All posts by Parallels Administrator

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

ByteHouse Offering to Make Your ‘Web Hosting Life Easier’ with Plesk 11

 

Parallels has always been the leader in the web hosting control panel market and we are pleased to be a launch partner and provide their latest and most advance feature packed version to all our web hosting clients.  Plesk 11 is an easy to use language rich control panel that has addressed many of the concerns of the web hosting community with an upgrade of the reseller package that enables users to have complete control of their customer facing stores, discounts, billing and US and international taxation.

 

The new feature rich product also provides you Parallel’s upgraded site builder re-branded “Web presence builder” that provides an easy to use point and click drag and drop instant web site builder. There are over 100 pre-configured templates to cater to the myriad of small business and hobbies that you may have. For those more adventurous, you have the option of clicking on the hundreds of open source applications such as WordPress or Drupal web development products and downloading them pre-configured hassle free.

 

“We are excited to offer such a powerful and extensive range of feature rich products to our web hosting customers that we believe will make their web hosting life easier whilst having greater control of their hosting environments” says Fred Jones, ByteHouse product development manager.

 

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

ZNet Offers Free Plesk 11 for 10 Domains with Every Windows & Linux VPS

 

 

ZNet-Parallels partnership will move ahead with ZNet becoming a part of Parallels Plesk 11 Launch. With this launch, ZNet will offer free Parallels Plesk 11 for 10 domains with every Windows & Linux VPS. It’s great to see Parallels Plesk 11 with a new look & added features that includes:

 

  • – Cloud-Friendly Cloning of Images into Leading Virtual Environments
  • – Improved Web Server Performance with NGINX (Linux) Modern Architecture
  • – Improved Security
  • – And more…

 

Best of Luck to Parallels Team!!

 

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

NuBlue on the Slick and Intuitive Parallels Plesk 11 Interface (Guest Blog)

 

NuBlue was established in 2005 and has quickly become a leading e-commerce hosting provider in the UK.

 

Since our inception we have used the Parallels Plesk control panel as no other product offers our customers the powerful and intuitive interface combination that Plesk allows. Our business has grown massively as Plesk has continued to evolve. With Plesk 11 it feels like the product has reached an evolutionary milestone. 

 

Our team and our clients love the new interface, the speed of it, the slick and well organised feature set it provides. It just feels intuitive. Under the hood we are very excited by the possibilities of Nginx and SNI support as well as the myriad of performance enhancements that have been made, not to mention the out the box IPv6 support which stands us in good stead for our impending IPv6 rollout!

 

All in all we see this release of Plesk as the most exciting release yet and we can’t wait to introduce it to all our customers.

 

Tom Ashworth

Technical Director

www.nublue.co.uk

 

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

VIUX™ offers Parallels Plesk Panel 11

 

Parallels® Plesk Panel 11 is scheduled for release on 6/26/12. ViUX Systems will be among the first Web Hosting Providers to offer Plesk 11 – fully integrated with our Shared Cloud Hosting, VPS / Cloud Servers, and Dynamic Dedicated Servers.

 

Over the coming weekend maintenance window we will be upgrading our Hosting Automation Ssystem, Parallels Business Automation Standard (PBAS), to version 4.2.0 to add support for Plesk Panel 11.

 

VIUX™ Hosting currently makes use of Plesk 10.4.4 on all servers. When we roll out Plesk 11 on 6/26/12 it will be initially just on newly deployed servers; however all existing servers will be scheduled for upgrade to Plesk 11 over the weeks following its release. Plesk 11 adds many new features and improvements, so we are very excited about being an early adopter of Parallels® Plesk Panel 11 and to participate in its launch events.

 

ViUX™ originally selected Plesk as our Control Panel back in 2005 after reviewing it at HostingCon that same year. A primary factor in our selection of Plesk over cPanel (and several other contenders) was that it supported both Linux and Windows – thereby allowing us to roll out a single Control Panel System to ALL of our customers. This then lead us to become a Parallels® Partner and to select Virtuozzo and PBAS to complete our Hosting System.

 

Plesk 11 combined with our new Cloud Hosting System and the latest versions of Virtuozzo and PBAS will take ViUX™ Hosting to new levels of ease-of-use and performance!

 

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

GoDaddy Guest Blog: Announcing Parallels Plesk Panel 11

 

Go Daddy is excited to announce the launch of Parallels® Plesk Panel 11 on VPS and dedicated hosting environments. Starting June 26, all new Plesk installations will provision with version 11, and existing Go Daddy customers can request a server reprovision to update their control panels to the newer version.

What’s in store for Parallels Plesk 11 users? First and foremost is the integration of NGINXTM as the end-user Web server. NGINX edge server technology lets you increase the number of maximum concurrent website connections, decrease server CPU and memory resource consumption, and improve the efficiency of serving your visitors with slow connection speeds on your Linux® server.

If increased server performance doesn’t get you excited enough, Parallels Plesk 11 promises improved security features to really get you fired up.

Enhanced security mode introduces advanced protection of sensitive data in Panel. With enhanced security mode enabled, password reminders and remote API features are updated to further protect your server from unauthorized access.

Additional security updates include password-protected backups and minimum strength requirements for user generated passwords. Secure backups lock attackers out of backup data if your external storage backup is compromised.

With Parallels Plesk 11, you can now force stronger user passwords by choosing from five password strength levels. Setting a minimum strength password requirement helps ensure server login integrity.

Plesk 11 gives you increased server performance, added security and more to your panel and websites!

Be sure to check out the Go Daddy Virtual Dedicated Server and Dedicated Server product pages for more information on advanced hosting solutions. 

 

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

Layershift Offers Free month of Managed Hosting with Plesk Panel 11

 

 

This guest post and promotion comes from Andrew Cranson, Director and founder of Layershift, a Managed Hosting provider and long-term Parallels Platinum Partner based in the United Kingdom with services in the UK, New York and Singapore.

 

We have been working exclusively with Parallels Plesk Panel for over 11 years now; initially providing shared hosting and now focusing on Managed VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers and Complex Hosting catering to a wide range of customers around the world. Plesk helps our customers to get the best performance and flexibility from our hosting service. We’re seeing a huge sense of anticipation from customers and staff over the launch of Parallels Plesk Panel 11 as this adds further new powerful features to our portfolio which are in strong demand.

 

Each new Plesk release continues to add highly requested functionality directly from our customers – the engineering team do a great job constantly enhancing the product and rapidly fixing bugs with weekly updates to make sure it always delivers the best results for the user.

 

To celebrate the launch of Parallels Plesk Panel 11 we are pleased to announce a special offer across our range of Cloud VPS and Cloud VPS Extreme products! Until July 31st 2012 we are offering two months half price on all plans with 1GB RAM or more.

 

All our Managed Cloud Hosting services come as standard with:

 

  • ● Parallels Plesk Panel 11, with optional Web Presence Builder 11
  • ● PHP 5.3 & MySQL 5
  • ● Nginx turbocharger (for high performance websites with reduced CPU & RAM usage)
  • ● Layershift Managed Care Packs (end-to-end service guarantees and extra features)
  • ● 24×7 Fully-Managed Expert Support and Monitoring from Plesk Experts since 2001
  • ● 14 day Money Back Guarantee

 

To take advantage of this promotion, simply enter the following coupon code in our store while signing up for a new UK, USA or Singapore hosting solution:

 

Coupon code: PP11LAUNCH

 

I invite you to find out more about how Layershift with Plesk 11 compare to other providers and view Layershift reviews and customer testimonials at our website where you can chat with one of our friendly sales engineers.

 

Damien Ransome, Sales Director, Layershift Limited

 


Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

Cirrus Tech Pumps Up VPS Hosting Plans with Parallels Plesk Panel 11


 

Cirrus Tech, a Canadian web hosting provider specializing in shared, VPS and cloud hosting services, is participating as an official launch partner for the release of Parallels Plesk Panel 11, the latest version of the award-winning web hosting control panel. 

 

At Cirrus, we are committed to providing our customers with the most up to date technology available. When we were approached by the Parallels team about participating in the launch, we jumped on board without hesitation and are thrilled to provision version 11 of the Parallels Plesk Panel on our Virtual Machine and Virtual Private Server hosting plans as of June 26th, 2012.

 

Users will continue to enjoy all the benefits of the intuitive and fully integrated Plesk control panel, and can now also take advantage of the new and improved features of version 11, including:

 

– An updated, modern look and feel to the user interface

– Improved web server performance and load times thanks to nginx high-performance architecture 

– Better security features including improved password encryption, options to enforce the use of strong passwords for users, and the ability to configure Parallels Plesk Panel 11 for PCI compliance

– A new Software Development Kit (SDK) that makes the addition and customization of extensions easier than ever

 

At Cirrus, we’ve built our VPS hosting services from the ground up to offer a flexible, reliable, and cost effective solution that can meet the hosting needs of any business. Parallels Plesk Panel is a big part of our recipe for success. 

 

Ehsan Mirdamadi, CEO, Cirrus Tech Ltd. – a Canadian web hosting company providing affordable, dependable VM and VPS hosting services since 1999. 

 

Control Panels, Plesk Panel 11

How to Start Offering Parallels Plesk Panel 11

 

With the arrival of Parallels Plesk Panel 11, infrastructure providers may questions on what is required to start offering Plesk 11 to their customers. This article is a brief overview of how to deploy Parallels Plesk Panel 11.

 

Deploying Parallels Plesk Panel 11


There are three main ways of deploying Parallels Plesk Panel which will be impacted in different ways by the Plesk 11 release:

 

  • Installation using the Parallels Installer utility
  • Installation using application templates (if you use Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (PVC))
  • Cloning an image of your virtual machine (VM) with Plesk in a hypervisor virtualization solution (PSBM, Xen, Hyper-V, etc.)

 

Installation Using the Parallels Installer Utility


The Parallels Installer utility is commonly used to install and upgrade Parallels Plesk Panel on hardware servers, PVC containers, PSBM VMs and VMs of other hypervisor solutions. Typically, providers automate installation of Plesk with shell scripts that use Installer command-line options and Plesk command line interface (CLI) commands. All scripts working with Plesk 10 will keep working with Plesk 11 with minimal changes applied:

 

  • One-click installer will enable installation of Plesk 11 starting on June 26th with no action required on the providers side
  • Scripts based on Parallels Installer may need minimal updates depending on actual usage

 

A typical installation script would consist of downloading Parallels Installer and then launching it in unattended mode. For example, if installing on CentOS 5 x64 the script may look like this:

 

wget –O parallels_installer

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/CentOS5/parallels_installer_v3.12.0_build120601.16_os_CentOS_5_x86_64

chmod u+x ./parallels_installer

./parallels_installer –select-product-id plesk –select-release-latest –tier release,stable — installation-type typical

 

The script downloads Parallels Installer from Parallels.com and then executes it in unattended mode to install a typical configuration of latest available Plesk in “Release” or “Stable” phases. From June 26, 2012, it will install Parallels Plesk Panel 11. It won’t require any update. Some other scripts contain an exact version of Plesk – i.e. the last line of a script might look like this:

 

./parallels_installer –select-release-id PLESK_10_4_4 –installation-type typical


Such scripts will require a replacement of   “–select-release-id PLESK_10_4_4” to the latest ID of Plesk 11 build – which currently is PLESK_11_0_9. If other similar constants were used, they will need to be updated as well.


An extensive set of the installation options and more examples of actual scripts can be found in the “Automated Installation” chapter of the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide.

 

Templates for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (PVC)


For Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (PVC), Parallels ships special application templates that employ all of the benefits of the PVC software. There are two kinds of templates:

 

  • Major-version templates, which correspond to a specific Plesk version, e.g., 10.x
  • Version-free templates, which always install the latest Plesk version

 

Providers using Major-version templates will need to switch to Plesk 11 templates. The templates can be obtained either by using the vzup2date service of PVC, from the PVC Containers Templates Catalog, or from the Plesk download page.

 

Providers using version-free templates (introduced in Plesk 10) can keep using them. As of June 26, version-free templates will be associated with Parallels Plesk Panel 11.

 

Check out our documentation to learn more about using Plesk PVC templates.

 

 

Image Cloning in Hypervisor Virtualization Solutions (PSBM, Xen, Hyper-V,
etc)

In hypervisor virtualization solutions (PSBM, Xen, Hyper-V, etc), it would be quite common to deploy
Plesk by cloning an image of a virtual machine with pre-installed Parallels Plesk Panel 11. To start
deploying Plesk 11, the image has to be repacked with a clean Plesk 11 installation. With Plesk 11
support for cloning in virtual environments, this operation is now even easier than it previously was. It
requires just a single CLI call which prepares Plesk for cloning (example for Linux) :…/bin/cloning — update -prepare-public-image true

Next, you should simply shut down the original machine and clone the machine’s image file. On the next boot, Plesk will reconfigure its IP pool to new IP addresses. There are other cloning options available depending on the specific needs of a provider. See our documentation for the instructions on how to clone Plesk in Linux and Windows environments.

 

 

Upgrading Plesk in a virtual machine is exactly the same process as for dedicated servers. 

 

License keys

 

The majority of providers would prefer to deliver a license key into a fresh Plesk installation before offering it to an actual customer. Let’s look at the changes in this process enabled by the Plesk 11 release.

 

Previously, each new major version required a new license key – 7.x, 8.x, 9.0, 9.5. Updating them was inconvenient for providers. In Plesk 10, we introduced lease (paid monthly) license keys called “Parallels Plesk Panel 10 and Later” which will work for Plesk 10.x, 11.x and any future Plesk version. 

 

Infrastructure providers deploying Plesk with “Parallels Plesk Panel 10 and Later” license keys won’t need any changes in licensing. These license keys will keep working in Plesk 11 for both upgraded instances and new installations.

 

There are also perpetual keys restricted to a specific Plesk version (i.e. perpetual key for 10.x were named “Parallels Plesk Panel 10”). If used, such keys must be replaced with “Parallels Plesk Panel 11” keys in provisioning procedures (i.e. PBAs solution for Plesk will support these license keys from version 4.2.0). On upgrade to Plesk 11, such license key will be automatically substituted with a perpetual license key for the newer version if they have valid and unexpired Software Update Service (SUS).

 

 

You may notice a small improvement in license keys shipment – Plesk 11 supports so-called Activation Codes, which are lines of symbols that are easy to copy-paste (for example, AX3Z00-CB3X10-ABCDE- ABCDE-RFBH49). This is faster and easier than uploading license key file. Plesk 11 supports both delivery methods – input of an Activation Code and uploading a license key file. So, all existing deployment procedures will work with Plesk 11 as well.

 

 

 

 

 

“Parallels Plesk Panel 10 and Later” keys will be shipped in both ways – a requestor will receive an Activation Code and a traditional license key file and can use either of them according to their choice. So, again, Plesk 11 does not require any changes in existing licensing procedures.

 

 

 

 

“Parallels Plesk Panel 11” keys – a requestor will receive an Activation Code only.

 

Summary

 

In most cases, infrastructure providers cancan start deploying Plesk 11 with minimal or no changes depending on a specific path used. If any changes are required, the guidance provided above should help to make required adjustments easier.

 

 

Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11

Media Temple and Plesk: A Decade of Co-Innovation

 

Everything we do here at (mt) is about our customers: making things better, faster, easier, and more secure for them. Which is why Plesk has been the backbone of one of our most successful product lines, the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual server, for nearly 10 years.

 

It’s a perfect partnership. We provide the premium hardware, rock-solid virtualization, and 24/7 US-based support. Plesk provides a simple, powerful control panel that puts all the essential server tools in one reliably convenient place. And now with the release of Plesk 11, we’re taking server security, stability, and mobility to a whole new level—together.

 

Not only is (dv) the most trusted managed VPS hosting product in the industry, it’s also one of the world’s largest virtual server deployments using Parallels. And we’re so pleased to be a part of the Plesk 11 launch that, through the end of July, we’re offering 20% off of all new (dv) server accounts to celebrate.

 

Sign up at www.mediatemple.net/dv2012.

 

Uncategorized

Global SMB Market: Hosted Communication and Collaboration

 

Part 4 of a 5-part series detailing Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research

 

Welcome to Part 4 of our overview of findings from our Parallels SMB Cloud Insights report. So far in this series, we’ve discussed the different segments of the SMB cloud services market and how they relate to hosted infrastructure and web presence. 

 

In the area of hosted communication and collaboration, the opportunities for hosted email penetration are the same for SMBs working with either mature or maturing cloud service markets in developed countries. Therefore, in this post we’ll look at all developed countries as a single group. We’ll also focus our research on two areas: premium business email, including security, archiving, and mobility features; and hosted PBX.

 

Worldwide, the SMB market for both these services is small, with less than 10% of SMBs currently paying for premium hosted email and less than 5% using hosted PBX services (see Table 3 below).

 

 

 

Hosted Email

 

About 50% of SMBs in countries with mature cloud services use hosted email (see Table 3), and less than 10% of those in mature and maturing cloud service environments pay for it (except in the US, where over 15% do). Though this may seem like a challenge, current low usage of paid hosted email actually offers two major growth opportunities for service providers.

 

The first is in encouraging adoption among micro and small SMBs currently using in-house email servers. Our research found that around 10% of micro SMBs and more than 20% of small SMBs in developed countries use in-house email servers. This is an expensive and complicated solution for small companies, particularly those without dedicated IT staff. And since some 25 to 40% of SMBs with in-house email servers are either definitely planning to or at least considering switching to premium hosted email in the next three years, these SMBs represent a sizable opportunity for service providers.

 

The second opportunity lies in upselling small and medium SMBs that are currently using free email. Free is hard to compete with, but free only gets business so far. In fact, 20 to 50% of small and medium SMBs using free email are either planning to or considering adding premium hosted email in the next three years. The trick to upselling to these businesses is demonstrating the benefits of hosted email, like its team collaboration aspects and its “pay-per-seat” pricing model.

 

For the markets with emerging cloud services, less than 20% of SMBs are even using email at all, and only 5% are paying for it. These companies can benefit from the same features as SMBs in developed countries, so the best opportunity here is to upsell small and medium SMBs using free email through a hosting service, ISP, or other free provider. 

 

Hosted PBX

 

Hosted PBX is a fairly new service in all geographies, which means the SMB market for this service looks similar in both developed and developing countries. Our research found that, except in the U.S., less than 5% of SMBs in any country have a hosted PBX system (see Table 3). For U.S. companies, it’s still a meager 10%. Nevertheless, we expect other countries to catch up to the U.S. rate quickly.

 

The easiest targets for service providers looking to step into the hosted PBX market are SMBs that currently use in-house PBX systems (about 10 to 20% of micro SMBs and more than 30% of small SMBs). Selling points include the less complicated, more flexible options hosted PBX offer. 

 

Service providers will also have to address the three big stumbling blocks to hosted PBX adoption for SMBs: price, security and privacy issues, and technical know-how. We believe the trick to working around this is two-fold: offer small bundles in order to keep prices lower, and actively educate SMBs about security and technical aspects. Hosted and in-house PBX systems have similar technical features and are equally secure, yet many SMBs mistakenly think otherwise. 

 

SMBs also often indicate that it’s important to them that their service provider has a local presence. It’s crucial for service providers with a local presence push this advantage, by emphasizing their expertise in local language voice offerings, for example. 

 

In our last series entry, we’ll discuss opportunities in Business Applications, and wrap up the findings in our Parallels SMB Cloud Insights report.