Administration Tasks

Editing Administrator’s Information and Password

To enter or edit Administrator’s information, click Edit On the Server administration page. The Administrator’s information editing page appears:

If you forget your password, you can use the plesksrvclient.exe utility located in <plesk installation directory>adminbin to set up a new password.

Managing Plesk Services

To manage Plesk services from the control panel Click the Service Management icon on the Server administration page. The Services management page appears.

Managing Plesk Components

To manage the components controllable under Plesk and choosing the default ones, select the Component Info icon on the Server Administration page.

The component version information is refreshed every 24 hours. When updating system components, you might have to reboot the server or restart the “Plesk Management Service” to have the component versions displayed correctly.

Using the Plesk Service Control Utility

In addition to the service management facilities provided within control panel, there is the Service Control utility available from the system taskbar. It allows managing the following services:

• Plesk Control Panel – the control panel’s web server engine,
• Plesk Management Service – handles control panel settings, security and statistics,
• Plesk Miscellaneous Service – handles IP assignment, time management, Plesk utilities and user accounts,
• Plesk Scheduler – task scheduling and management,
• Plesk List Connector – mail service,
• Plesk Mail Transfer Agent – mail service,
• Plesk POP Service – mail service,
• Plesk Postoffice Connector – mail service,
• Plesk SMTP Connector – mail service,
• Plesk SQL Server – MySQL database that stores all Plesk objects,
• Stunnel – enables SSL support for mail server,
• Plesk Name Server – DNS service,
• Plesk Java Servlet Container – enables support for Java applets.

Managing Server IP Addresses

If your server has more than one IP address or is on more than one network interface, you can use the IP Addresses function in order to control IP addresses on system network interfaces.

To do this, click the IP Addresses icon on the Server administration page. The IP addresses management page appears displaying the list of IP addresses available in the system.

Managing the DNS Zone Template

Plesk allows creation and use of default DNS Zone Template, intended to simplify setting up the DNS records for a freshly created new domain. This feature provides you with a number of DNS records that are more or less standard for a DNS zone.

Backing Up Using Acronis True Image

Acronis True Image Enterprise Server allows you to create the exact server disk image for complete server backup.

The server disk backup file includes all the server disk data including system, programs, databases, and the like.

Plesk has integration with Acronis True Image. You can set up either one-time or recurring backup of server’s hard drives via Plesk control panel interface. Presently, restoring of backup data is possible only via separate Acronis True Image utilities.

Managing Scheduler

In the Path to executable file or script box, specify the absolute path to executable file or script. This file may be:

• a generic windows application,
• a PHP script
• a PHP, Perl or Python script (identified by the first line #!script interpreter name),
• a file with any of the following extensions: .BAT or .CMD (batch files), .VBS, .VBE, .JS, .JSE (visual basic or java scripts), .PL, .PM (perl scripts), .PY, .PYC (python scripts), .PHP, .PHP3 (php scripts).

The path to file may include the environment variables related to a user, on behalf of which the application or script is executed, therefore the users may specify the strings like %homedrive%%homepath%application.name to run the applications or scripts residing in their home folders.

For example, c:Inetpubvhostsdomain.com is a user’s home folder. If user specifies %homedrive%%homepath%httpdocsapplication.exe as the application to be executed, the application.exe file located in c:Inetpubvhostsdomain.comhttpdocs will be run.

Using Application Vault

Application vault functionality allows for managing web applications. Server Application vault also gives the opportunity of viewing the list of all application packages installed on the server.

Managing User Sessions

You can monitor and manage the following currently active user sessions from the control panel: control panel sessions, FTP sessions and terminal server sessions. To access the user sessions management functions, select the Sessions shortcut in the navigation pane.

Viewing Server Statistics

Plesk compiles statistics on server usage. You can access this information at any time. The report is especially helpful if the server is slow or is experiencing performance problems, it may help you diagnose and correct such problems.

To access the System Statistics page Click the Statistics icon on the Server administration page

About the author: Prashanth K is a B.Tech CSE and has worked on the Windows System administration for over a year in Poornam. His expertise lies primarily on Plesk Windows administration.