Plesk 9 what is new?

[BerArt]

Key Themes:

Plesk 9 introduces several long-awaited key features to Plesk users. The addition of Resellers to Plesk user hierarchy gives much more flexibility to businesses providing shared hosting services, while Postfix mail server support (available in Plesk 9 for Unix/Linux) provides customers with ability to use the extremely popular alternative to Qmail. Presented in brand-new clear and nice Vista visual theme, Plesk 9 also boasts new user interface, completely redone to help users navigate in Plesk and quickly access all crucial features, data and statistics.

New Features:

Resellers - Plesk user hierarchy is enriched with Reseller accounts in Plesk 9. Resellers sign up their own Clients and resell Web hosting services to them, distributing available resources within the limits acquired by a reseller from the Plesk Administrator. Resellers can also create and manage their own domains. GUI integration with Parallels Plesk Billing completes the shared hosting solution based on Parallels Plesk products.

Overselling and Overuse - The ability to conveniently manage the overselling and overusage of provided resources directly via Plesk tremendously improves the flexibility of business model implementation and opens up new possibilities for those who provide shared hosting services.

Postfix Support - Postfix mail server is finally available to all Plesk for Unix/Linux users. The long-awaited support of immensely popular alternative to Qmail allows Plesk administrators to improve the stability, security and performance of all mail-related tasks. Switching from Qmail to Postfix is quick, effortless and transparent both to Plesk administrator and end-users. This feature is available only in Plesk for Unix/Linux.

APS Catalog - Now you can browse web applications packaged in APS Format and published at www.apsstandard.com/app/ directly from Plesk administration screen, with ability to add them to the server Application Vault online without the hassles of manual uploading. These applications can be made freely available to all customers or their distribution can be restricted for provision on a per-user basis, allowing you to conveniently sell the applications according to the hosting plans you provide.

Redesigned User Interface - Plesk 9 also boasts completely redone user interface designed to help users navigate in Plesk and perform their tasks quicker and easier. Most popular and important actions are available right away on the user Home Page, while less popular but still important things can be accessed through the drop-down menus located on Home Pages. Navigating through Plesk is faster than ever now due to ability to select Resellers, Clients, domains and mail accounts via pathbar.

New Default Vista Skin - Plesk 9 is presented in brand-new clear and nice Vista visual theme that combines the best elements of most popular Plesk interface skins and provides less strain on the eyes.

Alternative WebMail - Users can now enjoy additional choice of @mail as their WebMail tool. The selection of WebMail can be done on a per-domain basis, guaranteeing that every customer can use their WebMail client of choice.

PHP over Fast CGI - Site applications based on PHP can be executed much faster and safer with PHP running in the Fast CGI mode. This feature was previously available only in Plesk for Windows.

New Backup Tool - Completely revised Plesk Backup/Restore functionality provides users with much more powerful and flexible backup solution than ever before. Selective data backup and restoration through Plesk is now a comfortable, painless and fully controllable process. On-the-fly restoration conflicts resolution offers a variety of ways to resolve restoration conflicts prior to actual update of the system, thus guaranteeing success and complete control over the restoration process.

Plesk Billing Bundle - Plesk 9 comes with integrated Plesk Billing solution, eliminating the need of purchasing a third-party billing software and relieving administrators from the pain of integrating such software with Plesk. Smooth navigation between provisioning and billing portions of Plesk Billing solution makes hosting provision much more efficient both for hosting service providers and their customers.

Improved Hosting Setup UI - User interface for setting up hosting was redone to make the procedure quicker and more intuitive. Hosting now can be created and configured very fast and literally on one page due to radically improved usability of redesigned hosting setup UI.

API RPC Protocol 1.6.0.0 - Updated API RCP protocol further improves the ability to intergrate your software solutions with Plesk and completely supports all important features introduced in Plesk 9

New Operating Systems Support - Plesk 9 for Unix/Linux fully supports OpenSuSE 11, FreeBSD 7.0 and FedoraCore 9. This feature is available only in Plesk for Unix/Linux.

MSSQL 2008 support - Plesk 9 for Windows works with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. This feature is available only in Plesk for Windows.

Source: ftp://download1.swsoft.com/Plesk/Plesk9 ... atsnew.htm

[aus-city]

Ah crap there are no fedora 9 packages

[breun]

Well, the document mentions Fedora 9 support. Plesk 9 doesn't seem to be released yet, though.

[CSNM-Carl]

The new vista style & interface looks really good.

[faris]

I hope we get to keep qmail if we want it. I have a load of stuff that only works with qmail and don't fancy changing.

Everything else looks interesting though.

All I can say to any inexperienced sysadmin reading this is - don't upgrade to plesk 9.0.0. You will almost certainly regret it. Wait for 9.1.x at the very least, which should have most of the major bugs squashed! OK. I've done my civic duty. I can go home now

Faris.

[tema]

I've also just stumbled across these:

http://mirror.proserve.nl/plesk/Plesk/P ... ed-os.html

[faris]

Hehe. Well I'm not going to try it. I'm not that brave

Hmmm... this PHP over FastCGI - does that mean suPHP won't be needed and PHP will run as the FTP user?

Faris.

[scott]

It might at that, I havent had a chance to check it out. We're all digging into the segfault stuff in mod_sec right now.

[Highland]

Parallels was it the PHP conference I attended last week. Just for kicks I asked them about Postfix for Plesk (they were not there for Plesk but for Virtuozzo and Mac dual boot mostly) and they had no clue. He thought he'd seen it on some roadmap somewhere but he wasn't anyone significant with the company from what I could tell. The fact that Plesk 9 is out with Postfix makes that all the more amusing.

[scott]

To be fair, the beta does *not* support postfix, or @mail. It says that its planned for 9-stable.

I did test the php-fcgi stuff, you've got the option of using the module in apache, fcgi, or cgi now. I only tested it with fcgi, which did run the app as the user for the domain. Taking that into consideration, we might bump the suphp module from ASL and put more work into the enterprise console.

[hostingguy]

I think mod_suphp from asl is no longer needed.

However it would be nice to hear from some others in testing which way they ran the new php methods in psa 9beta and which way performed better for clients, which one used less resources, which one was "more secure" etc (if such things even are different between the methods).