UnitedHosting server upgrades - CPanel Control Panel

UH-Matt · 8th October 2009, 02:59 PM

Hello All

I wanted to open a new thread regarding open discussion with you all about our intended change of control panel from Ensim to Cpanel.

Many of you probably won't care about the type of control panel you use, many of you will prefer Cpanel, and we also understand some of you will have concerns about the intended change, so we are happy to have some open discussion on the topic right here and now.

Most of our shared/reseller servers are reaching end of life in terms of hardware (just over 3 years of age) so it is required for us to change them out for new better hardware anyway (before they fail). At this time we feel it is a good time to also switch our control panel environment. This decision is based purely on the fact that Ensim control panel has had little to no development or support over the past 18 months, since being purchased by Parallels, who by own admission have little time to focus on the Ensim control panel in favour of their other "plesk" product line.

So if you have any questions, thoughts or concerns please feel free to post and discuss here.

I will also be updating with useful information and responses as often as I can. We will also be following up very soon with a more official announcement and details of our intended change of hardware and switch to Cpanel.

Note that we have been investigating and using Cpanel behind the scenes now for some months, including managing Cpanel servers for some dedicated customers already. We also have the backing of an incredible Migrations team from Cpanel who will be handling our changeover for us!

I will also post about some of the huge benefits you will see from this change, both in terms of new hardware developments and speeds, and also new features Cpanel will offer.

VEAdas · 8th October 2009, 03:19 PM

Not really used cpanel much but Ensim is pretty rubbish.

Would this change affect stuff like squirrel mail? Reason I ask is I think its a joke that 25Mb of space is used per website on this when 1 installation could cover a whole server.

UH-Matt · 8th October 2009, 03:23 PM

With cpanel you get a choice of webmails, and as far as I understand they do not eat into disk quota at all.

percepts · 8th October 2009, 05:52 PM

Would we get full root access with cpanel and woould awstats be installed with the ability to access raw stats files with our own cron jobs?

No cpanel setup I have seen allows that.

It might help if you told us what features will be downgraded under cpanel that made ensim so much better. i.e. there are pros and cons to doing this and I would like your opinion of what the cons are.

UH-Tony · 8th October 2009, 06:04 PM

While only dedicated server customers would have the option to have root level access, items like raw log access are indeed available.

Simply having the ability for every site admin to add their own cron tasks will be a nice advantage over "Parallels Pro" (formerly Ensim).

As for the pros/cons, these days I cannot honestly claim any feature as a pro for "Parallels Pro" (formerly Ensim) over CPanel except possibly the "chroot" file system. While this was a big concern for us for a long time, we have understood for a while now that other practices within CPanel more than make up for not having the chroot.

For CPanel pros, that is a long list which we are working on details for a separate post

percepts · 8th October 2009, 06:20 PM

I have investigated this in the past. Raw logs are available via a manual download but every other host I have asked about the possibility of accessing them via a cron has responded with "You have full access via cpanel" which means no cron access which means manual daily download required which is impracticle.
This is effectively a downgrade of your USP for your services putting UH on a par with every other host.

So why not Plesk which does allow full root access as ensim currently does.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Tony

While only dedicated server customers would have the option to have root level access, items like raw log access are indeed available.

Simply having the ability for every site admin to add their own cron tasks will be a nice advantage over "Parallels Pro" (formerly Ensim).

As for the pros/cons, these days I cannot honestly claim any feature as a pro for "Parallels Pro" (formerly Ensim) over CPanel except possibly the "chroot" file system. While this was a big concern for us for a long time, we have understood for a while now that other practices within CPanel more than make up for not having the chroot.

For CPanel pros, that is a long list which we are working on details for a separate post

Nicky · 8th October 2009, 07:16 PM

Hi UH Matt / UH Tony - Any cp that would help and prompt a user a bit more would be great. And, a multi-lingual capability would be sublime.

UH-Tony · 8th October 2009, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by percepts

I have investigated this in the past. Raw logs are available via a manual download but every other host I have asked about the possibility of accessing them via a cron has responded with "You have full access via cpanel" which means no cron access which means manual daily download required which is impracticle.
This is effectively a downgrade of your USP for your services putting UH on a par with every other host.

So why not Plesk which does allow full root access as ensim currently does.

Sorry percepts, you are right about the logs not being accessible by default.
I can personally assure you though that we can and will make them accessible for anyone who requires access to them through methods such as ftp/ssh/cron.

As for the reason we have gone towards CPanel instead of Plesk, well we have been testing and offering Plesk on dedicated servers for a while now as well and from all our findings it is more flexible than Parallels Pro but not nearly as much so as CPanel and one of the biggest nice points about CPanel is that you would be hard pressed to have a problem for which a solution is not already available on their forums. This is an absolutely huge thing for us as with both Parallels Pro and Plesk (same company) we frequently have to submit tickets to their "Platinum Partner" support team and have to wait days or even weeks for a solution. And sometimes the "Solution" is simply "No, you cannot do that".

UH-Tony · 8th October 2009, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nicky

Hi UH Matt / UH Tony - Any cp that would help and prompt a user a bit more would be great. And, a multi-lingual capability would be sublime.

CPanel will certainly meet those requests. Their user interface is extremely intuitive and I know that it will be improving even further as I was able to sit down Wednesday with their UI team and review and offer feedback on some improvements they have been working on.

As for Language support:

Officially Provided:
English
Spanish
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese
French
German
Hindi
Japanese
Portuguese
Russian

Community Provided:
Romanian
Catalan
Dutch
Polish
Russian
Swedish
Turkish

Samizdata · 8th October 2009, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Matt

This decision is based purely on the fact that Ensim control panel has had little to no development or support over the past 18 months

I'm sure the decision was painful, but I would say it was inevitable in the circumstances.

Something in the changeover is bound to irritate me, but the issues will be minor in comparison.

Good luck, UH.

...

Nicky · 8th October 2009, 07:46 PM

Awesome! Thanks for the info, looking forward to the new cp. Merci and Obrigado UH Tony.

UH-Tony · 8th October 2009, 07:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nicky

Awesome! Thanks for the info, looking forward to the new cp. Merci and Obrigado UH Tony.

You are quite welcome, and believe it or not, we are very much excited and looking forward to the change in spite of the work it involves.

percepts · 8th October 2009, 07:50 PM

I will also require the ability to access my awstats conf file and datat files for modification and an option to have perl modules installed from cpan such as GEO-IP or pureperl.

Is that going to happen as default with no added cost?

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Tony

Sorry percepts, you are right about the logs not being accessible by default.
I can personally assure you though that we can and will make them accessible for anyone who requires access to them through methods such as ftp/ssh/cron.

As for the reason we have gone towards CPanel instead of Plesk, well we have been testing and offering Plesk on dedicated servers for a while now as well and from all our findings it is more flexible than Parallels Pro but not nearly as much so as CPanel and one of the biggest nice points about CPanel is that you would be hard pressed to have a problem for which a solution is not already available on their forums. This is an absolutely huge thing for us as with both Parallels Pro and Plesk (same company) we frequently have to submit tickets to their "Platinum Partner" support team and have to wait days or even weeks for a solution. And sometimes the "Solution" is simply "No, you cannot do that".

UH-Tony · 8th October 2009, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by percepts

I will also require the ability to access my awstats conf file and datat files for modification and an option to have perl modules installed from cpan such as GEO-IP or pureperl.

Is that going to happen as default with no added cost?

I'll have to investigate the AwStats side as I believe customizations are available via include but am unsure on the accessibility of the data files.
Perl modules will be easily installable by default in the site admin level interface.

percepts · 8th October 2009, 08:13 PM

basically I'm just asking for what I have now which is a cron which takes a daily copy of raw log file after daily update and full control over my awstats including adding geo-ip data file to it with use of pureperl and GEO-IP. Thats all I do outside of my domain root.

Those accessing anything else outside of their domain root or subdomain are going to have trouble with a cpanel installation which they don't have with ensim.

mark.willis · 8th October 2009, 09:32 PM

Are dedicated servers with you, going to be able to stay on the ensim control panel?
also when are you planning to roll this out?

UH-Simon · 8th October 2009, 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark.willis

Are dedicated servers with you, going to be able to stay on the ensim control panel?
also when are you planning to roll this out?

Yes, all our dedicated server clients will be emailed individually and given the option to migrate but ofcourse this will not be compulsory.

UH-Tony · 8th October 2009, 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UH-Simon

Yes, all our dedicated server clients will be emailed individually and given the option to migrate but ofcourse this will not be compulsory.

Ok, anyone who received my mail already stating that you have to take CPanel on your dedi...just ignore it...lol

mark.willis · 9th October 2009, 07:44 AM

what would be the expected downtime for the changeover on a dedicated server?
is there any filesystem changes?
would permissions/etc need changing?

Thanks

Mark

UH-Simon · 9th October 2009, 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark.willis

what would be the expected downtime for the changeover on a dedicated server?
is there any filesystem changes?
would permissions/etc need changing?

Thanks

Mark

The Cpanel migrations team are still working on the finer details of the process but we do not expect any downtime during migrations. We will ofcourse post more specific details on the process once we start confirming dates for our own shared/reseller migrations.