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The distributed backup and restore are the option provided by the psadump and psarestore utilities. These utilities can be used in a fashion, which allows to back up a Plesk server creating the dump-file on the disk of a remote computer as well as to restore a Plesk server using the dump-file stored at the remote computer.
The psadump utility can be used the following way to for backing up the remote Plesk server information storing the dump-file at the local machine. This can be done, for instance, to provide the regular server backup.
ssh root@remotehost '/usr/local/psa/bin/psadump -f - --nostop' | split -b1000m - dump.
Please use caution when executing a backup with the --nostop parameter. See the details of using --nostop in order to avoid possible complications.
The backup of Plesk can take up a considerable amount of disk space at the server. Using this technique you are both: saving the disk space at the server and placing the dump-file at a different location, which enhances the security of the backed up information.
The psarestore utility much similar to the psadump utility allows executing remote restore operation. In this case the remote dump-file is used to restore Plesk at the local server.
ssh root@remotehost 'cat /root/psa_backup/dump.*' | /usr/local/psa/bin/psarestore -f - -m my_ip_map_file -s my_shells_map_file
This, like the above technique, is useful when you are unable or choose not to store the dump-file at the same machine with Plesk.
Combining the two previously described techniques allows to execute the simultaneous backup/restore of a Plesk server. This could be very useful when you need to work (make an upgrade or a similar operation) on your machine that is currently employed under Plesk but you wish to decrease the idle time as much as possible. In such case you can simply enough migrate Plesk from one machine to another.
ssh root@remotehost '/usr/local/psa/bin/psadump -f - --nostop' | /usr/local/psa/bin/psarestore -f - -m my_ip_map_file -s my_shells_map_file