How does BackupWall work with Plesk, and is there a Plesk plugin?
BackupWall backs up, restores and migrates Plesk subscriptions (tested on Plesk Obsidian 18.0.81 and 18.0.82). There is no Plesk extension yet: administrators use the console on port 8087, and Plesk customers cannot restore or download for themselves.
Supported versions
Plesk has no version check. PortWall tested Obsidian 18.0.81 and 18.0.82 on Linux, one server each (AlmaLinux 9, Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12). Older versions, Plesk on Ubuntu 22.04 and Windows Plesk were not tested.
No Plesk plugin
There is no Plesk extension, no Plesk customer self-service and no download screen for Plesk users. Administrators open the console at https://<server-ip>:8087. Restores for Plesk customers go through an administrator.
How BackupWall connects
The installer creates a Plesk secret key described as "BackupWall (local)" and a MySQL user backupwall so databases can be dumped. Uninstalling revokes both. Writes to Plesk are sent once with a 5-minute timeout; if a create gets no answer, BackupWall checks for up to 2 minutes what Plesk made and carries on with it if it is its own.
What BackupWall captures on Plesk
Subscriptions (customers' and resellers'), web files under /var/www/vhosts, databases, mailboxes, mail forwarding, aliases, autoresponders, forward-only mail names and catch-all, DNS of every record type for every zone, SSL certificates (including their use for mail), scheduled tasks, extra FTP accounts, PHP handler and settings per domain, the service plan, customer logins and a site's suspension.
SSL certificates, scheduled tasks and extra FTP accounts are captured when BackupWall runs as root on the Plesk server, which is the normal install.
Plesk-specific limits
- A subscription with no web hosting or no system user is skipped, with a line in the log only.
- A certificate that secures only a domain's mail or webmail (not the domain's own) may not be carried; the backup point names it.
- SSL It! (Let's Encrypt) settings are not carried. After a restore, check in SSL It! that the domain still renews.
- A subscription's HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect setting is not backed up (the certificate is).
- Databases on a remote database server are skipped; the backup point names them.
- Plesk mailing lists are not backed up.
- A deleted customer is made again with login, contact data and password before the subscription is restored. A customer under a reseller was not tested.
- For a migration, the cutover web proxy was tested live on nginx; Apache was unit-tested only.