
2; customer-domain-plesk.tst # pbas customer 3; customer-domain2-plesk.tst # pbas customer
# reseller John Doe 6; example1.tst 9; example2.tst
4. Generate the transfer data and configuration files:
plesk_to_ppa_migrate.pl -start-migration -migration-file=migration_list.txt
After completing this step, the plesk_to_ppa_migrate.pl tool will generate two files:
migration_data.xml - the transfer data file.
config.ini - the configuration file.
Note: After this step, the tool will also transfer customer and reseller accounts (owners of the transferred subscriptions) from PBAS to PA.
4. Configure the Tool
Since the ppa-transfer tool communicates with a number of servers, you should provide it with server IP addresses, administrators’ credentials, and other information. The tool is configured with the help of the config.ini file, which was created in the previous step 5. Generate the Transfer Data and Configuration Files (on page 70).
To configure the tool:
1. Copy the config.ini and migration_data.xml files you created in the previous step from the PBAS server to the server where the ppa-transfer tool is located.
2. Edit the config.ini file to configure the tool. The description of file sections is provided below.
The Structure of the Configuration File
The config.ini file consists of several sections of two types:
Predefined. These sections contain information about your PA management node and various aspects of data transfer. The names of the sections [GLOBAL] and [ppa] are predefined by the tool and you should not change them.
Custom. These sections contain information about your existing servers connected to PBAS. You can use arbitrary names for such sections. For example, [plesk1], [plesk2], and so on.
Note: The major part of the parameters in the file is already set. Typically, all you have to do is specify authentication settings such as passwords and authentication type. For the meaning of these parameters, their possible values, and for information about other supported parameters, see the configuration template file
/etc/ppa-migrator/config.ini.pbas.template.
An Example of the Configuration File
Let us take a look at the example of the config.ini file. In this example, we are going to transfer data from two Panel servers. The PA installation in this example has webmail on a separate service node with IP address 192.168.0.21.
[GLOBAL]
source-type: pbas
pbas-data-file: migration_data.xml source-plesks: plesk1, plesk2 [ppa]
ip: 10.52.71.64
panel-username: admin panel-password: setup ssh-username: root
ssh-auth-type: password ssh-password: 123qwe webmail-ip: 192.168.0.21 [plesk1]
ip: 10.50.51.194 os: unix
panel-username: admin panel-password: setup ssh-username: root ssh-auth-type: password ssh-password: 123qwe [plesk2]
ip: 192.168.0.102 os: windows
panel-username: admin panel-password: setup1Q
windows-username: Administrator windows-password: 123qweQWE
5. Check for Possible Conflicts
Before performing a transfer, we strongly recommend that you perform a preliminary check for possible conflicts that can cause issues during the data transfer process or even make switching to PA impossible. Such a check is performed by the ppa-transfer tool and includes a number of checks concerning various aspects of hosting panels’
functionality, such as usernames of accounts’ staff members, DNS hosting type, and other.
To perform the preliminary check:
$ ppa-transfer check config.ini
Based on the check results, the tool generates a report. The report contains messages of two types:
WARNING. These messages warn you about the potential issues that may affect your further work in PA but are not critical for the transfer process.
ERROR. These messages appear when a certain issue blocks the transfer.
You must resolve all issues marked as ERROR before performing the transfer.
6. Install MySQL on IIS Web Server Nodes (Windows Servers)
While Plesk for Windows provides support for MySQL databases, IIS-based web server nodes in PA do not do that. This means that before transferring customer databases from Windows-based Plesk servers, you should first add support for MySQL to the target node.
To add support for MySQL on the target IIS web server node:
1. Obtain the MySQL 5.1 distribution package and install it following the installation instructions.
2. Add the MySQL installation directory to the PATH environment variable.
3. Restart the PEM service by running the following commands on behalf of the Windows administrator:
net stop pem net start pem
7. Run Transfer
Once all preparation steps are completed, you can run the transfer process:
1. Run the transfer:
ppa-transfer transfer-accounts config.ini
The tool performs the transfer of your hosting data to certain service nodes.
2. Test the transferred domains:
ppa-transfer test-all config.ini--skip-dns-forwarding-test 3. If any issues were found by the tool, resolve them and re-run the command in the
previous step to verify they are resolved.
The tool does not require you to resolve all of these issues. You can resolve only the important ones.
Note that this command allows specifying a different transfer list, which can be useful when a transfer has failed for many domains, and you do not want to test these domains. In such a case, specify the latest list with successfully transferred domains, for example:
ppa-transfer test-all config.ini--skip-dns-forwarding-test--migration-list-file
migration-session/successful-subscriptions.1385955582.55
Note: In this step, DNS zone files on the PBAS DNS server are not yet updated with new IP addresses of Panel servers.