101domain.com - One of First Registrars to Launch Scaled Implementation of Server Nodes Using Parallels Plesk Automation

Q&A with Joe Alagna, VP of Channel Development at 101domain.com

101domain.com was one of the first registrars to launch a scaled implementation of server nodes using Parallels Plesk Automation. The platform allows web hosting providers to manage tasks asynchronously, including provisioning and infrastructure updates, adding hosting accounts, and managing multiple servers from a single access point. It is also designed to be more secure and to limit vulnerability to attack by isolating production workloads.

The project was managed by 101domain.com’s Hosting Services Manager, Rodolfo Elias. We wanted to learn about his experience and tracked him down for some Q & A.

Q. Now that you’ve had a chance to work with Parallels Plesk Automation what are your overall impressions?

A. The product gives us the ability to separate services, making it a lot more efficient for us to balance accounts and provision servers as necessary. The centralized management of accounts and resellers allows us to track usage more efficiently.

Q. As an early adopter, what advice would you give someone getting started on Parallels Plesk Automation to help them do it better?

A. We took advantage of every one of the features the product offers. Our integration was a bit complex. I’d suggest that they acquaint themselves with the documentation ahead of time so they can understand better how to provision and manage the software within the platform. Use the resources that Parallels Plesk Panel provides and work closely with their team. They’ve been very supportive to us.

Q. What are some of the benefits that the platform offers to clients?

A. The client interface is exactly the same as our previous Parallels Plesk Panel interface (Parallels Plesk Panel 11). This was a big advantage because those clients didn’t see any difference at all. We also consolidated all of our clients who used previous versions of Parallels Plesk Panel (versions 8 – 10) so now our entire customer base is on a single platform as we move forward. Future upgrades will be much easier because everything is centralized.

Q. But what about other clients? Will they see any other benefits to this?

A. Surely. With the separation of services, there will be less of a load on each server. Their websites will respond quicker. That’s the biggest benefit. The platform is more secure because one service doesn’t affect another. Apache, email, MySQL and web services are all independent. We can monitor the servers better and separate the impact of each service on a server. That makes our client’s websites and email hosting more reliable.

Now our clients can host all of their domains without worrying about overages. They get centralized management of all domains in one place. They also get unlimited email boxes at a very low price. We’re really proud our revamped hosting services platform and we think it’s a great value for our clients.

Q. What about resellers? Are there any important benefits for them?

A. Yes, a lot. Our new hosting reseller program will allow us to provide resellers with a branded solution for their hosting ventures. We’re still working on that piece but it will be coming out soon. It’s going to be really nice.

Cloud-making SMBs in India - a force to reckon with

by John Zanni, Vice President of Service Provider Marketing and Alliances, Parallels

I have been visiting India for more than 10 years and I have seen an amazing transformation in the last years. Today, there are 36 million micro, small and medium enterprises in India. Many face seeming insurmountable challenges of sub-optimal scale of operation, technological obsolescence, supply chain inefficiencies, increasing domestic and global competition, fund shortages, and turbulent and uncertain market scenario.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that today’s new generation of entrepreneurs in India is young, bold and willing to try new ideas. They see an opportunity and take the plunge. They know that as small businesses they have the benefit of being agile and nimble against much larger organizations. They are therefore able to capitalize more quickly on emerging opportunities. They are also more willing to take a few hits at the beginning of the business to win big later.

They understand that being small means they don’t have the luxury of large financial backing to support the various activities of the business. This means they need to be smarter at deciding how best to compete and grow.

One smart proven approach is the use of web presence to create brand awareness and generate business opportunities. They are turning to the cloud to reach out to potential customers locally, nationally and internationally. Creativity and technology are making it possible for these small upstarts to compete against much larger businesses.

The result is phenomenal growth in adoption of ICT particularly those delivered via cloud computing. In the past, the biggest barrier to adoption to cloud services in India was bandwidth but that's changing very rapidly. Bandwidth is significantly better now, and reliability issues are slowly going away. Cloud adoption will explode and we see the opportunity for cloud services accelerating.

The latest Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ for India estimates that the Indian SMB cloud services opportunity in 2013 is worth ₹16.9 billion (US$339 million), and expects it to grow 35 percent year-over-year for the next three years, reaching ₹42 billion (US$839 million) by the beginning of 2016.  This growth will be driven by new adopters of cloud services and current users adding more applications and functionality to their existing cloud services. They are eager to get online and consume services that will help them reach their customer base, increase their productivity, and improve their IT capabilities and they are willing to PAY for it. 

The opportunity is huge.  We are seeing it in our business at Parallels.

Service providers who are able to stay on top of this growing demand by SMBs and engage them with the right mix of services and applications will grow and profit in the years to come.

Variation of previously reported vulnerability in older versions of Parallels Plesk Panel

A variation is being reported of a previously-reported zero-day vulnerability in older versions of Parallels Plesk Panel. Since the original vulnerability was first reported, the majority of Parallels Plesk Panel customers took the necessary steps to upgrade to a non-vulnerable version of the product.

Today only 4% of servers running Parallels Plesk Panel are potentially impacted. This means 96% of Parallels Plesk Panel servers have been updated to a non-vulnerable version of Parallels Plesk Panel.

If you are still running Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 to 9.2, please take the action to upgrade today. There are multiple version options to upgrade to in order to help you secure and protect your customers.

How to upgrade

+ The best version to upgrade to is Parallels Plesk Panel 11.0. It has been available for over a year and is the version with the highest deployment rate, lowest support cost, best performance and, of course, highest security.

+ On June 13, 2013, Parallels will launch Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5. This new version will come with additional usability, performance and security benefits.

+ If you cannot upgrade to the latest version, you can update now to Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.4. This is a direct upgrade through the AutoInstaller. On June 13 you can then upgrade to version 11.5.

If you are unable to upgrade at this time, you can apply a script to automatically update your Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux 9.0-9.2.3 server.  You can download that script (wrapper.zip) from the "Attachments" section of http://kb.parallels.com/116241.

Details about the vulnerability

This vulnerability is not new.  It is a variation of the long-known CVE-2012-1823 vulnerability related to the CGI mode of PHP in selected older and end-of-life versions of Parallels Plesk Panel. The exploit for this vulnerability uses a combination of two issues:

+ PHP vulnerability CVE-2012-1823 related to CGI mode used in older versions of Parallels Plesk Panel (http://kb.parallels.com/en/113818)

+ Parallels Plesk Panel phppath script alias usage in Parallels Plesk Panel versions 9.0-9.2

All currently supported versions of Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.4, 10.x and 11.x, as well as Parallels Plesk Automation, are NOT vulnerable. Also, Parallels Plesk Panel 8.x (now end-of-life) is NOT vulnerable.

There also are some additional resources to insure that your Parallels Plesk Panel installation is secure, and malware, if present, is removed:

+ Parallels has created a comprehensive page on securing Parallels Plesk Panel at http://kb.parallels.com/en/114396

+ Parallels has created a malware removal tool at http://kb.parallels.com/en/115025

To stay on top of Parallels security communications please subscribe to our support e-mails by clicking here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and add our Knowledge Base browser plug-in here. 

Adam Bogobowicz, Sr. Director of Product Marketing

Verio takes advantage of Parallels Plesk Panel market demand, grows 102% in cloud business

Parallels Plesk Panel 11 has gained strong adoption since its launch 12 months ago. Superior user experience, best in class performance further enhanced with NGINX integration and cloud friendly cloning features make it the preferred choice for service providers looking for a professional grade cloud panel solution. Parallels Plesk Panel 11 is the fastest growing panel product in the company’s history.

Recently Verio, a subsidiary of NTT Communications and a leading provider of innovative online business solutions to SMBs worldwide, became a Parallels Platinum partner.  As part of the partnership, Verio gained access to the broad portfolio of Parallels products, research, training and support which allowed the company to deliver greater value to partners and customers.

Verio took advantage of the cloud features of Parallels Plesk Panel 11 and added Parallels Plesk Panel to its cloud offering.

Yesterday Verio announced an impressive 102 percent growth quarter over quarter for Verio Cloud. This service takes full advantage of both the exceptional user experience of the Parallels Plesk Panel as well its cloud features.

Parallels Plesk Panel 11 cloud support includes a panel cloning features that allows Verio to copy the same Parallels Plesk Panel instance to different virtual machines without compromising panel operability due to changing IP addresses and other unique entities. To support Virtual Private Server (VPS) cloning, Parallels Plesk Panel 11 includes tools for preparing images, automatic reconfiguration to new environments (including KVM, XEN, VMware, Hyper-V), and optional automated delivery of a license into a new environment.

The upcoming release of Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 is now available in feature complete preview and will further improve customer experience.  Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 will be more secure, easier to adopt, easier to upsell, and will provide full control and industry-best usability for website owners, helping service providers like Verio to deliver new value to the cloud users.

Turning Cloud Sense into Dollars

As small and medium businesses (SMBs) continue to increase their use of cloud services, web hosters have been asking, “How can I leverage this opportunity to better serve my customers’ needs and grow my business?” Here are some tips on how offering a competitive core bundle and upselling value added services can be a successful way to increase your average revenue per user (ARPU), reduce churn and differentiate your services.

•    Increase ARPU - To increase the revenue your customers generate, you need to continuously offer them new services. Upselling and cross-selling additional services and products—both during and after the point of sale—will play a major role in maximizing revenues from your existing customer base.

•    Reduce customer churn - Customer retention is the litmus test of your ability to differentiate yourself as a service provider and demonstrate to your customers you understand their needs. Studies show that when SMBs buy additional services through their Web service provider, they are less likely to leave. You can also differentiate yourself by engaging customers with great service; educating them on how to derive the greatest value from the solutions they purchase from you; and offering them outstanding support.

But how can you determine which solutions SMBs need? Our Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ research can help give you the answers:
 

30% of SMBs plan to add site building tools in the next three years – to capture your fair share, offer Parallels Web Presence Builder, a full-featured website design tool that any SMB can use. With Parallels Web Presence Builder, you can attract new customers and differentiate your services by offering try-and-buy evaluations or configuring a freemium website offer and upselling to paid or hosting packages.

50% of US SMBs have or plan to build mobile websites – with the highest growth in next three years. The time to start selling mobile optimized websites is now and UNITY Mobile will enable your customers to quickly create and publish a mobile site that run on any mobile phone and tablet. You can offer mobile services bundled or as standalone and UNITY Mobile products also offer you upsell options.

44% of SMBs are concerned about security - Web Hosters can help reduce security fears by upselling key services such as StopTheHacker, a great website security solution to help your customers prevent, detect and quickly recover from hacker or malware attacks. Another important application is CloudFlare, which extends your network globally with 23 points-of-presence on four continents, making your customer’s websites load twice as fast, while keeping them safe and optimized.

If you’re an Infrastructure Provider, you should offer server-wide services to protect your customers, secure your reputation and improve customer satisfaction - Parallels Premium Antivirus and Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam are two must-have applications. With Parallels Plesk Panel Power Pack you can extend Parallels Panel capabilities with high-value add-ons. As an example, Panel Power Pack includes five mailbox licenses for Kaspersky Antivirus server-side e-mail scanning software. These licenses are resalable, so you can use them to upsell your customers to additional mailbox protection, you can also upsell to an unlimited per server license.

Leslie McGuire
Channel Marketing Director

Selling Value in the Cloud

Cloud brokerage makes a great deal of sense to the channel. Take vanilla services from a variety of vendors, package them with (or without) your own secret sauce, and sell them with your own SLA wrapped around them. It’s a classic channel solution sell. That said, this brings VARs and ISPs into conflict with IT departments – which, in the past, have been the owner of the service guarantee within each organization, and which may be feeling increasingly marginalized by the migration of application and resource management to the cloud. In this article by John Zanni, VP of service provider marketing and alliances at Parallels he discusses how Cloud brokerage turns resellers into VARs again.

Read the article on ChannelPro.

IPv6: Two Years after Implementation in Parallels Plesk Panel

Following the North American IPv6 Summit, I received some questions on what Parallels take is on the IPv6 market and our implementation of this technology.

At Parallels, we believe that it is important to stay on top of internet technology when delivering hosting solutions to thousands of customers. Leveraging the latest stacks can help improve product security, deliver value to customers and give technology companies time to (with feedback from customers) mature and perfect their technology.

For some technology, urgency of implementation is farther driven by hard market requirements. For example, the need for implementation of IPv6 technology is exacerbated by the fact that in some geographies, IPv4 has simply sold out.

 
Parallels implemented IPv6 starting in Parallels Plesk Panel 10.2 two years ago because of the IPv6 ability to improve security and reliability, the ability to offer IPs to a global market, and built-in functionality for Mobile IP. This implementation now fully matured with all versions of Parallels Plesk 10 and Parallels Plesk 11 and it will now be a battle tested mainstream feature in Parallels Plesk 11.5.

We originally selected and will maintain a hybrid IPv6 implementation. The hybrid or dual stack implementation is important because most countries expect that IPv4 and IPv6 will co-exist for several years, so it will be important for sites to be represented in both versions of IP.  Parallels Plesk Panel also supports “pure IPv6” for when no IPv4 is available.

Parallels implementation of IPv6 is designed to support hosters’ needs regardless of the underlying OS and therefore supports multiple Linux OSs including Debian, Ubuntu, CenOS, RedHat, OpenSUSE, CloudLinux and multiple versions of Windows. We use the same multi-OS strategy for Server Name Indication (SNI), a technology which lets hosters have multiple SSL Certs on a single IPv4 address, stretching the dwindling supply of IPv4 addresses.

IPv6 is an important technology today.  Any company that is only now considering implementation of IPv6 is already behind the innovation game as it is a must have feature of the networked hosting world.

Adam Bogobowicz
Sr. Director of Product Marketing

Parallels supports Cisco researcher assessment: “website operators and administrators must keep systems up-to-date.”

Recently, a Cisco security research analyst used an old Parallels Plesk Panel vulnerability as an example of why it is important to patch servers that may be running old software. His point is valid, and Parallels agrees fully that “the active exploit of this year-old vulnerability serves as an important reminder that website operators and administrators must keep systems up-to-date.”

It turns out the exploit this researcher was referring to was (a) for Parallels Plesk Panel 9.3 and earlier – products from 2009 and earlier that are now at end-of-life, and (b) in the 3^rd party Horde webmail component, not in the Parallels Plesk control panel itself. A patch was promptly issued by Parallels in February 2012.

This reported vulnerability – which certainly is not anything new (considering the patch has been out for over a year), was later confused in some subsequent blogs and comments with another vulnerability in Parallels Plesk 10.3 and earlier versions (products from summer 2011 and earlier) also discovered and fixed in February 2012. Though the current version of Parallels Plesk Panel at that time, 10.4, did not have this vulnerability, Parallels immediately issued a security advisory and patches in February 2012 for all prior impacted versions and advised partners about actions to take. Additionally, Parallels created a comprehensive page on securing Parallels Plesk Panel and a Malware Removal Tool, responding quickly and thoroughly to these exploits.

For Parallels partners who install patches and reset passwords, Parallels Plesk Panel is not subject to this vulnerability. Customers running Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 and 11 never had this vulnerability in the first place.

Parallels agrees that the point of the Cisco researcher is still very valid: “The active exploit of this year-old vulnerability serves as an important reminder that website operators and administrators must keep systems up-to-date. This is especially urgent with vulnerabilities that are remotely detectable. This means not just the operating system, but every program and add-on for those programs also needs to be kept up-to-date. A vulnerability left unpatched in any one of them can lead to total system compromise.”

We strongly encourage our customers to subscribe to our support e-mails by clicking here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and add our KnowledgeBase browser plug-in here.

Parallels Plesk Panel 11 and the upcoming 11.5 are the most secure versions ever, and we strongly encourage our Partners and customers to upgrade to these versions. In Parallels Plesk Panel 11, all Security Updates are clearly reported in the panel. Partners can force Security Updates when they choose. The option to turn on auto-upgrades is also highly recommended for anyone on Parallels Plesk Panel 10 or above.  It is the best way to keep you fully secure.

- The Parallels Plesk Panel Team

The Death of DAS?

For over a decade, Direct Attached Storage (DAS) has been a no-brainer for many organizations; simple, fast and cost-effective. But as applications, compute and storage move to the cloud, DAS is looking like less and less of a sure bet. In fact, it’s looking more like a liability. But migrating from traditional DAS models to cloud storage is not as difficult or complex as it seems, and the good news for VARs and service providers is that they can make recommendations to customers with large DAS estates which, given solid integration and lateral thinking, will allow them to get best use out of what may, initially, seem to be redundant technology.

In this recent piece published on Channel Pro, John Zanni, vice president of service provider marketing and alliances at Parallels takes a look at the drawbacks of DAS in a cloud environment – and what alternatives are out there.

The Death of DAS?

Shared Hosting Transformation and the Control Panel

Structure Research, an independent research and consulting firm with a focus on the hosting and cloud segments within the Internet infrastructure market, recently released an opinion piece titled “Shared hosting transformation and the control panel.”

The blog article provides fresh insight into the future of shared hosting with single-server panel technology vs. multi-server technology, such as Parallels Plesk Automation. Structure Research shares how management tools have not kept up with growth of many hosters. Check out Structure Research’s insights on why hosters’ ability to “scale through operational efficiency will be paramount.”

Good stuff.