CentOS Project Announces Early End-of-Life Date for CentOS 8

CentOS 8 Announces Early End-of-Life Date - Plesk

We recently found out that the CentOS Project accelerated the End-of-Life date for CentOS 8, meaning that no further operating system updates will be available after December 31, 2021. In the meantime, though, Plesk will continue supporting both CentOS 7 and 8 and CloudLinux 7 and 8 until their planned end of life dates.

CentOS also announced other critical changes to its roadmap that have an impact on the Plesk products and our users and partners:

  • CentOS 8 will be transformed to an upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux called CentOS Stream, where previous CentOS versions are part of the stable branch.
  • Although CentOS 7 life cycle remains unchanged, updates and security patches will be available until June 30, 2024. The life cycle timing is subject to change.

For additional information on the CentOS Project changes, you can also read their detailed blog post or refer to the CentOS FAQ page.

Plesk Support for CentOS 8

Plesk Support for CentOS 8 - CentOS 8 Announces Early End-of-Life Date - Plesk

If you’re wondering how CentOS 8 End-of-Life policy could affect your Plesk, here are some workarounds that you may want to hear. The good news is that Plesk has already been investing in product support for Ubuntu for decades, and will continue to support CentOS 8. 

Plesk Obsidian supports Ubuntu 20.04 LTS starting from Plesk Obsidian 18.0.29, and Plesk Onyx 17.8, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Nonetheless, if you’re a Plesk Onyx user, note that from April 22, 2021, it will no longer be available for new purchases and will stop receiving further development and technical support requests. Please read this article to learn how to upgrade to the latest Plesk Obsidian and how to automate renewals to keep your Plesk updated at all times.

When to Transition and Other Alternatives

CentOS 7 is the most popular choice of Plesk users. Therefore, it will be officially supported by RHEL until June 30, 2024, and will be supported by Plesk to that date. CentOS 7 remains a good choice for a new server.

We will consider supporting CentOS Stream as an alternative to CentOS 8 based on actual industry flow. So, people who will make a decision to follow the official RHEL distro will have CentOS Stream as an option. RHEL states that switching from CentOS 8 to CentOS Stream will be in-place and smooth. 

Additionally, we also plan to deliver AlmaLinux OS support for Plesk in summer 2021. AlmaLinux OS is a free new RHEL fork from the CloudLinux team, and it’s been developed in close co-operation with the community. 

Another good thing is that Plesk will also keep supporting CloudLinux OS 8. This additional supported operating system provides an upgrade path for customers with CloudLinux 6 or 7 deployments. CloudLinux is another commercially supported operating system that many of our partners benefit from. CloudLinux includes many advanced features such as improved user resource limitations, increased user visibility, and advanced customer isolation.

If you need additional information about this topic, please reach out to our support team. They will be happy to support you. And if you want to share your thoughts with us, drop us a line in the comment section below. 

The Plesk WordPress Toolkit 5.0 Version Release

I’m glad to announce that WordPress Toolkit v5.0 is now available! This seminal release introduces major changes in the product, fully justifying the major version increase. Let’s learn what makes this release truly special.

Goodbye Onyx, Hello Obsidian

WordPress Toolkit 5.0 leaves Plesk Onyx behind, requiring Plesk Obsidian to work. This change was necessary because it was getting increasingly difficult to develop new things while having to drag along a bunch of legacy code required for WordPress Toolkit to work in Onyx 17.8. Full transition to Obsidian should allow us to avoid using many old crutches, making changes faster and with fewer bugs. It will also open a lot more UI/UX possibilities, allowing our design team to properly express their ideas.

Users on Plesk Onyx 17.8 will stay on WordPress Toolkit 4.x, receiving only critical security updates (if/when necessary). Updating to WordPress Toolkit 5.0 will require updating your Plesk installation to Plesk Obsidian. We’re also going to prepare a separate WordPress Toolkit 4.10.x release. That’s to show a special notification to users about updating to Obsidian if they want to get new stuff. Learn more about Plesk Onyx End of Life and its support policy update here.

New Website Management UI

The biggest in-product change in WordPress Toolkit 5.0 is the new UI for managing WordPress installations. It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words.

We wanted to avoid dramatic revolutions and evolve the UI naturally. Making it more convenient and usable without requiring users to re-learn it. To achieve this, we’ve taken our true and tried website card interface and replanted it on a different set of UI elements that are also used by Dynamic List in Plesk.

Our next step was moving the update functionality to the very front. Since keeping your site up-to-date is one of the most important things the site admin is expected to do on a regular basis:

Other tools were also reshuffled a bit and placed in the expected and convenient locations. We wanted to make sure users won’t be confused and lost trying to find what they need. In the end, we’ve got ourselves a new modern-looking yet familiar interface with improved focus on important things – performance and better responsiveness.

This might not seem like a huge change, but it’s a very important one for us. Our old UI was already quite good (so no need for a drastic redesign). But it used outdated technology that was, let’s say, on life support. It was time to move the UI to a different foundation, creating a new UI platform with a huge potential for improvements and integrations.

We’ve already toyed a bit with some interesting ideas that would fit nicely in the new interface. I’m going to show you a super-secret sneak peek into some of these ideas made possible by our new UI platform:

We’d love to explore these ideas (and many others) in the future, but this is a tale for another time (and another bunch of challenges we’ll have to solve eventually).

WordPress Toolkit Lite Update

The “Lite” version of WordPress Toolkit 5.0 (also called WordPress Toolkit SE on our website) was previously limited to owners of Plesk Web Admin edition and similar low-end Plesk editions. However, the “free” part of the WordPress Toolkit required a thorough review and redesign to make it acceptable for a larger audience.

After conducting the review, we’ve come to the conclusion that the changes were required on two fronts:

  • Redesign the UI and UX of the whole process
  • Change the contents of the Lite (free) feature list

Let’s start with the UI/UX redesign. The old “Lite” interface had a lot of visual glitches, bugs, and overall inconsistencies accumulated over the years. Case in point:

Our design team came up with a new unified approach that was positively received by pretty much everyone who saw it. Powered by the new UI library, this redesign significantly improves the WordPress Toolkit Lite experience, making it consistent, unobtrusive, and pleasant to look at. I’ll let the screenshots tell the story:

The same screen, but with Lite upsell elements highlighted:

Inside a paid feature screen:

As for the contents of the WordPress Toolkit “Lite”, we’ve come up with the following rules of thumb that should be logical, reasonable, and easy to understand for both hosters and end-users:

  • Single-site operations available in the control panel or in WordPress itself should be free. Such features are either a mandatory baseline thing expected to “just be there”, or simply a nice bonus. They won’t push people to purchase paid WordPress Toolkit, but if they’re behind the paywall, it will annoy users (“I can do it in WordPress admin for free, why are you selling it?”).
  • Mass operations should require a paid version of WordPress Toolkit. They are a matter of convenience not available in WordPress itself, and they are required for any large-scale business. This makes them high value for agencies and hosters.
  • High-value operations like cloning or Smart Updates should also require a paid version of WordPress Toolkit. These features are critical for (semi-)professional level work and they are hard to carry out otherwise.

With this logic in hand, we’ve revised the list of “free” and “paid” features in WordPress Toolkit, coming to the following results.

Free and Paid Features

Features are available for free in WordPress Toolkit Lite:

  • Management of Search Engine Indexing
  • Debugging management
  • Password Protection
  • Update settings for individual sites
  • Upload of plugins & themes on the plugins & themes management screen of a particular site

Feature only available in the full (paid) version of WordPress Toolkit:

  • Mass update operations, including modification of update settings for multiple sites at once

We hope these changes will provide a better experience for all users, and we’re looking forward to introducing more features on both sides of the fence in the future.

WordPress Toolkit for cPanel and Future Plans

The team has been working on the cPanel release for more than a year, starting last September. I’m happy to say that the wait is over – WordPress Toolkit is finally available on cPanel! So, let’s go over the key points of this release.

WordPress Toolkit for cPanel is basically the same product, functionality-wise, just on cPanel. There are some minor discrepancies, but most of them will be either addressed in the next WordPress Toolkit releases or will have to wait until corresponding features are fully available in cPanel.

Unlike Plesk, WordPress Toolkit for cPanel is licensed on a per-account basis. Our first release is limited to a hand-picked selection of VIP partners, who will have exclusive access to WordPress Toolkit.

What’s Next?

Speaking about the future, our next release will be a shorter one to coincide with the cPanel v92 launch. We’ll focus on supporting the alternative licensing model for the public WordPress Toolkit 4 cPanel launch, introducing CloudLinux support on cPanel, and adding things like localization support (again, on cPanel). WordPress Toolkit 5.1 will also include customer features and bug fixes for existing Plesk customers, so don’t worry about the Plesk side of things, we’ve got that covered as well.

…So, once again, I want to thank the whole WordPress Toolkit development team for their fantastic work. And also thank you for your attention. If you have anything you’d like to share with us, let us know in the comment section below. See you next time!

 

Announcing Plesk Onyx Support Policy Update

Calling to all Plesk Onyx users – it’s time to say goodbye to your current software version. The dynamic hosting industry evolves very quickly. And our goal as a WebOps leading platform is to provide our customers with the best solutions. Plesk Obsidian entered the game so you can access the most complete tool on the market. With optimal usability, increased productivity, tougher default security, and many more key improvements.

With the launch of Obsidian last year, Plesk ended the era of upgrades and introduced the era of short releases. Switching to regular updates is imperative to always deliver a secure and stable version of Plesk. That is, with new features and improvements that partners and customers expect to get from an intelligent software solution. Find out more about Plesk Obsidian 18.0 mass update and new partner controls in this article. Also, keep in mind that only Obsidian gives you access to the full extensions catalog.

In order to fully accompany you to make the digital transformation easier, we provide you with the best support, that requires an update to the latest software version. In this regard, Plesk has an end-of-life support policy which is primordial in order to deliver innovative and cost-effective solutions.

Plesk Version Lifecycle

The table below describes when specific versions of Plesk will enter the extended support phase and when patches for critical issues will no longer be available. If the Plesk version in use is EoL (End of Life), Plesk strongly recommends upgrading to a supported Plesk version.

Product Released Extended Support* End of Life**
Plesk Obsidian June 4, 2019 *** not applicable not applicable
Plesk Onyx October 11, 2016 October 11, 2020 April 20, 2021

*In terms of Plesk Onyx, there is a 4-year support period, after which the product will no longer be available for new purchases and will only receive patches for critical issues. The Extended Support Period is six months starting from October 2020.

**End of Life: Once the Extended Support period is over, the product will stop receiving further development (including critical patches), and technical support requests will no longer be accepted.

*** Starting from this date, Plesk began accepting technical support requests for Plesk Obsidian (General Availability version launched on October 22nd, 2019).

Benefits of Auto-updates

It’s worth noting that Plesk is committed to supporting only Plesk Obsidian (18.x), and not older versions than the two previously released.

Here’s a good example. If a user installs Plesk 18.05.28 as a fresh instance but after a few weeks decides to install a new instance, its version will be 18.0.29 and not 18.0.28 anymore. Nonetheless, version 18.0.28 will still be supported until the following two newer versions are released – in this case, until version 18.0.30 is released.

This is why it’s very important to check your current version of your Plesk before asking for support. It’s possible that you’re no longer using a supported version – that is, the current version or the one before – and all you need to do is to update your Plesk to get full performance. You can turn the update option on to automatically update versions and simplify your admin tasks – at the end of the day, this is what Plesk’s here for 🙂  

Essential benefits of auto-updates are the following:

  1. No need to upgrade or migrate to a new major version each year.
  2. Immediate access to new features or improve existing ones.
  3. Constantly patching potential security vulnerabilities.
  4. Boosted speed and performance.
  5. Protection of user’s data.

You can find more information about Plesk Support Policy end-of-life on our lifecycle policy and change log pages. 

Got any questions about short releases and the Plesk Obsidian auto-updates? Drop us a line in the comment section below!

Tech Skills for a Changing World: The 5 Most Popular Plesk University Courses

The world is ever-changing, especially when it comes to technology. Gaining tech skills strengthens your resume and teaches you expertise in your chosen area of specialization. Online courses can help orient you by providing knowledge and expertise in specific technology fields. These courses also bring you close to real-world scenarios you can encounter so you get a practical understanding of how to troubleshoot problems. There are many reasons why training in technology skills works for your benefit. Let’s take a look at these reasons.

Why Should You Specialize in Tech Skills?

Specializing in tech skills proves that you are striving for both personal and professional development. It can help you irrespective of your current career level. If you’re just starting out, then you can undergo training to show your passion for learning and your interest in a particular tech field. If you’re more experienced, then advanced training will help you move forward in a changing world.

Tech training programs can help broaden your network as you will be in contact with both young aspirants as well as experienced professionals. Exposure to a broad network will open new opportunities for you.

Organizations always look for individuals who bring value to their company. Successful companies appreciate a continuous training mindset. Enrolling in tech training, taking tests or earning any certificates shows companies that you’re highly trained in a particular area. Your track record of learning new skills will help you establish professional credibility.

Plesk University offers many courses that can give you the ins and outs of different Plesk products. With some courses, you can also earn certifications. Check out our leaderboard of companies that have Plesk certified professionals. Did you know that access to all courses and exams in Plesk University is free? So, set yourself apart from your peers, choose your area of expertise, and join one of our most popular Plesk University courses. If you’re uncertain of what to choose, we’ve prepared a guide into 5 of our top courses and how they can benefit you.

The Top 5 Plesk University Courses

1. The Plesk Professional Course

In the Plesk Professional interactive course, you learn how to install Plesk Obsidian and use it to provide hosting services to your customers. You may as well ask what value will this add to your life, business, or resume. But don’t be dismissive – there are many reasons why knowing how to work with server management platforms is important. And it’s proven by a whopping 1,767 course completions.

First of all, technology has completely changed the way businesses work today. However, if you have a small business or are a solopreneur, you can’t always afford to have a separate IT department to manage all your digital processes. Who upgrades and monitors the servers and who troubleshoots problems as they arise? To ease these processes, you can either go to server management professionals who help in setting up and monitoring these crucial processes or you can learn the skills on your own. 

Let’s look at how server management is useful in more detail. You can use server management platforms to cut down costs. Instead of hiring people separately to manage servers, monitoring and management can be done by the platform. Hiring people can also be a challenging task for small businesses as finding the right staff always takes time. Depending on different pricing packages, using server manage platforms can result in comparatively lower skilled human resource costs. The best server management platforms also often provide you with the best support. On-call support with the best response time is usually included in the packages offered.

Additionally, as your company grows larger or if you’re planning to scale, the need for more servers grows. More staff is required to maintain and monitor server activities. Server management platforms are specifically dedicated to maintaining a greater number of servers. Knowing how to work with server management platforms saves you time, cost, and increases efficiency. An optimized server management platform automates regular administrative tasks, which can be time-consuming. This helps free your time up to perform other essential tasks.

2. The Plesk Associate Course

In the Plesk Associate course, you learn how to bundle infrastructure, Plesk, extensions, and services to create a managed WordPress hosting solution. Let’s take a look at how Managed WordPress solutions are a crucial add-on to the portfolio of services you can offer your customers. Or maybe you want to host your own WordPress. Either way, this is the course that can teach you the skills to do so and 1,461 course graduates agree.

Why is it useful to have Managed WordPress solutions? You need Managed WordPress to use WordPress efficiently as these solutions have the required resources and technology to maintain and update WordPress websites. The WordPress market share is 35% of all websites in the world. So, companies big or small want the management team that specializes in that Content Management System (CMS). Managed WordPress offers you many benefits, the most important of which are security, performance, and expertise on the platform. 

Ever hosted your own WordPress and woke up one day to find all those warnings and notifications for updates? Expertise is a crucial attribute when using WordPress. You may face extremely sophisticated security threats and down-time, which will ultimately affect your online presence and website performance. Managed WordPress acts like your hosting expert and takes care of these problems for you in the least possible time so that any losses are minimized. Wouldn’t it be great if you could gain this expertise?

The above points bring us to the next top Plesk University course:

3. The WordPress Toolkit Course

In the Plesk WordPress Toolkit course, you learn how easy it is to deploy, secure, and maintain a WordPress website with the WordPress Toolkit extension for Plesk. 

When talking about WordPress hosting, one of the first critical issues to address is security. A good Managed WordPress solution will provide you with the best security. Regular security helps in removing any malware present on your website. Hackers, bots, and other threats are tackled with the help of a specialized environment. The WordPress Toolkit is configured to do all of this for you with very little action needed from you. This is also a benefit when you want to offer Managed WordPress to your customers.

Additionally, if your business is growing or your customers are rapidly scaling, website traffic is going to fluctuate rapidly as well. Most likely you will require resources to keep the website running smoothly and avoid downtime if you’re scaling. Managed WordPress solutions take care of the smooth running of websites in such conditions. Crashing and downtime of the site can result in the loss of money and reputation of your brand and you want to avoid that at all costs. 

Last but not least is the issue of regular WordPress updates. WordPress releases updates on a regular basis. Keeping up with these updates is crucial for the high performance of your website. Excellent hosting management will help your site to cope with the updates and monitor how each update is impacting the website through automated tests. You’ll know if any issue is detected and have some action steps to follow to avoid downtime or security threats. Regular software updates also ensure high security for your website.

So, if you go for the WordPress Toolkit course, you’ll learn the tools to deal with the three most important issues – security, avoiding downtime, and regular updates – both for yourself and your business or your clients and customers.

4. The Plesk Obsidian: What’s New Course

The fourth course on our list is the Plesk Obsidian: What’s New course. This course is regularly updated and it showcases all the new features and changes in Plesk Obsidian. 

If you’re using Plesk every day and it’s a big part of your role, then this is the course for you. And if you haven’t kept up to date about Plesk Obsidian, now’s your chance. So, if you want to take a look at all the new features on Plesk Obsidian before signing up for the course, you can check out this guide. 

And so, on to the last course.

5. The SEO Toolkit Course

The fifth and final course on our list is the SEO Toolkit course. In this course, you learn how to use the SEO Toolkit extension to make your websites more visible by improving their search engine optimization (SEO).

Why is SEO important for your online presence? SEO helps in creating more visibility for your website or business. Good SEO management can drive more traffic to your website and a higher rank on search engines. SEO experts study and observe patterns that lead to higher rankings and the correct SEO tool can give you insights about developing better SEO strategies. Higher rankings lead to increased brand awareness, generating more leads, and ultimately increasing your sales revenue. With SEO tools, you also observe your site analytics, helping you to know your customers better and aligning your offers with their needs. You can also get to know where your SEO game is lacking.

So, there you have it. A wrap-up of the top 5 Plesk University courses for you to take this year. Build your skills and add more pizazz to your resume to take you to the next level! If you’ve taken any Plesk University course, let us know in the comments below. 

Until next time, arrivederci.

Plesk System Maintenance: How The Command Line Helps Administrators

In this article we provide overview on how to manage Plesk through the command line and execute scripts or binaries on certain Plesk events. In addition, you will learn how to adjust Plesk settings to fit a new network environment or server configuration, and restart Plesk to apply new settings.

Managing Plesk Objects Through the Command Line

Plesk Command Line Interface (CLI) is designed for integrating Plesk with third-party applications. Plesk administrators can also use it to create, manage, and delete customer and domain accounts, and other Plesk objects from the command line. CLI utilities require administrative permissions on Plesk server to run.

The utilities reside in the following directories:

  • On RPM-based systems: /usr/local/psa/bin
  • On DEB-based systems: /opt/psa/bin

Upon successful execution, utilities return the 0 code. If an error occurs, utilities return code 1 and display the error details.

Executing Custom Scripts on Plesk Events

Plesk provides a mechanism that allows administrators to track specific Plesk events and make Plesk execute custom scripts when these events occur. The events include operations that Plesk users perform on accounts, subscriptions, websites, service plans, and various Plesk settings. For example, you can save each added IP address to a log file or perform other routine operations.

Changing IP Addresses in Plesk

During the lifetime of a Plesk server, you may need to change the IP addresses employed by Plesk. Two typical cases when IP addresses may need to be changed are the following:

  • Reorganization of the server IP pool. For example, substitution of one IP address with another.
  • Relocation of Plesk to another server. Changing all addresses used by Plesk (including the one on which Plesk resides) to those on the new server.

Every time the change happens, you should reconfigure all related system services. To help you do this promptly, we offer the reconfigurator command line utility located in the following directory:

  • on RPM-based systems: /usr/local/psa/bin.
  • on DEB-based systems: /opt/psa/bin.

The reconfigurator replaces IP addresses and modifies Plesk and services configuration to make the system work properly after the replacement. To do this, the utility requires a mapping file, that includes instructions on what changes to make. Each line of the file should describe a single change. For example, the following line instructs Plesk to change the IP address 192.168.50.60 to 192.168.50.61:

eth0:192.168.50.60 255.255.255.0 -> eth0:192.168.50.61 255.255.255.0

The utility also helps you with creation of the mapping file. If you call the utility with a new file name as an option, it will create the file and write all available IP addresses to it. The IP addresses in the file are mapped to themselves. If you want to perform a change, modify the change instruction for a certain IP address.

When editing the mapping file, consider the following:

  • A replacement IP address must not exist in the Plesk IP pool before changing; however, it may be in the server IP pool. To make sure the IP is not in the Plesk IP pool, go to Server Administration Panel> Tools & Settings > IP Addresses and remove the IP if necessary.
  • If a replacement IP address does not exist in the server IP pool, the utility adds it to both Plesk and server IP pools.

To change IP addresses used by Plesk:

  1. Generate a mapping file with current Plesk IP addresses by running the command:
  2. ./reconfigurator <ip_map_file_name>
  3. Edit the file as described above and save it.
  4. Reconfigure Plesk and its services by running the following command one more time:

./reconfigurator <ip_map_file_name>

Changing Paths to Services

Plesk uses various external components, for example, Apache web server, mail service, antivirus, and so on. When interacting with these components, Plesk gets the information on their locations from the configuration file /etc/psa/psa.conf.

Plesk configuration file provides an easy way of reconfiguring Plesk if a service is installed into another directory or migrated from the current partition to another. Note that you can only modify paths present in this file; other paths are hard-coded in Plesk components.

Each line of psa.conf has the following format:

<variable_name> <value>

A sample part of the psa.conf file is displayed below. To change a path to a service, utility, or package, specify the new path as a value of a corresponding variable.

# Plesk tree

PRODUCT_ROOT_D /usr/local/psa 

# Directory of SysV-like Plesk initscripts

PRODUCT_RC_D /etc/init.d # Directory for config filesPRODUCT_ETC_D /usr/local/psa/etc 

# Directory for service utilities

PLESK_LIBEXEC_DIR /usr/lib/plesk-9.0 

# Virtual hosts directory

HTTPD_VHOSTS_D /var/www/vhosts 

# Apache configuration files directory

HTTPD_CONF_D /etc/httpd/conf 

# Apache include files directory

HTTPD_INCLUDE_D /etc/httpd/conf.d 

# Apache binary

HTTPD_BIN /usr/sbin/httpd

#Apache log files directory

HTTPD_LOG_D /var/log/httpd 

#apache startup script

HTTPD_SERVICE httpd 

# Qmail directory

QMAIL_ROOT_D /var/qmail

Note: Be very careful when changing the contents of psa.conf. Mistakes in paths specified in this file may lead to Plesk malfunctioning.

Restarting Plesk

If you experience problems with Plesk, for example, malfunctioning of a service, you can try to resolve them by restarting Plesk or the administrative web server sw-cp-server. Also, a restart is necessary to apply configuration changes that cannot be made while Plesk is running.

To restart Plesk, run the following command:

/etc/init.d/psa restart

To restart sw-cp-server, run the following command:

/etc/init.d/sw-cp-server restart

Managing Services from the Command Line and Viewing Service Logs

Here we explain how to stop, start, and restart services managed by Panel, and access their logs and configuration files.

Plesk web interface

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa restart

Plesk log files are located in the following directories:

  • Error Log: /var/log/sw-cp-server/error_log
  • Access log: /var/log/plesk/httpsd_access_log

Panel configuration files are the following:

  • php: $PRODUCT_ROOT_D/admin/conf/php.ini
  • www: /etc/sw-cp-server/applications.d/plesk.conf

Presence Builder

Log files are located in:

  • Error log: /var/log/httpd/sitebuilder_error.log
  • Logs: /usr/local/sitebuilder/tmp/

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /usr/local/sitebuilder/config
  • /usr/local/sitebuilder/etc/php.ini

phpMyAdmin

The error log is located in: /var/log/sw-cp-server/error_log

The configuration file is accessible at: /usr/local/psa/admin/htdocs/domains/databases/phpMyAdmin/libraries/config.default.php

phpPGAdmin

The error log is located in: /var/log/sw-cp-server/error_log

The configuration file is accessible at: /usr/local/psa/admin/htdocs/domains/databases/phpPgAdmin/conf/config.inc.php

Courier-IMAP

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/courier-imap start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/courier-imap stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/courier-imap restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/plesk/maillog

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /etc/courier-imap/imapd
  • /etc/courier-imap/imapd-ssl
  • /etc/courier-imap/pop3d
  • /etc/courier-imap/pop3d-ssl

DNS / Named / BIND

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/named start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/named stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/named restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/messages

The configuration file is accessible at: /etc/named.conf

FTP (ProFTPD)

Log files are located in: /var/log/plesk/xferlog

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /etc/xinetd.d/ftp_psa
  • /etc/proftpd.conf
  • /etc/proftpd.include

Postfix

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/postfix start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/postfix stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/plesk/maillog

Configuration files are accessible at: /etc/postfix/

QMail

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/qmail start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/qmail stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/qmail restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/plesk/maillog

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa
  • /etc/xinetd.d/smtps_psa
  • /etc/xinetd.d/submission_psa
  • /etc/inetd.conf(Debians)
  • /var/qmail/control/

SpamAssassin

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/plesk/maillog

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /etc/mail/spamassassin/
  • /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
  • /var/qmail/mailnames/%d/%l/.spamassassin

Kaspersky antivirus

To start the service through the command line:

service kavehost start

To stop the service through the command line:

service kavehost stop

To restart the service through the command line:

service kavehost restart

Log files are located in:

  • /var/log/maillog
  • /var/log/mail.log

Configuration files are accessible at:

/opt/kav/sdk8l3/etc

Odin Premium Antivirus

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/drwebd start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/drwebd stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/drwebd restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/plesk/maillog

Configuration files are accessible at: /etc/drweb/

Tomcat

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/tomcat5 start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/tomcat5 stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/tomcat5 restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/tomcat5/

Configuration files are accessible at: /usr/share/tomcat5/conf/

MySQL

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/mysqld start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/mysqld stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

Log file is located in: /var/log/mysqld.log

The configuration file is accessible at: /etc/my.cnf

PostgreSQL

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/postgresql start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/postgresql stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/postgresql restart

Startup log is located in: /var/lib/pgsql/pgstartup.log

The configuration file is accessible at: /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf

xinetd

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/xinetd start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/xinetd stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/messages/

The configuration file is accessible at: /etc/xinetd.conf

Watchdog (monit)

To start the service through the command line:

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modules/watchdog/wd --start

To stop the service through the command line:

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modules/watchdog/wd --stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modules/watchdog/wd --restart

Log files are located in:

  • /var/log/plesk/modules/watchdog/log/wdcollect.log
  • /var/log/plesk/modules/watchdog/log/monit.log

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /usr/local/psa/etc/modules/watchdog/monitrc
  • /usr/local/psa/etc/modules/watchdog/wdcollect.inc.php

Watchdog (rkhunter)

Log is located in: /var/log/rkhunter.log

The configuration file is accessible at: /usr/local/psa/etc/modules/watchdog/rkhunter.conf

Apache

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/httpd stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Log files are located in:

  • /var/log/httpd/
  • /var/www/vhosts/<domain_name >/statistics/logs/

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
  • /etc/httpd/conf.d/
  • /var/www/vhosts/<domain_name >/conf/httpd.include

Mailman

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/mailman start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/mailman stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/mailman restart

Log files are located in: /var/log/mailman/

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf
  • /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py
  • /etc/mailman/sitelist.cfg

Webalizer

To start the service through the command line:

/usr/local/psa/bin/sw-engine-pleskrun /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/DailyMaintainance/script.php

Configuration files are accessible at:

/var/www/vhosts/<domain_name>/conf/webalizer.conf

AWstats

To start the service through the command line:

/usr/local/psa/bin/sw-engine-pleskrun /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/DailyMaintainance/script.php

Configuration files are accessible at:

/usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/

Backup Manager

Backup logs are located in:

  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/sessions/<session>/psadump.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/sessions/<session>/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/pmmcli.log

Restore logs are located in:

  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/rsessions/<session>/conflicts.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/rsessions/<session>/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/pmmcli.log

The configuration file is accessible at:

/etc/psa/psa.conf

Plesk Migration Manager

Migration logs are located in:

  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/msessions/<session>/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/rsessions/<session>/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/rsessions/<session>/conflicts.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/migration.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/pmmcli.log
  • /var/log/plesk/PMM/logs/migration_handler.log

Horde

Log is located in:

/var/log/psa-horde/psa-horde.log

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • Apache configuration
    • /etc/httpd/conf.d/zzz_horde_vhost.conf
    • /etc/psa-webmail/horde/conf.d/
  • Horde configuration:

·         /etc/psa-webmail/horde/

Atmail

Log files are located in:

/var/log/atmail/

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • Apache configuration
    • /etc/httpd/conf.d/zzz_atmail_vhost.conf
    • /etc/psa-webmail/atmail/conf.d/
  • Atmail configuration:
    • /etc/psa-webmail/atmail/atmail.conf
    • /var/www/atmail/libs/Atmail/Config.php

psa-firewall

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-firewall start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-firewall stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-firewall restart

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /usr/local/psa/var/modules/firewall/firewall-active.sh
  • /usr/local/psa/var/modules/firewall/firewall-emergency.sh
  • /usr/local/psa/var/modules/firewall/firewall-new.sh

psa-firewall (IP forwarding)

To start the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-firewall-forward start

To stop the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-firewall-forward stop

To restart the service through the command line:

/etc/init.d/psa-firewall-forward restart

Configuration files are accessible at:

  • /usr/local/psa/var/modules/firewall/ip_forward.active
  • /usr/local/psa/var/modules/firewall/ip_forward.saved

Moving the Plesk GUI to a Separate IP Address

By default, the Plesk GUI can work on all IP addresses available on the Plesk server (from the server’s IP pool). You may want to allow access to the Plesk GUI only from the local network. For that, you should move the GUI to an internal IP address.

To move Plesk GUI to a separate IP address, in the configuration file /etc/sw-cp-server/conf.d/plesk.conf, replace the lines

listen 8443 ssllisten 8880;

with the lines

listen SPECIFIC_SERVER_IP:8443 ssllisten SPECIFIC_SERVER_IP:8880;

where SPECIFIC_SERVER_IP is the new IP address that you want to use for the Plesk GUI.

Do not change the ports.

Setting Off Automatic Integration of WordPress Installations

If you are using the WordPress Toolkit extension, it detects new installations performed through the Application Catalog (or Application Vault) and integrates them with WordPress Toolkit. For this reason, installation of WordPress on a site takes up to 20 seconds. If you want to avoid this, you can switch off automatic detection of new installations by the WordPress Toolkit.

To do this, add the following lines to the panel.ini file :

[ext-wp-toolkit]

autoAttachApsInstances = off

Turning Off WordPress Toolkit

If you are using the WordPress Toolkit extension, you can completely switch it off on your server.

To switch off WordPress Toolkit, add the following lines to the panel.ini file:

[ext-wp-toolkit]

enabled=off

Securing Your Websites with the SSL It! Extension in Plesk Obsidian

SSL It! Extension in Plesk Obsidian

Securing your website with SSL is essential to ensure the privacy of your visitors and that you’re found online in 2020. Encrypt All The Things and Google’s push for more SSL adoption mean SSL is rapidly becoming the new standard. As a result, without SSL on your website, you risk a poor experience for your users and falling rankings. So, to solve this dilemma, we’ve developed the SSL It! extension.

It allows you to keep your websites secured with certificates from trusted certificate authorities (CAs) Let’s Encrypt and DigiCert (Symantec, GeoTrust, and RapidSSL brands), or with any other SSL/TLS certificate.

SSL It! comes already installed by default, and you can do everything from one, easy-to-use interface. You need the latest versions of the DigiCert SSL and Let’s Encrypt extensions to also be installed to get the most from it, but apart from that, it’s ready to go out-of-the-box.

To give you an idea of what the extension can help you do, here’s a rundown of its main features:

  • HTTP to HTTPS redirects to enhance the security of your website’s visitors
  • Prohibits web browsers from accessing your website via insecure HTTP connections
  • Improves website performance and protects privacy with OCSP Stapling.
  • Uses protocols and ciphers generated by Mozilla to make connections encrypted with SSL/TLS certificates more secure

SSL It! is a free extension, but SSL certificates themselves can be paid. Before we get into all that, let’s have a look at how you can use it to elevate your security.

Evaluating the SSL security of your website

Using the SSL It! extension, you can run one of the most popular testing services, Qualys SSL Labs, to check how good the SSL protection of your site is and discover what you can do to improve it.

Evaluating the SSL security of your website is as easy as doing the following:

  1. Go to Websites & Domains > your domain > SSL/TLS Certificates
  2. Click “Run SSL Labs Test”

The Qualys SSL Labs website will open in a new tab and the test will start automatically. Simply wait a few minutes until the test is finished, and you will receive a grade.

The highest possible grade is A+. If you secure your website with a valid SSL/TLS certificate from a trusted CA, and have turned on all security-enhancing features within the SSL It! extension (both steps we’ll look at next), you’re likely to receive top marks.

Securing websites with SSL/TLS certificates

To manage the SSL/TLS certificate of a domain, you first need to go to Websites & Domains > your domain. There you can see the current security status of your domain under SSL/TLS Certificates.

SSL It!

As you can see in the Tips & Tricks video below, by clicking SSL/TLS certificates you will see a list of certificates, all with clear descriptions so you can pick the right one for your needs.

For example, in the video, we select the Lets Encrypt certificate. All that needs to be done next is to enter a valid email address and choose what you want to secure. The first option, domain and the selected components, is a good option if you’re not sure what DNS settings you have in place.

On the next page, you’ll see that your domain and the selected components are now secured. From here, you can run the SSL Labs Test to see how secure your domain is. Like in the video, it’s likely your website will now score an A. You can improve your security further and raise this to the maximum score, A+, by turning on the four TLS-related options and sync TLS versions with Mozilla’s free service.

Enhancing the security of your websites

SSL It! will ensure your website is secured with a valid SSL certificate from a trusted CA. But this is not enough to ensure all-round protection. In particular, this extension contains four options that, when configured, will improve your website’s performance, enhance the security of your visitors, and harden the security of all servers’ encrypted connections. On top of this, enabling these features will boost your SSL Labs Test score to A+ and raise your website up the search engine rankings.

Here’s the four options with details of how they secure your website:

Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS:

The first option, redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, sets up a permanent, SEO-safe 301 redirect from the insecure HTTP to the secure HTTPS version of the website and/or webmail.

HSTS:

The second option, HSTS, prohibits web browsers from assessing your website via insecure HTTP connections. If visitors are unable to connect via HTTPS, for instance, because your certificate has expired, your website will become unavailable.

Keep websites secure:

The third option replaces expired or self-signed SSL certificates with free valid certificates from Let’s Encrypt. It covers each domain, subdomain, domain alias and webmail belonging to the subscription.

OCSP Stapling:

The last option, OCSP Stapling, forces the web server to request the status of the website’s certificate from the CA instead of the visitor’s browser.

On this page, you will also see there are ciphers managed by Mozilla which are constantly being updated. Click on TLS versions and ciphers by Mozilla to go to the settings page, and if you want to use the latest, click Sync now.

With your certificate installed, the four TLS-related options on, and ciphers synced, you can now do another run of SSL Labs Test. All that’s left to do is bask in the glory of your website’s A+ security rating.

There are many more things you can do to improve your website’s security within the extension, such as acquiring a paid SSL/TLS certificate or uploading your own. Check out this guide for more detailed info.

What is your experience with this extension? Share your thoughts or drop us a question or two by heading to the comments below!

Heads up: Plesk and WebPros speakers at Cloudfest 2020

Cloudfest 2020 - Cancelled - Plesk Sponsor

Cloudfest is by far the most important cloud-computing conference in the world. Over 4 days, 7,000 attendees, 200 exhibitors, and 250 speakers come together to create an unmissable event that celebrates everything new and exciting in tech and innovation. Cloudfest 2020 will explore how the cloud industry is preparing for the AI evolution in technology, oversight, economics, and morality.

Thanks to the stellar line up of newsmakers, influencers, and web experts, it’s sure to inspire top keynotes, game-changing network sessions, and legendary parties. We’ll be attending Cloudfest as a sponsor with a booth (G33) along with the whole Web Pros team. Plesk CTO Jan Loeffler, Director of Program Management Sergey Egorov, and Senior Program Manager Andy Kugaevskiy will deliver highly-anticipated talks. Moreover, we will have special Plesk certifications happening thanks to Ivan Butorin  – Plesk education expert, and Roman Basalyko – support expert.

Sergey Egorov Talks About Plesk Obsidian

Sergey’s talk will explore the importance of a lightweight SaaS experience for staying relevant and competitive in every stage of a web project. It will be perfect for those interested in what Plesk can offer them in terms of SaaSification.

Future of Hosting and Cloud Management – Jan Loeffler (with Todd Mitchell)

Jan will be speaking alongside COO and WebPros expert Todd Mitchell, about the Future Vision of Hosting & Cloud Management: How WebPros can help your business reach maximum growth. This talk is the one for you if you want to know how WebPros—a partnership between Plesk, cPanel, XOVI, Solus IO, and WHMCS—can be a game-changer for your business and your future growth.

WordPress Toolkit: Marching Towards Global Expansion – Andrey Kugaevskiy

WordPress Toolkit as a managed WordPress hosting solution is becoming available to all hosters this year. Sr Program Manager, Andrey, is covering WordPress Toolkit’s integration with cPanel and the upcoming market release. You can learn about WordPress Toolkit as a centralized, platform-agnostic, stand-alone product – also coming soon. Plus, upcoming support and integration changes and features to be introduced in version updates this year.

Get Plesk Certified with Ivan Butorin and Roman Basalyko

Thanks to our two Plesk experts, Ivan and Roman, web hosting product/project managers and web professionals will learn to deploy Plesk and provide specialized hosting solutions. And receive a certification as proof. You can check out the full session agenda here. Secure your spot as seats are limited!

ivan-butorin-avatar

Book Your Sessions Now

Cloudfest will be held between March 16-19 in the theme park and resort, Europa Park, in Germany. You can find the full WebPros/CloudFest 2020 Agenda here, along with details of each session and their speakers.

All sessions will be held at the Hotel El Andaluz, Alhambra Meeting Room. You can also use the link to secure your place and register for the talks. We highly recommend doing this sooner rather than later! We look forward to seeing you there as we learn, ask questions and share feedback.

 

We can’t wait for this year’s Cloudfest. Are you attending? Let us know your thoughts below. We hope to see you there for some serious business and some serious fun.

Strengthening PHP settings in Obsidian and the new PHP Composer

New PHP Composer

PHP, standing for “hypertext processor”, started out as a small open source project that evolved as more and more people found out how useful it was. Today, it is one of the most widely used scripting languages in the world. It’s particularly popular for web development since it can be easily embedded into HTML pages.

PHP is so popular and effective that you’ll find it at the core of the biggest content management platform, WordPress. As well as behind the largest social network – Facebook. One of the things that makes PHP so great is that it’s powerful, flexible, and easy to use. It runs on various platforms, is compatible with most servers, and everyone from expert developers to beginners and hosting managers can work with it.

Plesk provides full support for the PHP scripting language. Including support for multiple PHP versions and handler types out of the box. As part of Plesk Obsidian, our latest product release, we introduced PHP Composer. A new extension that allows you greater control over your PHP settings, ensuring they’re as strong as can be.

In this article, we dive into the new Plesk Composer extension. Looking at how you can use it to better manage PHP settings for your domains and subdomains directly from Plesk’s control panel.

The New PHP Composer Extension

PHP Composer is an extension that helps you find, install, and update library packages that your PHP project depends on. Starting from Plesk Obsidian, PHP Composer is available by default as a Plesk extension.

The tool is ready to go, out of the box. Allowing users access to all the most important operations within the Plesk UI. This also means you don’t need to install obligations or manually update to the latest versions. The PHP Composer does it all for you.

There are many benefits to using the new PHP Composer. To give you a better idea how it can strengthen your PHP settings, here’s an overview of its core features.

Use PHP Composer without SSH access

There’s now no need to gain SSH access to execute the most useful Composer actions. Using PHP composer. You can set up environment variables, edit your composer.json file, run the Install and Update commands. All from the Plesk UI.

Install and update dependencies with one click

Instead of having to remember all the commands and options to run to install dependencies, the Plesk Composer takes care of it with a click of a button. You’ll also soon be able to use it to perform test runs before executing dependencies, to ensure they don’t break your production site.

Review installed dependencies before updating

To maintain a secure website, it’s important to update dependencies. But doing so can lead to a broken site. With Composer, you can review installed dependencies and decide if it makes sense to update them before doing so. Soon you’ll also be able to use Composer to identify security issues with the installed version.

Get the right PHP version automatically

You want to make sure your website is using the right PHP version. PHP composer ensures your website automatically uses the PHP version specified in composer.json. Soon Composer will also allow you to choose the correct PHP version and handler. Just log in via SSH and run the “php” command.

How to Run PHP Composer

As mentioned, Plesk Obsidian comes with PHP Composer already installed and compiled with the most popular modules. However, if you need to install some additional libraries, you can connect to a Plesk server via SSH (Linux) / RDP (Windows Server).

Instead of running the default command:

# composer [options] [arguments]

use the following commands instead:

X.X  (XX  for Windows Server) should be replaced with an installed PHP version provided by Plesk (5.6, 7.0, 7.1, etc).

On CentOS/RHEL-based distributions, use the command:

# /opt/plesk/php/X.X/bin/php /usr/lib64/plesk-9.0/composer.phar [options] [arguments]

On Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions, use the command:

# /opt/plesk/php/X.X/bin/php /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/composer.phar [options] [arguments]

on Windows Server, use the command:

c:\> “%plesk_dir%Additional\PleskPHPXX\php.exe” “%plesk_dir%Additional\Composer\composer.phar” [options] [arguments]

Customizing PHP Settings in Plesk Obsidian

Customizing your PHP settings is now super simple. Whether you want to alter one domain, a selection of domains assigned to a specific plan, or all your domains. To adjust PHP setting for a domain, go to:

Domains > example.com > PHP Settings

You can then adjust the PHP settings according to your needs and apply the changes.

plesk obisidian- php settings

To customize the PHP settings for domains that are assigned to a specific service plan, go to:

Service Plans > plan_name > PHP Settings

You can then adjust the PHP settings according to your needs and apply the changes by clicking Update & Sync.

deafult-domain-settings-php-obsidian

Finally, you can customize PHP settings for all domains by going to:

Tools & Settings > PHP Settings > click on a required PHP version (any application) > switch to the php.ini tab.

You can then adjust the values for existing PHP parameters or specify your own. Once you finish, apply the changes.

Managing PHP Dependencies with Composer

To store the list of modules for a project, PHP Composer uses two files. Composer.json – to list libraries on which your project depends directly. And composer.lock, to list all libraries on which the libraries in composer.json depend directly and indirectly.

Plesk offers two ways to use Composer: Through the command line, and through Websites & Domains > Applications. Below are a few of the main ways you can use PHP Composer to manage dependencies.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the PHP Composer documentation.

Manage PHP Project Dependencies with Composer

To manage dependencies, you can find all applications that have composer.json by clicking Scan in the Applications section. The applications will appear in the list. The commands below are available only for applications with the composer.json file.

Installing Dependencies

You can use PHP Composer to install all modules necessary for your project by going to: Websites & Domains > Applications > Manage My Applications. Click the application name in the list, and finally select Install Dependencies.

Updating Dependencies

You can update module dependencies by running Websites & Domains > Applications > Manage My Applications > clicking the application name. And then selecting Update Dependencies.

Editing Dependencies

To manually edit dependencies, you can select the Edit Configuration button and open up composer.json in Plesk’s Code Editor.

Remove Dependencies Management from Your App

By clicking Remove, the application will no longer appear in the list of applications in My Apps. However, the composer.json and composer.lock files will remain in the application directory. So you can add the application to the list by clicking Scan.

Have you tried the new PHP composer yet? Let us know your feedback and suggestions in the comments!

Keeping Tabs with Plesk Obsidian’s Advanced Monitoring Extension [VIDEO]

Advanced Monitoring Extension by Plesk

Plesk is continually evolving. We released Plesk Obsidian just a few months ago, and it’s by far our most powerful management platform yet. Jam-packed with new features, Plesk Obsidian also introduces six new extensions that make the Plesk experience better than ever. Each extension offers users enhanced usability, tougher security, and maximum productivity. One of these new extensions is the Advanced Monitoring extension.

Advanced Monitoring replaces the Server Health Monitor component as the main feed for monitoring the health of your server. The Advanced Monitoring extension works in tandem with Grafana – an extension that displays server metrics as visuals, graphs and dashboards. The result is a powerful combination that optimizes both the flexibility and control of your Plesk account.

This article will fill you in on everything you need to know about the new Advanced Monitoring extension. We’ll first look at why the extension is so important and the problems it solves. Then, its main features, and finally how you can start using it.

What problems does Advanced Monitoring solve?

Keeping track of your servers can be a tricky and time-consuming task. But anyone who’s suffered an unexpected cut knows it can ultimately save you a whole lot of time and hassle. That’s why, a tool that can automate the monitoring of your servers is an invaluable asset. However, it’s important that it actually makes the process easier and upholds server monitoring best practices.

First on the best practice list is that the tool can watch various system metrics around the clock. Alerting you whenever there’s a problem. The Advanced Monitoring extension does this by tracking your server resources usage day and night.

It then notifies you when the usage of one or more resources reaches a pre-defined threshold. Because it’s essential to be instantly alerted of critical issues in order to handle them right away. Advanced Monitoring sends you emails according to your preferences and limits so you never have to worry about breaks again.

Another best practice is being able to monitor current and historical data of your server usage. This can help you get a feel for the overall state of your Plesk. Ensuring you don’t overload your server, and allowing you to plan accordingly for future needs.

Of course, all this data is useless unless it’s offered in a clear, easily-digestible manner. Grafana is the leading open source software for time series analytics. The extension displays data in Advanced Monitoring through graphs and dashboards that are highly customizable and visually appealing.

Main features of Advanced Monitoring

Let’s take an overview of Advanced Monitoring’s full feature list. With the Advanced Monitoring extension, you can:

  • See detailed reports on your server health
  • See how server health parameters change with time
  • Change the displayed time period
  • Keep track of the system resources’ usage on your server
  • Configure email notifications to inform when one or more resources’ usage reaches a pre-defined threshold (this feature is on its way).

One of the best things about the extension is that it’s ready to go out-of-the-box. Both the Advanced Monitoring and Grafana extensions are installed in Plesk Obsidian by default. You can find them located in the main left panel. The resources and services monitored by Advanced Monitoring are separated into five categories, with each one shown on its own tab.

If you upgrade to Plesk Obsidian from Plesk Onyx, Advanced Monitoring will automatically install and replace Server Health Monitor.

How to use the Advanced Monitoring extension

It’s incredibly easy to monitor your resources and server health using Advanced Monitoring. Most of its features are ready to go, but you can also customize it to suit your needs.

For example, you can select a time period for which Advanced Monitoring generates graphs. Or specify a custom period by selecting “Custom time range”. This can help you find out how your parameters change over time. As well as identify the periods when your resources usage is maximal or minimal.

You can also track your server health. Not only by looking at resources graphs, but by setting up and receiving Advanced Monitoring notifications. Advanced Monitoring can show notifications in Plesk’s interface when your resource usage exceeds its threshold and/or returns to normal value. The notifications only show for resources with notifications turned on and which have thresholds set in the Advanced Monitoring settings.

Certain resources already have their notifications turned on and their thresholds set by default. When a default threshold’s exceeded, it means a parameter is close to its critical value, which can be problematic. The automated-add on Grafana allows you to see detailed, visual reports on server health. And follow the real-time evolution for parameters that are of interest to you.

It offers numerous types of dashboards and can be used in two main ways:

  • With the data collected from default sources which were integrated for you by us.
  • (If you’re an experienced Grafana user) By harvesting data from any source you can integrate Grafana with.

We’re very excited about all Plesk Obsidian’s powerful new extensions. If you have any questions about Advanced Monitoring, be sure to leave us a comment below. Or get in touch with our friendly team of Pleskperts.

Plesk Obsidian 18.0 Mass Update and New Partner Controls

Plesk Obsidian 18.0 Mass Update and New Controls - Plesk

This year, we’ve publicly announced the automatic updates to 17.8, from Plesk 17.0 and 17.5. Then, in September, we announced the beginning of the short releases era of auto-updates. Now, we’re sharing the progress we made with auto-updates to the latest Onyx version, with additional details and timelines on auto-updates from Onyx to Obsidian. You’ll also find out how you can set up the automatic updates to run at the time you want them to.

Plesk Obsidian 18.0 General Availability (GA) happened on October 22, 2019. As of end of November 2019, we updated around 60,000 Plesk servers to Plesk Obsidian. Since then, they continue to be updated to the latest version every month. Of course, only if a system administrator has allowed automatic updates.

Thanks to the auto-updates, we increased the number of servers on supported Plesk v17.8 to over 20%. With the Plesk Obsidian release to GA we have two supported versions, and 76% of all the Plesk servers are running actual and supported versions.

How We’re Ending 2019 – Plesk Servers by Version Distribution

How We’re Ending 2019 - Plesk Servers by Version Distribution Plesk

Your Automatic Server Update To Plesk Obsidian

We plan to start mass distribution of automatic updates to your Plesk Onyx 17.8 servers starting from January 20, 2020. From the end of January until the end of February, Plesk Retail Customers (who purchased licenses directly from us) and Partners with Early Adopters tier* will be updated. From March through June, we plan to update the servers that belong to the General Release tier. Then, we’ll start updating servers on the Late Adopters tier from June.

Your Automatic Server Update To Plesk Obsidian Plesk

*To check your tier in Plesk Onyx 17.8, in the Plesk interface in the left side menu, click Tools & Settings > Update and Upgrade settings.

Controlling Automatic Updates from Partner Central and Plesk

There are two ways for a server administrator to set up days and timeframes for the installation of automatic updates in Plesk:

  • If you’re managing just one Plesk Server, please refer to our Administrator’s Guide for details on how to set the automatic updates time through the panel.ini configuration file.
  • If you want to apply auto-update settings to more than one Plesk server, you will need to do so from Partner Central:
  1. Login to Partner Central here.
  2.  Go to Product Configuration > configuration you need > click Edit link close to Server Settings.
  3. Make sure the radio button Install updates automatically is selected.
  4. Set weekdays when you want the auto-updates to run (at least 2).
  5. Enter the email address of a person or group of people who we should notify when the auto-update starts and ends.
  6. Set a timeframe for when you want the updates to be installed (3 hours at least).
  7. Click Save.
  8. Make sure to activate the configuration
Controlling Automatic Updates from Partner Central and Plesk

Please note that in both cases of setting up a timeframe through panel.ini or KAPC configuration, the time that is specified is in UTC time zone. There are some limitations that you should be aware of:

  • When specifying a timeframe, it should fit into 24 hours timeframe, i.e. the period that is being specified, should be either until midnight, or after it.
  • There is just one timeframe for any week day, i.e. on the settings in the screenshot above the auto-updates are allowed for installation Monday to Thursday from 1 am to 4 am UTC.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I have several Plesk servers and I perform their administration. Auto-updates are enabled on all of my servers and I see that several servers were already updated to the latest version of Plesk Obsidian, while several servers are still on older version. What is wrong?

A: There is nothing to worry about. The remaining Plesk servers should be updated to the latest available version until the end of the particular short release period.

Q: I have set up in panel.ini file the weekdays and timelines where I want my Plesk servers to be auto-updated. What will happen if my provider sets another days and timeframes in KAPC?

A: The settings on a single server have higher priority, and in this situation, the settings specified on your single Plesk server will be taken into consideration by the auto-update algorithm.

Q: I purchased my Plesk license directly from you. Can I use the configuration settings in Partner Central even if I’m not Plesk Partner?

A: You cannot use Partner Central settings in this case. We recommend that you set the days and time-frames using panel.ini.

 

Got any more questions about the upcoming mass update or new Partner controls? Drop us a line in the comment section below!