Plesk 11.0 Preview

[Sergey L]

is there any idea as to when plesk 11 will be a fully functional release?

It is not too far. For a specific date, please watch official announcements on parallels.com. Partners of Parallels would receive earlier notification.

 

[Sergey L]

Meanwhile Plesk 11 preview #5 is shipped - http://www.parallels.com/download/plesk/11

Among other items this update includes

[+] Better Security. Panel 11 has put significant efforts into improved password encryption and other security improvements to avert vulnerabilities. Hosters and website owners concerned about security should upgrade to Panel 11 for enhanced protection. The main improvements are as follows:

* Hosting providers can control the availability of the password encryption feature to Panel administrators.
* Sensitive part of backups can be encrypted as well. Learn more about how to protect backups in Panel.
* Administrators can force Panel users to employ only those passwords that meet the minimum strength requirements. There are five password strength levels which will help to get the right balance between required protection and password complexity. Learn more about the password strength.

[+] Software Development Kit for writing extensions. Adding new functionality to Panel has never been so clear. Use the new SDK (the replacement of former Modules API) to learn how to extend Panel to meet your unique needs.

See more at http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/parallels-plesk-panel-11-linux-updates-release-notes.html#1104

See all features of 11.0 at http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/release-notes/parallels-plesk-panel-11.0-for-linux-based-os.html

 

[paulieG]

Hi,

The release notes page for Linux has gone missing : http://download1.parallels.com/Ples...lels-plesk-panel-11.0-for-linux-based-os.html

I just get a redirect back to http://www.parallels.com

Paul.

 

[Sergey L]

Hello, there has been a technical problem causing some items lost. We will restore it shortly.

UPD: restored

Regards

 

[petzsch]

I hope for support of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which has been released April 26th, in the autoinstaller for 10.x or the upcoming 11.x

Is there a planed Release Date for 11.x allready?

 

[paulieG]

Hi Sergey,

I've been looking for a command line option for using an activation code with the Plesk 11 preview and not found one. Is there one? For me the functionality is only any use if I can activate licences from the command line.

Also, I personally would like for my Linux Panel to stop suggesting I buy MyLittleBackup!

I was having a nosey around and found that the nginx configuration files are using templates the same as the httpd configuration files. On that basis I presume I could (not that I really want to) reconfigure the panel to be :

varnish -> nginx -> apache

By overwriting the variables for the nginx port with hard-coded values and then installing varnish on port 80.

As I said I don't really want to, but I am curious as to how much flexibility there is, it seems like there is a lot, and thats pleasing.

--
I'm also confused why Plesk 11 has qmail. As per this page : http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/lifecycle/ qmail is no longer actively supported. Does this mean that for PCI-Compliance/Security purposes that all Plesk 11 installs should be done with Postfix?

--

One thing that is missing from my standpoint is the ability to configure external webmail clients. I'd like the ability to register an external URL for webmail and for the system to create the necessary redirects on webmail.domain.com to point to it. I know this has been requested by others since the original feature was brought into Plesk 10.

---

Apart from that I'm regretting that I've had very limited exposure to Plesk 10 as a lot of things that I suddenly think are new features turn out to be in Plesk 10 already!

Paul.

 

[Sergey L]

I hope for support of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which has been released April 26th, in the autoinstaller for 10.x or the upcoming 11.x

We expect it follow shortly after 11.0 release

Is there a planed Release Date for 11.x allready?

You'll need to watch marketing announcements of Parallels for the date. Parallels partners should receive earlier notification than general public.

 

[Sergey L]

Hi,

I've been looking for a command line option for using an activation code with the Plesk 11 preview and not found one. Is there one? For me the functionality is only any use if I can activate licences from the command line.

Checkout this command

# /usr/local/psa/bin/license --help

Usage: license command [options]
Available commands:
--install or -i <file name|activation code>
Imports license from the specified
file or by activation code
...

Also, I personally would like for my Linux Panel to stop suggesting I buy MyLittleBackup!

Good point. Will file a bug report.

I was having a nosey around and found that the nginx configuration files are using templates the same as the httpd configuration files. On that basis I presume I could (not that I really want to) reconfigure the panel to be :

varnish -> nginx -> apache
...
I am curious as to how much flexibility there is, it seems like there is a lot, and thats pleasing.

We didn't explore this option, but you probably could do that.

I'm also confused why Plesk 11 has qmail. As per this page : http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/lifecycle/ qmail is no longer actively supported. Does this mean that for PCI-Compliance/Security purposes that all Plesk 11 installs should be done with Postfix?

As you see from that page, it is not end of life, so qmail is still shipped for compatibility purposes (people may have dependencies on Qmail). But new installations of Plesk have Postfix as default.

One thing that is missing from my standpoint is the ability to configure external webmail clients. I'd like the ability to register an external URL for webmail and for the system to create the necessary redirects on webmail.domain.com to point to it. I know this has been requested by others since the original feature was brought into Plesk 10.

Would you mean the feature Selecting Webmail Software? Or you need more than that?

Apart from that I'm regretting that I've had very limited exposure to Plesk 10 as a lot of things that I suddenly think are new features turn out to be in Plesk 10 already!

Good to hear that, Paul! Could you share which good features you discovered in Plesk 10?

Regards

 

[paulieG]

Hi,

Checkout this command

# /usr/local/psa/bin/license --help

Ah I looked for anything starting with key! Thanks!

Would you mean the feature Selecting Webmail Software? Or you need more than that?

When you register an external webmail and choose it for the domain all that seems to happen is the webmail.domain.com A record is removed from the DNS settings. I think a better implementation would be for webmail.domain.com to be reconfigured by the panel to forward to the external webmail.

Could you share which good features you discovered in Plesk 10?

Specifically it was the permissions for admin that you can set within /usr/local/psa/bin/admin , since we provide both managed and unmanaged VPS hosting and managed dedicated hosting its very useful to know that we can disable some of the functionality for our clients without having to resort to giving them client/reseller access. Actually thinking about it, I think I contributed to some of the discussion on this for Plesk 10 so how I missed it I don't know!

We don't use Plesk 10 much at all, and since Plesk 11 is fairly close to release I think its likely we'll leapfrog from Plesk 9 to Plesk 11 and try and standardise on Plesk 11. If I can be ready almost on the point of release and then start standardising I'll have at least 2 years before I need to worry about major upgrades again!

Thanks for your responses!

Paul.

 

[EgidijusS]

is there any idea as to when plesk 11 will be a fully functional release?

From parallels announcement:

Parallels Plesk Panel 11 is coming. We're targeting RTM on June 5th and a general availability launch date of June 18th. Parallels Plesk Panel 11 is the most hardened version ever with enhanced security and improved password encryption. These improvements are available in the downloadable preview code.

 

[Mshaker]

security enhancements

Good to see that we will have encrypted password support in version 11. One other suggestion that I didn't see mentioned:

1. The ability to limit access to the Plesk web API (By specifying specific IP's or subnets). Normally you should only have the deployment servers using the API. There is no need to have it wide open. This would have stopped what we saw with the latest exploit.

 

[sevenone]

How can i install horde 4?

 

[paulieG]

Good to see that we will have encrypted password support in version 11. One other suggestion that I didn't see mentioned:

1. The ability to limit access to the Plesk web API (By specifying specific IP's or subnets). Normally you should only have the deployment servers using the API. There is no need to have it wide open. This would have stopped what we saw with the latest exploit.

I thought that the "Restrict Administrative Access" function did this. Unless you're talking about non-admin access to the Plesk API?

The original notification of the vulnerability made mention that if you'd configured this setting you were unaffected, and this is consistent with what we saw.

Paul.

 

[Mshaker]

they should be seperate

I thought that the "Restrict Administrative Access" function did this. Unless you're talking about non-admin access to the Plesk API?

The original notification of the vulnerability made mention that if you'd configured this setting you were unaffected, and this is consistent with what we saw.

Paul.

"API" access and "Admin" access should really be separate (they are different roles). You may want your admin staff members able to login from where ever they want (from home etc). But access to the "API" should be restricted to just a few machines (usually the server with the billing software on it).

Most permission systems should be able to handle use cases like this.. I think its just a matter of creating a separate "API" and "admin" role.

 

[dresnnn]

at the moment, the preview doesn't support the new lts-version of ubuntu (ubuntu server 12.04 lts).
will the final release of plesk 11 support ubuntu 12.04? and if it will, comes the final release in the next 2 months?

thanks,
andré

 

[paulieG]

"API" access and "Admin" access should really be separate (they are different roles). You may want your admin staff members able to login from where ever they want (from home etc). But access to the "API" should be restricted to just a few machines (usually the server with the billing software on it).

Fair enough, we use two VPN's (primary and secondary) for all servers's that we're able to restrict admin access to and they're also the only servers we use the API on. Our current setup allows the current configuration to work for us, but that may change in the future.

On another note, there was another preview released on 3rd May, I can't see any change in the release notes, does anyone know if any features were added or changed?

Paul.

 

[AandCmedia]

Any updates on Plesk 11?

 

[Sergey L]

Previews are updated weekly. If you have installed any of previews before, you can upgrade to the current one or you could reinstall. Both ways you will access to latest fixes and features for evaluation. Feedback is much appreciated.

If your question is for the release date, please watch Parallels official announces.

Regards

 

[Sergey L]

On another note, there was another preview released on 3rd May, I can't see any change in the release notes, does anyone know if any features were added or changed?

Hi Paul,

some previews include only fixes of internally discovered problems, in this case release notes may go without update.

 

[Sergey L]

at the moment, the preview doesn't support the new lts-version of ubuntu (ubuntu server 12.04 lts). will the final release of plesk 11 support ubuntu 12.04? and if it will, comes the final release in the next 2 months?

Yes, one of next previews will include Ubuntu 12.04 for evaluation.