Configuring Parallels Plesk Panel to Run Behind a Router with Firewall and Network Address Translation

This section provides information about the ports and protocols that must be opened in the firewall settings, so as to allow access to the Parallels Plesk Panel and its services. It also describes the additional steps that must be taken to ensure the proper assignment of IP addresses in the DNS zones of newly created domains: When you set up a new DNS domain in the control panel, its zone file includes a resource record that associates the domain name with the IP address your Parallels Plesk Panel server is on, which is an internal network address like 192.168.1.10. As the 192.168.x.x IP addresses are reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use by private networks, this domain name will not be accessible to the Internet users. To work around this, you would have to associate this domain name with the IP address of the router/firewall/NAT machine in the domain's zone file (Domains > domain name > DNS Settings (in the Web Site group)). We recommend using the DNS zone template (Home > DNS Settings) to automate association of the newly added domain names with appropriate IP addresses.

To make sure that Parallels Plesk Panel and its services are accessible, open the following ports in the firewall settings.

Service name

Ports used by service

Parallels Plesk Panel administrative interface

TCP 8443, 8880

Samba (file sharing on Windows networks)

UDP 137, UDP 138, TCP 139, TCP 445

Parallels Plesk Panel VPN

UDP 1194

Web server

TCP 80, TCP 443

FTP server

TCP 21

SSH (secure shell) server

TCP 22

SMTP (mail sending) server 

TCP 25, TCP 465

POP3 (mail retrieval) server

TCP 110, TCP 995

IMAP (mail retrieval) server 

TCP 143, TCP 993

Mail password change service

TCP 106

MySQL server 

TCP 3306

MS SQL server

TCP 1433

PostgreSQL server

TCP 5432

Java applications server's administrative interface 

TCP 9008, TCP 9080

Licensing Server connections

TCP 5224

Single Sign-On service

TCP 10001, TCP 11443, TCP 11444

Domain name server

UDP 53, TCP 53

To ensure proper assignment of IP addresses to newly created domains, perform the following steps. For illustration purposes, let's consider setting up a Parallels Plesk Panel server running on 192.168.1.10 in a private network protected by a firewall, which is running on 11.22.33.44:

  1. Go to Home > DNS Settings (in the Server group).
  2. Locate all resource records of A type. As you cannot edit any of these records, you should delete them and then create the new records: be sure to leave the values in the Name column unchanged for each A record, but replace the <ip> templates in the Value column with the IP address of your firewall host – 11.22.33.44.
  3. Configure your routing device so as to ensure the proper address translation.

In this section:

Setting Up Parallels Plesk Panel's Firewall (Windows Hosting)

Configuring Port Range for Passive FTP Mode (Windows Hosting)