Mail Only Plesk Server

[Richard1]

I have configured a mail only Plesk server.

The customer, subscriptions and domains were all copied from my old server via Plesk Migration with the Mail Only flag.

All subscriptions which have more than 1 domain have a main domain with a Hosting type of Website. All additional domains have No web hosting.

When creating Email Addresses there is a domain name selection field for all domains.

All good so far, this all works as expected and makes sense apart from one thing - remembering that this is not a web server but a mail server and therefore logically it doesn't make sense for these accounts to be set as Website hosting.

However when I change to the more logical setting of No web hosting, I am then unable to Add New Domain, my only option is to Add New Domain Alias, which subsequently removes the domain name selection field when adding mail and only allows the creation of mail accounts under the main domain name.

I believe this to be a bug which should be looked into?!

Additionally, this makes the server less secure as to get the expected functionality I have to use Website hosting, which then opens up another area for potential exploit.

 

[IgorG]

I think that this is correct behaviour - if you haven't hosting enabled what is the reason for adding additional domains? You can use Service Plan with "No hosting" for adding separate subscriptions with one main domain without hosting for mailboxes creation.

 

[Sergey L]

Hi, there is a technology limitation in Plesk currently - that "primary" domain shall have hosting in order to make extra domains. I understand it maybe inconvenient for the purpose of mail hosting, but after all, Plesk has been primarily designed for web.

So you can either
- make each domain a separate subscription - they won't have hosting (secure) and it shall not have any negative impact on mailboxes
- make new domains as aliases - but each mailbox will present in all "domains" (aliases) then

 

[Richard1]

Thank you, Igor and Sergey, for your responses.

Sergey, while I completely understand Plesk has been designed for web, do you know if this something that Parallels is looking to reworking in the future?

Also, thank you for supplying the available options, I had already implemented your additional subscription workaround but again, logically, this doest make perfect sense within the whole Plesk hierarchy.

 

[Sergey L]

Hi Richard,
Yes, we looking to rework this (as it causes some confusion for web as well). Just takes time.
And thanks for filing a proposal at plesk.uservoice.com

 

[Richard1]

Thanks Sergey, no problem

 

[smirking]

I'd be interested in having a way to have both a hosting instance and a mail instance separate for the same domain. I'm trying to accomplish this and it doesn't appear to be possible because I can only use the domain name once either as a primary domain name or as an alias to another domain.

What I'm trying to do is have domain1.com be the alias of domain0.com, but have its own mailboxes under domain1.com so that domain1.com and domain0.com can have separate mail setups, but share the same website. Actually they won't really have the same website in my case since I've got a multi-site service setup under domain1.com.

BTW, to avoid hijacking this thread, I've created a new thread about this to further explain what I'm trying to do:
http://talk.plesk.com/threads/best-way-to-separate-mail-and-hosting-domain-on-same-server.336525/

 

[KonstantinosS]

@smirking I think this is more PPA oriented. But I may be wrong.