Pre-Planning and things to consider.
Before installing Plesk for your control panel you should decide what platform is right for you. Consider costs, flexibility, and the operating system you are most comfortable with. You will also need to consider licensing needs, features needed, and what other applications you will use your Bare Metal Server for. We provide these installations free of charge and this can either be done by us manually or through an OS reload, though we do understand that sometimes a manual install by the customer is needed. A clean install of the OS is the only way to install Plesk safely and to have it run optimally.
Operating systems compatible with Plesk and supported by SoftLayer
There are only 4 operating systems officially supported by SoftLayer with Plesk installed:
Redhat Enterprise ES 4.x/5.x- 32bit only
CentOS 4.x/5.x- 32 bit only
Fedora Core- 32 bit only
Microsoft windows 2003/2008all editions - 32bit only
Keep in mind you may install it on any platform you want and that we will license this for you, however you will not get any support on a operating system we do not support. Some common operating systems that Plesk can be installed on that we do not support are:
FreeBSD
Debian Etch
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
The full list of compatible operating systems can be found here http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/reqs/
Installation Preparation
The first thing you need to do before installing Plesk on a server is an OS reload, if it has been used more than a week or anything has been changed on the OS. This will ensure your Plesk install will go as smoothly as possible. This applies for both Linux and Windows.
Once you have a fresh OS install, you will then need to get the packages needed for install. You can get these from the Parallels site at http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/ . You will need to sign up in order to download the different install packages for the OS of your choice. It is strongly recommended that you review this link http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/ before proceeding with the install as this covers most everything you need to consider regarding the operating system, Partitioning requirements , and anything else you may need to know as a Plesk server administrator.
How to perform a basic Microsoft Windows Plesk installation
In this section we will go over basic installs of Plesk in both windows and Linux. We will start with windows.
Pre-requisites for Windows:
Clean OS install
Ftp server such as IIS or another supported 3rd party ftp server ( see the parallels documentation for more options)
Qos packet scheduler
Default Installation on Windows 2003
Step1. Installing the QOS packet scheduler
To begin Click on start >> control panel >> network connections >> public network
then click on properties for the network connection
Then click on Client for Microsoft networks >> Install
Then click on service >> Qos Packet scheduler >> add >> ok
Note: You may notice a brief interruption in your terminal services connection while the Qos packet scheduler installs. Once this completes you can move on to the installation of your preferred ftp server..
Step2. Installing the default IIS Ftp server
To begin installing the default window IIS ftp server Click on start >> control panel >> Add or Remove programs >> Add/Remove windows components
Once there - Click on >> Application Server >> Details >> Internet Information Services (IIS) >> Details
This will bring up the Internet Information Services (IIS) component window. From here click the check box on >> File Transfer Protocol and then click >> ok >> ok >> next. This will begin the installation process for the ftp service. And once complete this should be all you need to begin a default Plesk installation.
Step3. Installing the Plesk Control panel
Download the Plesk installation package for windows (see installation preparation)
Double click on the Plesk installation package and click >> run
This will bring up the Plesk installation window - Click >> next
If you encounter a error message regarding the Qos packet scheduled, refer back to the Qos packet scheduler installation instructions listed above
This will bring up the plesk license agreement, if you agree click >> next
This will bring up the desired destination directories to install too, I would recommend leaving this as the defaults and clicking >> next
We recommend a typical installation unless you have other requirements. From here click on >> typical and then click on >> next
This will bring up the Plesk administrator password window, set the desired password and click >> next
This brings up the IIS work process scalability options, it is strongly recommended to check the box for “enabled on shared desktop for all w3wp “and then click >> next
This will bring up the installation confirmation window, from here you can click >> install
This will go through the installation process and once completed you will need to click >> finish
This will prompt you to restart your computer so you will need to click >> yes
After reboot, your windows Plesk installation should be ready to use.
Note: A ticket will need to be opened with us to get this licensed for you.
How to install Plesk in CentOS Linux
Pre-requisites for Linux
Clean OS installation.
You will need the drive partitioned to acceptable specifications for Plesk. The following is the recommended partitioning configuration:
/boot 100 MB
/swap 2GB
/ 10 GB
/var Rest of drive space
Step1. Installation of the Plesk control panel.
There are 2 different packages for each Linux distribution, the full installer and the auto installer. We recommend using the auto installer as it take less time to download as it will only download the packages you need. As of the creation of the document the following installer is the most current for CentOS 5.x 32 bit (parallels_installer_v3.3.2_build080710.09_os_CentOS_5_i386)
To download the package you will need to login to the server as root and issue the following commands (with adjustments made for the proper packaging for your distribution)
To download the Plesk installation package you will need to type
Once this has been downloaded, you will need to chmod the package to execute as the default permissions will not allow this: type >> chmod +x parallels_installer_v3.3.2_build080710.09_os_CentOS_5_i386 and hit >> enter
To execute the installation script do the following type >> ./parallels_installer_v3.3.2_build080710.09_os_CentOS_5_i386 and hit >> L enter
This will bring up a important notes. To move beyond this hit >> enter
The next window will be the installation sourceselection menu. Since we will be installing from the plesk server we will leave this as the default and hit >> enter
The next menu is options for a proxy if this is in use, if not you can hit >> enter for defaults.
The next menu will ask you for the desired product versions you wish to have installed. For this install we will use only plesk. To select Plesk type >> 1 and then hit >> enter.
This will bring up a sub menu that gives you the choice of what version of the plesk install you would like. By default it will go to the lowest version available.
To select the most recent version (as of this writing) Plesk 8.6.0 type >> 6 and then hit >> enter
The next menu to come up will be the installation type menu.
I would recommend using the custom menu as using the typical or full option will generally exceed the Plesk licenses we offer by default (such as exceeding licensing packs etc.) So we will type >> 3 and then hit >>enter
Below is a typical setup for a custom install that will work with a default Plesk license. You can change this to fit your requirements as needed or required by your licensing type. Once you have selected what is needed hit >>enter
The next menu is the preparation for system product installation. This menu will explain how many packages will be needed by your system and you can browse what packages are to be installed. To continue past this screen hit >> enter.
The final menu will go over available disk space to ensure your system meets the minimum requirements. To proceed past this screen hit >> enter.
The installation is now underway. Keep in mind that installation times can vary due to network latency on the Plesk installation mirrors. You will see many packages install but thereis no progress indicator. Once the process is complete a message will be displayed that says “Packages were installed successfully.”
Your Plesk for Linux control panel is now ready to use.
Note: A ticket will need to be opened with us to get this licensed for you.
End Notes
This guide is intended to be a basic introduction to manual Plesk installations. All steps were tested before publication. If you have any questions regarding these processes or the licensing this product open a ticket with us and we will be more than happy to assist you or you may review the documentation at http://www.parallels.com