How to Upgrade Windows Plesk?

Posted on July 11th, 2020

Plesk is a hosting control panel that allows an administrator to develop new websites, email accounts, reseller accounts, DNS entries, and more. Plesk offers a web-based interface, and it is compatible with both Windows and Unix based commercial hosting servers.

Upgrade Plesk

You can upgrade Plesk to the latest version via the command-line or Plesk interface. Please note that during the Plesk upgrade, the Plesk won’t be available, but the Websites stays online. To check if your operating system supports the latest version of Plesk release, visit the Plesk Lifecycle Policy page.

To upgrade the Plesk via the Plesk interface, open the port 8447 in the firewall. If the Port 8447 is not open, then use the command-line to upgrade Plesk.

Upgrade Plesk Via Interface

In the Plesk interface, go to ‘Tools & Settings’ and click the ‘Updates and Upgrades’ option.

Click the ‘Install or Upgrade Product’ option on the ‘Updates and Upgrades’ page.

Select the desired Plesk version from the drop-down list on the ‘Install or Upgrade Product’ page and click the ‘Continue’ button to proceed with the upgrade procedure.

By default, you can upgrade to the latest stable Plesk release. Sometimes you need to change the release tier if you want to upgrade to an early adopter release or if the operating system does not support the next Plesk release. To change the release tier, follow the below process from the Administrator GUI:

  1. Log in to the Plesk Administrator GUI.
  2. Go to the ‘Tools & Settings’ page and click the ‘Update and Upgrade Settings’ option.
  3. Scroll down to the ‘Plesk release tiers’ section.
  4. Then, select the ‘Early adopter release’ option to upgrade Plesk to the early adopter release.

Upgrade Plesk Via Command-line

1) Log in to the Plesk server via RDP.

2) Start the Plesk installer. To start the Plesk installer on Windows Server, run the following command in the command prompt as an administrator.

> "%plesk_bin%"\ai.exe --console

If you want to upgrade Windows Plesk to other versions than the latest stable release using an interactive console, follow the below steps:

1) Log in to the Windows server via RDP as an administrator.

2) Download the Plesk installer by using the following link: https://installer-win.plesk.com/plesk-installer.exe.

3) Open the Windows command prompt and change the working directory to the directory in which the Plesk installer binary got saved.

4) Launch the Plesk console by using the following command.

> plesk-installer.exe --console

5) To upgrade Plesk to the latest version, run the following command.

> plesk-installer.exe --console --tier testing

6)  Read the details carefully mentioned in the text ‘IMPORTANT’ on the console before the installation.

7) Type ‘N’ to move to the next step and press the ‘Enter’ key.

8) Set the basic and additional settings similar to the one done during the installation time and type ‘N’ to move to the next step and press the ‘Enter’ key to proceed.

9) Next, select the version to which you want to upgrade and type ‘N’ and press ‘Enter’ to proceed with the upgrade.

10) Confirm that you want to upgrade Plesk by typing ‘Y’ and press Enter to continue.

11) Plesk installer downloads the installation file for the selected lesk and prompt confirmation. Confirm the upgrade by typing ‘F’ and then press the ‘Enter’ key to start the Plesk upgrade.

 

Troubleshoot while Upgrading Plesk to Plesk Obsidian

During the upgrade of Plesk to Obsidian, there is a chance that you encounter any of the following situations:

1) At the ‘Updates and Upgrades’ page, the Plesk Obsidian RTM not available for upgrade on the supported OS for Plesk Onyx or Plesk Obsidian RC.

2) The release or general release tier is already selected. To check if it is already selected in Plesk Obsidian RC/ Plesk Onyx, run the following command via SSH.

# plesk bin server_pref -s | grep -i release-tier

3) In Plesk Onyx, check the Plesk release tiers from the ‘Update and Upgrade Settings’ page.

The cause for the above situations is that at the moment, the Plesk Obsidian RTM is available for the early adopter release tier.

Upgrade Windows

 

Resolution

 1) Upgrading to Obsidian via Command-line Interface

The upgrade to Obsidian via command-line is the most used option to fix the above issue.

1) Connect to the Server via RDP as an administrator.

2) Start the Plesk installer from the command prompt.

> plesk installer

While running the following command, if it fails with the following error, then stop all the existing Plesk Installer processes.

BUSY: Another update process locked update operation.

3) In the Plesk Installer, Select the Plesk Obsidian 18.0.20 and start the upgrade procedure.

 

Note:

To stop all the existing Plesk Installer processes, follow the below solutions

1) Connect to the Plesk Windows server via RDP.

2) Open the command prompt and find the PID of a Plesk Installer process using the following command.

> wmic process where “caption like ‘%installer%’” get processId,caption
Caption ProcessId
parallels_installer_Microsoft_10.0_x86_64_3.23.12.exe 6434
Caption ProcessId
ai.exe 6434

3) Run the following command to kill the Plesk Installer process.

> taskkill /PID 6434 /F

4) Next, kill the ai.exe process by using the following command.

> taskkill /FI “IMAGENAME eq ai.exe” /F

 

To stop or terminate the Plesk Installer Process using the Task Manager, run the following command.

1) Open Task Manager from Windows Start.

2) The names of the Plesk Installer process can be Plesk Installer, ai.exe, parallels-installler.exe or plesk-installer.exe. Right-click on the existing Plesk Installer process and click the ‘End Task’ option.

Windows Plesk

 

 

To terminate the Plesk Installer process for Plesk Obsidian, follow the below process.

1) Connect to the server via RDP.

2) Stop the Plesk Installer processes by using the following command.

> plesk installer stop

 

2) Upgrading to Obsidian via Interface

1) Log in to the Plesk interface as an administrator.

2) Go to ‘Tools & Settings’ and click the ‘Update and Upgrade settings’ option.

2) Switch the Plesk release tiers to the ‘Early adopter release’.

3) Next, connect to the Plesk server via RDP.

4) Run the Plesk Daily task by using the following command.

> plesk daily

5) If the above command throws the below error, then stop all the existing Plesk Installer process and re-run the above command.

ERROR: Update operation was locked by another update process (Plesk installer or pum).

6) Then, log in to the interface as an administrator and go to the ‘Tools & Settings’ page.

7) Select ‘Update and Upgrades’.

8) Click ‘Install or Upgrade Product’ and select the Plesk Obsidian 18.0.20 from the list.

9) Next, click the ‘Continue’ button to perform the upgrade.

 

Please comment below for any questions or queries. If you are an InterServer customer, please reach out to our support team for further help.

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