How to Add and Remove Database Servers from Plesk?

Posted on July 11th, 2020

Plesk is a hosting control panel that allows an administrator to develop new websites, email accounts, reseller accounts, DNS entries, and more. Plesk offers a web-based interface, and it is compatible with both Windows and Unix based commercial hosting servers. It offers three different editions – Web Admin, Web Pro, and Web Host edition. Plesk helps to manage your account, files, applications, email, and more. In comparison with other control panels, Plesk has a cleaner graphical user interface (GUI) and is easy to use.

In this knowledgebase, you learn how to add and remove database servers from Plesk.

How to Add External Database Servers on Plesk

You can add an external database server to use with your hosting server by using the following steps:

First, set up the external database server by following the below process:

• Install any of the database software, such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, or Postgre SQL, that you wish to use as an external database.
• To know about the supported version details, check the Release Notes from the link: https://docs.plesk.com/release-notes/obsidian/software-requirements/.
• Set up the administrator’s account for the database.
• Next, enable the network access to the server.

 

After the setup of the external database server, Log in to Plesk interface.

Open to the ‘Tools & Settings’ option from the left-side menu bar.

From the Applications & Database section, select the ‘Database Servers’ option.

 

Click the ‘Add Database Server’ option to add an external database server to your hosting account.

 

When you click the ‘Add Database Server’ icon, it opens a ‘New database server’ set up page. In this page, fill the following details:

• In the Database Server type box, mention the database sever engine type. This box displays all the database engines supported by your license key in the drop-down. Go to the License Management page under the ‘Tools & Settings’ menu and check the database engines that Plesk supports with your license. The database server should get installed by using the Add/Remove components option before using it as an external database.
• In the ‘Host name or IP address’ box, mention the IP or hostname of the database server that you are going to add as an external database server.
• Mention the port number that the database listens to in the Port number box. By default, MySQL listens to port 3306. So, if you want to use the default port number, then you can leave the box as blank.
• Set a username and password for your database administrator under the ‘Authentication’ section.

Then, click the ‘Ok’ button to save the changes and add the database as the external database server.

 

How to Remove Database Server from Plesk

You should make sure that you are not deleting the default server, and there is no database on the server before removing the database server from Plesk. You can follow the below steps to remove or unregister a database server from Plesk.

Log in to the Plesk interface and select the ‘Tools & Settings’ option from the left-side menu.

From the Applications & Database section, select the ‘Database Servers’ option.

In the Database Servers page, tick the checkbox next to the database server’s hostname that you need to remove.

Then, click the ‘Remove’ button.

Click the ‘Ok’ button to confirm your current operation.

Follow the below process, if you want to unregister a server that is assigned as a default database server on your hosting account or has a database in it.

First, we need to delete all the databases associated with that server. To delete all the databases associated with the server, follow the below process.

• In the Plesk interface, go to the ‘Tools & Settings’ page and select ‘Database Servers’ option from the ‘Applications & Database’ section.
• Select the hostname of the database server that you want to unregister.
• To select all the database, click the checkbox at the upper left-side corner of the list.
• Next, click the ‘Remove’ button and then click the ‘Ok’ button to confirm the removal.

After removing all the databases associated with the server, change the default database server to any other active database server. To do the same, follow the below process.

• Go to ‘Database Server’ page
• Click the hostname of the database that you need to make as the default one. Please be noted that this database that you wish to make as a default database server should be the same server type as the one which we are going to delete.
• Open the ‘Preferences’ page for the selected database and click the ‘Use this server as default for MySQL’ checkbox. If the server is MS SQL, then click the checkbox near to the ‘Use this server as default MS SQL’ option.
• Then, click the ‘Ok’ button to save the changes.

After changing the default database server, return to the ‘Database Servers’ page.

Click the checkbox near to the database server you want to delete.

Then, click the ‘Remove’ button to delete the database server.

After that, click the ‘Ok’ button to confirm the deletion.

 

Note:

We cannot delete any database associated with any web applications by using this above method. To delete such databases, you need to remove the respective application from the website first.

We hope this knowledge base was helpful to you. Please comment below for any questions or queries. If you are an InterServer customer, please reach out to our support team for further help.