The popular and efficient way to start offering Plesk services is to install Plesk in a cloud and then seamlessly scale your infrastructure and install more Plesk instances as your business grows. The challenge in this approach is that it is not possible just to copy the same Plesk again and again to different virtual machines because of the following:
The Plesk cloning technology solves these and other scaling problems.
Plesk cloning is the technology of copying the same Plesk instance to different virtual machines without compromising Plesk operability. Two prevailing usage scenarios of the cloning are:
The application scope of Plesk cloning is wider: For example, you can clone Plesk 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.
Before you start cloning Plesk, please contact our sales representatives and provide the range of IP addresses within which your Plesk instances will be installed. Our licensing system will activate Plesk servers from this range only.
If you want to use Plesk cloning, start with preparing your Plesk instance for cloning. 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.
On Linux:
# /usr/local/psa/bin/ipmanage --auto-remap-ip-addresses true
On Windows:
%plesk_cli%\ipmanage --auto-remap-ip-addresses true
Note: This step is not mandatory if a virtual machine to which you want to copy Plesk uses a static IP address. Moreover, omitting this option will make Plesk start faster because Plesk will not reconfigure its IP pool on each startup. However, we highly recommend to complete this step if you deploy Plesk to a cloud.
init_conf
command-line utility or the Plesk GUI. Read more about the initialization in After Installing Plesk.-prepare-public-image
with the true
value. Note that this step does not perform cloning, it only modifies Plesk settings.On Linux:
# /usr/local/psa/bin/cloning --update -prepare-public-image true
On Windows:
%plesk_cli%\cloning --update -prepare-public-image true
During cloning operation you can ask Plesk to remove the license key on the next start. For this purpose use the option -reset-license
with the true
value.
On Linux:
# /usr/local/psa/bin/cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -reset-license true
On Windows:
%plesk_cli%\cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -reset-license true
By default, the cloning command resets the customized configuration of the source Plesk instance to default: you may need to additionally configure cloned instances. To preserve the configuration of the source Plesk instance in new instances, use the option -reset-init-conf
with the false
value. By default, this option is used with the true
value and resets the Plesk configuration to default.
To preserve a custom Plesk configuration in images of your Plesk server, use the cloning
command with the following options:
On Linux:
# /usr/local/psa/bin/cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -reset-init-conf false
On Windows:
%plesk_cli%\cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -reset-init-conf false
After the cloned instance is started, updates for current version are checked explicitly and installed if necessary. Installation of updates is working under the same rules as in daily maintenance task. Updates installation can be disabled if option -skip-update true
is passed while cloning.
To disable updates in images of your Plesk server, use the cloning
command with the following options:
On Linux:
# /usr/local/psa/bin/cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -skip-update true
On Windows:
%plesk_cli%\cloning --update -prepare-public-image true -skip-update true
Note: When preparing a Plesk instance for cloning, avoid restarting the psa
service and shutting down the virtual machine on which the instance is installed.
We assume that you have a virtual machine with Plesk and you wish to clone this machine. The cloning procedure consists of three steps:
Once you have the virtual machine image, you can use it as a preset for new virtual machines or as a Plesk snapshot.
We assume that you have a virtual machine with Plesk and you wish to clone this machine. The cloning procedure consists of three steps:
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 Plesk snapshot.
The following list contains the data items that are reset by the cloning
utility:
cloning
does not change user-defined certificates)The rest of the data remain intact.