Plesk

The Parallels Plesk Panel (ex: Parallels Plesk Control Panel, Plesk Server Administrator, PSA) software package is a commercial web hosting automation program. Originally released under the U.S. company Plesk Inc. and designed in Novosibirsk, Russia, Plesk became an SWsoft product when SWsoft acquired Plesk Inc. in July 2003. Parallels Plesk Panel is now shipped under Parallels, Inc. since Swsoft rebranded itself as Parallels (an existing namebrand in its portfolio) in January 2008. At that time, Plesk was rebranded as Parallels Plesk Panel.

* 1 Overview
* 2 Add-ons
* 3 Version history
* 4 Reported Issues
o 4.1 Security
o 4.2 Interface
o 4.3 Backup and restore
* 5 Competing software
* 6 References

Overview

Parallels Plesk Panel allows a server administrator to set up new websites, reseller accounts, e-mail accounts, and DNS entries through a web-based interface. The administrator can create client and site templates, which predetermine resource allocation parameters for the domains and/or clients.

Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux/UNIX supports multiple POSIX platforms, including Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu. Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows supports Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems.

Parallels Plesk Panel installs custom versions of or manages versions of MySQL and PostgreSQL databases (Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine under Windows), Apache Tomcat Java platform server, ColdFusion server, as well as CounterStrike and Battlefield 1942 game servers.

Add-ons

Parallels Plesk Panel has several software packs that are not part of the main Parallels Plesk Panel code base. These add-ons are designed to fully interact with Parallels Plesk Panel. These Parallels Plesk Panel software packs include functionality for billing, website building, and multiple server support.

They include:

* Parallels Plesk Billing
* Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder
* Parallels Plesk Expand

Version history
Version Released
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.3 2009-10-20
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.2 2009-07-28
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.1 2009-04-28
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0.1 2009-01-30
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 2008-12-09
Parallels Plesk Control Panel 8.6 2008-07-28
Parallels Plesk Control Panel 8.4 2008-05-07
Plesk 8.32007-12-26
Plesk 8.2.1 2007-09-19
Plesk 8.1.1 2007-03-27
Plesk 8.0.1 2006-09-20
Plesk 7.6.1 (Windows only) 2006-07-25
Plesk 7.5.4 2005-11-15
Plesk 7 2004-02-10
Plesk 6.5 2003-11-20
Plesk 6 2003-06-26


Reported Issues

• Security

Some users have complained that Plesk is not secure in the sense of multihosting security since all virtual hosts are run under the same Apache user and share the same configuration.[17] However, in Plesk 7.5.6 for Windows and onward, all virtual hosts can run under their own worker process group, secured using their own respective IIS user. In Plesk for Linux, one could use the apache2-mpm-itk (Multi-Processing Module) or the alternative suexec+fastcgi+php solution - both of which are not directly related to plesk itself . Plesk also defaults to port 8443 for https applications, this clashes with both Microsoft ISA servers and Microsoft Small Business Servers, which disallow non standard ports for https.

Plesk offers users the possibility to install web applications with just a few mouse clicks using the APS-standard. On the downside it's not always possible to upgrade these applications as easily to fix security problems which might lead to vulnerable servers.

• Interface

The Plesk control panel uses a SSL-enabled web based GUI, using frames.

• Backup and restore

One shortcoming in Plesk's data backup and restore functionality is the mechanism by which Plesk stores backup files, using server disk space before uploading files to a separate FTP server. Because Plesk backup files can be quite large, this mechanism effectively limits the usable server storage space, forcing administrators to choose between not backing up data or leaving large amounts of storage unused.