1: Instances and Pricing

In order to install Plesk on Alibaba Cloud, users first need to create a new account on Alibaba Cloud. Then, just select ‘Elastic Computer Service’ in the navigation console and click on ‘Instances’. Go to the ‘Create Instance’ button and choose the pricing you want from the two options available: Pay-as-you-go or Subscription.

2: Select Data Center Regions

Once done, select the datacenter region and zone. Remember, for small business site hosting, it’s worth choosing the data center region and zone closest to the geolocation. Thus, lowering page load times.

3: RAM Size

If you’re unsure which instance to choose, start with the ecs.n1.tiny instance, because you can always upgrade later if you have a subscription. Select the Instance Type. And when choosing the ECS instance to deploy Plesk on, look out for how much RAM it comes with. The more websites you host, the more traffic generates, and hence, the more RAM you’ll need. The Plesk System Requirements will help you estimate the amount of RAM your setup needs.

4: Elastic IP address and more

Set “Network Bandwidth Peak” to “0 M” to have the option to later bind an Elastic IP address to your instance. An Elastic IP address is a constant, public IP address your instance needs for web hosting.

Under “Choose the Operating System”, select the Marketplace Image tab and type Plesk in the search field. Under “Choose Storage”, we recommend SSD Cloud Disk for your site hosting and minimum one Ultra Cloud Disk or Basic Cloud Disk for backups. Under “Security Settings”, set the authentication method for your instance: password or key-based authentication.

5: Successful Activation

Under “Purchase Plan”, specify the number of instances you want (and instance name). Click Buy Now, and then click Activate. When the instance has been successfully activated, you can see it in the Alibaba Cloud console (Elastic Computer Service > Instances > click the data center region you specified during purchase).

6: Buy and bind an Elastic IP

All that’s left to do is purchase and bind an Elastic IP address. After this, your instance should be up and running. However, to start using Plesk on Alibaba Cloud from scratch, you’ll need to perform a short post-install configuration.

7: Opening Ports by Plesk

By default, each time a new instance is created, only certain ports are allowed for inbound connections, which means that posted used by Plesk are closed. Therefore, in order for Plesk and its services to work in an efficient manner, users need to open up specific ports by adding security group rules to the desired instance.

Users can either add a single security rule that allows all incoming connections, which is the preferred option for businesses that do not have much experience with either Plesk or Alibaba Cloud. Another option would be adding multiple security rules to allow incoming connections to only arrive to ports required by Plesk.

Your tailored Plesk config on Alibaba Cloud

Configurations for Plesk available on the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace include; Plesk Onyx on Ubuntu 16 (WebHost), CentOS 7 (WebHost), Ubuntu 16.04 (Web Admin SE), Windows 2012 R2 (WebHost), CentOS 7 (BYOL), Ubuntu 16 (BYOL), and Windows 2012 R2 (BYOL). Check the Plesk docs article for more configuration info.

We advise Administrators to ensure the recommended components set include all the components necessary for hosting. Including managing the web server, mail server, and database server. Furthermore, the WordPress Toolkit in Plesk Onyx on Ubuntu 16.04 only provides basic functionality. So we advise users of this Plesk license to upgrade their license.