Running DA under a vserver

[chuckd]

Hi there,

Has anyone tried running DirectAdmin (or other CPs for that matter) inside a vserver or other similar virtualised environment? I can't afford to hand over the whole machine to DA just to try it out. Also it would be very cool to be able to offer CPanel & DA on the same box.

Keep up the hard work on DA, hope you get support structures sorted out so you have more time for development.

Chuck

(info on vserver: http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/miscprj/s_context.hc)

(Background: I run a small web hosting company. I've been evaluating control panels for a month or so and am rather frustrated at the options. Plesk: interface argh, CPanel: the incredibly ugly and hacked-together install script was enough to put me right off, DA: looks dandy but lacking IMAP means it's unusable for us. I was about to install CPanel on our new server which is about to replace the main server, but then decided to wait a few days and consider DA a bit more.)

[ProWebUK]

Should have no problems running DirectAdmin in VServer, if its a normal VPS system you should be ok.

As most know, i cant stand CPanel, im my honest opinion its the worst 'main' control panel i have ever seen from every angle possible. I believe IMAP is close to completetion now, so you may be better off just waiting a few fore days (possibly) and getting DirectAdmin :)

Chris

[chuckd]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
Should have no problems running DirectAdmin in VServer, if its a normal VPS system you should be ok.

Well it's a reasonably new VPS system & can have a few issues, so I was wondering if anyone had tried it in particular. vserver is not a fully partitioned VPS system - the individual vservers don't run their own kernel.

A related question - are there other good free VPS implementations?

As most know, i cant stand CPanel, im my honest opinion its the worst 'main' control panel i have ever seen from every angle possible. I believe IMAP is close to completetion now, so you may be better off just waiting a few fore days (possibly) and getting DirectAdmin :)

Worst from every angle? What about support of software, e.g. Mailman? Speed of updates? Long term viability (JBMC seems to be in a difficult period of growth)? The latter is an important issue given that the licensing system requires the DA server to be always accessible.

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by chuckd
Well it's a reasonably new VPS system & can have a few issues, so I was wondering if anyone had tried it in particular. vserver is not a fully partitioned VPS system - the individual vservers don't run their own kernel.

A related question - are there other good free VPS implementations?

Not that i know of (not free anyway!)


Originally posted by chuckd
Worst from every angle? What about support of software, e.g. Mailman? Speed of updates? Long term viability (JBMC seems to be in a difficult period of growth)? The latter is an important issue given that the licensing system requires the DA server to be always accessible.

-> security, first thing i noticed was installing KISS had some nice problems with it.

-> I have heard you cant update php without breaking cpanel, you can only update using the autoapache (?) script, therefore updates for things like that are usually slower than others CP's where customers can give advice and recompiling information.

-> Maybe this is me, although it seems cpanel has permanenly got security problems patches and updates... to tell the truth i would be worried of how many exploitable bugs it currently holds.

I heard somewhere also, that the majority of sites that got defaced by that defacers 'competition' the other week were on CPanel servers.

From looking at it, using their demo doesnt do much. it has lots of features, although the bit you dont see experience in the demo is the administration. I also find the look of CPanel awful, although im getting picky now :D

unfortunately the list of reasons i dislike cpanel just keeps on going for me :)

Chris

[chuckd]

Originally posted by ProWebUK
From looking at it, using their demo doesnt do much. it has lots of features, although the bit you dont see experience in the demo is the administration.

Check out the WHM (Web Host Manager) demo - that's where all the admin stuff is. I got confused by that at first - they don't make it clear that WHM is part of "CPanel" the product, although different from "CPanel" the user interface.

Also I saw a really nice skin for CPanel that arranged things hierarchically - something even DA could do with a bit more of.

[ProWebUK]

Originally posted by chuckd
Check out the WHM (Web Host Manager) demo - that's where all the admin stuff is. I got confused by that at first - they don't make it clear that WHM is part of "CPanel" the product, although different from "CPanel" the user interface.

Also I saw a really nice skin for CPanel that arranged things hierarchically - something even DA could do with a bit more of.


Do you really want everything being downloaded and installed without your knowledge.... from what i have heared recently, they have allowed you to get alterted before any updates take place mind, to be honest i would rather do upgrades myself.

When looking at new control panels, The things that will always grab my attention at first are:

-> A clean good looking skin that is easy to navigate for users.
-> Good selection of options for clients
-> Quick and easy to setup / configure accounts and sites
-> Easy adminstration, not something that breaks with every manual update.

The moment i look at CPanel i get turned away, the skin looks half finished (and the older skins look like they were designed by nursery children) 70% of the menus in CPanel are not needed, meta tag generators, search engine submitters and other webmaster resources can be found all over the internet without much work at all. CPanel is far from quick when it comes to setting up accounts, last time i used it you had to create the package firstly and then setup the domain / client totally seperate??!! the posts above i think answer the administration point ;)

Chris

[josetann]

I use UML for my VDS servers, and DA works fine. I recommend it to all my customers, though too many still want Cpanel since it's more well-known. I think as soon as DA has been out a bit longer, and gets a few crucial features implemented (i.e. imap, and the ability to move accounts between servers), it'll give Cpanel an even bigger run for its money.

[ProWebUK]

imap is already there :D

[thoroughfare]

My VDS is based on UML also :)

Try the petite VDS from www.jvds.com if you want to check out DA on a VDS super-cheap :)

Works fine for me (although my spec much higher than the petite VDS).

HTH,
Matt :)

[josetann]

Originally posted by thoroughfare
My VDS is based on UML also :)

Try the petite VDS from www.jvds.com if you want to check out DA on a VDS super-cheap :)

Works fine for me (although my spec much higher than the petite VDS).

HTH,
Matt :)

I'll agree that JVDS does offer good VDS packages.

I've setup Cpanel on some of mine that I sell, but it just seems to eat more resources than DA does. Someone getting our lower-end package will be happier using DA, than Cpanel. It'd be nice if someone could do some benchmarks showing the performance of one over the other, unfortunately I don't have the spare time right now.

[thoroughfare]

Just to point out here that JVDS.com do DirectAdmin for $5/month, just they haven't gotten round to putting it on their site yet :)

Matt

[chuckd]

Crikey! Will they have any specials? Maybe I can get them to pay me for having a DA VDS with them?

[chuckd]

BTW if anyone's interested (and has their own physical box rather than VDSs), I've got vservers running quite nicely using the VServer patch from

http://linux-vserver.org/

It's amazingly simple, and free! Gives you a pretty much full-featured VPS system. Maybe DA could integrate this into a "VPS manager" product...

Although it does require you to be able to patch your kernel and have a good knowledge of your distro. Not rocket science though.

I'll be trying out DA in a vserver soon.

[interfasys]

I always thought UML was the more stable solution, no?

[chuckd]

I don't know, I never really liked the idea of UML too much for hosting environments. It's cool and all, but a bit overkill. Anyone out there using it for virtual servers?

UML is a lot more resource intensive than vserver. Yes UML has been in the kernel for longer, but vserver has been developed for a long while now. It's also a simpler solution than UML - patch your kernel, install a distro in /vservers/bingo/ then run "vserver bingo enter" and you've got a running vserver. The resource overhead for a vserver is only the servers running, no kernel for each vserver.

That being said I've never used UML myself, I'd be interested as to what other people have done with it.

[interfasys]

Check out WHT, there was a good discussion about VDS recently and check out jvds, the guy runs UML and has a forum where he could answer to your questions.

[josetann]

JVDS uses both to my knowledge, plus something else for his FreeBSD VDS's. Myself, I use UML, as it's the closest thing to a dedicated server a customer can get, without actually getting a server.

Performance isn't that bad, as long as you compile the host's kernel with the skas patch.