Install Plesk on IONOS Cloud Virtual Machines (VMs)

Overview

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Plesk on an IONOS Cloud 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.

Target audience

This tutorial is intended to help both developers and technical decision-makers.

What you will learn

You will learn how to deploy a virtual machine on IONOS Cloud and install Plesk using either a pre-built image or the official installer. This tutorial guides you through the setup, configuration, and initial access to your Plesk control panel.

Before you begin

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

Procedure

The execution process is divided into the following steps:

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:

Install Plesk with a Pre-installed QCOW Image

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.

Install Plesk with the Plesk Installer

Final result

After completing the steps above, your IONOS Cloud VM will have Plesk installed and ready for use. You can access the Plesk control panel via your browser using the login URL generated during installation. From here, you can start configuring websites, domains, email accounts, and other hosting features through Plesk’s intuitive interface.

Conclusion

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