Plesk Obsidian 18.0.80: MCP support for AI agents, assistant on by default, DNS diagnostics

Plesk released Obsidian version 18.0.80 on 24 August 2026, with support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as the headline feature. For anyone running panels in production, the release also introduces an AI assistant enabled by default, a DNS diagnostic tool, and security updates covering DNSSEC, TLS and SFTP.

MCP: the server managed by an AI agent

The Model Context Protocol is a standard that allows language models and AI agents to discover and use the functions of an external system. Plesk now supports MCP, the Model Context Protocol, making it possible to manage a Plesk server through an AI agent. In practice, work can be handed off to an AI agent rather than carried out step by step: provisioning a new subscription, investigating a mail delivery issue, tracking down the cause of a 500 error, or passing a site bug to an AI coding agent are all operations that can be done through a single connection.

Activation happens via the WebPros Dashboard: adding the Plesk server to the WebPros Dashboard enables management access to the server and its subscriptions via MCP. Anyone handing a server over to an agent wants to know what it can touch: access tokens can be restricted to a single subscription, so an end user's AI agent only works within its own subscription, or extended to full server administration, to manage a fleet through a single LLM connection. Individual MCP tools can also be enabled or disabled, and each can be set to read-only or read-write.

AI assistant on by default, DNS diagnostics in beta

The AI Support Assistant, in beta for a few releases now, is enabled by default for new servers with a retail licence installed after 4 August 2026.

There's also a new tool that brings together the classic mail checks – DNS resolution, SPF, DKIM and DMARC – into a single command, available via CLI with plesk repair dns [-n -j] -check-resolution <domain_name> and via REST API at GET /domains/{id}/dns/resolution. The tool is flagged as beta.

MariaDB 12.3, DNSSEC and dates to note

The release brings support for MariaDB 12.3 on Linux (except Ubuntu 18.04/20.04, Debian 10, CentOS 7 and ELS) and on Windows Server 2019 and later, where it is installed by default on new installations.

On the security side, the deprecated DNSSEC algorithms RSAMD5, DSA, NSEC3DSA, ECCGOST, RSASHA1 and NSEC3RSASHA1 have been removed, with ED25519 now the new default on Linux and ECDSAP256SHA256 on Windows. Anyone managing DNSSEC-signed zones should review their keys after the update.

Two dates worth noting: Debian 11 is approaching the end of vendor support (31 August 2026), and Plesk Obsidian 18.0.80 will be the last release to support it, with no plans for ELS support; anyone still running these machines is advised to do a dist-upgrade to Debian 12. In addition, from version 18.0.82 support for XML-RPC protocol versions earlier than 1.6.9.1 will be removed, so integrations relying on older versions should be updated in good time.

The update is available via the Plesk Installer; full details can be found in the official release notes on docs.plesk.com.