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Install Plesk on IONOS Cloud Virtual Machines (VMs)

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Plesk on an IONOS Cloud VM using either a Plesk image or the installer. Plesk is a powerful web hosting control panel that simplifies server management through a user-friendly graphical interface. It allows you to easily manage every aspect of your website, including domains, email accounts, files, and databases, without using the command line.

Before you begin

Prerequisite: Ensure you have already created a Data Center on IONOS Cloud. For more information, see Create a Data Center.

Execution

The execution process is divided into the following steps:

  1. Set Up your IONOS Cloud instance for Plesk installation

  2. Install Plesk

1. Set Up your IONOS Cloud instance for Plesk installation

1. In the DCD, go to Menu > Virtual Data Centers.

2. Select the data center where you want to install Plesk.

3. Select a virtual instance, such as Dedicated Core servers, vCPU servers, or Cubes, and drag and drop it into your workspace to create the VM.

Select a vCPU server

2. Install Plesk

You can either install Plesk with a Plesk QCOW image or use the Plesk Installer. The steps for each option are explained below:

  1. Upload an official Plesk QCOW image to the IONOS Cloud platform. For more information about file upload, see Private images.

Important: Ensure that the uploaded image supports cloud-init. For more information, see Access and Manage Private images.

  1. Select your newly created VM and enter a Name for it in the Inspector pane.

Inspector pane

  1. Select a preset configuration, or configure your VM manually. Make sure your VM meets the following requirements:

    Type

    RAM

    Disk Space

    Linux

    1 GB and 1 GB swap

    0 GB

    Windows

    2 GB

    32 GB

Inspector pane

  1. In the Storage tab, click HDD or SSD to configure storage for your VM.

  2. In the Create New Attached Storage window, enter a Name and Size in GB.

  3. Under Image, select Own Images and choose one of your uploaded Plesk QCOW images.

Image selection

  1. Click Cloud-Init user data to enter your public SSH key for VM access.

Cloud-Init user data

  1. Enter your user data and then click OK. It might resemble the following example:

    #cloud-config
ssh_pwauth: True
users:
  - name: root
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      - ssh-rsa YOUR_PUBLIC_SSH_KEY
Cloud-Init user data

  1. Click Create HDD Storage or Create SSD Storage to finish storage creation.

  2. Connect your VM to the Internet.

VM connection

  1. Click Provision Changes to complete the setup of your VM.

  2. Connect to your VM via SSH.

  3. Generate the Plesk login URL with the following command:

plesk login

  1. Paste the generated URL into your web browser to initialize Plesk. Enter your contact information, admin password, and license to use your installation.

Conclusion

By the end of this tutorial, you have successfully installed Plesk on an IONOS Cloud VM.

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