What are plesk clients and domains, nowhere seems to define what these actually are?

[ChristianCh]

I know this may seem a really dumb question, but we're somewhat stumped here with this.

We're looking to setup a shared hosting environment to sell hosting (apache on linux, IIS on windows), mail, DB and DNS hosting with registration.

We have been advised we need a PBAS/PPA setup along with the hosting nodes of Plesk.

However, when we come to try and setup Resellers, they only seem to be able to resell our packages from PBAS. Yet we know we can setup Plesk resellers in PPA and Plesk Panel, and they then sell these resources on in their own packages to their customers.

We've seen references to Plesk Client and Domains in the Billing manager of PBAS, but this seems separate from PPA which we have been informed is what we need for our centralised offering to our customers.

Could someone here explain what is the difference between the two elements of Clients and Domains in respect to Plesk.

Have we not made it clear enough on what we want and therefore bought the wrong products? As mentioned above we require:

1) Centralised panel for customer access to multiple subscriptions, including DNS hosting and registration
2) Reseller packages to buy resources from the Provider then resell on in their own hosting plans
3) Linux web hosting, with MySQL DB
4) Windows web hosting, with MSSQL DB
5) Mail hosting

 

[HMoellendorf87]

Hi ChristianCh,

have a look on: http://www.parallels.com/de/products/plesk-automation/overview/
Plesk PPA will be the right one for you. As a system administrator you see all clients which can have multiple subscriptions\domains, regardless if they are assigned to an reseller.

A reseller can setup own service plans.

 

[ChristianCh]

In which case, we're drastically not understanding something or the system has not been setup correctly.

I've followed the video guides.

We seem to be missing where we can allocate reseller resources and charge them for the account. The only thing we can see is for them sell subscriptions to accounts.
Any ideas which step we are missing.

I can quite happily setup a reseller and give him a discount on our hosting plans.

However, how do we assign resources to them, I can find no documentation on this point? The PBA-S PG only talks about assigning discount, nothing else regarding resources (Pages 177 to 183)

 

[HMoellendorf87]

Hi ChristianCh,

which product did you setup? PPA or BPAS?

 

[ChristianCh]

We have both.

We have the PPA node in as a node under Parallels Automation Manager, in PBA-S. However the resellers don't see it.

Now I have managed to get our test reseller able to create their own templates. I did this by creating a Reseller in PPA, and then assigning it to the account from Conflicts Manager under the Migration Director.

However, we don't appear to have any "reseller" subscription for them, so they are getting the resources for free.

What should the mechanism for selling resources to a reseller be in PBA-S?

I presume they would get a Plesk Node if we resold them a Plesk licence? But that would be dedicated to them, if I understand properly, or is there a way to sell them access/resources on a Plesk Node?

As I mentioned previously, we seem to be missing a fundamental setup stage.

 

[HMoellendorf87]

So, you setup a PPA management node and bought a PBA-S license? Normally, when you use this constellatin, you only have to create the reseller on PBA-S...

 

[ChristianCh]

Okay to confirm what we have bought and setup, as I don't think I have fully explained this yet.

We have

1 x Linux plesk panel server with a Plesk Unlimited license, to host mail and web
1 x windows plesk panel with a Plesk unlimited license, to host web
1x linux plesk panel automation server with plesk unlimited license, to act as central management for the two plesk servers, and eventually more
1 x linux server with PBA-S, with reseller and client licenses, to manage billing side for shared hosting
2 x linux servers for DNS hosting, no licenses, with management from the PBA-S.

We can currently
1) Sell hosting subscriptions to clients
2) Set reseller packages, who resell our subscription packages or service templates, we can give them a simple x% discount on the price they buy from us.

We would like to be able to
1) Sell shared hosting subscriptions to clients
2) Sell resellers packages, where they get allocated resources for a flat fee and can then resell their own designed packages, with what ever resources they want to apply to the service template.

Therefore we need to know what we need to do to resell resources to resellers within PBA-S. We can see what to do if this was being run from PPA, but the financing of the system is run from PBA-S.

Is this wrong, do we actually need PBA-S to run just a hosting system? We where told we needed PBA-S/PPA plus the plesk unlimited licenses. Is our architecture incorrect?

 

[HMoellendorf87]

Dear ChristianCh,

normally, the normal situation is, that you integrate PBAS into the PPA server. Not on a seperate server.
For setting up a reseller, please have a look on the specific documentation

 

[ChristianCr]

Okay the documentation shows the PPA side of this. So I have a few questions.

1) What issues would occur from not having the two servers on the same system, they currently seem well integrated
2) Is it worth moving the PBA-S onto the PPA server? And how is it done.
3) What are the steps in PBA-S to setup the reseller account from PPA template, is it much like a end user subscription? Could you point me at the documentation as I don't believe I've seen something so specific.

4) Having rewatched the video tutorial, I remember that there seems to be a section where we have to dedicate a plesk server (or multiple depending on the resources needed), to resellers. Is this also an absolute requirement?

Could I reiterate. What do we need to run a shared hosting environment and have resellers, to which we sell resources and they then resell on those resources in self made templates?