Setting Up a Custom Updates Server for Plesk Updates

If you maintain a great number of Plesk servers, to reduce bandwidth usage, you may want to set up a mirror of the official Plesk Update server inside your network, and then configure your Plesk servers to use it.

You can set up a mirror on any networked computer with Linux or Windows operating system and Web server installed. The following instruction provides the steps for setting up a mirror on Windows-based servers:

  1. Download the MirrorManager.exe utility from Parallels site at www.parallels.com.
  2. Copy or move the utility to the server where you want to set up the mirror.
  3. Run the utility. The utility retrieves a list of available updates from Parallels server, and shows it in the Server Configuration File window.
  4. To create a new blank configuration file, click New file. Note that you can also make a copy of the configuration file retrieved from Parallels Updates server (shown in the Server Configuration File window), and then remove the unwanted updates from the list. To make a copy of the original configuration file, from the File menu, select Duplicate Server Configuration.
  5. To arrange conveniently the windows on the screen, from the Window menu, select Tile Vertically.
  6. Decide which updates you would like to make available from your mirror server, select them in the Server Configuration File window, and click Download. When prompted, specify the Web server's directory where you want to place updates, such as C:\Inetpub\vhosts\default\htdocs\Updates. Click OK.
  7. From the Server Configuration File window, drag the selected updates to the new window on the left.
  8. Do the following for each selected update:
    1. Click an update's name in the window to the left.
    2. In the Packet properties window, double-click the Source URL entry.
    3. Type the URL to your mirror server (for example, http://example.com/Updates/) and click OK.
    4. Double-click the Readme URL entry.
    5. Type the URL to your mirror server (for example, http://example.com/Updates/) and click OK.
  9. Click Save As and save the configuration file to the Web server's directory C:\Inetpub\vhosts\default\htdocs\Updates.
  10. Define the MIME types appropriately:
    1. Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager > Web Sites, right-click the domain name, select Properties, click the HTTP Headers tab, and then click the MIME Types button.
    2. Click New. In the Extension box, type .xml, in the MIME type box, type application/octet-stream. Click OK.
    3. Click New. In the Extension box, type .crc, in the MIME type box, type application/octet-stream. Click OK.
    4. Click New. In the Extension box, type .msp, in the MIME type box, type application/octet-stream. Click OK.
    5. Click New. In the Extension box, type .msi, in the MIME type box, type application/octet-stream. Click OK.
    6. Click OK and close the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
  11. Log in to Plesk and go to Server > Updater > Automatic Update tab.
  12. Select the Automatically update Plesk check box, type the network address of your mirror server and click OK.