Meeting Installation Requirements

Before you install Plesk on your server, make sure the following requirements are met:

• Microsoft Windows 2003 Server is installed on your system.
• Your server uses static IP address.
• QoS Packet Scheduler service is enabled.
• Internet Information Server (IIS) is installed on your system with WWW and FTP support.
• Mail Server role is NOT chosen for your server, otherwise there will be conflicts with MailEnable mail server included with Plesk.
• Your server is NOT working as a Windows Domain Controller (neither primary nor backup). If this requirement is not fulfilled, a system crash may occur during the creation of domains with certain names.

Attention: Plesk must be installed on NTFS partitions. We strongly recommend that you install Plesk on a clean server. Only the required operating system components should be installed. If you have to choose a role for your server, select the Application Server role.

The following things should be taken in consideration when before installing Plesk or some of its specific components:

• If you want to use SSI, ASP and FrontPage services, select the respective components during the installation of IIS.
• If you want to install SiteBuilder for Windows included with Plesk for Windows installation package, make sure that .NET Framework 2.0 is installed on your server.
• If you want to install the Tomcat component included with Plesk installer, please make sure that the folder where Tomcat will be installed has no national or special characters in its name. The following characters are allowed: basic Latin characters, numerals, space and the following symbols: !#$%&()+,-.:;=@[]_{}.
• If you want to use ColdFusion:
  • ColdFusion should be installed separately before installing Plesk.
  • If you intend to use ColdFusion support in Plesk, ColdFusion should be installed on the server with Default Web Site chosen on the Web Server Selection step of installation. Otherwise, if you choose All IIS Websites, ColdFusion support will always be activated for all domains that have physical hosting, regardless of the corresponding checkbox status.
• If you want to use Microsoft SQL Server DBMS support in Plesk:
  • Microsoft SQL Server should be installed and configured to use standard or mixed security mode.
  • If Microsoft SQL Server is not installed, you can select Microsoft Database Engine (MSDE) to be installed with Plesk and configured with administrator name 'sa' and random password, which you can change later on the Server > Databases page.
  • If you want to use external Microsoft SQL Server (in case it was installed before Plesk), you need to supply the required password on the Server > Databases page.

Due to the large quantity of various software available on the market, SWsoft cannot guarantee compatibility with all third-party software products, except when explicitly stated otherwise. The following software is known to malfunction when working on the same server where Plesk is installed:

• Microsoft Free Sharepoint
• Personal Tiny Firewall
• F-Prot Antivirus
• Black Ice
• Various antivirus/firewall software that may have malfunctions in blocking of potentially dangerous programs.