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Plesk or cPanel?


Guest Brivtech

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Guest Brivtech

I'm looking into setting up a virtual dedicated hosting server to replace my numerous shared hosting servers, and I have several options available to me. Here's what I think I should get, based on a low budget to start with ...

Red Hat Fedora Core 6

500GB Bandwidth

30GB Hard Drive

Simple Control Panel - Unlimited domains

256MB RAM Guaranteed, 1GB Bursted

Everything is scaleable, up or down, so I can upgrade particular components if I need to.

As I eventually outgrow this, I'll eventually exhaust the upgrade options and end up on a dedicated server.

The thing I'm not sure about is whether I should upgrade the Simple Control Panel for Plesk or cPanel? I've no idea what the benefits of either are, they're both the same price for me.

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I'm looking into setting up a virtual dedicated hosting server to replace my numerous shared hosting servers, and I have several options available to me. Here's what I think I should get, based on a low budget to start with ...

Red Hat Fedora Core 6

500GB Bandwidth

30GB Hard Drive

Simple Control Panel - Unlimited domains

256MB RAM Guaranteed, 1GB Bursted

Everything is scaleable, up or down, so I can upgrade particular components if I need to.

As I eventually outgrow this, I'll eventually exhaust the upgrade options and end up on a dedicated server.

The thing I'm not sure about is whether I should upgrade the Simple Control Panel for Plesk or cPanel? I've no idea what the benefits of either are, they're both the same price for me.

Both Plesk and cPanel are resource hogs. I don't think you'll get either cPanel or Plesk up and running with Apache, PHP etc. on 256Mb RAM. Depending on the number of visitors you get, I would suggest 500Mb RAM and upwards.

You should probably look to LiteSpeed instead of Apache. You'll also want to do some PHP and MySQL optimizing. That means, go for managed if you've not got much experience with Linux from a command line. Management will usually cover a control panel installation, software updates, kernel updates, php compiles, security hardening, iptables based firewall installation etc.

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Guest Brivtech

Both Plesk and cPanel are resource hogs. I don't think you'll get either cPanel or Plesk up and running with Apache, PHP etc. on 256Mb RAM. Depending on the number of visitors you get, I would suggest 500Mb RAM and upwards.

You should probably look to LiteSpeed instead of Apache. You'll also want to do some PHP and MySQL optimizing. That means, go for managed if you've not got much experience with Linux from a command line. Management will usually cover a control panel installation, software updates, kernel updates, php compiles, security hardening, iptables based firewall installation etc.

Interesting! So, the simple control panel would probably do me (I guess at the end of the day, they all have the same server controls, just offer them differently). Plesk and cPanel are both options that are available, and are automatically installed, so there's no issue about cans and cannots.

RAM, I can upgrade, obviously, everything I upgrade, I need to pay extra for, so I'll battle on with the basics until the need comes to improve on particular aspects.

I don't think I have any control over Apache/litespeed.

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I agree with Homar - I've used a 256Mb VPS with cPanel in the past (I assume this is what you mean), and it was much slower than a cheap reseller account.

Plesk appeared to be much slower than cPanel, but that may have been the set-up.

I did a few tweaks, tuning mySQL, and applying a php cache - but with so little free memory, I couldn't gain much.

Don't get me wrong, it was usable, just a big difference to a reseller account.

I like the idea of VPS systems, they're a good way to learn about servers without worrying about messing things up too much.

Unless you need Root access, or security is a big concern, a good reseller account should allow you to grow to a point where you can get a good dedicated server.

You normally get a fixed amount of bandwidth and storage, and normally no limit on the amount of accounts you can create.

Each account will have cPanel access.

Hope this helps,

Jason

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Guest Brivtech

I'm getting some very interesting information here guys.

I like the idea of VPS systems, they're a good way to learn about servers without worrying about messing things up too much.

My sentiments exactly - It gets me on a learning curve on how to manage and maintain a dedicated server.

One of the reasons I am looking into this is because I find I am simply too limited with a shared hosting account. While I'm very happy with my shared hosting, and it's fantastic for general purpose "webbing", I'm venturing into evermore specialised areas, and finding that limitations are starting to hold me back.

I'll start with 256B, and if I find it's a problem, I'll upgrade straight away - Again, one of the great things about VPS is that I can tweak the specifications whenever I like, not just having control over what software it's running, but what hardware I'm using as well.

I think I'll stick with the simple control panel that comes with the hosting, it seems that the alternatives are hungry, and not necessarily better, something I can re-examine in the future as needs allow. Theother control panels seem to come with extra application software, but I can actually download that stuff myself from the respective websites, I doubt I'd even use most of it!

By the way, I am a good reseller already! I just have never needed to use the higher-end servers for my own web applications before. B) I must say that I've been very happy with the shared hosting accounts, but now as I learn more and more about web things, they seem more and more restrictive. I am near the point of also having additional staff who need to access the server, not just FTP, but perhaps configuration settings, etc. and I think that can be better managed with shared hosting.

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I think memory will be your biggest bottleneck. MySQL databases can also eat up many CPU cycles. Most VPS providers allocate CPU based on your memory share (i.e. the more memory you have, the greater the share of the CPU you'll be entitled to use). Remember that Linix works differently to Windows in that Linux tries to consume all the available memory (even though it may not be needed). You'll need to use the appropriate command/tool to find your actual memory usage.

It seems strange that you would not be able to remove/configure Apache. With a VPS, you usually get root access and so can install and configure pretty much what you want. If you go for a stripped down control panel, Apache will probably be your biggest memory hog. I hear that LiteSpeed uses much fewer resources and servers PHP 50% faster - it's the big topic at WHT (WebHostingTalk). LiteSpeed is great since it supports mod_rewrite and other modules. You should just be able to disable Apache and then enable LiteSpeed - and everything works.

As far as stripped down control panels go, I hear LxLabs Host-In-A-Box is the best. They claim that you can serve 8 million hits per day on 100Mb RAM. I'm not sure if this is true, but it is certainly a popular choice. The control panel only consumes 15Mb of RAM (but that's with Lighttpd running instead of Apache). With Apache, I'd expect this to be considerably more.

If you use Apache, you'll definitely want to do some optimization. There are also many great tutorials on the web that will show you how to optimize Apache, MySQL and secure your environment. If you want to run a email server, you should not install any SPAM filtering software. These can easily consume 100Mb of RAM.

Having said all of this, give it a go with the provider's recommended setup (note: you'll still need to secure your VPS if they won't). If your VPS is slow, processes stop responding or your VPS goes down - you'll know that it's time to do some optimizing. You should always optimize and end unnecessary processes in addition to upgrading RAM.

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I currently have a VPS with 256M RAM and cPanel. While it's not the quickest thing ever, it has served me well for over a year.

I did run into a memory issue earlier this year, but setting up a cron job to restart Apache once a day solved it.

I've considered upgrading to the next level with 512M RAM, but the company I'm with wants $90/mth for it.

To the original question - Plesk looks good, although there are some features of cPanel that I haven't seen in any other panel, especially for your hosting clients.

I just did a bit of research on panels and found several worthy of note, including a GPL one that looks promising:

http://www.psoft.net/ - Currently my 2nd choice after cPanel

http://www.zervex.com/

http://www.virtualmin.com/

http://www.gplhost.com/software-dtc.html

http://vhcs.net/new/

http://zomos.com/

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Homar,

Thanks for the references, I had missed those in my research and they look to be the best so far.

No problem. $90 per month for 512Mb seems very pricey to me. I know a highly regarded (on WHT) VPS provider that offers 450Gb bandwidth, 512Mb SLM RAM, 30Gb SA-SCSI Disk Space + 2 IPs included. This includes management. They will setup your VPS completely. They'll also secure your VPS on request. Need PHP updating, compiling etc. just ask them and they'll do it for you. This is the advantage of management. They offer all of this (+ cPanel) for $55 per month (+ they have 15% off for life at the moment). Their ticket response is very fast (usually within minutes) and they actually know what they're talking about! You'd be surprised at the number of VPS providers who don't have a clue when it comes to SSH etc.

Unless a company offer a specific service (e.g. UK servers), I wouldn't consider a company who charged over $70 per month (for 512Mb).

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