Starting from April 22, we’ll roll out auto-updates from Plesk 17.0 to Plesk 17.8 which will focus on server security and feature fixes. You’ll receive your update notification in the next days and can choose to update manually, turn off automatic updates or simply wait for us to handle the Plesk 17.8 update for you. However we strongly advise you to have an up-to-date server for the following reasons.
Why are you getting this server security update?
Official server security stats from Structure Research 2019 say 90k websites are hacked every day, with 43%+ attacks targeting small businesses. Fileless attacks are also quickly on the rise going from 29% in 2017 to 35% in 2018. So we have to be more efficient with security fixes.
What’s slowing us down is developing, shipping backport bus fixes and features from upstream for 17.0, 17.5 and Plesk 17.8. Thus, having less resources to address your uservoice requests. And even though Plesk 12.x has been EOLed since Jan 1, 2019, it still requires highly-critical server security fixes. Even if the issue is not in Plesk, but in the third-parties that Plesk uses.
The result is that we ship bugs fixes faster for the latest supported Plesk Onyx 17.8, than for the others. For example, in May 2018, we had Plesk 17.5 and 17.8 fully-supporting GDPR. Meanwhile, Plesk 17.0 and Plesk 12.x had limitations to satisfy formal aspects.
How we’re rolling the Plesk 17.8 Auto-update for Admins
First, we will update servers for Plesk Onyx 17.0 and then 17.5 users, who purchased a license directly from Plesk Online Store. This should be quick and painless. Most customers who updated from 17.5 to 17.8 said that during the upgrade, each server took just five minutes to update.
When will we upgrade your server?
You’ll first receive a pop-up notification on your Plesk panel, then by email, with clarification of the Plesk 17.8 update process. Giving you time to update at your own convenience, or wait until the auto-update takes effect. Plesk 17.0 will be first, starting from April 22, followed by 17.5 from April 29.
Then, if you’re a Plesk 17.0 admin, you’ll see a permanent notification until you update your server. The notification will count down the days until the auto-update. Two weeks after the notification, the server updates will start in small, controllable chunks.
We don’t recommend you opt-out of this automatic update. But if you’re absolutely sure you want to stay on the current version, you can go to Tools & Settings > Update and Upgrade Settings and turn off automatic Plesk updates.
Your Plesk 17.8 auto-update notification
If you’ve received no such notification, it most likely means we’re updating your servers a little bit later. However, it could also be because you haven’t bought your Plesk license directly from our online store. Or, you may be using components deprecated in the latest version of Plesk.
In such cases, your server won’t get an automatic upgrade to the latest version. Please note that servers with Tomcat installed, or servers connected to Multi Server won’t get updates either since their configuration is incompatible with Plesk 17.8.
Why you should enable automatic Plesk updates
What’s great about updating to Plesk Onyx 17.8 is that you also get all the new features, APIs and CLIs. Whereas only a critical subset of new features is back-ported to the previous versions.
You can see that 50% of our servers are already on the latest Plesk Onyx 17.8. Every 24 hours, your server already automatically updates installed Plesk extensions and Plesk WP Toolkit automatically updates WordPress core and its plugins. Then, every week, you get a bunch of Plesk service updates automatically installing, and these usually contain bug fixes and feature improvements.
This year, starting from the next major Plesk release, we plan to roll out automatic Plesk updates on a monthly basis. The releases will include new features and bugs fixes and there will be no option to opt-out of a server update.
How does the auto-update affect partners?
We understand that some of our partners offer managed hosting and have many customizations on their servers. To avoid impact on their business, we’ll have exceptions for their servers to spread out rolling of updates over time. You’ll receive direct contact or email before we start any auto-update process for partners. Check the dedicated blog post for the process of how such updates will work for partners.
Can you backup before the Plesk 17.8 auto-update?
There is no trigger to do the backup right before Plesk update happens, but you can configure daily backups, and/or backup and update manually before the auto-update happens.
Plesk updates within one major version (for example, 17.x) are quite safe. But if you have concerns, please create the backup manually or set up automatic backups right now.
Got any questions about Plesk 17.8?
Ask us directly in our forum or contact support, and we’ll be quick to help. Meanwhile we would love for your feedback on the auto-update process so that we can make future auto-updates more convenient for you.
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6 Comments
Traditionally, we have HATED auto updates, as Plesk is notorious for altering basic settings or settings that get overwritten — then much time is needed to rectify, then calm down upset clients and explain why their sites do not function. It is very bad when plesk overwrites.
Same here. How do we disable this auto update Plesk?
We don’t recommend you opt-out of this automatic update. But if you’re absolutely sure you want to stay on the current version, you can go to Tools & Settings > Update and Upgrade Settings and turn off automatic Plesk updates.
very nice.. i like it
Is not it a bit unsafe to have versions like 11 or 12 in production?
Well we don’t anymore, we will focus only on the latest version 🙂