How Plesk supports MySQL and PHP variants

Plesk PHP / Mysql

Plesk for Linux since version 11.5 supports third-party builds and variants of MySQL server, PHP packages and PHP-FPM. For example, you may install MariaDB or Percona Server in place of OS vendor MySQL packages. Or you may install PHP packages from Webtatic (or any other) repository. And Plesk will properly support such alternatives, including the ability to automatically upgrade them.

In this post I’ll explain how support for these alternatives works and limitations of it. I’ll share some information and tips that will help you make a transition to

Introducing ‘plesk installer’ (Linux)

Have you ever felt that using Parallels Installer from command line is somewhat daunting? It has a lot of options and you usually need to get required “spell” from KB articles or official forums. For example, to manually install latest updates onto your system previously you would have to run (tediously typing each option!):

# /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller --select-product-id plesk --select-release-current \
  --upgrade-installed-components

No more! Introducing installer subcommand for plesk command-line hub.

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MariaDB installation guide

Plesk uses MySQL as both admin and client RDBMS. Plesk 11.5 for Linux and higher allows for MySQL alternatives (such as MariaDB or Percona Server) to be used as drop-in replacements for it. Upgrade from installations with drop-in replacements is also supported.

This guide will explain in great detail how you can replace MySQL server on a Plesk installation with MariaDB server. The guide is aimed at administrators with intermediate experience and understanding of package management for their OS. Also basic experience with services management and MySQL maintenance required.

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