Managing Database User Accounts

When you work with a database in Plesk, Plesk accesses the database on behalf of a user account associated with the database. Therefore, every database should have at least one associated user account; otherwise, you will be unable to access it.

Any database user can be set as default for a certain database. Plesk will always access the database using this default user's credentials even if there are other users associated with the database. If a database has several associated user accounts, and none of them are default, the first account from the list will be used.

Types of Database Users

There are two types of database user accounts in Plesk:

• User accounts which have access to only one particular database.
  If you collaborate with other people on managing a website and wish to give them access to the database, you should create separate user accounts for them. Each of these accounts is used to access only one database. In this case, you first create a database and then user accounts.
• Universal user accounts which have access to all databases.
  Universal users have access not only to all existing databases, but to all newly created databases as well.

  If you plan to install a number of web apps on your site, it might be convenient to create one universal user account, so that all the apps can access their databases using this account. In this case, you first create a user account and then specify it when installing apps.

  Note: A universal user acts only within one database server. If you use several database servers, create a separate universal user account for each server.

Operations with Database Users

You can create, update or remove a database user by going to Websites & Domains > Databases, and selecting the Users tab of the required subscription.

When creating a database user, you will be prompted to provide the user credentials for accessing the database and the name of the database that the specified user will access. A universal database user can be created by selecting Any for a Database.

Notes:
1. You can remove a default database user only by removing the database associated with this user. Alternatively, you can edit the user and clear the Make the user default for this database option, and then remove the user.
2. If a database user was created by an APS app, you can remove this user only by removing the respective app.
3. A database user password must be at least 5 characters long, must not contain the user name or any extended ASCII table characters.

Access Settings

Starting from Plesk 12.0, you can allow or prohibit remote access to a database, or allow access only from the specified hosts. The access settings apply to individual database user accounts. For details, see the section Setting Up Custom Access Rules.