Windows Control Panel

[ERob]

Bob,

Are you going to be offering a control panel on your Windows accounts? Do you know what which control panel it will be? Sorry if I missed this somewhere else.

Thanks,
Rob

[Dotable Steve]

We will be providing a control panel for Windows shared accounts, it will most likely be either hsphere or Plesk (Still testing both)

Our Windows VPS's (when released) can have your control panel of choice installed.

These products will be rolling within the next week or so.

[ERob]

Thank you for the information Steve.

[Punjabi]

Originally Posted by Dotable Steve

We will be providing a control panel for Windows shared accounts, it will most likely be either hsphere or Plesk (Still testing both)

These products will be rolling within the next week or so.

Hi Steve, any plans of testing Helm? I have 3 different windows account - hsphere / helm and plesk. From my experience Hsphere is rock solid BUT has a very steep learning curve. Moreover the reselling capabilities are limited because of per control panel license restrictions. Helm is the easiest to manage but it is a very *soft* control panel. None of the limits are real time but just indicative in nature. So a person might be alloted only 50 MB but he could actually be using 150 MB. I found plesk to be a decent combination of features.

Disclaimer: I am not a hosting expert and above opinion is only my personal observation and it could be wrong


Cheers!!

[Dotable Steve]

I don't think Helm clusters well (or at all by default) punjabi, which is one of the things that we are looking for.

We are going to build a platform with seperate mail servers, database servers and web servers, linux and windows, so hsphere is really the way to go. I have always been reluctant in the past with hsphere, but with good docs and well setup, it will be far the most flexible of systems and one that is easily expandable. We want to provide a platform with redundcany, seperate mail servers, dns servers, database servers etc, it will make expanding so much easier.
The licensing is also a more attractive option, with hsphere.

Plesk may still be in contention, but it doesn't cluster as well as hsphere and I have had some issues with plesk expand, data not syncing properly etc, so that's a minus at this point.

Obviously on a VPS (windows) you could have the control panel of choice.

All will be revealed soon.

[Dotable Steve]

I've Had a look at Helm just now, seems it has moved on a bit since the last time I looked, clustering is an option.

One more to the test table

Thanks Punjabi

[Dotable Steve]

The control panel chosen for the Windows accounts was in the end Hsphere.

Hsphere is a lot more flexible to use and isn't restricted to be run on only Windows machines. Our cluster includes linux mail servers, dns servers, a mysql server and an mssql 2005 server, so the cross platform installation was a must have. With Hsphere accounts, you can create Windows or Linux sites and manage them within the 1 control, panel. The clustering of services provides better redundancy of services, as you aren't relying on 1 machine to provide all services.

Hsphere will also be available for VPS accounts to use as well.

[mylinear]

In this sort of a cluster setup, are the servers you are referrring to actual separate "physical" servers?

If so, let's say now I have a Linux reseller account and I am on the Earth server. This means all the services are on one physical server. For a Windows plan, when you tell us which server we are on, which services are actually on that particular "physical" server? The web pages component only? How many "physical" servers make up a Windows plan on a clustered setup?

[Dotable Steve]

Originally Posted by mylinear

In this sort of a cluster setup, are the servers you are referrring to actual separate "physical" servers?

If so, let's say now I have a Linux reseller account and I am on the Earth server. This means all the services are on one physical server. For a Windows plan, when you tell us which server we are on, which services are actually on that particular "physical" server? The web pages component only? How many "physical" servers make up a Windows plan on a clustered setup?

If you create a Windows account (or linux, we can do both windows and linux on the hsphere cluster) then this is what happens.

Each service runs on a seperate server. So instead of having 1 server running all of the services, you create a windows account that has a mssql database and email.

The servers hosting the services would be

1 x Control panel server - running hsphere
1 x Primary dns server - Hosting the dns 1 - Each dns server has IP's within different subnets.
1 x Mail server - Mail service, pop, imap, webmail.
1 x Backup relay + secondary dns server (backup MX)
1 x Windows 2003 Web Server (hosting your sites pages and applications)
1 x MSSQL 2005 Server - Hosting your mssql databases.

So, your 1 account would be serviced by 6 seperate servers, each tasked with their own service.

[mylinear]

Originally Posted by Dotable Steve

If you create a Windows account (or linux, we can do both windows and linux on the hsphere cluster) then this is what happens.

Are these only for Windows / Linux shared accounts? Will there be Linux reseller accounts with the clustered setup?

Originally Posted by Dotable Steve

So, your 1 account would be serviced by 6 seperate servers, each tasked with their own service.

Will the current running servers be part of this 6 server cluster? Or will there be 6 new servers that will be setup in this cluster manner?

When you setup a new account and say "You are on the XXX (eg Earth, Mars etc) server...", which of the 6 physical servers will you be referring to? Will it be the one running the HSphere control panel or the server running the Windows 2003 where the website is?