Plesk Obsidian: what it is and what it does on your VPS

Plesk Obsidian is the current version of Plesk, a hosting control panel for running your own server. Instead of setting up each service by hand, you manage your websites, email, DNS and other services through one web interface. That gives you more control over the server and less maintenance work, for your own sites and for sites you host for clients.

What can you do with Plesk Obsidian?

In Plesk Obsidian, you handle the everyday work of hosting on a VPS. You manage websites, domains, databases, email accounts, backups and applications, and you add SSL certificates to your sites. Plesk runs on a Linux VPS as well as a Windows VPS, so you pick the system your software needs. If your software runs on both, we'd choose Linux, because it adds Fail2Ban to the security tools below.

Plesk Obsidian is a good fit when you run several websites and want to manage each one on its own. It's just as useful if you're a web designer who hosts sites for clients and wants to give each client their own login. It also makes sense when a shared hosting plan no longer has enough resources for your projects.

User roles: who logs in and what they manage

Plesk splits its tools over three panels, one per role:

• Server Administration Panel: for you as the server's administrator. You maintain the server and manage every account, and you can run web hosting tasks here too.
• Reseller Panel: a reduced version of the administrator's panel, for resellers who look after customers of their own, available with Web Host Edition.
• Customer Panel: for your customers, who create and manage their websites and mailboxes and take care of other hosting tasks here.

If you host sites for clients, check that your edition lets you give each client their own login, while the server stays in your hands. You can also add users with limited access, for example a contractor who works on a website but shouldn't control everything.

Security tools that are on by default

Plesk Obsidian protects its own login from the start, with brute-force protection that's built in and on by default in every installation. With its standard settings, it steps in after 5 wrong passwords from one IP address. Plesk then makes that address wait 300 seconds before the next try.

Plesk also has two more security tools, which you may have to install and turn on yourself. ModSecurity is a web application firewall. It checks every request to your websites against a set of rules and acts on requests that fail the check. This way, it protects apps such as WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal from attacks.

Fail2Ban reads the log files of your Plesk services and blocks IP addresses that keep trying to get in. It works on Linux only. On a server installed with Plesk's "Recommended" preset, it's on by default, so check in Plesk whether it's on for yours. If it isn't on, you install and enable it yourself and activate its default jails, which hold its protection rules, as Plesk's guide to Fail2Ban describes.

Our VPS is unmanaged, so you get full control and you're responsible for its setup, updates and troubleshooting. Keeping these security tools switched on is part of that job.

Plesk extensions worth knowing

Extensions add features to Plesk, and these four are especially useful on a VPS:

• Repair Kit helps you fix problems with Plesk and its services, for example when email isn't sent or a website won't open. It also lists the processes on your server with their RAM and CPU use, so you can find what's behind high CPU load.
• Git deploys your website from a Git repository, including one on GitHub or Bitbucket. You can deploy by hand or let it happen automatically.
• SEO Toolkit checks your website for common SEO issues and tracks your keyword rankings. It's made by XOVI, and you pay for it separately.
• Grafana turns your server's health data into graphs and dashboards that show how the server is doing over time.

Choosing a Plesk edition: which one do you need?

Above all, the Plesk editions differ in how many domains you can manage.

If you run WordPress sites, look at the WP Toolkit row as well. Web Admin Edition includes a limited version (SE), while Web Pro Edition and Web Host Edition include the full version.

Our advice: choose by the number of domains you'll run on the server. For your own websites, up to 10 domains, Web Admin Edition is enough. If you build and host sites for clients, Web Pro Edition with up to 30 domains is the usual fit. Choose Web Host Edition when you sell hosting or need more than 30 domains.

How to get Plesk Obsidian on our VPS

Plesk is optional on our VPS plans. The Plesk licence isn't included in the VPS price, so Plesk isn't free, and what you pay depends on the edition you choose. You can buy a licence from us when you order or later in the control panel. You can also get one from another vendor or use a key you already have.

We install Plesk for you while you sort out your licence, so there's nothing to install by hand:

1. Choose a VPS plan that suits your needs, and add a Plesk licence or bring your own.
2. When you set up the VPS, ask for the Plesk control panel, and we install it for you automatically.
3. Log in to Plesk and start setting up your websites.

After your first login, work through the first steps with Plesk on your VPS to finish setting up your server.

Your own server with full root access, Linux or Windows. Add a Plesk licence or bring your own, and we install Plesk for you.

With full root access, you can remove Plesk or swap it for another control panel whenever you like.

If you'd rather not look after the server yourself, Managed VPS is the other way to run Plesk with us. We handle the maintenance, monitoring, security and software of your server, and Plesk comes pre-installed with the Web Host Edition licence included, with a domain limit that depends on the plan. If you can't decide, see how a VPS compares with a Managed VPS.

What is the difference between Plesk Obsidian and Plesk Onyx?

Plesk Onyx is version 17 of Plesk, and Obsidian is version 18. Plesk launched Obsidian in October 2019, and its lifecycle policy says version 18 stays a major version that Plesk supports, with patches and support for the newest update and the one before it. New releases of Obsidian keep coming, with the latest listed in Plesk's change log. After four years, Onyx moved to Extended Support, when it only got patches for critical issues. Once Extended Support ended, Onyx reached its end of life, so it no longer gets critical patches, and Plesk no longer accepts support requests for it. If your server still runs Onyx, upgrade it to Obsidian.

To start on Obsidian, choose a Plesk VPS, pick the edition you need and add a licence from us or bring your own.