Learn how to - Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8

Felix Williams How to Rocky Linux Web Hosting April 2, 2023

Learn how to – Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8.

PleskControl Panel was released in Russia in 2001 by Plesk and later sold to SWSoft in 2003. In 2008 it was renamed to Parallels Plesk Panel and became a separate business in December 2015. Currently, Plesk Control Panel is one of the widely used control panels for web hosting. It allows users to manage websites, emails, domains, and databases easily using the web-based control panel.

Plesk is a Linux and Windows-based web hosting automation software tool that allows server admins to control their sites, email accounts, and DNS records using a graphical interface. It has 100+ extensions that can be used to improve its performance.

With the dynamic hosting industry proactively changing, Plesk’s evolution is an ongoing, process to help manage the revolutionizing IT industry. To help you understand better the new version of Plesk, here is an overall of the new Plesk version (Plesk Obsidian) features:

It has an advanced monitoring and Grafana extensions to provide charts with stats and info for better understanding
Moving Domains between subscriptions – this is a security feature that separates your staging and prosuction sites.
SSH access is no longer needed for PHP composer
Composer V2.0 – (PHP Dependency Manager) It makes it easy to install dependencies, there is no need to memorize all the commands. All you need is to click and install or update a dependency.
Improved File Manager UX- tha allows one upload and extract RAR, TGZ, TAR and TAR.GZ files. Also there is mass upload and file search in the new File manager
Revised and improved UI with automatic restarts incase of crushes, PHP-FPM and apache tweaks e.t.c
Server-side restrictions for Plesk Admins. This feature allows admins to control access to Plesk’s administration tools and settings.
It has personalized HTML notifications to help improve the user experience
Self-repair Tool that automatically detects and resolves issues and related services.
Backup Optimizations instead of having a full server backup. This makes it easy to restore a subscription, the subscription will only require a space equal to the optimised backup
SSL It – it is used to install, buy and renew certificates , secure domains,webmails e.t.c

The latest Plesk’s version (Obsidian) is available in the following License configurations:

Plesk Web Pro Edition: Used to manage upto 30 domains and also includes Plesk WordPress toolkit.
Plesk Web Admin Edition: manages upto 10 domains, this is used for basic management has no extended features.
Plesk Web Host Edition: manages unlimited domains and also allows the admin to create additional reseller accounts.

In this guide, we will systematically go through how to install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8.

System Requirements

Before we commence on this installation, ensure that your system meets the below requirements:

Minimum Requirements.

RAM 512 MB + 1 GB swap
Storage 10 GB

Recommended Requirements

Ram 1 GB + 1 GB swap
Storage – Typical shared hosting(2 – 2.5 GB per website), Dedicated VPS hosting(4-12GB per website)

Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8

There are multiple ways to get Plesk Control Panel installed on your CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8 namely:

Using ISO-images provided by Plesk for CentOS 8 | Rocky Linux 8.
Using web Installer.
Using 1-click Plesk Panel installation
Using Installer Console

In this guide, we will install Plesk using the installer console. Install the required packages:

sudo yum install wget vim

Pull the Plesk Obsidian installer using the Wget command below.

wget https://autoinstall.plesk.com/plesk-installer

With the download complete, make the file executable.

chmod +x plesk-installer

Then execute the script to install Plesk Obsidian and its dependencies on CentOS 8 | Rocky Linux 8.

sudo ./plesk-installer

The installation will commence as below:

The Plesk Installation and Upgrade Wizard will guide you through
the installation or upgrade process.
===============================================================================

------ IMPORTANT ------

* New installation of product(s) should be performed on clean servers only.

* Before upgrading Plesk, be sure to back up your data.
* By using this Wizard you agree to the terms and conditions described at
  http://www.plesk.com/legal/terms/ and those of the Plesk End User
  License Agreement.

Available actions:
(F) Go forward
(Q) Cancel installation

Select an action [F/q]: F
........
Would you like to help Plesk make better products by sending information 
about issues occurred, including installation and upgrade issues? [Y/n]: y

Enter F as shown to agree to the License terms and proceed with the installation. In the next step, you are required to choose the type of installation, with the default “Recommended” option selected, enter F to proceed.

Select the installation type for Plesk Obsidian
===============================================================================

Installation types for the product:

 1. (*) Recommended
       Install typically used components. Recommended for general use.

 2. ( ) Full
       Install all available components.

 3. ( ) Custom
       Custom components selection. Recommended only for experienced users.


Available actions:
(F) Go forward
(B) Go back
(Q) Cancel installation

Select an action or a number [F/b/q/1-3]: F

Proceed and download the required software packages by entering F as shown.

Preparing Your System for Product Installation
===============================================================================

There are 340 packages required for the product to function properly which
were not found in your system.

There are 13 packages that need to be upgraded
in order to install the product.


Available actions:
(F) Go forward
(B) Go back
(Q) Cancel installation
(S) Show the list of packages

Select an action [F/b/q/s]: F

On successful installation, you will see this notification.

Installation is finished
  
  	                           Congratulations!
  
  	The installation has been finished. Plesk is now running on your server.
  
  	To complete the configuration process, browse either of URLs:
  	  * https://stupefied-wescoff.105-163-2-86.plesk.page/login?secret=ReOWp6eC4PIj-xeATrIkLngn82A7RjECrSCyg4poNIwinJ-s
  	  * https://192.168.100.249/login?secret=ReOWp6eC4PIj-xeATrIkLngn82A7RjECrSCyg4poNIwinJ-s
  
  	Use the username 'admin' to log in. To log in as 'admin', use the 'plesk login' command.
  	You can also log in as 'root' using your 'root' password.
  
  	Use the 'plesk' command to manage the server. Run 'plesk help' for more info.
  
  	Use the following commands to start and stop the Plesk web interface:
  	'service psa start' and 'service psa stop' respectively.
  
  	If you would like to migrate your subscriptions from other hosting panel
  	or older Plesk version to this server, please check out our assistance
  	options: https://www.plesk.com/professional-services/
  


The changes were applied successfully.

Cheers! You have successfully installed Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8. Remember that the URL link provided above will be used to access the Plesk Obsidian web interface for the first time.

Check out the PSA systemd service file and edit it to avoid PSA problems on startup.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/psa.service

in the file, you are required to change the type from one-shot to simple as shown.

[Unit]
Description=Plesk Panel
Wants=sw-cp-server.service sw-engine.service
Wants=mariadb.service mysql.service
After=network.target mariadb.service mysql.service

[Service]
Type=simple
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/bin/true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload the system daemon and start the PSA service as below.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start psa.service

Check the status of the service.

$ systemctl status psa.service
● psa.service - Plesk Panel
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/psa.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Thu 2021-10-14 07:13:21 EDT; 9min ago
 Main PID: 51364 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Tasks: 0 (limit: 14608)
   Memory: 0B
   CGroup: /system.slice/psa.service

Oct 14 07:13:21 stupefied-wescoff.105-163-2-86.plesk.page systemd[1]: Starting Plesk Panel...
Oct 14 07:13:21 stupefied-wescoff.105-163-2-86.plesk.page systemd[1]: Started Plesk Panel.

Allow HTTP through the firewall.

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Access Plesk Control Panel Web Interface

Using the URL provided during the Plesk installation, access the web UI. You will see this page, here provide your contact details and set a password for the admin user. You will also be required to provide the License or proceed with the free version(trial version)

Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8 1

Plesk Obsidian will initialize as below.

Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8 2

After all the configurations are initialized, you will be granted the below page.

Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8 3

While here, you can skip the introduction and proceed to the Plesk dashboard by clicking “Explore Plesk”

Install Plesk Control Panel on CentOS 8 | AlmaLinux 8 4

While on this admin dashboard, you can add a domain by clicking on +Add Domain as shown above. You will be required provide the domain name. If you dont have, you can use a temprary domain(for trials)