Parallels Plesk Automation

Transcription

1 Parallels Plesk Automation

2 Copyright Notice Parallels IP Holdings GmbH Vordergasse 59 CH-Schaffhausen Switzerland Phone: Fax: Global Headquarters 500 SW 39 th Street, Suite 200 Renton, WA USA Phone: +1 (425) Fax: +1 (425) EMEA Sales Headquarters Willy-Brandt-Platz Munich, DE Phone: +49 (89) Fax:+49 (89) APAC Sales Headquarters 3 Anson Road, #36-01 Springleaf Tower, Singapore Phone: Copyright Parallels IP Holdings GmbH. All rights reserved. This product is protected by United States and international copyright laws. The product s underlying technology, patents, and trademarks are listed at Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, Windows NT, Windows Vista, and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Mac is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

3 Contents What Is Parallels Plesk Automation 5 Management Node 8 Changing the IP Address of the Management Node... 9 Changing the Hostname of the Management Node Service Nodes 11 Configuring IP Pools Apache Web Server Nodes Optimizing Apache Mail Server Nodes Enabling Mail Submission Agent (Postfix Mail Server Nodes) Protection from Spam Protection from Viruses Mail Queue Database Server Nodes Adding More Roles to Service Nodes Propagating Changes in the Node's Operating System to PPA DNS 33 Using DNS Server Nodes Using External DNS Servers Managing DNS Zones Managing Reverse DNS Zones PPA Behind NAT 38 Configuring Mapping for Shared IP Addresses Configuring Mapping for Dedicated IP Addresses Updates and Upgrades 40 Backing Up Hosting Data 42 Customers and Resellers 43 Serving Customers Creating Shared Hosting Templates Creating Customer Accounts Subscribing Customers to Services Creating Custom Service Offers Employing Resellers Creating Reseller Service Templates... 53

4 What Is Parallels Plesk Automation 4 Creating Reseller Accounts Subscribing Resellers to Templates Administering PPA 55 User Access to PPA Securing PPA Protecting Access to PPA with SSL Changing Administrator's Password Managing Service Templates Managing Subscriptions Assigning a Dedicated IP Address to a Subscription Moving Subscriptions Between Nodes Install the PPA Moving Tools Configure the Tool Create a Transfer List Run the Transfer Selecting a Node for a Subscription Configuring Automatic Node Selection Forcing PPA to Provision Web Hosting and Database Services to the Same Node Managing Customer Accounts Managing Reseller Accounts Managing Staff Members Using Command-Line Utilities Changing Interface Language Adding and Customizing Administration Panel Locales Adding Custom Links to the Hosting Panel System Monitoring Managing Background Tasks Monitoring PPA Tracking Resource Usage Forcing PPA to Collect Usage Statistics Viewing Login History Notifications Configuring Administrator Notifications Configuring Customer and Reseller Notifications Handling Events Creating Actions Changing the Editing Mode Troubleshooting PPA Web Hosting Management 105 Appendix. Resource Types 106 Apache Webspace IIS Webspace Mail Service Database Service DNS hosting Subscription Diskspace Traffic IP Addresses / IPv6 Addresses Additional Staff Members

5 C H A P T E R 1 What Is Parallels Plesk Automation When a hosting company eventually grows, it employs more and more servers. If each server is managed separately, this entails big maintenance costs and suboptimal server loads. To help hosting providers solve these issues, we offer Parallels Plesk Automation (PPA). PPA is a hosting control panel where one central server (management node) controls an arbitrary number of other servers that have various roles - web, mail, DNS, and so on. In terms of PPA, these controlled servers are called service nodes. When a customer subscribes to a web hosting plan, PPA allocates all the necessary resources on service nodes and links these resources to the customer's account. For example, when a customer subscribes to a shared web hosting plan, PPA creates a webspace (virtual host) on one of the available web server nodes. If the subscription also includes mail services, PPA creates customer's mailboxes on one of the mail server nodes. The diagram below represents the PPA architecture.

6 6 What Is Parallels Plesk Automation

7 What Is Parallels Plesk Automation 7 The PPA User Interface The PPA UI consists of the following components: Administration Panel. Administrators use this panel to manage PPA infrastructure: add and configure service nodes, manage IP pools, and so on. This panel is based on Parallels Operations Automation. Hosting Panel. Customers use this panel to manage their hosting services: add domains and mailboxes, manage website content and so on. The panel is based on Parallels Plesk Panel. (Optional) Billing solution. Administrators and resellers can employ a billing solution to automate subscribing customers to hosting plans as well as to automate the monetization of this process. Currently, PPA supports the following solutions: Parallels Business Automation Standard. Web Host Manager Complete Solution (WHMCS). Any homegrown billing system integrated with Plesk Automation by means of API. Note: Administration and Hosting panels are hosted on the management node. Service nodes do not provide the UI.

8 C H A P T E R 2 Management Node Management node is a central server in the system that controls an arbitrary number of service nodes with various roles - web, mail, DNS, and other. Hosting Services Provided by the Management Node As well as service nodes, the management node is also able to provide hosting services. By default, these are: DNS. The node is the master DNS server for all zones created in PPA. Webmail. The node provides the webmail service for all mailboxes in PPA. You can also set up the management node to provide the following services: Apache web hosting. Postfix mail. MySQL database. To make the management node provide these services, assign it the corresponding provisioning attributes and mark the node as being ready to provide. You do not need to install any additional packages to the node! Note that, currently, Apache and Postfix settings are not shown on the management node's details page (Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node). To access them, you can follow this temporary workaround: 1. Log in to the Administration Panel (all other sessions with Plesk Automation from your IP address should be closed). 2. In the browser address bar, specify the address This step should be done twice. 3. Open the desired settings page. Important: We strongly recommend that you do not use the management node for providing any hosting services due to performance and security considerations. The best practice is to use the management node only to provide the GUI for PPA users. Learn more about the recommended PPA infrastructure configuration in the Deployment Guide. Next in this chapter we will provide instructions on management node configuration aspects.

9 Management Node 9 In this chapter: Changing the IP Address of the Management Node... 9 Changing the Hostname of the Management Node Changing the IP Address of the Management Node Sometimes, it may be necessary to move the management node to another IP address. If you simply change the address of the node, all main Plesk Automation services will stop working. This happens because all Plesk Automation services and service nodes are still configured to use the old IP address of the management node. To avoid such an issue after changing the address, use the ppa_ipaddress utility. The utility propagates the new IP address to all related Plesk Automation services and service nodes. To change the IP address of the management node: 1. Log in to your management node as root. 2. Change the management node's IP address in the operating system. For example, you can use the ifconfig system utility for this purpose. 3. Create the mapping file by running this command: ppa.ip_address <map_file> where <map_file> is the name of the mapping file. 4. Edit the mapping file. The file should contain the old and new IP addresses (both main and communication) of the management node. For example: # You should edit IP addresses, netmasks and interfaces to reflect your # future settings. If you don't want the IP address to be changed - leave it untouched or # comment out or remove a certain line from the file. Old main ip= New main ip= Old communication ip= New communication ip= Propagate the new IP address by running this command: ppa.ip_address <map_file> where <map_file> is the filename you specified in step 2.

10 10 Management Node Changing the Hostname of the Management Node Sometimes, it may be necessary to change the hostname of the management node. If you simply change the name, some Plesk Automation services may start to work improperly. To avoid such an issue after changing the address, use the ppa_hostname utility. The utility propagates the new hostname to all the related Plesk Automation services and service nodes. To change the hostname of the management node: 1. Log in to your management node as root. 2. Change the management node's hostname in the operating system. You can do this by editing the /etc/sysconfig/network file. 3. Run this utility: ppa.hostname --update

11 C H A P T E R 3 Service Nodes Service nodes are physical or virtual servers configured to carry out specific hosting tasks. The set of tasks performed by a node is defined by its role. Learn how to add service nodes to PPA in the Deployment Guide, section Adding Service Nodes. The administrator can assign the following roles to a server when registering it in PPA : Apache web server - a web server based on Apache HTTP Server. IIS web server - a web server based on Internet Information Services. Postfix Mail server - a mail server based on the Postfix mail transfer agent. SmarterMail mail server - a mail server based on the SmarterMail mail transfer agent. External mail server - an arbitrary external mail server. Webmail server - a dedicated webmail server based on the Horde and Atmail software. MySQL database server - a database server based on the MySQL database management system. PostgreSQL database server - a database server based on the PostgreSQL database management system.man Microsoft SQL database server - a database server based on the Microsoft SQL Server database management system. DNS server - a DNS server based on the Bind software. Backup server - an FTP server used as a centralized backup storage. In addition, PPA also supports a number of mixed roles. For example, one service node will be able to provide web and mail services at the same time. Note that you can extend the role of a service node at any time. For example, you can turn the node with the Apache web server role to the Apache web server / Postfix mail server node. Learn more in Extending Service Node Roles (on page 31). Server-Wide Settings of Service Nodes You can configure server-wide settings of services provided by registered nodes: Apache web server nodes. Switch off unused Apache modules to achieve better node performance. Learn more in the section Apache Web Server Nodes (on page 13). Mail server nodes. Change server-wide mail settings, such as black and white lists, spam filter threshold, and other settings. Learn more in the section Mail Server Nodes (on page 15).

12 12 Service Nodes Note: The Administration allows configuring of mail server settings only for Postfix mail server nodes. The configuration of SmarterMail mail server nodes should be performed manually by means of the SmarterMail software. Database server nodes. Manage existing databases through the web interface. Learn more in the section Database Server Nodes (on page 30). To change server-wide settings on a certain node, you should select the node in Infrastructure > Service Nodes and proceed to a certain settings tab. For example, to switch on/off Apache modules on a certain Apache web server node, you should go to the Apache Modules tab. Server-wide node settings affect all customers who use the node. For example, you may choose Atmail as a webmail software instead of Horde for one of your mail nodes. As a consequence, all customers whose mailboxes are located on this node will use Atmail, while customers whose mail services are provided by other nodes will continue to use Horde. The per-customer service configuration (like custom PHP configuration for customer's websites or the support for a particular scripting language) is performed by other means described in the chapter Customers and Resellers (on page 43). Next in this section, we will provide instructions on how to adjust server-wide settings on service nodes. In this chapter: Configuring IP Pools Apache Web Server Nodes Mail Server Nodes Database Server Nodes Adding More Roles to Service Nodes Propagating Changes in the Node's Operating System to PPA... 32

13 Service Nodes 13 Configuring IP Pools An IP pool is a set of available IP addresses that you are able to pass down to resellers and customers or utilize them within your own servers or services. IP addresses may be granted as either dedicated (exclusive), meaning that the target subscriber becomes the only owner of this address, or shared, meaning that this address is shared among many subscribers. To specify the IP addresses for a node, you should create an IP pool containing certain addresses and attach this pool to the node. Note that you can attach one IP pool to a number of nodes. When you add a service node to PPA, you are able to allocate only two IP addresses in the system: The management IP address (used for communication with a management node) and shared IP address. Therefore, by default, a node can provide services only from one shared IP address. All other addresses that exist on the node are marked as used and you will not be able to use them through IP pools for providing services. Thus, if you want to use the node for offering services (for example, web or mail hosting) with dedicated IP addresses, you must configure an IP pool. When a subscription that requires a dedicated IP address is allocated on the node, PPA automatically gets a free address from the pool and creates it on the node. To configure an IP pool for a service node: 1. Add an IP pool containing addresses you want to use in Infrastructure > IP Manager > IP Pools. 2. Attach the IP pool to a certain node on the Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Networking tab. Note: The addresses you declare for the pool are allowed to intersect with the ones that already exist on the node. These IP addresses will be marked as being used and unavailable for hosting provisioning. 3. (Optional. For Virtuozzo / OpenVZ-based service nodes only) PPA is unable to add IP addresses on Virtuozzo / OpenVZ containers automatically. Therefore, you should manually add all IP addresses from the pool to such nodes. Otherwise, the provisioning of subscriptions with dedicated addresses to such nodes will fail. You can add the address by using the vzctl utility on the hardware node that runs the container. For example, to add the address to the container with the 101 ID: vzctl set ipadd save Apache Web Server Nodes Next in this section: Optimizing Apache... 14

14 14 Service Nodes Optimizing Apache You can switch off the Apache web server modules that are not critical to hosting services in Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Apache Modules. This will allow you to reduce node resources consumption (for example, get the smaller RAM footprint) and, as a result, provide for more hosting customers on a node. Note that some modules are interdependent and can be switched off (on) only when the modules they depend on are off (on). For example, the cache module depends on disk_cache, file_cache, and mem_cache modules. This means that you cannot switch off the cache until its three dependent modules are off. Caution: This feature is for advanced users only. Toggle modules only if you completely understand the consequences of your actions. Note that some modifications may reduce Apache performance or even lead to it becoming inoperable. In addition, these changes may affect certain server functions. For example, if you turn off mod_perl or mod_php, the Perl and PHP scripts (including webmail) will stop working on websites. This may cause a situation in which you offer a feature that does not work in a service plan. The following Apache modules are always enabled: env auth_digest authn_file authz_host authz_user actions alias autoindex dav dir log_config mime negotiation setenvif ssl

15 Service Nodes 15 Mail Server Nodes After adding mail server nodes with Postfix, you can configure the mail service settings described in this section. Important: The Administration Panel does not support configuring of the mail service on SmarterMail mail server nodes. Such configuration should be done manually by means of the SmarterMail software. To view or configure the mail service settings: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > service node's hostname > Mail Server Settings tab. The server-wide mail preferences screen will open on the Settings tab. 2. Leave the Enable mail management functions in Panel checkbox selected if you want to allow your users to create mail accounts through the Hosting Panel and use the mail services provided by the Panelmanaged mail server. If you are using an external mail server, clear this checkbox. 3. If you want to limit the size of an message that can be sent through your server, type the desired value in kilobytes into the Maximum message size box. Otherwise, leave this field blank. 4. To protect your server against unauthorized mail relaying or injection of unsolicited bulk mail, select the Enable message submission checkbox to allow your customers to send messages through the port 587. Also notify your customers that they need to specify in their programs' settings the port 587 for outgoing SMTP connections, and be sure to allow connections to this port in your firewall settings. 5. Select the mail relay mode. With closed relay the mail server will accept only addressed to the users who have mailboxes on this server. Your customers will not be able to send any mail through your outgoing SMTP server, therefore, we do not recommend closing mail relay. With relay after authorization, only your customers will be able to receive and send through your mail server. We recommend that you leave the authorization is required option selected, and specify allowed authentication methods: POP3 lock time. With POP3 authorization, once a user has successfully authenticated to the POP server, he or she is permitted to receive and send e- mail through the mail server for the specified period of time. SMTP. With SMTP authorization, your mail server requires authorization if the e- mail message must be sent to an external address. 6. Select the antivirus program that should be used on the server. 7. Select the spam protection options that should be used on the server.

16 16 Service Nodes Note: If you wish to set up spam protection systems, such as SpamAssassin spam filter, or protection systems based on DNS blackhole lists or Sender Policy Framework (SPF), proceed to the section Protection from Spam (on page 23). Next in this section: Enabling Mail Submission Agent (Postfix Mail Server Nodes) Protection from Spam Protection from Viruses Mail Queue... 29

17 Service Nodes 17 Enabling Mail Submission Agent (Postfix Mail Server Nodes) A mail submission agent (MSA) is a software agent that receives messages from a mail user agent (MUA) and cooperates with a mail transfer agent (MTA) for delivery of the mail. Using MSA between MUA and MTA gives you a number of benefits, such as protection from unauthorized mail relaying, protection from injection of unsolicited bulk mail, and other. Learn more about MSA at If you enable MSA, you must notify your customers that they need to adjust mail clients' settings. More specifically, they should change the port of the outgoing SMTP server to 587 and turn on the TLS encrypted connections. You can find an example of instructions for your customers in Adjusting Mail Client Settings (on page 18). Note: MSA is currently supported on Postfix mail server nodes only. To enable mail submission agent on a certain Postfix mail server node: 1. Log in to PPA. 2. Go to the Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select the node > Mail Server Settings tab. 3. Select Enable message submission. Replacing the Default Postfix SSL Certificate The MSA employs the TLS protocol to secure connections between MUAs and the MTA. The default Postfix SSL certificate is used for encryption purposes. To replace the default certificate with the one from a trusted certificate authority: 1. Log in to your Postfix service node as root. 2. Save the default Postfix SSL certificate: cd /etc/postfix cp postfix_default.pem postfix_default.pem.orig 3. Replace the default certificate with the new one: cp ~/you_cert.pem postfix_default.pem 4. Restart Postfix: service postfix restart 5. Check that Postfix uses your new certificate. This can be done, for example, by sending a sample message. Next in this section: Adjusting Mail Client Settings... 18

18 18 Service Nodes Adjusting Mail Client Settings Enabling mail submission agent on a mail service node requires customers who use the node to adjust their mail client's settings. More specifically, they should change the port of the outgoing SMTP server to 587 and turn on the TLS encrypted connections. Here is an example of how your customers must configure the Microsoft Outlook mail client. To configure Microsoft Outlook for working with MSA: 1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook. 2. Go to File > Info > Account Settings.

19 3. Select your account and click Change... Service Nodes 19

20 20 Service Nodes 4. Click More Settings...

21 Service Nodes Open the Outgoing Server tab and check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.

22 22 Service Nodes 6. Open the Advanced tab, and specify 587 for the Outgoing server (SMTP). In Use the following type of encrypted connection, set the TLS value. 7. Click OK, click Next. If the connection test is finished successfully, click Finish.

23 Service Nodes 23 Protection from Spam To protect your users from spam, you can use the following tools with your Panel: SpamAssassin spam filter. It is a powerful spam filter that uses a wide variety of local and network tests to identify spam signatures. You can configure the spam filter so as to either delete suspicious messages when they come to your mail server, or change the subject line and add "X-Spam-Flag: YES" and "X-Spam-Status: Yes" headers to the messages. The latter can be useful for users who prefer to filter mail with mail filtering programs installed on their own computers. To learn more about SpamAssassin, visit To configure and switch on the SpamAssassin filter, proceed to the section SpamAssassin Spam Filter (on page 24). DNS blackhole lists. This spam prevention system is based on DNS queries made by your mail server to a database, which contains known and documented sources of spam, as well as an extensive listing of dynamic IP addresses. Any positive response from this database should result in your mail server returning a '550' error, or rejection of the requested connection. To configure your mail server for working with DNSBL databases, proceed to the section DNS Blackhole Lists. Sender Policy Framework. This spam prevention system is also DNS query-based. It is designed to reduce the amount of spam sent from forged addresses. With SPF, an Internet domain owner can specify the addresses of machines that are authorized to send for users of his or her domain. Receivers that implement SPF then treat as suspect any that claims to come from that domain but fails to come from locations that domain authorizes. To learn more about SPF, visit To enable filtering based on SPF, proceed to the section Sender Policy Framework System (Linux). Server-wide black and white lists. Black and white lists are standard mail server facilities. You can use black and white lists to block or receive mail from specific servers. Your mail server retrieves domain names and IP addresses of servers which attempt to establish connection with it. If a domain name is matched against black list entries, your server refuses the connection. Thus, the potential spam message will be never received. If an IP address is matched against white list entries, your server receives a message from the sender without using the spam protection systems such as sender authentication, greylisting, or DNSBL. To set up server-wide black and white lists, proceed to the section Server-wide Black and White Lists. Next in this section: SpamAssassin Spam Filter DNS Blackhole Lists Server-wide Black and White Lists Sender Policy Framework System... 27

24 24 Service Nodes SpamAssassin Spam Filter To switch on SpamAssassin spam filter: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Mail Server Settings tab. 2. To allow server wide filtering based on the settings you define, select the Switch on server-wide SpamAssassin spam filtering checkbox. 3. To let your users set their own spam filtering preferences on a permailbox basis, select the Apply individual settings to spam filtering checkbox. 4. If you wish to adjust the amount of system resources the spam filter should use (available only for Linux hosting), type the desired value from 1 to 5 into the Maximum number of worker spamd processes to run (1-5) box (1 is the lowest load, and 5 is the highest). We recommend that you use the default value. 5. If you wish to adjust the spam filter's sensitivity, type the desired value in the The number of points a message must score to be considered spam box. SpamAssassin performs a number of different tests on contents and subject line of each message. As a result, each message scores a number of points. The higher the number, the more likely a message is spam. For example, a message containing the text string BUY VIAGRA AT LOW PRICE!!! in Subject line and message body scores 8.3 points. By default, the filter sensitivity is set so that all messages that score 7 or more points are classified as spam. When your users receive lots of spam messages with the current setting, to make filter more sensitive, try setting a lesser value in the The score that a message must receive to qualify as spam box; for example, 6. When your users are missing s because your spam filter thinks they are junk, try reducing filter sensitivity by setting a higher value in the The score that a message must receive to qualify as spam box. 6. Specify how to mark messages recognized as spam. At the server level, you cannot set the server-wide spam filter to automatically delete spam: you can do it only on a per-mailbox basis. So, for the server-wide policy, you can choose only marking messages as spam: X-Spam-Flag: YES and X-Spam-Status: Yes headers are added to the message source by default, and if you want, the spam filter will additionally include a specific text string to the beginning of Subject line. To include a desired combination of symbols or words to the message subject, type it into the Add the following text to the beginning of subject of each message recognized as spam box. If you do not want the spam filter to modify message subject, leave this box blank. If you want to include into the subject line the number of points that messages score, type SCORE in this box. 7. If you do not want your users to receive from specific domains or individual senders, click the Black List tab, and then add the respective entries to the spam filter s black list:

25 Service Nodes 25 To add entries to the black list, click Add Addresses. Separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or a white space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of letters, and question mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example: [email protected], [email protected], *@spammers.net. Specifying *@spammers.net will block the entire mail domain spammers.net. If you use a Windows-based server, also specify what to do with messages coming from the specified addresses. To save the entries you added, click OK. To remove entries from the black list, under the Black List tab, select the entries and click Remove. Confirm removal and click OK. 8. If you want to be sure that you and your users will not miss from specific senders, click the White List tab, and then add addresses or entire domains to the spam filter s white list: To add entries to the white list, click Add Addresses. If you have a list of entries stored in a file, click Browse to specify it, and then click OK. Otherwise, select the From List option, and type the addresses into the addresses box. Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or a white space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of letters, and question mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example: [email protected], [email protected], *@mycompany.com. Specifying *@mycompany.com will add to the white list all addresses that are under the mycompany.com mail domain. To save the entries you added, click OK, then confirm adding, and click OK again. To remove entries from the white list, under the White List tab, select the entries and click Remove. Confirm removal and click OK. 9. Once finished with setting up the spam filter, click OK. Now all the incoming mail will be filtered on the server side. By default, spam filter does not delete spam mail, it only adds the "X-Spam-Flag: YES" and "X-Spam- Status: Yes" headers to the message, and "*****SPAM*****" text string to the beginning of Subject line of each message recognized as spam. If you have enabled the Apply individual settings to spam filtering option, then your users will be able to set their spam filters so as to automatically delete junk mail. They will also be able to set up their personal black and white lists of correspondents that will override the server settings, and teach the spam filter on a per-mailbox basis. DNS Blackhole Lists You can use free and paid subscription blackhole lists with your server. To switch on spam protection based on DNSBL: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Mail Server Settings tab. 2. Select the Switch on spam protection based on DNS blackhole lists checkbox. 3. In the DNS zones for DNSBL service input box, specify the host name that your mail server should query, for example: sbl.spamhaus.org. Now, messages from known spammers should be rejected with an error code 550 (connection refused).

26 26 Service Nodes Server-wide Black and White Lists To reject connections from specific mail servers: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Mail Server Settings tab > Black List tab. 2. Click Add Domain. 3. Specify the name of the domain from which you do not want to receive . For example, 'evilspammers.net'. 4. Click OK. 5. Repeat steps from 2 to 4 to add as many domains as required. To assure mail reception from specific servers or networks: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > service node's hostname > Mail Server Settings tab > White List tab. 2. Click Add Network. 3. Specify an IP address or range of IP addresses from which mail must always be accepted. 4. Click OK. 5. Repeat steps from 2 to 4 to add as many addresses as required.

27 Service Nodes 27 Sender Policy Framework System To set up support for Sender Policy Framework: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Mail Server Settings tab. The server-wide mail preferences screen will open on the Settings tab. 2. Select the Switch on SPF spam protection checkbox and specify how to deal with To accept all incoming messages regardless of SPF check results, select the Create only Received SPF-headers, never block option from the SPF checking mode drop-down box. This option is recommended. To accept all incoming messages regardless of SPF check results, even if SPF check failed due to DNS lookup problems, select the In case of DNS lookup problems, generate temporary errors option from the SPF checking mode drop-down box. To reject messages from senders who are not authorized to use the domain in question, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to fail from the SPF checking mode drop-down box. To reject the messages that are most likely from senders who are not authorized to use the domain in question, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to softfail from the SPF checking mode drop-down box. To reject the messages from senders who cannot be identified by SPF system as authorized or not authorized because the domain has no SPF records published, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to neutral from the SPF checking mode drop-down box. To reject the messages that do not pass SPF check for any reason (for example, when sender's domain does not implement SPF and SPF checking returns the "unknown" status), select the option Reject mail if SPF does not resolve to pass from the SPF checking mode drop-down box. 3. To specify additional rules that are applied by the spam filter before the SPF check is actually done by the mail server, type the rules you need in the SPF local rules box. We recommend that you add a rule for checking messages against the open database of trusted senders, for example, 'include:spf.trusted-forwarder.org'. For more information on SPF rules, visit 4. To specify the rules that are applied to domains that do not publish SPF records, type the rules into the SPF guess rules box. For example: v=spf1 +a/24 +mx/24 +ptr?all 5. To specify an arbitrary error notice that is returned to the SMTP sender when a message is rejected, type it into the SPF explanation text box. If no value is specified, the default text will be used as a notification.

28 28 Service Nodes Protection from Viruses To provide your users with anti-virus protection, you can use Parallels Premium Antivirus, which is installed by default on mail service nodes. The antivirus requires an additional license key with annual renewal. Check the current prices with your provider or visit the Parallels website. After installing a license key for the antivirus, it starts checking all incoming mail and moves all suspicious and infected messages to the quarantine directory located at /var/drweb/infected. To switch on Parallels Premium Antivirus: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Mail Server Settings tab > Settings tab. 2. Under the Antivirus Settings group, select the option Parallels Premium antivirus.

29 Service Nodes 29 Mail Queue If your customers complain that they cannot send through the mail server, this can mean that the mail server is overloaded and cannot cope with the amount of received messages. This can happen when somebody is sending spam through the mail server, or the daemon responsible for sending mail is down. To return the mail server to an operable state, delete the unwanted messages from the mail server s message queue. To see the messages in the message queue and to delete them: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > Mail Server Settings tab > Mail Queue tab. The following information will be presented: Total number of undelivered messages. When messages come to your mail server, they are first added to the main queue. Then, the mail server preprocesses them in order to find out whether they should be delivered to a local account on the same server or sent further to a remote recipient s e- mail address. After preprocessing, the messages directed at local mail recipients are put to a local queue, and the messages directed at remote recipients are put to a remote queue. Once delivered, the messages are removed from the queues. Message properties: subject, sender, recipient, queue type (local, remote, not preprocessed), date the message was sent from user s computer, the time lapsed since the moment when message was put to queue (age), and message size. 2. To find a message with specific subject, select the queue in the Queues drop-down box, type the desired combination of symbols into the Subject box, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All. 3. To find a message from a specific sender, click the Show Advanced link, type the sender s address into the Envelope Sender box, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All. 4. To find a message addressed to a specific recipient, click the Show Advanced link, type the recipient's address into the Recipients box, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All. 5. To find a message by date, age, or size, click the Show Advanced link, type the required values into the Date, Age, or Size boxes, respectively, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All.

30 30 Service Nodes 6. To delete a message from the queue, select the corresponding checkbox and click Remove. To delete all messages from the queue, select the checkbox in the upper-right corner of the messages list, and click Remove. Database Server Nodes In addition to adding service nodes with automatic deployment of the necessary software components through the Infrastructure > Service Nodes > Add New Node wizard, you can configure PPA to use existing MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL Serverbased database servers. Note: To be able to register Microsoft SQL Server-based database servers, you should have at least one IIS web server node registered in PPA. To register a database server with PPA: 1. Run Infrastructure > Database Servers > Add Database Server. 2. Specify the properties of the database server: Hostname or IP address. Port number the database server is listening on. This option is available only for MySQL. By default, MySQL servers listen on port You can leave the Port number box blank, if your MySQL database server is listening on the default port. Database server engine. Database server administrator's username and password. To change the host name, IP address, port, or database server administrator's credentials: Go to Infrastructure > Database Servers > database server's host name or IP address. To manage databases through the DB Webadmin tool: Go to Infrastructure > Database Servers, and click the icon.

31 Service Nodes 31 Adding More Roles to Service Nodes Sometimes, it may be necessary to extend the role of a service node. For example, it may be necessary if you add the Apache web server node, but then (as your company grows) decide that it must also provide mail services. In this case, all you need to do is install the ppa_postfix package to the node. After you add the package, Plesk Automation will change the node's role to Apache web server / Postfix mail server and assign it the corresponding attributes. The following is a list of all packages that you can install. ppa_apache - Apache HTTP server ppa_postfix - Postfix mail server ppa_pgsql - PostgreSQL database server ppa_mysql - MySQL database server ppa_webmail - Horde and Atmail webmail server To extend a node role by installing additional packages: 1. Go to Infrastructure > Service Nodes > (select a node) > Packages tab > Install Package. 2. In the Name input box, type ppa and click Search. All packages that you can install will be listed. 3. Click the icon next to the package you want to install. 4. Click the icon. 5. Specify the installation settings, such as the installation paths, administrator's username and password, and other settings that may be required by the application. 6. Click Submit, and on the next step, click Finish.

32 32 Service Nodes Propagating Changes in the Node's Operating System to PPA Sometimes, it may be necessary to make changes in the operating system of a certain service node (for example, install new software). In such a case, Plesk Automation must be warned about these changes, otherwise, the node may start function improperly. For example, if you install Microsoft.NET Framework 4 on the node and do not propagate this change to Plesk Automation, the provisioning of subscriptions with support for.net will fail on this node. Another example when changes must be propagated is enabling hard disk quota on a Virtuozzo container. To propagate changes in the node's operating system to Plesk Automation: On the Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select the node > Summary tab, click the Refresh button (in the User-installed packages group).

33 C H A P T E R 4 DNS By default, DNS services are provided by the management node. It acts as a master DNS server for all zones registered in the system. Setup of DNS zones for newly added domains is automated: When a customer adds a new domain in the Hosting Panel, PPA automatically generates its zone file and registers it in the nameserver's database. You can view the list of domains registered in the system in Operations > DNS Manager > Domains. Learn how to manage DNS zone records of particular domains in the section Managing DNS Zones (on page 35). The reverse lookup process is based on reverse DNS zones. Learn how to work with them in the section Managing Reverse DNS Zones (on page 37). The functions of a master DNS server can be delegated to any node with the DNS Server role. To improve DNS reliability, you may also add slave DNS server nodes (slave servers periodically load zone data from the master server) or even more master DNS server nodes. In the latter case, PPA will create and update same zone files on all master servers. Learn how to use DNS server nodes in the section Using DNS Server Nodes (on page 35). In addition, you can register external DNS servers (the servers which are not a part of your PPA infrastructure) in PPA. PPA is unable to create or update zone files on such servers. Thus, this should be done by some external system notified by PPA about required changes. Learn how to use external DNS servers in the section Using External DNS Servers (on page 35). You can view the full list of DNS servers used by PPA in Operations > DNS Manager > Nameservers. How DNS Works in PPA The set of services that you are able to offer to your customers is defined by resources (also called resource types) registered in the system. For example, every customer should have an IP address for accessing their websites, therefore, they should be provided with the IP Address resource. Resources should be configured to meet the needs of certain customers. Thus, for the IP Address resource you can specify the address type: IPv4 or IPv6, shared or dedicated. The DNS service is provided to your customers with the DNS resource. This resource type defines which of the registered DNS server nodes (up to three different nodes) should be used as master or slave servers for customer zones. In addition, with the help of DNS resource settings you can specify the SOA record parameters: refresh and retry intervals, expiration period, and minimum TTL. Note that, by default, all of your customers use the same DNS resource. Therefore, all of them have the same DNS configuration. For example, you cannot have a separate DNS server node which stores zones of a specific customer only.

34 34 DNS Note: To work around the restriction of having a single DNS configuration, replace the DNS resource type in your offerings with custom resource types based on the DNS Hosting resource class. In this chapter: Using DNS Server Nodes Using External DNS Servers Managing DNS Zones Managing Reverse DNS Zones... 37

35 DNS 35 Using DNS Server Nodes To use a separate service node as a master or slave DNS server: 1. Add the node to PPA by running the wizard Infrastructure > Service Nodes > Add New Node in the Administration Panel. During the node registration, specify the DNS Server role (or one of the combined roles which include the DNS service). For the detailed instructions on how to add DNS server nodes to PPA, refer to the Parallels Plesk Automation: Deployment Guide, section Adding DNS Server Nodes. Once you add the node, it appears in the list of registered PPA nameservers, which is available at Operations > DNS Manager > Nameservers. 2. Set this node as a master or slave nameserver in the DNS resource type properties located at the Products > Resource Types > DNS > Activation Parameters tab. In addition, you can set the SOA record template parameters: refresh and retry intervals, expiration period, and minimum TTL. The template settings are applied to the SOA record of all zones but can be overridden for a specific zone. Learn how to do this in the section Managing DNS Zones (on page 35). Note: You can set up to three nameservers in the DNS resource type properties. The first nameserver is always master (by default, this is the management node). Using External DNS Servers To serve zones by an external DNS server which is not a part of PPA: 1. Register your external DNS server in PPA by running the wizard Operations > DNS Manager > Nameservers > Register External Nameserver in the Administration Panel. The wizard will prompt you to enter a server's hostname and IP address. 2. Set this server as a master or slave nameserver in the DNS resource type properties located at the Products > Resource Types > DNS > Activation Parameters tab. Note: PPA is unable to make changes in zone files on external nameservers. This should be done by an external system that is notified by PPA about required changes in zone records. This can be organized by means of event handlers. Learn more in the section Handling Events (on page 99). Managing DNS Zones PPA allows you to manage a DNS zone of any domain registered in the system. More specifically, you can: Add new records and edit the existing ones. Modify the SOA record of a zone.

36 36 DNS Switch the DNS service off for a domain in case a customer uses their own external DNS server. Modifying DNS Records To add new records or edit the existing ones for a domain: 1. Select the domain in the Operations > DNS Manager > Domains. 2. Select an existing record in DNS > DNS Records to modify it or add a new one. Note: When a customer registers a new domain in the system, PPA creates the corresponding zone file. This file contains the set of predefined DNS records which you are unable to modify or remove. Nevertheless, if the record modification is required, you can disable the record (on the record properties page) and add a new one containing the required changes. Modifying the SOA Record To override the SOA record settings defined by the SOA template for a certain zone: 1. Select a domain in the Operations > DNS Manager > Domains. 2. Modify the SOA record for the domain zone in DNS > Zone Settings. Switching the DNS Service Off for a Domain If a customer wants to use their own DNS server for a domain, you should switch PPA's DNS service off for this domain. To do this, complete the following steps: 1. Select the domain in the Operations > DNS Manager > Domains. 2. On the DNS tab, click the Change DNS Hosting to External button. Once you complete these steps, PPA will remove the zone file from registered DNS servers.

37 DNS 37 Managing Reverse DNS Zones A reverse DNS lookup process (when a client looks up a computer name based on its address) is essential to a large number of Internet services. The processing of reverse requests is based on reverse DNS zones that store the information about IP addresses and corresponding domain names in the form of PTR records. PPA does not automatically create reverse DNS zones for the registered IP network addresses. Therefore, if you need reverse lookup for hosted domains, you should manually create reverse DNS zones for all of your IP network addresses in Operations > DNS Manager > Reverse DNS Zones. Once a reverse DNS zone is created for a certain network, PPA will automatically add to it corresponding PTR records for all newly created domains. In addition, you can add new PTR records and temporarily disable the existing ones in each reverse zone. Creating Reverse DNS Zones To add new reverse DNS zone, run the Add new reverse zone wizard in Operations > DNS Manager > Reverse DNS Zones. When creating a zone you will be prompted to provide an IP address of a network for which you create a zone and a nameserver that should store zone files. Managing PTR Records To manage PTR records of a certain zone, first select this zone in Operations > DNS Manager > Reverse DNS Zones. Here you can: Add new PTR records with Add new PTR record. Temporarily disable / enable PTR records (select a record > Disable or Enable). PPA temporarily removes disabled records from zone files. Remove PTR records (select a record > Remove).

38 C H A P T E R 5 PPA Behind NAT Network address translation (NAT) is the process of translating IP addresses used within one network into different IP addresses known within another network. The translation, performed by routing devices, provides an additional level of security for hosts in an internal network and helps to reduce the number of public IPv4 addresses required for operation. To run PPA behind NAT, do the following: 1. Configure IP pools to use private IP addresses, as described in Configuring IP Pools (on page 13). 2. Configure network address translation on the router. 3. Map private IP addresses to public addresses in PPA (in Administration Panel > Infrastructure > IP Manager > IP Translations). The mapping should be exactly the same as on your router. If the mapping is not performed, the records in the DNS zones of websites will use private IP addresses instead of the public addresses, and DNS resolving will not work. The mapping of shared and dedicated IP addresses is performed in a slightly different manner. Learn more about this in the following sections. Important: Network address translation is not supported for IPv6 addresses. In this chapter: Configuring Mapping for Shared IP Addresses Configuring Mapping for Dedicated IP Addresses... 39

39 PPA Behind NAT 39 Configuring Mapping for Shared IP Addresses To map IP addresses on your internal network to shared public IP addresses, do the following: 1. Go to Administration Panel > Infrastructure > IP Manager > IP Translations. 2. Click Add New IP translation. 3. Specify the following: PublicNet IP. The public network IP address. FrontNet IP. The private network IP address used by PPA service nodes to accept requests. Description. Here you can specify a description for the record. Port Forwarding. Leave the default value because this setting does not affect the address translation. 4. Click Submit. Configuring Mapping for Dedicated IP Addresses To map IP addresses on your internal network to dedicated public IP addresses, do the following: 1. Go to Administration Panel > Infrastructure > IP Manager > IP Translations > IP Translation Rules tab > Add New IP Translation Rule. 2. Specify the following settings: PublicNet IP Range - the range of public IP addresses used by the NAT router. FrontNet IP Range - the range of private IP addresses used by PPA nodes. 3. Click Submit.

40 C H A P T E R 6 Updates and Upgrades The full PPA version identifier consists of a number of fields. For example, the identifier PPA 11.1 Update #08 appears as follows. Version number Update Major Major

41 Updates and Upgrades 41 Updates include some minor enhancements and change only the number that goes after the Update prefix. Upgrades introduce more complex changes in product functionality and increase the PPA major version numbers. Plesk Automation is updated and upgraded using the special ppa_update utility which is a part of the Plesk Automation distribution. To apply available PPA updates: 1. Log in to the management node as root. 2. Check for available updates:./ppa_update --check-updates The information about available updates is also available on the home page of the Administration Panel. 3. If there are available updates, apply them:./ppa_update --install-updates To upgrade PPA to the latest version: 1. Log in to the management node as root. 2. Download the latest version of the ppa_update utility: wget 3. Make the utility executable: chmod +x ppa_update 4. Check for available upgrades:./ppa_update --check-updates The information about available upgrades is also available on the home page of the Administration Panel. 5. If there are available upgrades, upgrade Plesk Automation:./ppa_update --upgrade

42 C H A P T E R 7 Backing Up Hosting Data In Plesk Automation, administrators and resellers are not provided with a centralized means of backing up and restoring the data of their customers. Only users logged in to the Hosting Panel can back up and restore data belonging to their accounts. Plesk Automation can save backup files only on an external FTP server - a backup server. Therefore, to enable the backup functionality, you must add a special backup node to the system. Important: 1. If there are no backup nodes registered in Plesk Automation, the backup and restore functions cannot be used, and the corresponding buttons will not be available to users in the Hosting Panel. 2. Backup servers do not require a license key. To enable the backup functionality: 1. Prepare a server with CentOS 5.9, 6.4 or later (x86 or x86-64). Other server requirements are described here. 2. Run the Add New Node wizard in Administration Panel > Infrastructure > Service Nodes. The wizard will ask you to provide the following information: The service node role: Backup server A node host name or an IP address and a root password Once you add the backup server, users will be able to back up the data related to their accounts and websites in Hosting Panel > Account > Back Up My Account and Websites and Hosting Panel > Account > Back Up Websites.

43 C H A P T E R 8 Customers and Resellers When you start your hosting business, you should define how you will offer hosting resources and services to customers. PPA lets you organize your business by means of service templates and subscriptions. A service template is a combination of resources and services that you sell to your customers. For example, a template that offers a hosting account with 1 GB of disk space and 50 GB of traffic is a shared hosting template. There are also service templates of other types described later in this section. When customers want to host a website on one of your servers, they subscribe to such a template. In other words, a subscription is a set of resources and services defined by a template that is available to a certain customer for a limited period of time. Serving Customers The typical workflow of serving hosting customers in PPA is as follows: 1. You create a shared hosting template in the Administration Panel. 2. When a customer is ready to subscribe to the template, you create the account and subscription for the customer. 3. PPA grants the customer permissions to log in and use services provided with the subscription. For the detailed instructions on each of these steps, refer to the section Serving Customers (on page 45). Serving Resellers Reseller templates allow you to sell your services to a special category of customers - resellers. Resellers are people who sell hosting accounts on your servers to others. From a business perspective, resellers are similar to hosting providers: they have access to the Administration Panel, their own online stores, and customer management tools. The difference is that resellers do not have their own hosting servers. Learn how to start serving resellers in the section Employing Resellers (on page 51). Business Automation with a Billing Solution Organizing your offerings into templates is only one step to get your business ready to run. Before you can start serving customers, you should also think about how potential customers will find your offerings, how you will subscribe new customers and take payments, and other aspects of your business. To let you start your business easier, we recommend that you use one of the supported billing automation solutions:

44 44 Customers and Resellers Parallels Business Automation Standard. Web Host Manager Complete Solution (WHMCS). Any homegrown billing system integrated with PPA by means of API. This will allow you to completely automate all aspects of your business. Note that if you decide to choose one of these products as your billing solution, the workflow will change. In general, it will be as follows: 1. You create a service template in the Administration Panel and a corresponding plan in the billing solution. 2. A customer subscribes to the plan through an online store provided by the billing solution. At this step, the solution creates a new customer account and subscription. 3. The billing solution propagates the customer account to the Administration Panel. 4. When the customer pays for the subscription, the billing solution propagates customer's subscription to the Administration Panel. 5. The Administration Panel allocates the subscription and grants the customer permissions to log in to the Hosting Panel and use services provided with the subscription. In this chapter: Serving Customers Creating Custom Service Offers Employing Resellers... 51

45 Customers and Resellers 45 Serving Customers According to the chapter Customer and Resellers (on page 43), to start serving a customer through the Administration Panel you should follow the typical workflow. Let us look at the workflow in more details: 1. Create a shared hosting template (on page 47). During the template creation, you will be prompted to specify a number of template properties like the services and resources provided with the template, configuration of these services, and so on. One of the key steps when creating a template is to define which nodes will be used for allocation of the template subscriptions. This is done by means of attributes. Learn more about them later in this section. 2. Create a customer account (on page 48). Each customer can have an arbitrary number of subscriptions: Skip this step if you want to create an additional subscription for an existing customer. Once the account is created, you can perform a number of operations with it: edit account properties (like account administrator credentials, contact information, and other), suspend the account, remove it, and so on. Learn more in the section Managing Customer Accounts (on page 73). 3. Create a customer subscription associated with the template (on page 48). As well as with customer accounts, you can edit subscription properties, suspend or remove the subscription, and so on. In addition, you are able to associate the subscription with another service template. Learn more in the section Managing Subscriptions (on page 64). Subscriptions are synced with their templates. Learn more about the relationship between templates and subscriptions next in this section. The Default Domain of a Subscription A customer subscription is always linked to a domain, called the default domain - a domain created along with the subscription, which is necessary for allocating system resources. This name is specified when creating a subscription. Relationship Between Templates and Subscriptions Subscriptions associated with a particular template are synced with it: Any changes made to the template can be applied to all its subscriptions. Besides, you can always customize a certain subscription: add more resources like diskspace or number of domains, give a customer more privileges comparing to the ones provided by the template, and so on. Note that the Administration Panel does not track such customized subscriptions: They always stay synced with their template. This means that when you change the properties of the template and apply them to subscriptions, the customized subscription will be affected as well. You can work around this limitation by applying template changes individually to each subscription excluding the customized ones. Learn how to do this in the section Managing Subscriptions (on page 64).

46 46 Customers and Resellers Attributes: How PPA Provisions Customer Subscriptions When you register service nodes in PPA, you distinguish them by their roles. Typically, your infrastructure contains a number of nodes which provide web hosting services, a number of mail server nodes, nodes with some mixed role, and so on. When a subscription is created, PPA picks up the most suitable service node and allocates the resources into a newly created hosting account. The central issue of such automatic provisioning is how to let PPA know on which node to provision a certain subscription resource. PPA uses the provisioning attributes for that purpose. Attribute is a tag that links a template and nodes on which the services included into the template can be set up. When a customer subscribes to the template, PPA chooses one of the nodes for allocating the subscription resources by matching the attributes of a node and the template. Next in this section: Creating Shared Hosting Templates Creating Customer Accounts Subscribing Customers to Services... 48

47 Customers and Resellers 47 Creating Shared Hosting Templates To create a shared hosting template, run the wizard Products > Service Templates > Add Shared Hosting Template in the Administration Panel. During the template creation, you will be prompted to specify a number of parameters: Provided services. The shared hosting template may include the Apache- or IIS-based web hosting service and Postfix-based mail service. IP address type. The service template can provide IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. IP addresses may be granted as either dedicated, meaning that the target subscriber becomes the only owner of this address, or shared, meaning that this address is shared among many subscribers. Note that in order to provide dedicated IP addresses, you must configure IP pools as described in Configuring IP Pools (on page 13). Attributes. As described in the section Serving Customers (on page 45), an attribute is a tag that links a template and nodes on which the services included into the template can be set up. Thus, you should choose at least one attribute that is also assigned to the nodes which you want to use for allocating subscriptions. Other template settings. The template parameters also include: resource limits (diskspace, traffic, number of domains, and other), customer permissions (ability to change PHP settings, access through SSH, and other), service settings (for example, if the template provides a web hosting service, this may be the support for various scripting languages, the PHP handler type, and other). Important: IIS web server nodes do not provide the support for the following components out of the box: - Coldfusion scripting language. - MIVA scripting language. - ASP.NET framework. - Microsoft FrontPage. Apache web server nodes do not provide the support for the following components out of the box: - Coldfusion scripting language. Therefore, before including the support for these components in service templates, install them manually on those nodes that you want to use for template subscriptions.

48 48 Customers and Resellers Creating Customer Accounts To create a customer account, run the wizard Operations > Customers > Add New Customer in the Administration Panel. During the customer account creation, you will be prompted to specify a number of parameters: Contact information. These are company name, address, and other information. In addition, you should specify administrative, billing, and technical contacts. The two latter contacts are optional. Account administrator information. An account administrator is the company representative who has the administrative privileges to a customer account: They are able to log in to the Hosting Panel and perform hosting management (create websites and mailboxes, manage website content, install web apps, and so on). Learn more about access to PPA in the section User Access to <PPA_ name> (on page 56). You should provide PPA with the account administrator credentials (username and password) and their contact information (typically, the account administrator and the administrative contact are the same persons). Subscribing Customers to Services To subscribe a customer to a service template, run the wizard Operations > Subscriptions > Create New Subscription in the Administration Panel. During the subscription creation, you will be prompted to specify a customer (subscription owner) and a template. Though the resources provided with the subscription are defined by the template, you can customize them (for example, add more diskspace, provide a dedicated IP address instead of the shared one, and so on). Learn more about the relationship between subscriptions and templates in the section Serving Customers (on page 45). Once you complete the wizard, PPA will start the provisioning task - the allocation of subscription resources on service nodes. In case of any issues, you can check task details in System > Task Manager > Task Log.

49 Customers and Resellers 49 Creating Custom Service Offers The default PPA service templates (shared hosting and reseller templates) provide a predefined set of services. Thus, a shared hosting template always includes a web hosting or mail service, an IP address, the DNS service, and so on. This section contains information on how to create custom service offerings - custom templates, which can provide a non-standard set of services. For example, you can create a custom service template that provides DNS services only. You can use such a template for offering the domain parking service. For the better understanding of how to work with custom templates, we recommend that you acquaint with the PPA concepts underlying service templates. They are described in this section. Service Templates and Resource Types The set of services that you can offer within a service template is defined by resources (called resource types) registered in the system. See the diagram for convenience. When talking about resources, we actually mean system resources and services a customer can use: disk space, traffic, the DNS service, and so on. For example, every customer should have an IP address for accessing their websites, therefore, they should be provided with the IP Address resource. Resource type properties allow you to set the limit for a resource or specify the configuration of a certain service provided by the template. Thus, for the IP Address resource you can specify the address type: IPv4 or IPv6, shared or dedicated.

50 50 Customers and Resellers The set of resource types included in default templates is defined by PPA. Thus, a reseller template always includes Apache or IIS Webspace, Client Accounts, Diskspace and some other resource types. As opposed to the default templates, the set of resource types of custom templates is defined by you. Thus, in the example with the domain parking service, you should create a custom template which contains the DNS and Subscription resource types only. The full list of resource types used for shared hosting is provided in Appendix. Resource Types (on page 106). There you can also find the list of resource types included in the default service templates. Resource Type Parameters Resource parameters that you define when creating a shared hosting or reseller template are actually the parameters of the resource types included in this template. For example, when you set the Domains parameter for a template, PPA actually sets this value to the Number of Domains limit of the Subscription resource type included into the template. Moreover, provisioning attributes that you assign to a template are, in fact, assigned to certain resource types. Resource type parameters can be divided into: Resource limits. For example, the hard disk quota or connections limit of the Apache Webspace resource type. Activation parameters (resource configuration). For example, the PHP handler type or the permission to create domains of the Apache Webspace resource type. Provisioning Attributes. Used to define a proper service node for allocating a resource. Learn more about attributes in the section Serving Customers (on page 45). Creating Custom Service Templates To create a custom service template, run the wizard Products > Service Templates > Custom Template in the Administration Panel. While creating the template, you will be prompted to enter a number of template parameters: The template Name and the Autoprovisioning parameters. The Autoprovisioning parameter defines whether the subscriptions to this template should be provisioned to service nodes. For example, this is actual for distinguishing customer and reseller templates. As a reseller subscription is just a declaration of what system resources a reseller can offer to their customers, reseller templates should have Autoprovisioning switched off. Customer subscriptions require the allocation of resources on service nodes, therefore templates for hosting customers should have Autoprovisioning switched on. The list of resources a template should provide. For the detailed descriptions of resource types, refer to Appendix. Resource Types (on page 106). Limits for the resource types included into the template.

51 Customers and Resellers 51 Note that while creating a template, you are unable to define resource configuration parameters and provisioning attributes. These settings will be available only after you finish creating the template. To perform the resource type configuration, open the template in Products > Service Templates, select the desired resource type on the Resources tab, and adjust its advanced properties on the Activation Parameters tab. To set attributes for a resource type, open the template in Products > Service Templates, select the desired resource type on the Resources tab, and assign attributes on the Provisioning Attributes tab. Learn more about editing service templates in the section Managing Service Templates (on page 62). Employing Resellers From the perspective of a hosting provider, resellers combine features of customers and PPA administrators. On one hand, templates and subscriptions of resellers work almost in the same way as they do for the customers. The differences are as follows: In such a case, we are talking about reseller templates and reseller subscriptions. A reseller subscription is just a declaration of what system resources a reseller can offer to their customers. Therefore, reseller subscriptions are not provisioned to service nodes (the Autoprovisioning property of reseller templates is set to No). A reseller subscription does not have the default domain, a reseller subscription provides a set of resources and services that the subscribed reseller redistributes by the means of subscriptions belonging to their customers or to themselves. On the other hand, resellers offer the resources that they rent from you to other people using the administrator's workflow: They access the Administration Panel where they create their own service templates, customer accounts, and subscriptions. To start serving resellers in PPA, you should perform the following operations: 1. Create a reseller template (on page 53). During the template creation, you specify the resources which resellers are allowed to provide to their customers, maximum number of customer accounts, and so on. For the information on how to manage reseller templates, refer to the section Managing Service Templates (on page 62). 2. Create a reseller account (on page 54). Once the account is created, you can perform a number of operations with it: edit account properties (like account administrator credentials, contact information, and other), suspend the account, remove it, and so on. Learn more in the section Managing Reseller Accounts (on page 74). 3. Create a reseller subscription associated with the template (on page 54). As well as with customer subscriptions, you can edit subscription properties, suspend or remove the subscription, and so on. In addition, you are able to associate the subscription with another reseller template. Learn more in the section Managing Subscriptions (on page 64).

52 52 Customers and Resellers Branding Resellers' Domain Names Since your resellers run their own hosting business, they want to have branded domain names for their customers' access to PPA. This disguises the fact that the resellers offer somebody else's resources and profit from it. Learn how to configure resellers' access to the system with their own domains names in the Parallels Plesk Automation: Branding Guide. Next in this section: Creating Reseller Service Templates Creating Reseller Accounts Subscribing Resellers to Templates... 54

53 Customers and Resellers 53 Creating Reseller Service Templates To create a reseller service template, run the wizard Products > Service Templates > Custom Template in the Administration Panel. For more information about custom templates and their underlying objects, refer to the section Creating Custom Service Offers (on page 49). During the template creation, you will be prompted to specify a number of parameters: The template Name and the Autoprovisioning parameters. As a reseller subscription is just a declaration of what system resources a reseller can offer to their customers, reseller templates should have Autoprovisioning switched off. The list of resources a template should provide. Specify all resource types that you want resellers to be able to include into their own service templates. For example, if you do not add the Apache Webspace resource to the template, resellers (template subscribers) will not be able to provide Apache-based web hosting services to their customers. For the detailed descriptions of available resource types, refer to Appendix. Resource Types (on page 106). Limits for the resource types included into the template. Resource limits define the total amount of resources a reseller is able to provide. For example, if you assign the 100GB value to the Diskspace resource type, the reseller will not be able to provide more than 100GB of disk space to their customers. Note that while creating a template, you are unable to define resource configuration parameters and provisioning attributes. These settings will be available only after you finish creating the template. To perform the resource type configuration, open the template in Products > Service Templates, select the desired resource type on the Resources tab, and adjust its advanced properties on the Activation Parameters tab. To set attributes for a resource type, open the template in Products > Service Templates, select the desired resource type on the Resources tab, and assign attributes on the Provisioning Attributes tab. Learn more about editing service templates in the section Managing Service Templates (on page 62).

54 54 Customers and Resellers Creating Reseller Accounts To create a reseller account, run the wizard Operations > Resellers > Add New Reseller in the Administration Panel. During the reseller account creation, you will be prompted to specify a number of parameters: Contact information. These are company name, address, and other information. In addition, you should specify administrative, billing, and technical contacts. The two latter contacts are optional. Account administrator information. An account administrator is the company representative who have the administrative privileges to a reseller account: They are able to log in to the Administration Panel and perform administrative operations (create templates and customer accounts, subscribe customers to templates, and so on) as well as hosting management (create websites and mailboxes, manage website content, install web apps, and so on). Learn more about access to PPA in the section User Access to PPA (on page 56). You should provide PPA with the account administrator credentials (username and password) and their contact information (typically, the account administrator and the administrative contact are the same persons). Subscribing Resellers to Templates To subscribe a reseller to a reseller template, run the wizard Operations > Subscriptions > Create New Subscription in the Administration Panel. During the subscription creation, you will be prompted to specify a reseller (subscription owner) and a reseller template. Though the resources provided with the subscription are defined by the template, you can customize them (for example, add more diskspace, provide a dedicated IP address instead of the shared one, and so on). Learn more about the relationship between subscriptions and templates in the section Serving Customers (on page 45).

55 C H A P T E R 9 Administering PPA In this chapter: User Access to PPA Securing PPA Changing Administrator's Password Managing Service Templates Managing Subscriptions Assigning a Dedicated IP Address to a Subscription Moving Subscriptions Between Nodes Selecting a Node for a Subscription Managing Customer Accounts Managing Reseller Accounts Managing Staff Members Using Command-Line Utilities Changing Interface Language Adding Custom Links to the Hosting Panel System Monitoring Notifications Handling Events Troubleshooting PPA

56 56 Administering PPA User Access to PPA There are three main types of user accounts: Administrators Resellers Customers Depending on the tasks the users need to perform, they log in to different Panels: The Administration Panel The Hosting Panel Administrators and resellers log in to the Administration Panel for managing hosting infrastructure, service templates, and user accounts. They log in to the Hosting Panel for managing websites and services. Customers can access only the Hosting Panel. All users log in to PPA through the management node. Administrators and resellers are always taken to the Administration Panel. Customers are always taken to the Hosting Panel. The seamless transition among the Panels is organized by means of the Single Sign-on (SSO) mechanism. The operations that resellers and customers can perform in PPA are governed by the service plans (service templates) to which they are subscribed. Administrator accounts are not restricted in any way; there are no roles or permissions for these accounts. Viewing Accounts You can view a list of all user accounts in License & Security > Security Manager. The information about user logins to PPA and active user sessions is available in License & Security > Audit Manager. For more information, refer to the section Viewing Login History (on page 91). Staff Members in the Administration Panel For each user account in PPA, be it a reseller or a customer, at least one staff member account is created automatically. While user accounts store the basic information about users, staff members are system accounts that allow users to log in to PPA. Each user account can have a number of staff members, as shown on the chart below. You can also create staff member accounts for your own technical personnel: the users of these accounts will be able to perform administrative tasks in the Hosting Panel.

57 Administering PPA 57

58 58 Administering PPA Staff members in the Administration Panel correspond to the auxiliary users in the Hosting Panel. The operations that staff members can perform are governed by a system of user roles and privileges. For more information, refer to the section Managing Staff Members (on page 76). Auxiliary Users in the Hosting Panel Hosting customers, who collaborate on site maintenance with other people, can create auxiliary user accounts. Such accounts can access the Hosting Panel to perform various tasks, such as manage websites, install applications, and set up accounts. The exact list of operations these users are allowed to perform is governed by a system of user roles and privileges. You can learn more about this in the Parallels Plesk Panel: Administrator's Guide, section (Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts. Auxiliary users are also shown in License & Security > Security Manager. You (as the PPA administrator) can change their usernames and passwords, but cannot modify their roles. The latter can be done only in the Hosting Panel, on behalf of a certain customer. Securing PPA Next in this section: Protecting Access to PPA with SSL... 59

59 Administering PPA 59 Protecting Access to PPA with SSL To improve the security of your PPA instance, you can protect access to the Administration and Hosting Panels by Secure Sockets Layer-enabled hypertext transfer protocol. All data you exchange with the management node are encrypted, thus preventing interception of sensitive information. The SSL certificate used in the data encryption process is automatically generated and installed on the server during PPA installation. This is the so-called self-signed certificate: it is not signed by a recognized certification authority (CA), therefore, upon attempt to connect to the Administration or Hosting Panel, you and your customers will see warning messages in web browsers. To gain customer confidence, you should purchase an SSL certificate from a reputable certification authority, and install it to PPA. The certificate must be installed to a socalled "branding subscription" (or simply, brand). Brands are created by the PPA administrator or by resellers and, in general, are used to change the look of the PPA user interface. Learn more about brands in the Branding Guide. Protecting Access to PPA To protect access to PPA with an SSL certificate: 1. Log in to the Administration Panel. 2. Create a brand by running Marketing > Brands > Add New Brand.When creating the brand, specify the following parameters: Branded domain name - specify the domain name of your management node that your customers use to log in to PPA. Important: The purchased SSL certificate must be issued to the domain name of your PPA management node. Brand owner - select Administrator. 3. After the branding subscription is created, log in to it by clicking Configure near the created brand in Marketing > Brands. The Hosting Panel with your branding subscription will be opened. 4. Go to the Websites & Domains and click Secure Your Sites. 5. Upload the SSL certificate: Click Browse and select the saved certificate. 6. This will upload and install the certificate against the corresponding private key. 7. To install the certificate on a site, return to the Websites & Domains tab, and click on the domain name. 8. To switch on SSL protection, select the Enable SSL support checkbox. 9. From the SSL certificate menu, select your SSL certificate.

60 60 Administering PPA Tip: If you do not want to create a brand, you can install your SSL certificate in the following way: 1. Rename your.pem certificate file to httpsd.pem. 2. Replace the default httpsd.pem file in /usr/local/psa/admin/conf with your file. 3. Restart the internal PPA web server by running /etc/init.d/sw-cp-server restart. Protecting Access to a Branded Hosting Panel by a Reseller If you are a reseller, the process of protecting your branded Hosting Panel is quite the same. As PPA supports SNI, there is no need in assigning a dedicated IP address to a branding subscription to use an individual SSL certificate. After you receive an SSL certificate for your domain name, secure your branding domain with this certificate. To secure your branding domain with an SSL certificate: 1. Log in to the Administration Panel. 2. Log in to the branding subscription if it already exists in Marketing > Brands > Configure or create it. 3. Go to the Websites & Domains and select the branding domain. 4. Click Secure Your Sites. 5. Upload the SSL certificate: Click Browse and select the saved certificate. 6. This will upload and install the certificate against the corresponding private key. 7. To install the certificate on a site, return to the Websites & Domains tab, and click on the domain name. 8. To switch on SSL protection, select the Enable SSL support checkbox. 9. From the SSL certificate menu, select your SSL certificate.

61 Administering PPA 61 Changing Administrator's Password To get the current administrator's password: 1. Log in to your management node as root. 2. Run this utility: ppa.admin_passwd -g To set a new administrator's password through the CLI: 1. Log in to your management node as root. 2. Run this utility: ppa.admin_passwd -s <password> where <password> is your new administrator's password. To set a new administrator's password through the Plesk Automation UI: 1. Log in to the Administration Panel. 2. Change the password on the Personal Info > Login and Password page.

62 62 Administering PPA Managing Service Templates This section describes the operations on service templates that you can perform in the Administration Panel. Copying Existing Templates This is useful when you want to create a new service template similar to an existing one, but with certain minor changes. A template copy will have all the same properties as the original, except that it will be made inactive (or deactivated), and its name will be set to Copy of ServiceTemplate #<ID of the original service template>. To make a copy of a template: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template > Create a Copy. Editing Service Templates To change the properties of a service template: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template > Edit. To change the resource allotments: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template > Resources tab > Edit. To change activation parameters of resource types included into a service template: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template > Parameters tab > Edit. To apply these changes to all existing subscriptions, click the Apply Template Limits and Parameters button. Note that PPA will update properties of all template subscriptions. Therefore, if you have subscriptions that were customized comparing with their template and you do not want to apply template changes to them, apply the changes individually to each subscription excluding the customized ones. Learn how to do this in the section Managing Subscriptions (on page 64). Caution: If you remove a resource type from a service template, it will be immediately removed from all template subscriptions (you do not even have to click the Apply Template Limits and Parameters button). Subscribing Users to Templates For details, refer to Setting Up Your Business Offer (on page 43). To subscribe users to a service template: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template > Subscriptions tab > Create New Subscription.

63 Administering PPA 63 Deactivating and Activating Templates Deactivating a template removes it from the list of templates available for selection when subscribing users. This does not affect existing subscriptions to this template in any way. To deactivate or activate a template: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template, and click Deactivate or Activate respectively. Removing Service Templates You can remove only the templates to which no users are subscribed. To remove a service template: Go to Products > Service Templates > select a template > Delete.

64 64 Administering PPA Managing Subscriptions To perform any operation on a certain subscription, you should first select the subscription in Operations > Subscriptions. Changing a Subscription's Name By default, when you create a subscription, it gets the name of the default domain (first domain created within the subscription). To change a name of the subscription, click the Edit button on the General tab and specify a new name. Customizing Subscription Settings You can change the limits of subscription resources (diskspace, traffic, number of domains, and so on) and service settings (the PHP handler type, the support for scripting languages, and so on). Note that customized subscriptions remain synced with the service template. Learn more about the relationship between subscriptions and templates in the section Serving Customers (on page 45). To customize settings of the subscription, click the Edit button on the Resources tab and specify new parameter values. Updating Subscription Settings According with an Associated Template The changes made to a certain service template affect all template subscriptions including the customized ones. To avoid this limitation, apply template changes individually to each subscription. To apply changes of template settings to the subscription, click the Change service template button on the General tab and specify the same template that is already used for this subscription. Associating a Subscription with Another Template When you associate a subscription with another template, the subscription gets all its properties and becomes synced with it. To associate the subscription with another template, click the Change Service Template button on the General tab and specify a new template.

65 Administering PPA 65 Suspending / Activating a Subscription Websites, FTP and mail services of suspended subscriptions are not accessible to the Internet users. Note that a customer (subscription owner) is still able to log in to the Hosting Panel. Suspending a subscription is useful in cases the subscription expiration date comes or a website hosted within the subscription gets attacked. To suspend the subscription, click the Disable button on the General tab. To activate the suspended subscription, click the Enable button on the General tab. Once a subscription is activated, all the services provided with it start working properly. Removing a Subscription To remove the subscription, click the Delete button on the General tab. Assigning a Dedicated IP Address to a Subscription To be able to assign dedicated IP addresses to subscriptions, you must have at least one IP pool configured in the system. An IP pool is a set of IP addresses that you pass down to resellers and customers or utilize within your own servers or services. IP addresses from the pool, being assigned to a certain service node, are granted to subscriptions as dedicated or shared. Learn how to configure IP pools in Configuring IP Pools (on page 13). The type of an IP address for a subscription is completely defined by the subscription's service template. More specifically, it is defined by the IP addresses (for IPv4) and IPv6 addresses (for IPv6) resource types included into the template. It is not possible to change the type of an IP address for an existing subscription. The only way to assign a dedicated IP address to a subscription is to create a subscription to a service template which provides dedicated addresses. If you create a new service template, the type of provided IP addresses is specified during one of the creation steps (learn more in Creating Shared Hosting Templates (on page 47)). If you want an existing service template to provide dedicated IP addresses, follow the instructions below. To set up an existing service template to provide dedicated IP addresses: 1. Open the service template's resources for editing by running Products > Service Templates > (select the template) > Resources > Edit. 2. Change the value of the IP addresses (for IPv4) or IPv6 addresses (for IPv6) resource to 1. A 0 value indicates a shared address.

66 66 Administering PPA Moving Subscriptions Between Nodes Sometimes, it may be required to transfer a certain subscription from one service node to another. There are two main cases when such a transfer may be needed: Upgrading or replacing a hardware server that is a part of your PPA infrastructure. Decreasing the load on the service node. What Can Be Transferred Currently, the following subscription services can be transferred: Apache-based web hosting service. MySQL-based database service. For example, if a shared hosting subscription with Apache-based hosting and MySQL services is located on a single node, it can be transferred to another node with the same mixed role or to two separate nodes providing Apache-based hosting and MySQL database services correspondingly. Known Issues and Limitations The transfer is possible for subscriptions on IPv4 addresses only. IDN domains are not transferred. Tomcat applications are not transferred. How to Transfer Subscriptions Next in this section, you will find the detailed step-by-step instructions on how to transfer a subscription from one service node to another. Next in this section: 1. Install the PPA Moving Tools Configure the Tool Create a Transfer List Run the Transfer... 70

67 Administering PPA Install the PPA Moving Tools The transfer of subscriptions is performed by the special ppa-move-subscriptions tool which is a part of the PPA moving tools bundle. We strongly recommend that you install the tools to the management node. All further instructions in this guide are given for the tools located on the management node. Nevertheless, if needed, you may run the tools on any server in your network that meets the following requirements: CentOS 5.x/6.x or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x/6.x is installed on the server. The server has the connection to your hosting servers and the PPA management node. To install the tools on a server: 1. Log in to your server as root. 2. Download the installation script: wget 3. Make installer.sh executable: chmod +x installer.sh 4. Install the tools by running the script:./installer.sh After you complete this step, the tools will be ready for operation. If you already installed the tools and only want to update them to the latest available version, follow the instruction below. To update the tools to the latest version: 1. Log in to your server as root. 2. Update the tools:./installer.sh --upgrade

68 68 Administering PPA 2. Configure the Tool Since the ppa-move-subscriptions tool communicates with the management node, you should provide it with the server's IP address, administrator's credentials, and some other information. The tool is configured with the help of the config.ini file, which is not created by default. For your convenience, the directory /etc/ppamigrator/ contains the config.ini.move-subscriptions.template template files which you can use as a basis for creating your own config.ini. To configure the tool: 1. Create a config.ini file based on the template. For example: cp /etc/ppa-migrator/config.ini.move-subscriptions.template config.ini 2. Edit the config.ini file to configure the tool. An example of the file is provided below. An Example of the Configuration File [GLOBAL] # A directory for storing temporary files session-dir: migration-session [ppa] # An IP address of the PPA management node ip: # PPA administrator credentials panel-username: admin panel-password: setup # root system user credentials (on the PPA management node) ssh-username: root # There are two auth types: 'password' or 'key' # if you select the former, specify password in 'ssh-password' parameter # if you select the latter, either # - specify a file with an SSH private key in 'ssh-key' parameter # - do not specify anything to use "id_rsa" or "id_dsa" keys from ~/.ssh ssh-auth-type: password ssh-password:

69 Administering PPA Create a Transfer List A transfer list defines the list of subscriptions that should be transferred from source service nodes. The transfer list is an XML file that you should save as movelist.xml in the session directory you have specified in config.ini. Therefore, in our example, the path to the file will be: migration-session/move-list.xml. Transfer List Structure An example of the transfer list file is given below. <?xml version="1.0"?> <move> <domain name="a.tld"> <web> </web> <db-mysql> </db-mysql> </domain> <domain name="b.tld"> <web> </web> <db-mysql> </db-mysql> </domain> <domain name="c.tld"> <db-mysql> </db-mysql> </domain> </move> Here domain name - stands for the subscription you want to transfer. This is the subscription's default domain name (the first domain in the subscription). Note that regardless of the fact you specify here only one domain name, the tool will transfer all domains created within the subscription. web - an IP address of the destination service node which should provide Apachebased web hosting services. db-mysql - an IP address of the destination service node which should provide MySQL-based database services. You are allowed to transfer subscriptions partially: In the example above, the tool will transfer only databases from the c.tld subscription. Web hosting services will remain intact.

70 70 Administering PPA 4. Run the Transfer Once all preparation steps are done, you can run the transfer process. Important: Please make sure that nobody accesses subscriptions from the Hosting Panel during the transfer. 1. Copy subscriptions' hosting settings: ppa-move-subscriptions copy-hosting config.ini The tool performs the transfer of all hosting data (system users, cron jobs, web content, and so on) to certain service nodes. 2. Configure Apache on service nodes: ppa-move-subscriptions configure-apache-on-target config.ini 3. Check that the transfer was completed successfully: All subscriptions were provisioned to certain nodes and all websites are accessible. To perform such a check, add domain names of the transferred sites and IP addresses of the destination nodes to /etc/hosts. 4. Update subscriptions' IP addresses with the new ones: ppa-move-subscriptions change-subscription-ip config.ini 5. Transfer APS applications. ppa-move-subscriptions move-aps-applications config.ini 6. Update DNS records for the transferred domains: ppa-move-subscriptions reconfigure-dns config.ini 7. Ensure that DNS propagation has ended. This means that you should wait for the period of time which is equal to the sum of TTL and SOA refresh interval. After this you can delete the records you put to /etc/hosts and try to access transferred websites one more time. 8. If subscriptions were transferred successfully, you can remove all data from the source nodes: ppa-move-subscriptions remove-from-source config.ini Note that this operation is irreversible.

71 Administering PPA 71 Selecting a Node for a Subscription When a customer subscribes to a plan, PPA picks up the suitable service node and allocates the resources into a newly created hosting account. The main issue for such automatic provisioning is how to let the system know on what node to provision a certain subscription resource. PPA uses the provisioning attributes for that purpose. A provisioning attribute is a tag that links a hosting plan and nodes which can provide plan services. When a customer subscribes to the plan, PPA matches the attributes assigned to plan services with the attributes of registered nodes. Once the node with the same attribute is found, PPA allocates customer's subscription on that node. PPA has a set of default provisioning attributes. When you add a service node to the system, PPA automatically assigns one of the default attributes to that node. For example, if you add the Apache web server node, PPA assigns the Apache attribute to it. Therefore, typically, you can use PPA without any additional configuration of hosting provisioning - it works out of the box. Nevertheless, if for some reason you want to use your own attributes instead of the default ones, follow the instructions below to configure automatic hosting provisioning. Next in this section: Configuring Automatic Node Selection Forcing PPA to Provision Web Hosting and Database Services to the Same Node 72 Configuring Automatic Node Selection To configure automatic node selection for a certain service: 1. Assign the attribute to a desired node in Infrastructure > Service Nodes > select a node > General > Attributes. You can use one of the predefined attributes or create your own in Products > Attributes. 2. Assign the same attribute to a service you provide with a certain plan (service template) in Products > Service Templates > select a template > Resources > select a resource > Provisioning Attributes. Learn more about service templates and resources in the Operations Guide, chapter Setting Up Your Business Offer.

72 72 Administering PPA Forcing PPA to Provision Web Hosting and Database Services to the Same Node Sometimes, if a customer subscription contains both web hosting (for example, Apache) and database (for example, MySQL) services, it may be necessary to locate these services strictly on one service node with a mixed role (web and database server). For example, your environment contains two servers: one providing the MySQL service and one providing both Apache and MySQL services. When PPA starts provisioning a subscription that contains both Apache (with the Apache attribute) and MySQL (with the MySQL attribute) services, it acts in the following way: 1. PPA searches for the node with the Apache attribute and provisions the corresponding service. 2. PPA searches for the node with the MySQL attribute and provisions the service. On this step, PPA may select any node in the system that has the MySQL attribute. In our example, we have two such nodes. This means that the MySQL service may be provisioned on any of these nodes. If for some reason you want the services to be located on the same node, you can force PPA to do this by using the special WebHost attribute. This attribute (assigned to a database service) is simply a tag for PPA that forces the latter to provision the database service on the same node with the web hosting service instead of searching for a separate node. To force Plesk Automation to provision web hosting and database services on the same node (for new service templates): 1. Start creating a service template using the Products > Service Templates > Add Shared Hosting Template wizard. 2. Specify services that should be provided with the template (including web hosting and database hosting service) and click Next. 3. In the Attributes group, select the WebHost attribute. 4. Finish creating the template. To force Plesk Automation to provision web hosting and database services on the same node (for existing service templates): 1. Open the appropriate service template in Products > Service Templates. 2. On the Resources tab, remove the desired MySQL / PostgreSQL / Microsoft SQL database resource type. On the Resources tab, add the MySQL / PostgreSQL / Microsoft SQL database at web server resource type to the template. These types already have the WebHost attribute assigned.

73 Administering PPA 73 Managing Customer Accounts PPA allows you to perform a number of operations on customer accounts described in this section. Creating Customer Accounts For details on how to create customers, refer to the section Creating Customer Accounts (on page 48). Changing Contact Information You can do this at Operations > Customers > select a customer > Summary tab > Edit Contacts. Changing a Customer's Password to the Hosting Panel You can do this at Operations > Customers > select a customer > General tab > Staff members > select a user > General tab > Edit. Note: PPA does not automatically notify users when their username or password is changed. You should notify your users of the new account credentials. This is especially important because users who need to retrieve their passwords specify their usernames and addresses. If you do not notify users, they will not be able to use PPA. Suspending Customer Accounts Access to PPA is blocked for suspended customers and auxiliary users that they created. The subscriptions of suspended customers are suspended too, meaning that their websites, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to Internet users. You can suspend a customer account at Operations > Customers > select a customer > Disable account. Activating Customer Accounts Once an account is activated, all its subscriptions are activated too, and all the services start working properly. You can activate a customer account at Operations > Customers > select a customer > Enable account.

74 74 Administering PPA Removing Customer Accounts Once a customer account is removed, all subscriptions and websites of the reseller and their customers are removed as well. You can do this at Operations > Customers > Delete. Managing Reseller Accounts You can perform the following operations on reseller accounts described in this section. Creating Reseller Accounts For details on how to create resellers, refer to the section Creating Reseller Accounts (on page 54). Changing Contact Information You can do this at Operations > Resellers > select a reseller > Summary tab > Edit Contacts. Changing a Reseller's Password You can do this at Operations > Resellers > select a reseller > General tab > Staff members > select a user > General tab > Edit. Note: PPA does not automatically notify users when their username or password is changed. You should notify your users of the new account credentials. This is especially important because users who need to retrieve their passwords specify their usernames and addresses. If you do not notify users, they will not be able to use PPA. Suspending Reseller Accounts Access to PPA is blocked for suspended resellers and their customers. The subscriptions of suspended reseller accounts and their customers are suspended too, meaning that their websites, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to Internet users. You can do this at Operations > Resellers > select a reseller > Disable account.

75 Administering PPA 75 Activating Reseller Accounts Once a reseller account is activated, all its subscriptions are activated too, and all the services start working properly. You can do this at Operations > Resellers > select a reseller > Enable account. Removing Reseller Accounts Once a reseller account is removed, all subscriptions and websites of the reseller and their customers are removed as well. You can do this at Operations > Resellers > Delete.

76 76 Administering PPA Managing Staff Members This section describes the operations on staff member accounts that you can perform in PPA. Creating Staff Member Accounts for Your Own Needs 1. Run the wizard in License & Security > Security Manager > Staff Members > Add New Staff Member. 2. Specify a username, a password, and contact information. 3. Click Submit. By default, your staff members are not granted any permissions. To grant the necessary permissions for operations, do the following: 1. Go to License & Security > Security Manager > Staff Members > staff member's name > Hosting Roles tab. 2. Click Add. 3. Select a checkbox corresponding to a hosting role. The Account Administrator role grants all possible permissions. If you want to review and adjust a list of granted permissions for a role, click the role name > Privileges tab > Edit. 4. Click Submit. Creating Staff Member Accounts for Resellers 1. Run the wizard Operations > Resellers > reseller's company name > General tab > Staff Members > Add New Staff Member in the Administration Panel. 2. Specify a username, a password, and contact information. 3. Click Submit. By default, a reseller's staff member is not granted any permissions. To grant the necessary permissions for operations, do the following: 1. Go to Operations > Resellers > reseller's company name > General tab > Staff Members > staff member name > Hosting Roles tab. 2. Click Add. 3. Select a checkbox corresponding to a hosting role. The Account Administrator role grants all possible permissions. If you want to review and adjust a list of granted permissions for a role, click the role name > Privileges tab > Edit.

77 Administering PPA Click Submit. Creating Staff Member Accounts for Customers To create a staff member account for a customer: 1. Run the wizard Operations > Customers > customer's company name > General tab > Staff Members > Add New Staff Member in the Administration Panel. 2. Select the subscription for which the staff member must be created. Click Next. 3. Specify a username, password, contact information. Click Next. 4. Specify whether you want to restrict management of subscriptions. Click Next. 5. If you have chosen to restrict access to certain subscriptions, select the checkboxes corresponding to the subscriptions that the user is allowed to manage, and click Next. 6. Click Finish. By default, a customer's staff member is not granted any permissions. To grant the necessary permissions for operations, do the following: 1. Go to Operations > Customers > customer's company name > General tab > Staff Members > staff member name > Hosting Roles tab. 2. Click Add. 3. Select a checkbox corresponding to a hosting role. The Account Administrator role grants all possible permissions. If you want to review and adjust a list of granted permissions for a role, click the role name > Privileges tab > Edit. 4. Click Submit. Changing Contact Information To change the contact information of a reseller's staff member, go to Operations > Resellers > reseller's company name > General tab > Staff Members > staff member name > Contacts tab > Edit. To change the contact information of a customer's staff member, go to Operations > Customers > customer's company name > General tab > Staff Members > staff member name > Contacts tab > Edit.

78 78 Administering PPA Changing a User's Password to the Hosting Panel To change the password of a reseller's staff member, go to Operations > Resellers > reseller's company name > General tab > Staff Members > staff member name > Edit. To change the password of a customer's staff member, go to Operations > Customers > customer's company name > General tab > Staff Members > staff member name > Edit. Note: PPA does not automatically notify users when their username or password is changed. You should notify your users of the new account credentials. This is especially important because users who need to retrieve their passwords specify their usernames and addresses. If you do not notify users, they will not be able to use PPA. Removing Staff Member Accounts To remove a reseller's staff member, go to Operations > Resellers > reseller's company name > General tab > Staff Members, select the checkbox corresponding to the staff member's name, and click Delete. To remove a customer's staff member, go to Operations > Customers > customer's company name > General tab > Staff Members, select the checkbox corresponding to the staff member's name, and click Delete. Using Command-Line Utilities You can run Plesk Automation command-line utilities using only one universal utility called ppa. It can be run from any directory on the management node. To run a command line utility: 1. Log in to the management node as root. 2. Run the desired utility: ppa.<utility name> [parameters] [options] For example, to get help for the sn_test utility, you can call ppa.sn_test --help instead of specifying the full path to the utility: /usr/local/ppa/bin/sn_test -- help. The List of PPA Command-Line Utilities Name admin_passwd agent_certmng Description Sets and gets administrator's password Creates and installs SSL certificates

79 Administering PPA 79 apache_restart_inte rval apsmail billing sn_test dns_restart_interva l log_converter logs_collector hostname ip_address update services session_timeout firewall sn_list performance_setting s Sets Apache restart interval Manages APS connector packages used for connecting external mail servers Turns on/off the Billing Panel Checks service nodes for compatibility with Plesk Automation Sets DNS restart interval Converts poa.log to the human-readable format Collect logs from all service nodes Properly sets the host name of the management node Properly sets the IP address of the management node Updates or upgrades Plesk Automation to the latest version Checks the status of services on service nodes Sets the session timeout for the Plesk Automation UI Manages firewall rules Displays the state of service nodes Sets performance settings

80 80 Administering PPA Changing Interface Language The UI language in PPA is managed separately for the Administration and Hosting Panels on the Administration Panel and Hosting Panel tabs at the System > Settings > Internationalization & Localization. The Language of the Administration Panel Note: As hosting customers have access only to the Hosting Panel, changing the language of the Administration Panel for customers' staff members will not affect them in any way. The Administration Panel language is specified during PPA installation. PPA comes with support for 10 languages for the Administration Panel. The default language is English. If you want to add support of a language that is not supported by default, refer to the section Adding and Customizing Administration Panel Locales (on page 82). After the installation, you can set any of 10 languages as default for your resellers with the Make Default for My Resellers button at the System > Settings > Internationalization & Localization > Administration Panel tab. PPA will set the selected default language for all newly created reseller accounts and their staff members. Changing the default language will not affect already created accounts. In addition, you (as the PPA administrator) can change the Administration Panel language individually for any staff member in the system. Resellers can change the language only for staff members they own. To change the Administration Panel language for a certain staff member: 1. Go to License & Security > Security Manager. 2. Select the staff member and change their language on the Regional Settings tab. To change the language for the PPA administrator, choose the one you need at the Personal Info > Regional Settings > Language tab. The Language of the Hosting Panel The list of languages available for the Hosting Panel is defined by your PPA main license key. You can set any of the available languages as default for all Hosting Panel users (staff members) with the Make Default button at the System > Settings > Internationalization & Localization > Hosting Panel tab. PPA will set the selected default language for all staff members including the existing ones (regardless of whether they are owned by a reseller or a customer or the PPA administrator).

81 Administering PPA 81 Additionally, if the the Hosting Panel does not support the locale you need by default, you can create this locale by yourself or with the help of a third party. To learn how to create a new locale for the Hosting Panel, refer to the Guide to Localizing Parallels Plesk Panel. There is no direct way to change the language of the Hosting Panel for a certain staff member. You only can enable or disable certain languages on the System > Settings > Internationalization & Localization > Hosting Panel tab. If a language is enabled, staff members can select it for their UI in the Hosting Panel > Account tab > My Profile > Panel language. Next in this section: Adding and Customizing Administration Panel Locales... 82

82 82 Administering PPA Adding and Customizing Administration Panel Locales If the locale you need is not supported by the Administration Panel by default, you can prepare and add this locale by yourself. Additionally, you can customize certain messages of existing locales, for example, if you want page descriptions to provide more information or want to rename a parameter. To add a new locale to the Administration Panel: 1. Contact Parallels to get access to the LION localization tool. You will receive instructions on translating the locale messages to the desired language. Then create the new locale files using this tool and download them. 2. Go to System > Settings > Internationalization & Localization > Administration Panel tab. 3. Click Add. 4. Enter the following information about the new locale: Language code - the official ISO code of the language name. You can provide the language code in the following formats: As an ISO two letter abbreviation, such as en for English, fr for French, and so on. The full list of such abbreviations is available at As a combination of the ISO language code and a two-letter ISO 3166 country code separated by an underscore, for example, en_us or fr_fr. The full list of ISO 3166 codes can be found at ames_and_code_elements.htm. Language name - enter the name of the language that will be displayed at the login screen. 5. Click the name of the new locale. 6. Go to the Customized Locale Files tab and click the Add button. 7. Upload the XML files of your locale: click Browse, locate a locale file and click Submit. Repeat this operation for all files. Note: When you add a new locale to the Administration Panel, be sure to create and add this locale to the Hosting Panel as well. For details on adding new locales to the Hosting Panel, refer to the Guide to Localizing Parallels Plesk Panel. To customize an existing locale of the Administration Panel: 1. Go to System > Settings > Internationalization & Localization > Administration Panel tab. 2. Click the name of the locale you want to customize.

83 Administering PPA Go to the Source Locale Files tab. 4. Download the file you wish to customize: To customize a file from a locale supplied by default, go to the Source Locale Files tab and click the Download link for the file you wish to customize. To customize a file from a custom locale that you added previously, go to the Customized Locale Files tab and click the Download link for the file you wish to customize. 5. Save the file in your local file system. 6. Find the text you want to change in the locale file and edit this text as you want. The structure of the locale entries in the XML file is as follows: <entry> <keyword>add_new_product.caption</keyword> <phrase>ajouter un nouveau produit</phrase> <comment></comment> </entry> To edit a locale entry, replace the value in the <phrase> field with the desired value. To add a new entry to the locale, add an entry unit in the same format in any part of the file, specify the locale key in the <keyword> field and the key value in the <phrase> field. 7. Remove all entries that you did not edit from the file. 8. Save the file. 9. Go to the Customized Locale Files tab on the locale management page. 10. Click Add, browse for the edited file and click Submit..

84 84 Administering PPA Adding Custom Links to the Hosting Panel You can add custom hyperlinks to the Hosting Panel for specific user accounts. The links, placed on the Home tab or on the Websites & Domains tab, may lead to web resources, such as your corporate site, or to a web application that can process online requests and accept additional information about the users who click these links. You can specify what information about users should be passed: Subscription ID. Primary domain name associated with a subscription. FTP account username and password. Customer's account ID, name, , and company name. To add a hyperlink to the Hosting Panel: 1. Log in to the Hosting Panel on behalf of the user account for which you want to add a link. 2. Go to the Account Tab > Additional Services, and click Add Link to Service. 3. Specify the following: Type the text that will show on your button in the Button label box. In the Location menu, select the location where you want to place the link: To place it on the Home tab, select the option Customer's Home page. To place it on the Websites and Domains tab, select the option Websites & Domains page of Subscription. Specify the priority of the button. Your custom buttons will be arranged in the Panel in accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number, the higher the priority. Buttons are placed in the left-to-right order. To use an image for a button background, type the path to its location or click Browse to browse for the desired file. It is recommended that you use a 16x16 pixels GIF or JPEG image for a button to be placed in the navigation pane, and 32x32 pixels GIF or JPEG image for buttons placed in the main frame or desktop. Type the hyperlink of your choice to be attached to the button into the URL box. Using the checkboxes, specify whether you want the customer information and other data to be transferred within the URL. These data can be used for processing by external web applications. In the Tooltip text input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed when you hover the mouse pointer over the button.

85 Administering PPA 85 Select the Open URL in Parallels Panel checkbox if you want the destination URL to be opened right on the Panel page, otherwise, leave this checkbox cleared to open the URL in a separate browser window or tab. If the URL leads to a Panel extension or web app, you can use the Do not use frames option to specify how the extension/app should be displayed on the Panel page: in a frame or as a part of the Panel GUI. The latter is recommended as the extension/app is seamlessly integrated into the Panel GUI. Note that the Do not use frames option is relevant only for the extensions/apps that support this feature. If an extension/app does not support the integration with the Panel GUI, it will be displayed in a frame regardless of the Do not use frames option. 4. Click Finish. To remove a hyperlink button from the Panel: 1. Go to the Account Tab > Additional Services. 2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the button that you want to remove and click Remove. System Monitoring PPA offers you a couple of handy tools to track the system state: background Task Manager and PPA components monitor. In addition, you can use a number of PPA log files to track its activity. Next in this section: Managing Background Tasks Monitoring PPA Tracking Resource Usage Forcing PPA to Collect Usage Statistics Viewing Login History... 91

86 86 Administering PPA Managing Background Tasks When you perform some operation in PPA (for example, add an account, back up system state, register a service node, and so on), it schedules a corresponding task for execution. Task execution process can have different statuses depending on execution stage and result. Task Manager provides you with the information on the status of each task - the log of a task; you can run or cancel scheduled tasks. Task Manager displays the data in a comprehensive manner, allowing you not only to be well informed on what is happening in the system, but also to manage the performance of system tasks. Next in this section: Managing Scheduled Tasks Viewing Processed Tasks Managing Periodic Tasks Configuring Task Manager... 88

87 Administering PPA 87 Managing Scheduled Tasks Scheduled task is a task that stands in a queue for execution. To view the scheduled tasks go to System > Task Manager > Background > Scheduled Tasks. Scheduled tasks are represented in the form of a list and have such parameters as: ID - unique task number Name - task name. It can contain operation details like host name or user ID. Start date - date and time the task was scheduled. Queue name - tasks group name. All tasks inside the group have the same queue name and are performed consecutively. The queue is formed when several tasks are purposed to fulfill a single job. For example, registering a service node presumes performing several consecutive operations: copy PPA tools to that node, install all required components, and so on. If one of the task in a row fails, all the subsequent tasks will not be performed and will have the scheduled state until you restart or cancel the failed task. Tasks having different queue names are performed independently. Subscription ID - unique number of subscription for which the task was ran. If the task does not have relation to a subscription, this position is blank. Status - task current state. Aside from the task dependencies in one queue, a single task can also depend on another queue. For example, after PPA scheduled provisioning of a subscription to a node, you set this node for deletion without waiting till PPA finishes the provisioning. In this case, the deletion won't start till the provisioning operation queue successfully finishes. If it fails, the dependent task (node deletion) is considered failed too. To see if a task or queue blocks the execution of the other tasks in the neighboring queues, click on its name in the tasks list. In case there are some dependent tasks, the Tasks this task depends on tab will be available. Clicking on it will show you the list of dependent tasks. The status of the task can be: Unprocessed - the task awaits its turn to be executed (marked white). Rescheduled - the task failed during the its execution and is enqueued again (marked yellow). Periodic tasks always have the rescheduled status. Running - the task is executing at the moment (marked green). Canceled - the task that was manually recalled from execution. Tasks in this status are moved under the Canceled Tasks subtab, to view canceled tasks select this subtab. Restarted - the task was interrupted (marked yellow). Failed - it is impossible to execute the task due to some reason, e.g. the lack of the necessary component (marked red with the white exclamation point). To search for tasks using additional filters, click Advanced Search. You can cancel any task and run tasks with the failed status.

88 88 Administering PPA Viewing Processed Tasks Processed tasks are tasks that were executed either with positive or negative result. To view the processed tasks, go to System > Task Manager > Background or Periodic tab > Task Log. This screen presents a sort of a history chart for all tasks executions and task execution attempts. Each attempt has its execution status. It can be successful, failed or deleted. You can see the status information (log of the task) by clicking on the name of the task. Managing Periodic Tasks There are some tasks in the Task Manager that are executed on a periodic basis. You are able to specify the execution period in the following way: 1. Go to System > Task Manager > Periodic. 2. In the Scheduled tasks tab, select the task you want to edit. 3. In the Task info area, you can see the task Name, ID, Description, Status and Start time. Here you can Run or Cancel the task by clicking on the respective buttons. 4. In the Periodic task properties, click on the Edit button. Specify the Period in seconds, days, weeks or months and its Start time. Click Submit to save your settings. In the Task log tab, you can view all executed events of the task, its start/finish time and the status. 5. In the Last task execution results area, you can see five last executed tasks, their start/finish time and the statuses. You can view the list of all execution events in the Task Log tab. Configuring Task Manager Task Manager settings allow you to define how long to keep cancelled tasks and task logs and set up the logs rotating period. To change the settings: 1. Open the Task log settings page at System > Task Manager > Settings. 2. To change the active settings, press Edit. At this page specify the new values: Keep canceled tasks for - enter the number of days to keep the canceled tasks. Keep background task logs for - enter the number of days to keep the task logs. Keep periodic task logs for - enter the number of days to keep the task logs. Cleanup outdated log records - select the period frequency (seconds, days, weeks, months) and the start time for the logs to be processed. When the rotating ends, all the logs that exceed the period defined in the Keep task logs for field are deleted.

89 Administering PPA 89 Monitoring PPA PPA allows you to track the state of service nodes, applications, and service controllers. PPA displays two states for each component: Current state (the actual state of a component) and Required state (the state a component is supposed to be in). This allows you to promptly detect problem components in your system. For example, halted service nodes and so on. Next in this section: Monitoring Service Nodes Monitoring Applications Monitoring Service Controllers Monitoring Service Nodes To track a state of service nodes registered in the system: 1. Open the System > Monitoring page. This page allows you to get information about a certain PPA component by using a number of search criteria: Component name: A hostname of the node. You can use the asterisk symbol (*) as a wildcard. Component type: Select Host. Current state: Specify a desired actual state of the node: Active, Inactive, Unknown, Restart pending, Restart scheduled, or Any. Required state: Specify a state the node is supposed to be in. 2. Click Next. 3. Click the appropriate host name to get more detailed information about it. The Summary tab displays information about the node host name, a node platform, owner, and its current state. The Dependent applications tab displays the list of applications that depend on or run on the node. To get the additional information about an application, click on its name. The Dependent service controllers tab displays the list of service controllers that depend on or run on the node.

90 90 Administering PPA Monitoring Applications PPA allows you to monitor what applications are installed or running at the moment in your system. To track a state of your applications: 1. Open the System > Monitoring page. This page allows you to get information about a certain PPA component by using a number of search criteria: Component name: An application name. You can use the asterisk symbol (*) as a wildcard. Component type: Select Application. Current state: Specify a desired actual state of the application: Active, Inactive, Unknown, Restart pending, Restart scheduled, or Any. Required state: Specify a state the application is supposed to be in. 2. Click Next. 3. Click the appropriate application name to get more details, such as dependent service node properties or the information about dependent service controllers. Monitoring Service Controllers PPA allows you to monitor what service controllers are installed or running at the moment in your system. To track a state of your service controllers: 1. Open the System > Monitoring page. This page allows you to get information about a certain PPA component by using a number of search criteria: Component name: A service controller name. You can use the asterisk symbol (*) as a wildcard. Component type: Select Service controller. Current state: Specify a desired actual state of the controller: Active, Inactive, Unknown, Restart pending, Restart scheduled, or Any. Required state: Specify a state the controller is supposed to be in. 2. Click Next. 3. Click the service controller name to get more details, such as dependent service node properties.

91 Administering PPA 91 Tracking Resource Usage The Resource Usage component keeps you notified about the system resources usage. The component available at Operations > Resource Usage contains the list of all resource types registered in the system with the amount of system resources allocated for a certain resource type instance. The list has the following columns: Column Name ID Resource Usage Limit Available Last update Description The unique system identifier of a certain resource. The resource name. Click on the name, to view the information on the owner account who currently uses the corresponding resource. The current resource usage. The quota on the consumption of the given resource that cannot be exceeded in any circumstances. The resource amount that is currently available for further use. The date and time of the last resource update. Forcing PPA to Collect Usage Statistics The resource usage statistics on service nodes are collected once a day by the special daily maintenance script. You can force Plesk Automation to get the statistics immediately by running the script manually. To force Plesk Automation to collect usage statistics: 1. Select the Schedule daily maintenance task in System > Task Manager > Periodic. 2. Click Run Task. After the task is finished, the resource usage statistics will be updated on all nodes. The updated statistics will be shown on the Home page in the customers' Hosting Panel. Viewing Login History The user login history is located at License & Security > Audit Manager. The list of successful user' login actions is displayed on the Users tab. The list of successful login actions performed by service users is displayed on the Service Users tab.

92 92 Administering PPA Notifications Notifications system in PPA allows to alert users when a certain event occurs in the system. Notifications for the administrator (on page 92) and customer and resellers (on page 94) are set up in different ways. Next in this section: Configuring Administrator Notifications Configuring Customer and Reseller Notifications Configuring Administrator Notifications You can configure notifications to alert you and other administrators (staff members) when particular events occur in PPA. For example, staff members can be notified of different events like completing the delayed and background processes (for example, service installation), events that happen with the system users (for example, creating or removing a user). Using Notification Manager, you can track a number of system processes like host rebooting, account adding and removing, new packages installations and other. Notification Manager can be useful in case you need to distribute particular system events notifications among staff members having different privileges and PPA management assignments. For example, if a staff member is in charge of host management, they can be subscribed only to the host event notifications. PPA can deliver notification messages in two ways: By or through the GUI. Note that messages for resellers' staff are sent from a reseller's address, not from the provider's one. You can customize the notification text according to user s localization, contact details or support information. Note: Using Notification Manager to notify also your customers and resellers is possible though not convenient. To notify your customers and resellers by about occurred events, follow the practices described in Configuring Customer and Reseller Notifications (on page 94). Next in this section: Subscribing to Notifications Customizing Notification Messages Viewing Notifications... 94

93 Administering PPA 93 Subscribing to Notifications To subscribe to notifications about certain events: 1. Go to System > Notification Manager > Notification Subscriptions. 2. Click the Add New Subscription button. Two kinds of messages delivering are offered: HttpMessenger displays notifications right in the System > Notifications Log. MailMessenger delivers notifications to the specified address. In this case, a user will be promptly ed about any system event. 3. Select the desired transport type by clicking on its name. In case if the selected transport method is MailMessenger, you will be offered to specify the destination address for delivering notifications. To select notification events for a certain subscription, click on the transport name. 4. Click the Add button at the Notification events tab. The list of events registered in the system will be shown. 5. Check the desired system events you wish to be notified about and click the Submit button. You can always add or remove any notification event from the list by following the last two steps. Customizing Notification Messages There is a number of cases when you may need to customize notification messages. For example, to localize a message for a certain user, add your personal signature to a message, and so on. A notification message consists of the following fields: Name - event caption. Description - general event overview. Subject text - editable notification event name. Body text - editable notification content including system generated event actual data. Name and Description are used for identifying messages in the UI, the Subject and Body fields contain the notification information that is shown to a user. To edit the message information: 1. Go to System > Notification Manager > Messages for Notification. 2. Click on a message you wish to edit. You will see the message information screen. If there is more than one locale installed in the system, the message information will be displayed for all locales. You can change the text for each locale independently.

94 94 Administering PPA 3. Click the Edit button to open the message customization page. A message body text can contain placeholders, which are substituted during the message generation. For example, "PPA package \{pkg_name\} \{pkg_version\} (id=\{pkg_id\}) was successfully removed from the host \{host_name\} (id=\{host_id\})" will turn into the message like "PPA package racer 0.1 (id=246) was successfully removed from the host example.com (id=1)". Note: Every event has a corresponding predefined set of placeholders that can be used in a notification text. Viewing Notifications In case you are subscribed to notifications using HTTPMessenger, you can view notification messages in System > Notifications Log. To read a message, click on the corresponding notification event name. You can immediately remove the message from the list by clicking the Delete button. Once you read the message, it will get the read status. You can also change the status manually by clicking the corresponding Mark as read / Mark as unread button. Configuring Customer and Reseller Notifications PPA allows you to notify your customers and resellers by about events occurred in the system. Typically, customers and resellers are interested in events that happen with their subscriptions: creating, removing, suspending, and enabling. Important: This section covers details on how to create notifications only about events occurred with subscriptions. By default, on clean PPA installation, notifications are not configured. To configure customer and reseller notifications, you should perform two obligatory steps: 1. Set up notification messages (on page 96). These includes not only adjusting the content of a particular message, but also specifying the mail server which should deliver notification messages. 2. Subscribe customers (resellers) to event notifications (on page 99). Important Notes for Resellers Resellers who have brands in PPA can set up their own templates for notification messages. The instructions about how they can do this are provided in Setting Up Notification Messages (on page 96). Note that currently, resellers cannot subscribe their customers to notifications. This should be done by the PPA administrator. Next in this section: Setting Up Notification Messages... 96

95 Subscribing to Notifications Troubleshooting Notifications Issues Administering PPA 95

96 96 Administering PPA Setting Up Notification Messages Notification messages are based on the message templates located in /usr/local/ppa/etc/ _templates. These template files define the content of notification messages which will be sent to customers and resellers upon events occurred with their subscriptions. The notifier.conf file located in /usr/local/ppa/etc defines the mail server which should deliver the messages. These files are not created by default and, therefore, you should create them manually. Note that you can translate message templates to multiple languages and send localized messages depending on the recipient's UI language. To create the files, we recommend that you use samples provided with PPA. After PPA installation, the /usr/local/ppa/etc directory will contain the notifier.conf.sample file (basis for notifier.conf) and the _templates.sample directory with samples of all the notification templates. Setting Up Notification Messages To specify the mail server for notification messages delivery: 1. Log in to your management node as root. 2. In the /usr/local/ppa/etc directory, create the notifier.conf file based on the notifier.conf.sample: cp notifier.conf.sample notifier.conf 3. Set permissions of the created file to 600 (this will allow reading and writing the file only to the file owner): chmod 600 notifier.conf 4. Specify mail server settings by adjusting notifier.conf. The file contains the following parameters: mail_from - address which should be used to send notifications. host - an IP address or a domain name of the SMTP server which should send notifications. login - (optional) a username of the mail user that accesses the mail server (if the server requires SMTP authentication). password - a password of the mail user. To set up notification message templates: 1. Log in to your management node as root. 2. In the /usr/local/ppa/etc directory, create the _templates directory based on the _templates.sample: cp -ar _templates.sample _templates 3. Adjust the notification templates. There are two types of template files: <event_name>.msg - defines the content of the notification message. <event_name>.subj - defines the subject of the notification message.

97 Administering PPA 97 <event_name> here stands for the event name, like subscription_created. Both type of files support the following placeholders: ${account_id} - the identifier of the subscription owner (a customer or a reseller). ${actor_account_id} - the identifier of the event owner (a reseller or the administrator who initiated the corresponding task, for example, subscription creation). ${context_account_id} - the identifier of a reseller whose customer is affected. ${context_vendor_id} - the PPA administrator. ${domain_name} - the domain name of the affected subscription. ${subscription_id} - the subscription identifier. ${account_admin_lastname} - the last name of the Administrative Contact of the affected subscription owner. ${account_admin_firstname} - the first name of the Administrative Contact of the affected subscription owner. ${account_company_name} - the name of the company of the affected subscription owner. ${sub_service_template_name} - the name of the service template the affected subscription is based on. Localizing Notification Messages To localize notification messages: 1. Translate message template content to the desired language (the language should be supported by PPA). 2. Create a new message template file with this content. The file name must contain the UI language identifier (en_gb, ru_ru, de_de, and so on) separated with the dash (-) symbol from the event name. For example, subscription_created-en_gb.msg, subscription_enabled-ru_ru.subj. Important: Message files must use the UTF-8 encoding. When an event occurs, PPA will automatically determine the recipients language and send the appropriate localized message. For resellers, PPA uses the UI language set for their Administration Panel. For customers - the UI language of their Hosting Panel. Setting Up Notification Messages by Resellers If you are a reseller, follow the instructions below to create your own templates for notification messages. To set up notification message templates: 1. Log in to your branding subscription. 2. In the webspace root (on the same level with httpdocs), create the _templates directory.

98 98 Administering PPA 3. Download the archive with notification templates samples from download1.parallels.com/ppa/docs/ .tar.gz and unpack it to the _templates directory. 4. Adjust the notification templates.

99 Administering PPA 99 Subscribing to Notifications To subscribe a customer or a reseller to notifications about a certain event occurred with their subscriptions: 1. Go to the System > Events Handling > Default Events Handling tab. 2. Select the event about which you want to notify a customers or a reseller: PPA Subscription created, PPA Subscription deleted, PPA Subscription enabled, or PPA Subscription disabled. 3. Click Add Action and select the PPA Send notification action. 4. Specify the notification subscribers. To do this, specify one or more of the following placeholders in the rcpts field: ${account_id} - subscription owner. The s will be sent to the owner (customer, reseller, second level reseller) of the subscription affected by the event. ${actor_account_id} - event owner. The s will be sent to a person (a reseller or the PPA administrator) who started the corresponding task. For example, if a subscription creation was initiated by a reseller, he will receive the notification about the PPA Subscription created event. If the event was initiated automatically (for example, by the billing system), the PPA administrator will receive the notification. ${context_account_id} - reseller - owner of the corresponding customer account. The s will be sent to the reseller whose customer is affected. ${context_vendor_id} - the PPA administrator. For example, to notify a customer, a reseller, and the administrator about an event, specify ${account_id} ${context_account_id} ${context_vendor_id} in the rcpts field. Note: You can also specify the exact identifiers (separated by spaces) of customers and resellers whom you want to notify. For example, The identifiers of customers and resellers are shown on the Operations > Customers (Resellers) pages in the ID column. The notifications will be sent to the address specified in the Administrative Contact settings of these customers (resellers). But note, that in this case, PPA will send notifications about all subscriptions to these addresses. Troubleshooting Notifications Issues In case notifications are not delivered to recipients, check the /var/log/poa.log file for errors. Basically, all notification system errors should contain the text: PleskIntegration::Implementation::ServiceController::actionSend. The corresponding lines in the log contain the information about the notification utility's exit_code, its stdout and stderr.

100 100 Administering PPA Handling Events Using the PPA event handling capabilities, you can add certain actions on events occurred in the system. By default, most of the events are followed by adequate actions like send notification message on installation result. They are called suitable actions, although you have a possibility to change them. Next in this section: Creating Actions Changing the Editing Mode

101 Administering PPA 101 Creating Actions PPA offers you two ways to handle events: the custom events handling and the default events handling. They are represented by two tabs in the Events Handling page. Using the default events handling you can view and change (or add) actions that are performed on certain events. This default setup will affect all the user accounts within PPA (resellers, customers). The custom events handling allows you to set up actions which affect your own account only. Default Actions To add a default action for an event: 1. Go to System > Events Handling > Default Events Handling. The list of events registered in the system will appear. The editing mode is set on basic by default. 2. Select an event by clicking on it. The actions that currently process the event will be displayed. 3. Click the Add Action button to proceed to actions list. 4. Click the action that will follow the selected event. You will proceed to the action editing page. 5. The Event and Action areas contain the information on the event to be processed and the action you have selected. 6. The Placeholders area displays the placeholders used for the current action type in PPA, with descriptions indicating the purpose of (value represented by) each placeholder - for example, ${hostname} - Hostname; ${host_id} - Host identifier. These placeholders can be used both in the input fields in the Parameters area above and in the message body text (not displayed on the current screen). Note: To see the message body text, go to System > Notification Manager > Messages for Notification and find the message by its name or by the value of the message_type parameter (if displayed as a number, not a placeholder). Click on the name of the message to read it. 7. In the Parameters area provide action parameters: The list of notification senders - indicated by the (Sender) caption under the field The list of notification recipients - indicated by the (Recipient) caption under the field These input fields contain some default values (placeholders) presented as a commaseparated list. If necessary, you can substitute them with the placeholders offered below. Typically, the following fields are used for defining recipients/senders of the notification: context_account_id, actor_account_id - The account ID of a user who performs the operation (for example, removes a domain). context_vendor_id - The account ID of the user for whom user specified in the context_account_id is subordinate (his vendor). Note: To include the PPA administrator in the list of recipients/senders, specify 1 in the recipients/senders field (separate it from the other list items with a comma).

102 102 Administering PPA 8. Click the Submit button. Custom Actions To add a custom action for an event: 1. Select an event at System > Events Handling > Custom Events Handling. 2. Click the Add Action button to proceed to actions list. Note: If the event is processed by a default action, the Copy Default button will be displayed. Clicking on it, you will add this default action to actions list that process the selected event and will be able to customize it. 3. Select the action that should process the event. You will proceed to the action editing page. The Event and Action areas contain the information on the event to be processed and action you selected. The Parameters area has input fields with some default values. You can substitute them with placeholders offered in the list below or simply delete if needed. 4. Click the Submit button. Changing the Editing Mode When using the default events handling, you have a possibility to change the editing mode. There are two editing modes: Basic and Advanced. In the Basic mode, PPA shows only "non-system" events and "friendly" actions. Nonsystem events are the events caused by some user's operations, such as package installation, account adding, host overloading, and so on. Friendly actions guarantee the internal compatibility of event parameters with parameters of a subsequent action. In the Advanced mode, PPA shows all the possible events and actions. Note: In case if you try to process an event by a non-friendly action, it will not happen at all, unless you customize its parameters to match the event. To switch the editing mode: 1. Go to System > Events Handling > Default Events Handling. The Editing mode area is located above the events list. By default, the basic mode is on. 2. Use the Change button to switch between the basic and advanced modes.

103 Administering PPA 103 Troubleshooting PPA PPA allows you to track its activity in order to prevent or resolve any issues during its operation. The list below contains the recommended actions you should perform when a certain error occurs. Issues during... PPA installation Access to PPA PPA operation Service nodes registration Troubleshooting Search for errors in the PPA installation log file /usr/local/ppa/log/install.log Search for errors in the access log files located in/usr/local/ppa/log/: sso.log plesk_access.log Search for errors in the PPA system logs located in /usr/local/ppa/log/: poa.log, poa-ui.log, and poa.debug.log for the Administration Panel plesk.log for the Hosting Panel mail.log for mail services sitebuilder.log for Web Presence Builder 1. Look for failed tasks in System > Task Manager. 2. Search for errors in the installation log of a certain node: /tmp/ppa_install.log

104 104 Administering PPA Restarting Panels In some cases (for example, when you get the 500 error in your browser when trying to access PPA), you may need to restart the Administration or Hosting panels. You can do this with the following commands: The Administration Panel: /etc/init.d/ppa start stop restart The Hosting Panel: /etc/init.d/sw-cp-server start stop restart Restarting Services on Linux-based Service Nodes In some cases, you may need to restart services provided by Linux nodes. You can do this with the following commands (executed on a certain node): Apache HTTP server: service httpd start stop restart Postfix mail server: service postfix start stop restart MySQL server: service mysqld start stop restart PostgreSQL server: service postgresql start stop restart Bind DNS server: service named start stop restart PPA agent: service ppa_agent start stop restart

105 C H A P T E R 10 Web Hosting Management Web hosting management in PPA is performed by means of the Hosting Panel. Your customers use this panel to add domains and mailboxes, manage website content and so on. You can also use this panel to access customer accounts, or to manage your own hosting accounts. This panel is based on the Control Panel of Parallels Plesk Panel. Therefore, for the details on how to perform certain hosting management operations, refer to the Parallels Plesk Panel: Customer's Guide.

106 C H A P T E R 11 Appendix. Resource Types This chapter contains the complete list of PPA resource type classes and their activation parameters. For details on what are resource types, refer to Creating Custom Service Offers (on page 49). The Minimal Set of Resource Types for a Service Template Regardless of what services a service template should provide, it must contain a certain set of basic resource types. If one of the resource types mentioned below is missing from a template, PPA will fail to provision template's subscriptions. The resource types of the following classes are required for any service template: IP Addresses and/or IPv6 Addresses. Subscription. Diskspace. Traffic. DNS hosting. In this chapter: Apache Webspace IIS Webspace Mail Service Database Service DNS hosting Subscription Diskspace Traffic IP Addresses / IPv6 Addresses Additional Staff Members...120

107 Appendix. Resource Types 107 Apache Webspace Resource types of the Apache Webspace class provide Apache web hosting in subscriptions. Resource Limits Additional FTP accounts The maximum number of FTP accounts used to access the files and folders created within a subscription. This number does not include an account that is always created during the subscription creation. Connections limited to The maximum number of simultaneous connections to websites within a subscription. This setting is intended for preventing the websites from Denial of Service (DOS) attacks and excessive usage of bandwidth. Hard disk quota The hard quota on disk space. Java applications The total number of Java applications that can be hosted on the subscription's websites. Maximum bandwidth usage (KB/s) Defines the maximum speed (measured in KB per second) that a domain can share between all its connections. Number of Microsoft SQL Server databases The maximum number of Microsoft SQL Server databases that can be created within a subscription. Number of MySQL databases The maximum number of MySQL databases that can be created within a subscription. Number of PostgreSQL databases The maximum number of PostgreSQL databases that can be created within a subscription. Sites published with Presence Builder The number of websites that can be published with Presence Builder. Web users The total number of personal Web pages that the subscriber can host for other users under their websites. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have addresses like Activation Parameters Hosting Parameters SSL support Allows setting up SSL encryption on websites hosted within a subscription.

108 108 Appendix. Resource Types Web statistics Defines a statistics engine that will create reports on how subscription's websites are visited: how many people visited a site, and which web pages they viewed. SSH access to server shell Allows subscribers to upload securely web content to the server through SSH. Scripting Run PHP as Defines the PHP handler that will be used to process PHP scripts on subscription's websites. FastCGI / CGI support Turns on/off the support for FastCGI / CGI on a subscription. ASP / Perl / Python / SSI / MIVA support Turns on/off the support for certain languages. Allow web users to use scripts Allows scripting at web pages available at URLs like where <username> refers to a web user. Permissions Custom error documents Allows subscribers to design and use their own error pages that the web server returns with HTTP error codes. Hosting settings management Allows modifying parameters of hosting service provided with the subscription: changing hosting account features and switching on or off support for programming and scripting languages, custom error documents, SSL support, and so on. PHP settings management Allows the subscriber to adjust PHP settings individually for each website (subdomain) in their subscription. Anonymous FTP management Provides the anonymous FTP service, which lets the subscriber set up a directory shared over FTP protocol and available to anonymous users. A subscription should reside on a dedicated IP address in order to provide this service. Scheduler management Allows the subscriber to schedule running of scripts or utilities. Data backup and restoration using the server repository Lets the subscriber back up and restore their websites, and use the storage on the server for keeping backups. Data backup and restoration using a personal FTP repository Lets the subscriber back up and restore their websites, and use external FTP servers for storing their backups. Log rotation management Lets the subscriber adjust the cleanup of processed log files for his or her sites. Also, lets the subscriber remove log files.

109 Appendix. Resource Types 109 Domains management Lets the subscriber add domains, create websites and set up web forwarding. Subdomains management Lets the subscriber set up additional websites accessible by <subdomain>.<domain> addresses. Domain aliases management Lets the subscriber set up additional alternative domain names for their websites. Additional FTP accounts management Lets the subscriber manage FTP accounts for accessing the subscription's files and folders. Java applications management Lets the subscriber install Java applications on their websites. Hosting performance settings management Allows the subscriber to adjust performance PHP settings individually for each website (subdomain) in their subscription. In addition, lets the subscriber set up the limits on bandwidth usage and number of connections to their websites. Hard disk quota assignment Lets the subscriber set up such hosting parameter as Hard disk quota. Access to Application Catalog Provides the subscriber with access to prepackaged applications that can be installed on websites. You can view a list of applications available from your provider by doing the following: 1. Set up your own website by using a plan or a custom subscription that grants access to the Application Catalog. 2. In the Hosting Panel, go to the Applications tab > All Available Applications. Logs & Statistics Retain web and traffic statistics for Sets the period for which the server will store web statistics and traffic statistics gathered by Webalizer or AWstats programs. Log rotation by period Turns on/off log rotation by period. PPA will rewrite the log after the specified period of time. Log rotation by size Turns on/off log rotation by size. PPA will rewrite the log once it exceeds the specified size. Maximum number of log files Specifies the maximum number of log files. Compress rotated logs Turns on/off the compression of log files to reduce their size. Send logs to Specifies an address where the log files should be sent.

110 110 Appendix. Resource Types IIS Webspace Apache Webspace provides IIS web hosting in a subscription. Resource Limits Additional FTP accounts The maximum number of FTP accounts used to access the files and folders created within a subscription. This number does not include an account that is always created during the subscription creation. ColdFusion DSN connections The total number of ColdFusion DSN connections that the subscriber can use within the subscription. Connections limited to The maximum number of simultaneous connections to websites within a subscription. This setting is intended for preventing the websites from Denial of Service (DOS) attacks and excessive usage of bandwidth. FrontPage accounts The maximum number of Microsoft FrontPage accounts that the subscriber can create within the subscription. Hard disk quota The hard quota on disk space. Java applications The total number of Java applications that can be hosted on the subscription's websites. Maximum CPU use (%) Limits the amount of the server CPU (in per cent) that the pool can use. Maximum bandwidth usage (KB/s) Defines the maximum speed (measured in KB per second) that a domain can share between all its connections. Number of Microsoft SQL Server databases The maximum number of Microsoft SQL Server databases that can be created within a subscription. Number of MySQL databases The maximum number of MySQL databases that can be created within a subscription. Number of PostgreSQL databases The maximum number of PostgreSQL databases that can be created within a subscription. ODBC connections The total number of ODBC connections that the subscriber can use within the subscription. Shared SSL links The total number of shared SSL links that the subscriber can use within the subscription.

111 Appendix. Resource Types 111 Sites published with Presence Builder The number of websites that can be published with Presence Builder. Web users The total number of personal Web pages that the subscriber can host for other users under their websites. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have addresses like Activation Parameters Hosting Parameters SSL support Allows setting up SSL encryption on websites hosted within a subscription. Web statistics Defines a statistics engine that will create reports on how subscription's websites are visited: how many people visited a site, and which web pages they viewed. Additional write/modify permissions This option is required if subscriber's web applications use a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs folder. Please note that selecting this option might seriously compromise the Web site security. Web Deploy publishing Allows direct publishing of websites from Web Deploy. Dedicated IIS application pool Enables the use of dedicated IIS application pool for web applications within the subscription. Using dedicated IIS application pool dramatically improves the stability of web applications due to worker process isolation mode. This mode gives each site hosted on the server a possibility to allocate a separate process pool for execution of its web applications. This way, malfunction in one application will not cause stopping of all the others. This is especially useful when you are using shared hosting package. The Maximum CPU use (%) option limits the amount of the server CPU that the pool can use. Microsoft FrontPage support Allows subscribers to connect to the server and create websites with Microsoft FrontPage. Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support Allows subscribers to connect to the server over SSL and create websites with Microsoft FrontPage. Remote Microsoft FrontPage authoring Allows subscribers to connect to their FrontPage websites remotely. Scripting Microsoft ASP support Turns on/off the support for the ASP scripting language. Microsoft ASP.NET support Specifies the version of Microsoft ASP.NET to be used for websites. PHP support Specifies the version of PHP to be used for websites.

112 112 Appendix. Resource Types Run PHP as Defines the PHP handler that will be used to process PHP scripts on subscription's websites. CGI support Turns on/off the support for CGI on a subscription. ColdFusion / Perl / Python / SSI / MIVA support Turns on/off the support for certain languages. Allow web users to use scripts Allows scripting at web pages available at URLs like where <username> refers to a web user. Permissions Management of access to server over Remote Desktop Lets the subscriber access the server via Remote Desktop protocol. IIS application pool management Provides the subscriber with a dedicated IIS application pool and the means to manage it: enable or disable it, and set up the maximum amount of CPU power that the pool may use. Additional write/modify permissions management Lets the subscriber toggle such a hosting parameter as Additional write/modify permissions. These permissions are required if a subscriber's web applications use a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs folder. Please note that selecting this option might seriously compromise the websites' security. Shared SSL management Provides the shared SSL service, and lets the subscriber set up shared SSL links for their websites within the subscription. Custom error documents Allows subscribers to design and use their own error pages that the web server returns with HTTP error codes. Hosting settings management Allows modifying parameters of hosting service provided with the subscription: changing hosting account features and switching on or off support for programming and scripting languages, custom error documents, SSL support, and Microsoft FrontPage support. PHP settings management Allows the subscriber to adjust PHP settings individually for each website (subdomain) in their subscription. Anonymous FTP management Provides the anonymous FTP service, which lets the subscriber set up a directory shared over FTP protocol and available to anonymous users. A subscription should reside on a dedicated IP address in order to provide this service. Scheduler management Allows the subscriber to schedule running of scripts or utilities. Data backup and restoration using the server repository Lets the subscriber back up and restore their websites, and use the storage on the server for keeping backups.

113 Appendix. Resource Types 113 Data backup and restoration using a personal FTP repository Lets the subscriber back up and restore their websites, and use external FTP servers for storing their backups. Log rotation management Lets the subscriber adjust the cleanup of processed log files for his or her sites. Also, lets the subscriber remove log files. Domains management Lets the subscriber add domains, create websites and set up web forwarding. Subdomains management Lets the subscriber set up additional websites accessible by <subdomain>.<domain> addresses. Domain aliases management Lets the subscriber set up additional alternative domain names for their websites. Additional FTP accounts management Lets the subscriber manage FTP accounts for accessing the subscription's files and folders. Java applications management Lets the subscriber install Java applications on their websites. Hosting performance settings management Allows the subscriber to adjust performance PHP settings individually for each website (subdomain) in their subscription. In addition, lets the subscriber set up the limits on bandwidth usage and number of connections to their websites. Hard disk quota assignment Lets the subscriber set up such hosting parameter as Hard disk quota. Access to Application Catalog Provides the subscriber with access to prepackaged applications that can be installed on websites. You can view a list of applications available from your provider by doing the following: 1. Set up your own website by using a plan or a custom subscription that grants access to the Application Catalog. 2. In the Hosting Panel, go to the Applications tab > All Available Applications. Logs & Statistics Retain web and traffic statistics for Sets the period for which the server will store web statistics and traffic statistics gathered by Webalizer or AWstats programs. Log rotation by period Turns on/off log rotation by period. PPA will rewrite the log after the specified period of time. Log rotation by size Turns on/off log rotation by size. PPA will rewrite the log once it exceeds the specified size. Maximum number of log files Specifies the maximum number of log files. Compress rotated logs Turns on/off the compression of log files to reduce their size.

114 114 Appendix. Resource Types Send logs to Specifies an address where the log files should be sent.

115 Appendix. Resource Types 115 Mail Service Resource types of the Mail service class provide Postfix- or SmarterMail-based mail hosting in subscriptions. Resource Limits Mailbox size (in KBytes) The amount of disk space in KB that is allocated to each mailbox in a subscription for storing messages and auto-reply attachment files. Number of mailboxes The total number of mailboxes that the subscriber can host within the subscription. Activation Parameters Mail Service Mail server software Specifies the mail server software: Postfix or SmarterMail. Permissions Ability to change mail settings Allows subscribers to manage subscription-wide mail settings in the Hosting Panel. Mail Settings Webmail Specifies the webmail service, which allows users of mailboxes within the subscription to work with their mail using a web-based mail application. Policy on mail for non-existent users Defines how mail server should treat messages sent to addresses that are supposed to be registered under the subscription's domains but actually do not exist. The following options are available: Bounce with message returns the mail back to sender with a notice. Forward to address forwards the mail to another address. Reject silently rejects the mail without accepting it. This setting can decrease mail server load caused by a large amount of spam, which is often directed at randomly generated user names. However, this might be useful to spammers because scanning your mail server for valid addresses will speed up in such a case.

116 116 Appendix. Resource Types Database Service Resource types of the Database service class provide hosting databases using MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL Server database servers. Resource Limits No resources. Activation Parameters Database settings Database server type Specifies the database server software: MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL Server. Port Specifies the port on which the database is available on the selected server. Leave this field empty to use the default port. IP address Specifies the IP address of the database server. Leave this field empty to let the system choose the server automatically.

117 Appendix. Resource Types 117 DNS hosting Resource types of the Mail service class provide Postfix- or SmarterMail-based mail hosting in subscriptions. Resource Limits DNS management Used for internal purposes. Must be larger than zero. Activation Parameters Auto host domains Set this parameter to Yes if you want PPA to automatically create DNS zones for new domains. First nameserver / Second nameserver / Third nameserver Specify DNS servers that should serve DNS zones of domains within a subscription. You can set up to three DNS servers registered in PPA. The first nameserver is always master. Refresh / Retry / Expire / Min TTL / Default TTL Specify the corresponding parameters of the SOA record.

118 118 Appendix. Resource Types Subscription Resource types of the Subscription class are basic types that are required for any service template. Without this resource type in the template, PPA will not be able to provision template subscriptions. Resource Limits Number of domains The total number of domain names that the subscriber will be able to host within the subscription. This includes websites, web forwarding configurations that point to websites hosted on other servers, and domain names on which a website or web forwarding is not yet set up (domains with no hosting). Number of subdomains The total number of subdomains that the subscriber will be able to host within the subscription. Activation Parameters No activation parameters.

119 Appendix. Resource Types 119 Diskspace Resource types of the Diskspace class are basic types that specify the total amount of disk space allocated to the subscription. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to the subscription: content of websites, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files, and backup files. for any service template. Without this resource type in the template, PPA will not be able to provision template subscriptions. Resource Limits No resources. Activation Parameters No activation parameters. Traffic Resource types of the Traffic class are basic types that specify the amount of data that can be transferred from the subscription's websites and FTP/Samba shares during a month. Without this resource type in the template, PPA will not be able to provision template subscriptions. Resource Limits No resources. Activation Parameters No activation parameters.

120 120 Appendix. Resource Types IP Addresses / IPv6 Addresses Resource types of the IP Addresses / IPv6 Addresses classes are basic types that define whether a subscription will use a shared or dedicated IPv4 (IPv6) address. The value of the IP address resource types is 0 for shared and 1 for dedicated IP address. Without this resource type in the template, PPA will not be able to provision template subscriptions. Resource Limits No resources. Activation Parameters No activation parameters. Additional Staff Members Resource types of the Additional Staff Members class specify the number of additional staff members (auxiliary users in terms of the Hosting Panel) for a subscription. Resource Limits No resources. Activation Parameters No activation parameters.