Resolved Installing Plesk Onyx

[efransen]

Hi,

I have some questions before leaving DirectAdmin and switching to Plesk.

1. If you install Plesk for the first time on either a dedicated or VPS-server, does Plesk "see" what kind of hardware is available and install with the best settings available for this hardware or do I have to tweak Plesk to get best settings/preformance?

2. Default there is no antivirus and SPAM-filter available. Which extensions do you recommend (possibly free)?

3. What other extensions do you recommend which we certainly DO need?


Thanks,
Eric

 

[Bitpalast]

1) Plesk's philosphy is to provide a panel, but not to interfere with typical basic system settings like maximum number of files, RAM usage configuration or libraries that are installed. The panel is "on top" of the system. The panel itself does not need optimization, but you are free to apply tweaks to system services. Such tweaks however are not required or only required to the same extent as normal system administration tasks on Linux servers require them.

2) There are both, antivirus and spam filter available "built-in", Dr. Web and SpamAssassin. It is not really necessary to add others from extensions.

3) There are some extensions that are automatically part of an installation, e.g. Let's Encrypt for SSL and the Wordpress Toolkit for easy maintenance of Wordpress. Maybe you want to easily control servers through an app, then add the Mobile extension. Google Authenticator is another great extension which applies two-factor authentication to the panel and let's your users choose to apply it to their own panel access. But all these are not really required and most extensions that are useful for everyday tasks are free.

Plesk is very well equipped out of the box. In my opinion it is definitely a lot better than DirectAdmin.

 

[efransen]

1) Plesk's philosphy is to provide a panel, but not to interfere with typical basic system settings like maximum number of files, RAM usage configuration or libraries that are installed. The panel is "on top" of the system. The panel itself does not need optimization, but you are free to apply tweaks to system services. Such tweaks however are not required or only required to the same extent as normal system administration tasks on Linux servers require them.

2) There are both, antivirus and spam filter available "built-in", Dr. Web and SpamAssassin. It is not really necessary to add others from extensions.

3) There are some extensions that are automatically part of an installation, e.g. Let's Encrypt for SSL and the Wordpress Toolkit for easy maintenance of Wordpress. Maybe you want to easily control servers through an app, then add the Mobile extension. Google Authenticator is another great extension which applies two-factor authentication to the panel and let's your users choose to apply it to their own panel access. But all these are not really required and most extensions that are useful for everyday tasks are free.

Plesk is very well equipped out of the box. In my opinion it is definitely a lot better than DirectAdmin.

Do I understand correctly that both Dr. Web and SpamAssassin are prebuild-in, and that they don't need a license to operate?

Eric

 

[Bitpalast]

Yes, that is right. The Dr. Web license is included, SpamAssassin is free anyway.

 

[IgorG]

Do I understand correctly that both Dr. Web and SpamAssassin are prebuild-in, and that they don't need a license to operate?

They are Plesk components which may be installed or not according to your wishes. Dr.Web requires Additional license key. SpamAssassin is free.

 

[Bitpalast]

@IgorG Are there different DrWeb versions? Our DrWeb in all of the licenses we have is updating regularly, and viruses are detected. We never needed an extra license for that.

 

[mr-wolf]

1)
Plesk is very well equipped out of the box. In my opinion it is definitely a lot better than DirectAdmin.

Every time I hear the word "DirectAdmin" my stomach hurts and my memory goes back to the days of horror when I was obliged to use it.
Then I get a cup of coffee, think of the present and start thinking of Plesk

 

[IgorG]

@Peter Debik as far as I remember, included Dr.Web license is limited by 14 mailboxes. If you want to check viruses for more mailboxes - you have to buy additional key in Online Store.

 

[efransen]

They are Plesk components which may be installed or not according to your wishes. Dr.Web requires Additional license key. SpamAssassin is free.

Is there a free antivirus available?

 

[Bitpalast]

I see. That can be, because only a very few customers of ours have activated the virus check. But good to be reminded of that limit.

 

[Bitpalast]

Is there a free antivirus available?

So, yes, there is, but obviously limited to a certain number of mailboxes as IgorG said.

 

[efransen]

Do you also happen to have something like a best-practice on using DNS with Plesk. At this moment we use the cluster function of DA which enables the 4 DA servers to act as a NS, keeping all of the records at each server. Is there a Plesk alternative?

 

[Bitpalast]

Plesk has a fully featured DNS panel, using bind in the background. There is a free extension available to duplicate the settings to a second (external) nameserver.

 

[efransen]

Plesk has a fully featured DNS panel, using bind in the background. There is a free extension available to duplicate the settings to a second (external) nameserver.

So there is no way to solve this with 2 Plesk servers acting as nameservers, and using external nameservers is recommended (Best Practice)?

 

[mr-wolf]

So there is no way to solve this with 2 Plesk servers acting as nameservers, and using external nameservers is recommended (Best Practice)?

I have all the authorative DNS on 1 Plesk server and a 2nd server as slave.
This 2nd server is a Plesk server on another network, but bind is configured manually and out of scope from Plesk.
I could have used more servers as secondary DNS, but I can so more things against that than fore it.

This is easier for managing them IMHO, but it does prevent you from doing other things like letting your clients manage DNS.

You're speaking of "best practice", but if these 4 servers are on the same network this is not "best practice". Some TLD-providers even explicitly prevent you from applying this (I believe DE does).

Edit:

With "same network" they don't mean the same, for instance the same /20 network, they consider being on the same AS as "same network". This is much bigger.
If you want to follow "Best Practice" you should make sure that those servers are not dependent of the same infrastructure.