Hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are dominating cloud services and expanding their reach further. But how?
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What’s new on Plesk Onyx? The March 2018 Update
Have you heard? We’re coming at you with a huge update to our all-in-one platform. You spoke, we listened. So we’ve further aligned Plesk Onyx to the way web professionals work today. And the types of infrastructure hosting sites and web applications use at the minute. Hence, we focused on 5 main areas: Site Performance, SEO, WordPress, Security and Cloud integration. Check it out.
The Fast-Building Part
We’ve improved onboarding for you and your customers. Hello, simplified registration and social login! As soon as you’re on, you get the First Steps Advisor to guide you through the initial steps. Like adding a domain, creating mailboxes and of course enabling your security measures.
We made an SEO Toolkit. Now you can count on Plesk to help analyze your websites, without having to look elsewhere.
- You’ll get Site Audit for common SEO issues and receive optimization recommendations.
- Instantly review search engine crawler activity on your sites with Log File Analyzer. Then track your keyword ranking in order to adopt the right SEO strategy.
- Finally, think smart and monitor your competitors. So that you can react to their and your ranking changes fast.
Consider the WP Toolkit enhanced with single-click NGINX caching and AI updates.
- Let’s introduce you to Smart Updates by AI. Using Deep Learning Technology, you’ll bring your WP instances, plugins and themes up to speed.
- Configure NGINX caching to significantly speed up every WP site. And while you’re at it configure your plugin and theme sets to come preinstalled with every new WP instance.
- Feel safer when updating because you can now have additional restore points before updating WP or syncing data.
- Speaking of safe, we’ve added pingback attack protection for extra security.
- With all that in place, open shop and activate your eCommerce. Choose to install WooCommerce on the new Plesk Onyx. Learn more about setting up a WooCommerce online store.
- You’ll also find that we’ve made WP management and UX better to accommodate more and more users.
The Tighter Security Part
Out with Security Advisor and in with the all-new Plesk Advisor. This is because we’ve expanded this system-wide. You’ll get recommendations, fixes and enhancements for security, performance, reputation, updates, backups and more.
Combine our new SSL certificate manager with the ‘Keep me secured’ feature. Breaking this down, it monitors and automatically secures Plesk, new domains, subdomains and webmail with SSL certificates. You can even choose between Let’s Encrypt or Symantec SSL certificates. Domain Validation (DV) certificates are free, but you can also choose to purchase Organization Validation (OV) or Extended Validation (EV) certificates directly from Plesk.
The Part Where You Run on Schedule
Get up close with Hyperscale Cloud services. It’s easier than ever to integrate AWS with your system using AWS toolbox (RDS, Route53). Experience an elevated backup-to-cloud experience or integrate your own cloud storage backup. We’re talking incremental, scheduled, self-restore, granular restoration for sites, files, databases, mail accounts and more. Not to mention the improved passive FTP support and Maintenance mode
We gave the Plesk Extensions Catalog a facelift. You’ll see the catalog is completely redesigned with intuitive navigation, rapid search, and fast auto-updates (within 24 hours). And let’s face it, our 100+ extension list is currently unmatched.
The repairing and monitoring tools are smarter than before. Yes, it’s possible. The self-repair tool can find resource-consuming processes without SSH and CLI. So you don’t need an expert to do the work. Detect and limit resources by subscription to ensure your infrastructure’s integrity.
Find your fit with the new Plesk Onyx 17.8
Your complete set of technical, security and automation tools – all in one place. We’re a leading WebOps and Web Hosting platform for a reason. Want to effortlessly build projects, secure against vulnerabilities and automate daily tasks – all in a day’s work? Then let us help with Plesk Onyx 17.8.
See which Plesk edition fits you best. If you’re already a Plesk user, get in touch – and see if we can offer you something better.
Cloud Hosting Platforms – Choose the right one for your business
Cost is often the biggest factor in the minds of business leaders when it comes to picking a cloud hosting platform provider. But is it right to focus so heavily on price when value for your business needs is clearly the primary focus? For anyone looking to choose from the ‘big three’ cloud hosting platforms, it comes as no surprise that Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure are the dominant horses in this race.
Top 5 Reasons to Sell Managed AWS Services
Public Cloud Providers are growing aggressively. So traditional infrastructure providers aren’t responding to new opportunities that rise from third party cloud offerings. According to Structure Research, managed third party cloud markets should reach $US25 bn by 2020! That’s why we want to give you, our Plesk Partner, 5 reasons why you should add managed AWS services to your current sales portfolio:
1. You’ll drive more revenue
Offering a managed Plesk on AWS, through the AWS Marketplace, is more than just a migration opportunity. This is your chance to serve a broader set of net new customers while increasing recurring revenues from your existing customers.
2. You’ll go global
Local infrastructure offerings are important. But how do you respond to customers who need to go global? By adding Plesk on AWS solutions to your portfolio, you’re actually offering your customers everything they love about Plesk – but on a scalable infrastructure across 16 geographical regions and 44 Availability Zones.
3. You’ll simplify managed AWS services for web professionals
As a service provider and Plesk partner, you’re the infrastructure expert who understands Cloud, Cloud-based services and the technical details. Be the Cloud journey guide for web professionals – help them manage and scale their websites and applications. AWS is bursting with approximately 50 different services. Services which present immense opportunity to manage complexity on behalf of the growing web professional community.
4. You’ll increase business opportunities
AWS doesn’t monitor, support or consult – that’s where you can step in. As a Plesk partner you can actually sell a professional solution combined with your unique abilities. Managed services offer a huge range of additional recurring services that your customers want and need. Want some ideas? Here are a few:
- Full Service Monitoring: You can provide this either based on your onsite tools or the AWS tools that you use.
- Revenue Spin-offs: According to Structure Research, a high number of managed third party cloud customers were not doing business with the provider before entering into the managed AWS relationship. Those customers would happily pay a premium for unique service level agreements (SLA) or additional collocation services. And they’re not too hard to find either!
- Local support: Can you speak your customers’ language? Then monetize this advantage. Provide them with the high quality local support they need. If you’re not selling the SLA – your nearest competitor will.
- Consulting services: Give your customers the ability to do more for themselves. You’re the expert! Whether it’s a tailored setup on the complex AWS infrastructure, or a hybrid approach combining Plesk on AWS with your own data centre capabilities. So bundle your knowledge and become your customer’s Cloud evangelist. Happy customers will stay.
5. You’ll increase migrations
Let your customers benefit from your expertise and mitigate the risk. Help them to migrate to AWS and add a set of managed services to the deal.
Still sceptical? Wondering if there’s a meaningful upside potential? Well, we can tell you that, at Plesk, we truly believe it’s a must for infrastructure service providers to add managed third party cloud services to their portfolio. Because we know that:
“Cloud is about how you do computing, not where you do it!“
– Paul Maritz, former CEO of VMWare
How to migrate your services to a server managed by Plesk Panel
First published on Nov 13, 2017 – Updated on Feb 4, 2019
Nowadays, a server operating system might host some of the following services:
- Web service and associated applications used by websites
- Mail service
- Database services
- DNS service
Often there’s also an installed control panel software that helps to facilitate the deployment and management of these services. So migration of the data and services from one server to another one is, in this case, the process of transfer of the control panel data and content (such as websites, mail, databases, DNS zones) to the new server.
Disadvantages of manual backup/restore
Generally, the migration procedure backs up some data on the old server. Then, transfers the backup file to the new server and restores it there. For such a complex environment, the transfer of data to another server isn’t the easiest option. You can, of course, move all the data piece by piece using the native backup/restore tools for each server component and file copy. However, it often takes an unreasonable amount of work-time and manual operations.
The other disadvantage is that it’s not possible to make a seamless transition if the services on the old server are active. Some data will be lost in transfer staying on the old server or some services will be down during the transfer.
Migration to a server with Plesk
Let’s now suppose you have Plesk Onyx on the new server. In this case, it will be easier to transfer all the data (web/mail/databases/DNS/Control Panel data). Because Plesk provides a special tool, the Plesk Migrator Extension, which automates the process.
This is the migration tool that Plesk provides for migration to the latest, recommended Plesk Onyx versions. You install it via Plesk Panel like any other Plesk Extension and it has a handy user interface too.
There can be different reasons for migrating services and/or data from one server to another. Let’s go through the typical server migration scenarios and see how Plesk makes the whole process simple.
Moving your services to the Cloud with Plesk and our hyperscaler partners
Migration from another control panel/hosting environment to Plesk
Migration to the new Plesk and Operating System versions
Moving your services to the Cloud with Plesk
It’s become popular to move onto cloud services and scale your business. You can easily install Plesk on the most-loved cloud platforms, like:
- Amazon AWS
- Microsoft Azure
- DigitalOcean
- Vultr
- Google Compute Engine (we have yet not blogged about this yet, but you can install Plesk on a Google Cloud VM the same way as a regular stand-alone Plesk server)
And once you install Plesk, you can migrate to the cloud instance with Plesk from anywhere, in a standard way.
There will practically be no difference as it doesnt depend on where Plesk is installed (cloud instance, virtual container/ machine or a physical server). You always migrate to Plesk using the Plesk Migrator Extension (this is the number one tool for Plesk migration).
Migration from another control panel/hosting environment to Plesk
If you have any control Panel you would like to leave for Plesk – check out our list of supported Panels. We might already have implemented the support of migration from it.
Your Panel not on the list yet? No problem. Plesk has a dedicated migration assistance team who can prepare the scripts for migration or do a full, paid migration service for you, if needed. Do not hesitate to contact us so we can help you implement the migration method from your server environment to Plesk.
You can even do this from your Panel (one that is not yet supported) on your own, using our custom migration framework.
Migration to the new Plesk and Operating System versions
Another common reason to migrate to a server managed by Plesk is to update the old Plesk version and/or Operating System. Please check the Plesk EOL policy. We recommend that you migrate to the latest Plesk version (Plesk Onyx, since 2017) on a supported operating system.
You can check what upgrade/migration options are available for your OS/Plesk version in the Migration Process Guide.
More common migration scenarios
- Joining and migrating services from several Plesk servers, one by one, to a new, bigger, more powerful server.
- Migrate part of Plesk subscriptions to a new server.
- Shift to the Plesk Multi-Server product.
- Moving data to a server in another datacenter.
- Switch to a server with upgraded hardware.
- Transfer from a physical server to a VM/container.
In any case, the Plesk migration process is the same – you always migrate to Plesk using the Plesk Migrator Extension on the target Plesk server.
Common questions around migration to Plesk
Usually, when the migration planning has started, the following questions appear.
- Which tool should I use to migrate?
- What should I configure/check/install on both servers?
- Are there any ports that need to be opened on the servers?
- Will be there any services downtime during migration?
- How do you sync outdated data on the old server during migration?
- How much disc space do both servers need for migration?
- Is it possible to keep IP address of the old server instead of changing the domains’ DNS records?
You can find the answers and more details about the migration process in the Migration Process Guide document.
In most cases, Plesk migrator will warn you about the problems which need to be solved when it does automated pre-checks. Also, it will warn about problems when it does automated post-checks on migrated objects. Based on the warnings you can always do required corrections and repeat the migration of the problem customers/mailboxes/websites/databases any time.
Typical Plesk migration steps
A short overview of the migration steps (more in detail in the Migration Process Guide)
For steps 1 and 2:
- Install Plesk on the destination server.
- Install all 3rd party components/software that your services use on the source server.
- Make sure to install all products licenses.
- If you plan to migrate databases, make sure that you install and register database servers on the Plesk Panel. Do this in the destination server of the same or higher version than the source server.
- Install all available PHP versions via Plesk Panel installer on the destination server.
- For Windows – Install the latest .NET framework version on the server.
- Then, you can just install the Plesk Migrator Extension on Plesk Panel in the destination server.
- Start the migration to Plesk from there.
- Follow the hints of the automated pre-check/post-check procedures.
For step 3 and 4:
This will not interrupt your services on the source server. It will merely copy data from the source server and will validate them on the destination server. It will warn you if something is missing or if you need to configure something.
When you are satisfied with the migration result, you can sync data in step 6 from the source server to update it and switch domains’ DNS (or move IP addresses) to complete the migration in step 7.