Better alternatives

Customer Support Customer Only Discussion
1

After all the recent problems with mail hacking, control panel hacking, and now CMS vulnerability exploits I’ve been looking at hosting options.

I love the Jodo reseller package - it’s nice to offer clients/customers access to their own control panel (although they rarely use it, but at least they can setup their own emails), however having all of those control panels also accessible from my reseller control panel is a HUGE time saver. I have enough passwords as-is, and I really don’t want to track all those user accounts.

It’s also nice having our users/clients spread across multiple servers - down time can happen, and even if it affects 1/4 of our clients, at least it’s not all of them!

I’ve always stayed away from VPS because I felt it put too much of the work load back on my side of the keyboard, and also exposed us to too much risk - maybe multiple VPS accounts? Maybe paid Jodo support plans?

I’ll admit I was as negligent as anyone when it comes to forcing CMS vulnerability updates, but we’re working hard to harden EVERYTHING under our control. I’d really hate to go through all that work just to have it wiped out because all the other people with shared hosting accounts on the same server didn’t!

Ironically, one of the positive benefits of all this recent hacking activity is the focus it has placed on web servers. In the past people have been SO concerned about price and comparing hosting costs, this creates a GREAT argument for paying MORE for quality service.

Almost every client (actually all but one) that I talked to yesterday is ready to upgrade to a “new” hosting package to help avoid future service disruptions. Obviously it’s a balancing act - most can’t afford to pay several hundred dollars a month for dedicated hosting, but at least the “but GoDaddy offers hosting for $4.95 per month!” argument is off the table.

So…questions:
Are VPS packages hosted ‘away’ from the reseller/shared servers?
What about mail and SQL services?
The descriptions on the service plan add-on all seem to be geared towards Windows servers - do you recommend Windows VPS over Linux VPS?
If not - is Linux support priced similarly?
Any VPS users want to leave some feedback? I’d love to hear your experiences!
Stephen/Jodo techs - what’s your opinion? VPS? Vitruozzo? Semi-dedicated?

Maybe this needs discussion should move to Customer Only?

2

I went ahead and moved to customer only.

Are VPS packages hosted ‘away’ from the reseller/shared servers?

Yes they are, they are in the same datacenter facility, but entirely different servers (well except one iSCSI older server but nothing new going there, and only a few clients access that one) and that iSCSI was only for addon backup plans for VPS clients.

What about mail and SQL services?
Will be on VPS server, we used to offer them shared part of same hsphere, but any new Hyper-V plan or PCS(linux) plan will be on WHMCS and not have anything to do with Hsphere.

The descriptions on the service plan add-on all seem to be geared towards Windows servers - do you recommend Windows VPS over Linux VPS?
Our VPS servers are overwhelmingly Windows, and personally I like it a lot, PHP for CMS sites is just as solid as on linux and I know windows inside and out (and oddly enough use it CLI most of the time not the mouse based stuff!) However we do support linux plans in a same manner, but I won’t personally be able to help as much there outside the basics, as I do chip in VERy often on VPS desk and support. We however still do this, but I want to make one thing clean on support side, if you have a stack plan and an issue we’d prefer you let us do it, as troubleshooting mistakes made takes sometimes 5x longer than doing it right the first time, and we don’t cover troubleshooting in the plans, only management.

If not - is Linux support priced similarly?

Correct same price.

Any VPS users want to leave some feedback? I’d love to hear your experiences!
We have quite a few. :smiley: Hope some will see.

Stephen/Jodo techs - what’s your opinion? VPS? Vitruozzo? Semi-dedicated?

VPS is good, Virutozzo, NEVER. Semi Dedicated, probably not a fit for you with limited domains (to make it semi dedicated we have to do such), and still in Hsphere. We have considered a plesk based semi dedicated but not gone that route.

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Just as a note, in 2007 I posted about something I wanted to see at the PSOFT (before comodo and parallels bought Hsphere), was a seamless VPS reseller option, no not to make the ability to resell a vps, that was done even then, but the ability to automated deploy a VPS and assign a resellers users to it, and manage it just like any other plan totally hidden to the end user. But, with the benefit of the reseller being able to make customized settings for their unique customer base.

I still there there may be a market for such, but not within hpshere, or existing panels right now. I brought it up to Parallels for PPA and while they liked the idea did not want to run with it. Maybe it could even be an addon product to WHMCS or others to skin past existing and make additional, I will pick this idea up if i ever get time!

Note that right now, we do have a lot of Linux servers open and available for VPS duty, so we are set if you want to go that route. We offer plesk 11 on them as well, which is the best plesk made, and works really well, more reliable than past plesk easily, upgrades also work on plesk 10+ and higher, unlike past editions. with plesk you can easily disable it if you don’t want it on for access, or even restrict it to only certain IPs if you want the ability to use it when you want, but not other people to use/see it at all. It also runs nginx in front of apache to accelerate things quite a bit now on plesk 11.

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I went ahead and moved to customer only.

Thanks!

And thanks for your input. I know my old concept that PHP runs better on Linux versus Windows is probably wrong, I just need to let it go!

I remember your Reseller guide being invaluable when I was getting started years ago…do you have something similar or resource you’d recommend (can’t seem to load Jodohost.com right now) ?
Probably going to go the Windows route - more options that way and we’re talking with a client that has a comprehensive ASP site already, so that might make the transition much smoother.

5

Jodohost.com is up not sure why you wouldn’t be able to load…interesting.

VPS is so custom really we have some plesk startup guides, but on VPS side not really anything like a guide to it.

I guess if you wanted we could make a thread here on customer only, you can sign up and ask anything during the process and we’ll make a guide out of it from there from the perspective of reseller to VPS move, and if we do that I’ll see about getting you some credit on account for helping! Once the questions answered as they come it, it could be made public on site with some edits and linkage etc.

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We have some evaluations of new things going on, for LINUX what you really want. Not saying anything more just yet :smiley: