This blog was last updated in October 2022.
The dynamic web hosting industry has witnessed changes over the years. Cloud computing has revolutionized this industry, encouraging the regional and global market players to focus on product innovation primarily.
It has also made IT professionals tap on better solutions to manage multiple environments and services more efficiently.
As a result, Plesk’s evolution has also been a pretty ongoing process.
Productivity, compatibility and security are key here and Plesk Obsidian, the latest Plesk version, is an ultimate solution.
New and advanced features of Plesk Obsidian
Modernized Plesk UI and Improvements
Plesk has revised the overall UI to improve the behaviour and appearance of individual Plesk elements, font sizes and colors. All elements are aligned to a grid.
Some of the key improvements added are as follows:
- Precompiled PageSpeed:
The PageSpeed module is precompiled now with NGINX. - Restarts automatically:
Plesk services crashing on systemd-based Linux OSes (RHEL 7, CentOS7, Ubuntu 16.04/18.04, Debian 8/9) will now automatically restart. Apache restart is now robust that can be set as the default in order to reduce downtime for sites. - Quick default security:
It is secured by default – mod_security and fail2ban v0.10 are active immediately. - Easier Plesk Access:
Plesk access has been enhanced for Cloud like Digital Ocean and Amazon. You can access Plesk via https://<host-name-or-IP> without specifying the TCP port 8443. - Default HTTP to HTTPS:
Newly developed websites have an SEO friendly HTTP to HTTPS redirect that is enabled by default. - Apache and PHP-FPM Tweaks:
There are improvements made in the services which will give you better reliability with restarts. PHP engines that are supplied with Plesk have popular PHP extensions like exif, sodium, and fileinfo.
Domains’ movement between subscriptions
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For improved security, it is good to separate your sites, but it is recommended that keep your staging and production sites apart. Now, Plesk Obsidian’s UI and CLI give you the ability to move domains between subscriptions.
Just note that the subscription you target has enough space to handle the extra load, and you’re good to go.
Advanced Monitoring and Extension Grafana
Advanced Monitoring keeps you in the loop regarding server and site availability. So, you can get detailed reports of any issues.
As availability is the key factor in the Obsidian release, so usage is essential because you want to act fast when resources become overstretched. Thus, you can allow alerts to tell you if things like RAM, CPU, and Disk IO are getting overburdened.
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The new Grafana extension works with Advanced Monitoring to chart information and statistics in order to make them easily understandable. The latest Grafana charts replace the old HealthMonitoring tool.
Composer V2.0 – PHP Dependency Manager
Here are all the things the new PHP dependency manager allows you to do.
Run PHP composer without SSH access
Now you can run complete range of PHP composer actions without even having SSH access. You can create environment variables, modify composer.json and execute the Install and Update commands.
Install and update Dependencies in one click
You can now perform tests, run dependencies, or set up a classmap. The best part is, you do not need to memorize the commands and options to install them. Plesk Obsidian can handle this load for you.
This will take away your stress for partially updated dependencies, letting you perform test executions until you are sure that the dependencies are enough to push your site live.
Update dependencies more securely
Updating dependencies is extremely important to stay more secure. At the same time, you must be aware how this can affect your website as sudden major updates can cause breakdown.
With Obsidian, updating dependencies is safe and possible now. You can also weigh the risks right from its interface.
Get the latest PHP version automatically
Now the composer.json specified version of PHP will be automatically used by your site. Composer will run by using the correct PHP handler instead of the system default. Therefore, the version that individual website uses. Using SSH, log in and type in the “php” command.
Enhanced File Manager UX
Now, there are new options like mass upload and file search to make your File Manager experience more productive. You can easily upload and extract TAR, TAR.GZ, RAR, and TGZ archives.
Repair Kit: Self-repair Tool
Plesk Obsidian Repair Kit is a professional tool designed to automatically detect and resolve issues with Plesk, or any of its related services. This self-repair tool allows you view the list of processes that are running in that specific time on the server. You may filter the list by domains and disable them.
This also allows you to view CPU, RAM, and Disk usage for all the running processes on the server, as well as for individual processes.
Soon, you will be able to use a list of MySQL queries and processes to find out the reason behind excessive resource consumption by MySQL and which domain is causing the problem.
SNI for Mail Services
Make sure no one listens to your private email conversations by simply securing connections like IMAP, SMTP, and POP to your mail server using an SSL/TLS Certificate.
When you provide mail services for more than one domain, they may face problem with their clients. For this, there are individual SSL/TLS certificates for every domain.
Server-side restrictions for Plesk Admins
Server-side access control allows you to control which administrators can view or use which server administration tools and settings. This option is available under ‘Administration Tools’ tab in both Power User and Service Provider views.
Now, you can also monitor which services, tools, resources and settings your admins access while they are in Power User view, with Restricted Mode active. To control, go to the ‘Hosting Tools’ tab.
Overall, you can simply allow your customers have administrator access, without worrying about them damaging your critical and sensitive settings.
Secure with SSL
Make sure your server stays protected through SSL/TLS certificates from trusted certificate authorities like Let’s Encrypt and DigiCert, around the clock.
Here’s what you can use SSL for:
- Purchasing, installing and renewing certificates from different CAs.
- Protecting your domain, the ‘www’ subdomain, webmail, and countless aliases to get a clear view of what is protected and what is not.
- Automatically issuing, installing, and renewing the Let’s Encrypt certificates for domains that are secured with invalid ones and issued by non-trusted CAs.
- Managing OCSP Stapling, HSTS, and HTTP to HTTPs redirect.
- Checking the SSL/TLS status of the domain, subdomains, and domain aliases.
- Getting an A+ rating from ssllabs.
- Viewing SSL/TLS status easily via a small indicator on the domain page.
- Using the latest versions of TLS and ciphers.
Customized HTML notifications
Plesk Obsidian can send email notifications on your behalf to help improve user experience. You can also control your server and sites when you are not logged into Plesk. The HTML-based messages are easy to read than plain text.
You may send emails in the format you have designed to make them visually more appealing from other correspondence. Simply use the Plesk’s default HTML templates or customize the look of the mail yourself with HTML formatting. There are formatting elements like bold, italics, number and bulleted lists, headers, and more.
Backup optimizations
Plesk has reduced the free server disk space required to back-up to Amazon S3, Google, FTP, and One Drive cloud storage. You can now restore a subscription from a full server backup with only added disk space equal to the subscription space, instead of the complete server backup.
You can also back up the server to the cloud storage with extra free disk space equal to the two subscriptions, instead of the entire server’s disk space. This optimization will allow you to do operations faster on the backups stored remotely.
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To know more about Plesk Obsidian features, watch this video:
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With Obsidian, Plesk is introducing monthly release cycle to every time deliver value via secure and stable software. Once you upgrade to Plesk Obsidian and allow automatic updates via Plesk Server Settings, you will get the latest version of the software updated automatically. The comparison below will help you understand about why to upgrade.
Plesk Onyx vs Plesk Obsidian
Image Source: Plesk
In case you have any queries or wish to use Plesk Obsidian, get in touch with us today.
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