How to improve Plesk deployment / cloning?

[IgorG]

Dear Plesk users and experts!

At the moment Plesk 11 can be easily out-of-the-box deployed via Plesk ISO images. Also we have solution for deploying Plesk to different virtualization platforms like Xen and KVM systems, Microsoft Hyper-V system, Amazon EC2 Service and Windows Azure.

I would like to ask you about your ideas how we can improve Plesk deployment / cloning?
Please share your opinions, recommendations and suggestions here. It is really valuable for us.
All your ideas will be gathered and considered in details for the further implementation.
Thank you for cooperation!

 

[Slavik]

I'm not sure if this falls under deployment and cloning...

But I would like more support for "drop in service replacements" such as percona, maria db or litespeed as it would be nice to offer clients a "step up" from the base services to some more optimal ones before then moving them over to a more powerful custom configured server.

Easier ways to remove unwanted or unused plesk packages.

More transparency between plesk features which require additional purchases, eg the customer and accounts extension is a paid one, yet it showed up as an available update, so imagine my disapointment to find out it was extra cost.

A parallels linode stack (with different high performance preconfigured options depending on the vps size)

 

[IgorG]

A parallels linode stack (with different high performance preconfigured options depending on the vps size)

Thank you very much. Could you please explain your last point with more details?

 

[Slavik]

Thank you very much. Could you please explain your last point with more details?

Things like having the most recent php version as standard rather than having to install it via the updater.

Have APC / memcached / both pre-compiled and configured for usage.

Maybe some basic my.cnf optimisations.

Nginx enabled as default.

 

[paulieG]

Hi,

I tried the cloning feature in Virtuozzo 4.7 / Plesk 11 Preview and it didn't seem all that useful to me. Its not something I think we particularly need, we deploy containers (VMs) using Virtuozzo EZ templates followed by our own custom configuration scripts and we deploy physical servers using the command line parameters of the installer followed by our own custom configuration scripts.

I'm confident that I can get both methods working faster should I need to so I don't feel this area really needs any improvement or focus (I may feel different in a few months when I starting creating our own Plesk mirrors).

Partially related to this is the custom configuration options we make, where we make extensive and substantial changes across Courier, Qmail/Postfix, PHP, Watchdog, RKhunter, Apache, Nginx, vhost templates and other areas. I then have the task of identifying, finding, monitoring and correcting these configuration changes that can be removed at any time by Major, Minor and MicroUpdates.

My deployments would be easier if I had some confidence that the configurations I apply at deployment will not be overwritten by the updater.

I would also add my support to Slavik's suggestions regarding Plesk being more agnostic in terms of what provides a function, the function required is a MySQL server, if the functionality of a MySQL server is available then that ought to be enough for the installer to continue. I think that the installer looks for mysql-server having been installed as an rpm on CentOS, which is what stops Percona/MariaDB from working. I spent a little time trying to work around this with no success, and I didn't confirm what I suspected which is that if I compiled MySQL from source then the Plesk installer would balk at that too?

Paul.

 

[IgorG]

paulieG,
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
We will review and study them carefully and thoroughly.

 

[Slavik]

Thank you very much. Could you please explain your last point with more details?

Hi Igor,

Just wondering if theres any updates on this?

Im looking to start a new hosting service (lease to own style idea) with an application which relies heavily on innoDB.

Now plesk is my first choise for panel to provide to my end users, however the one major stumbling block is the database server. Percona + ExtraDB is a highly improved MySQL server (http://www.percona.com/software/percona-server) and is a drop in replacement on 99% of servers.

To explain how simple it was, on one of my clients servers running WHM, I stopped mysqld, removed mysql server + deps, installed percona + deps, started mysqld, logged into WHM, used easyapache to rebuild apache and php. Then turned off mysql updates in the panel.

This took the best part of 30 minutes and gave him a significant performance boost.

Unfortunately, Plesk makes it difficult to provide even drop in replacements... and I hate to say it, if i'm unable to provide Percona to power this idea, i'll have to ditch Plesk for WHM or similar.


As an off topic, I need to basically set it up so when a hosting account is created, it copies all the application files, sets up a database server, inserts the relevent details into a file and then locks down all the application files apart from 1 ftp directory I specify they can view / upload and change. How difficult would that be within plesk without stuff being overwritten on an upgrade?

Thanks

 

[IgorG]

We have already submitted feature request about MySQL replacement by MariaDB or Percona as a part of "GPL aspect" solution. Percona and MariaDb are a "drop in replacement". Remove Mysql, then install Percona or MariaDB and it just works. But the problem is that Plesk when update, look for "mysql" and if the rpm is called "Percona-Server", doesn't works.
Regarding your question of Plesk instance deploying with special settings I can say that actually, microupdate or major update can break or overwrite your custom settings. I think that some script for recovering all custom settings can be executed by Event Manager after each 'update' event.

 

[asawyer13]

I have a brand new server running Plesk 11. I really have to install MariaDB so I can use a product called Sphinx Full Text Search.
I see some talk about just installing MariaDB and it works, but with the root user changed to admin I don't think that it's that easy.
Can someone tell me if there is a way to make sure work and if so, how to do it?

 

[Nikolay.]

With Plesk 11.5 preview (soon to be released) you can just install MariaDB or Percona server as a drop-in replacement for MySQL. You should also be able do this for Plesk 11.0.9, but you'll need to turn off ALL updates to Panel until you update to Plesk 11.5 when it's released.