Plesk provides QCOW2 images that already contain a ready-to-use Plesk installation running on a Linux-based operating system. You can download these QCOW2 images here:

Plesk Obsidian QCOW2 images

Which QCOW2 Image to Download

All the provided QCOW2 images contain the latest Plesk version available at the moment. To choose the appropriate image to download, read about the difference below:

  • “plesk-<OS version>-latest.qcow2”. A link of this format is permanent. It means that it will not change when a newer Plesk version is released and you will always be able to use it to get and deploy the latest Plesk version.
  • “plesk-<OS version>-<plesk_version>.qcow2”. A link of this format is temporary. It means that it will change when a newer Plesk version is released and you will not be able to use it. If you are going to deploy only a particular version of Plesk, but not the latest one, we recommend that you download the image to your local drive.

Supported Virtualization Software

In addition to VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Player, you can deploy Plesk from a QCOW2 image using the following software:

You can also use virtualization management platforms, such as SolusVM, libvirt, etc.

Note: We will describe how to deploy Plesk on VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Player. You can use any other self-developed or third-party virtualization software, as well as deploy an image using your own deployment scripts. If any difficulties arise, refer to the documentation of the virtualization software you have chosen.

Converting QCOW2 Images

If the virtualization software you have chosen does not support QCOW2 images, you first need to convert such images to a supported format. For example, VMware Workstation Player does not support QCOW2 but supports images in the .vmdk format. To convert an image, do the following:

  1. Download and install QEMU on your computer.

  2. Download the Plesk QCOW2 image to the QEMU directory on your computer.

  3. Open the Command Line and move to the QEMU directory by running the following command:

    cd <QEMU directory path>

  4. Convert the QCOW2 image into the .vmdk format by running the following command:

    qemu-img convert -f qcow2 <file name>.qcow2 -O vmdk <file name>.vmdk

  5. (Optional) Copy the .vmdk file to another directory.