Has anyone used this? I have been considering replacing replacing cpanel/whm w/ it.

No but do you have any idea how much it costs? It's not cheap. It looks pretty good though. You may also look into psoft.net

i'e tlked to them about pricing and it definatly is not cheap.

Quality aint cheap :)

One i dont think its quality

The fact that it creates a VPN for every client is just weird

its 250 a month for the panel

How anyone uses this and makes money is beyond me

Joe

wierd, thats what the software is made for, its made to create virtual private servers its not made to be an end user control panel, of course you could always make a vds for your self and them make sub end user control panels. It really is a nice piece of software but is expensive but were going to be using it regardless for a new operation were starting up as it seems to be about the best out there.

Originally posted by multipleimage
Has anyone used this? I have been considering replacing replacing cpanel/whm w/ it.

There are some posts regarding this previously. If not mistaken during their promotion last time is $99 setup and $2.50 per domain.

How anyone uses this and makes money is beyond me

Many host offer solutions at higher rates and throw a QoS tag on it to qualify those higher rates. You would be surprised how many people buy QoS over something like basic CPanel hosting. Sphera adds value to your offerings.

Does anyone has a screenshot of what sphera look like ?

I took a quick look, and there is some picutres on the flash demo on their site.

Guys,

I understand the nature of these groups so I wont bore you with "Sales Pitches". I simply want to clarify a few points about Sphera HostingDirector as I noticed there are some misconceptions about the product. Hopefully this will help:

===================

1. "The fact that it creates a VPN for every client is just weird "

Actually we create Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS) for each web hosting client. This allows for you to offer dedicated server like functionality and quality to your web hosting clients. This DOES include a powerful control panel for each VDS. It is specifically designed for web hosting companies to REPLACE standard virtual hosting.

You can place up to 1000 VDSs on a single server installation

===================

2. "its 250 a month for the panel "

This is fairly accurate, however our pricing is multi-tiered and it different for WHP that will use it directly and for WHP that will resell it to their clients. Yes, we do offer a reseller program.

===================

3. "anyone uses this and makes money is beyond me"

Lets do the math:

$250 per month, divided by 1000 accounts = $0.25 per account

Now since even the most basic shared hosting is typically being sold on the market for approx. $14.95, and advanced shared hosting for more than $99.95 per month, it would occur to me that this is an ENORMOUS markup, wouldn't you agree?

===================

With that said I invite questions. You can either post them on the discussion list or email us directly, whatever suits you. Again this was just for clarification and I thank all of you for you comments.

Please contact me if you would like screenshots, I have loads of them.


With that, have a good one!

Sincerely,

Jamison Moore
jmoore@sphera.com
Sr. Sales Engineer (RHCE)
Sphera Corporation
http://www.sphera.com
======================
(781) 685-2956 Voice
(781) 685-4711 Fax
======================

First of all, i would never stick 1000 clients on 1 server.

That is just bad business.

I would max 250, and if im sticking large private servers on there, i would put at most 10

My problem is the fact that its 250 a month from the start, you are now ruling out a large market .

I mean you look at all the other panels and none charge that much.

A startup hosting company would not ever use this panel, maybe a company with many clients, but overall, its just a control panel - not the server.

I think that sphera might be a great product, that will never be used by most...

Joe

Originally posted by JBIZ718
First of all, i would never stick 1000 clients on 1 server.

That is just bad business.

I would max 250, and if im sticking large private servers on there, i would put at most 10

My problem is the fact that its 250 a month from the start, you are now ruling out a large market .

I mean you look at all the other panels and none charge that much.

A startup hosting company would not ever use this panel, maybe a company with many clients, but overall, its just a control panel - not the server.

I think that sphera might be a great product, that will never be used by most...

Joe

Very well put. The sphera pricing is out of touch with market goals. Considering a VDS (Virtual dedicated server) in the name alone dictates that users get an above average share f the server and resources especially to charge $99 per client. If you ran top of line servers you would honestly get no more than 10 $99 clients on there as Jbiz said. Now lets do the math, $99 x 10 is $990 minus the sphera monthly fee minimum of $250 leaves you with $740 . Now lets use that same space for the typical shared server with 250 clients paying $14.95 and no $250 Spgera monthly fee . Your profits are now $3737.50 which is 5 times the profit margin.

Don't get me wrong I think Sphera is a very very nice peice of software . I just hate to see it constantly being promoted as capable of 1000 vds's per server when its realistically only feasible for environments with 1/100th that limit.

So if you are claiming 1000 vds's per server at the typical market rate of $99 per vds please tell me where to buy these super servers becuase we would love to get them. A typical $99 client is going to want at least 1gig of space and 20 or more gig of bandwidth minimum. If we can find a server with 1 terabyte of data storage and capable of moving 20k gig per month then we will accpet the 1000 vds's per server comment.

I can not prove this, but I would be willing to bet a pan of fudge that you could never get 1000 VDS's on a standard box. You would need a super computer as stated before with 8 or more CPU's. Each VDS creates its own instance of the software required to run a web hosting server. (Apache, SSL, Bind, Mail - not smtp as I think sendmail is shared, just scripted to look private - etc....). The resource use is huge. Do you have benchmarks? And can you post the platform these were done on?

Very well put. The sphera pricing is out of touch with market goals.

Who's market goals? It is not fair to say Sphera has no market. This maybe true for most host here. However, there are a lot of larger host who did the basic hosting and are now seeing the importance of value added. This is a natural progression. There are not many large web host (over 5000 customers) offering just basic hosting. I can only think of HostRocket and ADDR right now. Everyone else eventually adds more to the offering. A VDS is a good addition. Many people with one server see $250.00/mo for a VDS enabled box a waste. However when you grow and have deep pockets, it is a drop in the bucket.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
Who's market goals? It is not fair to say Sphera has no market. This maybe true for most host here. However, there are a lot of larger host who did the basic hosting and are now seeing the importance of value added. This is a natural progression. There are not many large web host (over 5000 customers) offering just basic hosting. I can only think of HostRocket and ADDR right now. Everyone else eventually adds more to the offering. A VDS is a good addition. Many people with one server see $250.00/mo for a VDS enabled box a waste. However when you grow and have deep pockets, it is a drop in the bucket.

I meant the market norm. We do see the advantage of a vds system and that prompted a conversation and dem owe ran through with Shpera last year with their orginal version of Hosting Director. We prefer to develop our own vds system but thats not possible for many hosts especially those starting out. I would like to see Shpera cater to those little guys too. The main point I was trying to make though is the 1000 vds statement is just not realistic.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JBIZ718
>>First of all, i would never stick 1000 clients on 1 server.

>>That is just bad business.

A: Please give me your technical explanation of why you would never do this. Remember, there are loads of variables for this, hardware, OS, hosting software, site activity, all of which determine the amount of clients that be hosted. To make a blanket statement of how many clients you would host on one server without considering these variables is wrong.

I have been in the hosting business for over 6 years, worked internally with 100's of nation-wide provider and small hosts, in addition to having owned my own hosting business for over 3 years. I can say with utmost confidence that the amount of clients hosted per server varies greatly and ranges fro 10 to well over 1000.

>>I would max 250, and if im sticking large private servers on there, i would put at most 10

A: You are obviously confusing out technology with technology such as Ensim develops. We implement server very differently, liker night and day. We are working within the same constraints as they are. I would be more than happy to discuss what we do differently and why this does not apply to our VDS's. Again to make a blanket statement without understanding the technology is wrong.

>>My problem is the fact that its 250 a month from the start, you are now ruling out a large market .

You may be right, it may not be for the beginning hosting business with no client base whatsoever. However consider this example:

Basic server $200 + HD $250 = $450.00 cost
30 Customer @ $14.95 (min) = $448.50 revenue

It takes only approx. 30 customer to recoup your investment. I would not consider any company with less than 100 clients a commercial hosting company. Since we are marking ourselves as a commercial solution, I thinks this make great sense. How about you?

>>I mean you look at all the other panels and none charge that much.

A: You are comparing apples to oranges. Please do a feature by feature comparison and get back to me ;) I can tell you than any software with a comparable feature set is equal to or more expensive than our solution...guaranteed!

>>A startup hosting company would not ever use this panel, maybe a company with many clients, but overall, its just a control panel - not the server.

I think that Sphera might be a great product, that will never be used by most...


A: Please refer to my above post on commercial hosting.

Sincerely,

Jamison Moore
jmoore@sphera.com
Sr. Sales Engineer (RHCE)
Sphera Corporation
http://www.sphera.com

I think thats we we differ

Regardless of the technology, i am not sticking more then 250 on a server. I think thats why the large ones have so many problems.

Overall i guess are views differ, but sticking 1k domains does not look after my clients interest at all, and overall is just lining my pockets.

Also as I said its just a control panel, why spend any more then i have to.

If i get cpanel, ensim, plesk, in they end they all do a similiar process. I would rather stick less domains and stick the money in my pocket that way.

Overall regardless of the features the sphera might have, its not worth the buck, in the end im just hosting sites, most of my clients spend maybe 20 minutes in the panel, setting up email and what not, then there done. They dont go back unless need be, and most of them could care less as long as it works.

Overall take ensim , since we use that:

The appliance 250 domain license is 599

Sphera = 250 a month

As much as technology is good, in the end most companies are there to make money.

Even if sphera is better, for 1 year of ensim its 599, for 1 year of sphera its 5k.

To me it looks like i make a profit of 4301$ just by not using sphera

Joe

Originally posted by Jag


>>Don't get me wrong I think Sphera is a very very nice peice of software . I just hate to see it constantly being promoted as capable of 1000 vds's per server when its realistically only feasible for environments with 1/100th that limit.

A: Again this is based on not understanding the enviornment

>>So if you are claiming 1000 vds's per server at the typical market rate of $99 per vds please tell me where to buy these super servers becuase we would love to get them. A typical $99 client is going to want at least 1gig of space and 20 or more gig of bandwidth minimum. If we can find a server with 1 terabyte of data storage and capable of moving 20k gig per month then we will accpet the 1000 vds's per server comment.

A: Ok let me point out a few things that I wil GUARANTEE that most every other commercial hosting provider in the world will agree with...Customers almost NEVER use the entire amount of space you offer them. In fact they use on average about 10%. Hosting companies know this, and in fact if this were not the case the majority of hosting companies would run out of space today.

The type of companies that will purchase a shared hosting solution in the first place are small businesses with light needs. if there were not, they would have dedicated servers in the first place.

Ok so lets say we are dealing with small businesses. They average size of a small business website is well under 50MB, in fact it is closer to 20MB. So if you multiply even 50MB by 1000 you get 50GIG. This is much lower than 1 terabyte wouldnt you agree?

Keep in mind this is assuming that all your clients will use all their space, all the time....not the case.

On the server side, let me layout a very basic example:

Traffic is for a small business website is generally below 100 visitors per day (approx. 3,000 per month), 10 page views per visitor, with an average of 25 hits per page. This makes approx. 25,000 hits per month per small business website.

Multiply that by 1000 and you get 25,000,000 hits. Quite a bit but definitely not "Super Computer" requirements. Keep in mind a Cobalt says their Raqs can handle several million hits a day. I hope you host with better hardware than that ;)

Jamie

One thing though Jbiz, you can not truly compare Shpera with those others. Sphera is not meant to be just a control panel. Shpera seperates a server into several smaller servers each with root access and the freedom to crash their own virtual system and apache all they want without affecting the other VDS's on the system. It is not at all like cpanel or the others and really should not be grouped together like that.

Sphera is for the experienced user market that dont want to be on a shared system where they have to ask support to install simple mods and programs. Having said that they almost always want and need more space and allowances and therefore the 1000 rule in my opinion is impossilbe.

Sphera is not the best choice for hosts that want control panels for their shared server clients. It is designed for a different market niche completely. Use Sphera to fill the gap between shared hosting accounts and dedicated servers and charge a rate that falls between the two. This is what Sphera is designed for and does quite well. You will not make a ton of profit but it is another level of service you can provide to the experienced webmasters out there.

Of course someone that has a basic html page that gets 2 hits month will not want root access or even know what that is so the 1000 basic sites theory is again not plausable. But Sphera does have a place in hosting and is the best at what its designed for right now. I just wish the 1000 vds logic would be removed to avoid confusing the young hosts out there that ask about Shpera all the time.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JBIZ718
[B]I think thats we we differ

Regardless of the technology, i am not sticking more then 250 on a server. I think thats why the large ones have so many problems.

>>Overall i guess are views differ, but sticking 1k domains does not look after my clients interest at all, and overall is just lining my pockets.

I think your customers could care less how many clients are on a machine. This is not their are of experience and will leave that "number" up to you. What is in their best interests is that their needs are met in an efficient and relaible way. You have still not provided any technical reason as to why this should not be done. I will back any stament I make with a technical reference. To not do so invalidates the satement in the first place.

>>Also as I said its just a control panel, why spend any more then i have to.

As I mentioned Sphera does not sell control panels. We sell technology, out technology just happens to have a control panel ;)

>>If i get cpanel, ensim, plesk, in they end they all do a similiar process. I would rather stick less domains and stick the money in my pocket that way.

A: Sphera is for providers looking to differentiate fromt he market and offer higher level services. I would have to say that each company you mentioned has strong and weak points. The company you choose to use should be based on a complete technical evaluation based on your business needs. If you choose not to purchase, it just was not for you, no harm no foul.

If you do, I hope it is not because you were "looking for a control panel" but for a solution. Keep in mind without getting into a sales pitch, VDS is one of about 20 unique functions of HostingDirector. Many of which are far more interesting.

Jamie,
Small businesses and small websites dont need a VDS. They use shared hosting where
Sphera is not the ideal product. Please see my post above.

Best Wishes

jmoore, you keep referring to this 1000 number. Where are your benchmarks? Post them. Or is this 1000 number arbitrarily picked for easy math?

We looked at your product 1 year ago, pre-end user control panel days, and found it lacking at the time. It sounds like you have fixed many issues. We ending up buying ServerXchange. Just like you, Ensim offers solutions.

No offense, but can you post some actual customers you guys have for reference? All other software venders in this market will reference. You guys do not (or so I have noticed). I would like to talk to actual users.

Dialtone has a partnership with them but I coudn't tell you if they have any takers for using Sphera on dialtones servers.

And a word from a competitor :)

You can indeed not compare Sphera with the other control panels out there. If you want to compare, you can do so with the high-end solution of Ensim.

Sphera is aiming at a complete different market, which might turn out to be good or a bad move, future will learn. And with a different market, there is a different pricing scheme, which I'm sure they have calculated properly :o

And about the 1000 VDS on one server. It's a tough number to reach, but to be honest, we've got a customer from India and he places those numbers of accounts on his servers all the time. He now plans to put at least 1500 accounts on a single P3 server....well, I hold my breath :eek:

Yes im very impressed with sphera, but im wondering who this sales rep for them is, you need to go back to sales 101, your not pointing out the key features thats on every ones minds, but rather trying to preach to a group of hosts how the hosting biz works, about the dumbest move you can make.

Anywho on behalf of spheras great product ill try to save it from being condemned.

First of all, i agree its never smart to put 1000 users on one machine. The key features that make for this being possible though with sphera are outlined as below:

1. You can move sites and vds's around from server to server with the click of the button. What does this mean, it means if a server crashes or gets to loaded down, you just bring another server up and with the click of the button you can offload sites to this new server. This is in my opinion the best feature of sphera.

2. Spheras solution integrates a high level of redundnacy you can have multiple of instances of the key facets or every component.

Yes the software isnt priced or made to be distributed to low end markets, but then again if your running sphera, you can price your plans higher, Virtual Dedicated Servers are worth 3x more than hosting accounts.

Just my 2 cents.

You can move sites and vds's around from server to server with the click of the button. What does this mean, it means if a server crashes or gets to loaded down, you just bring another server up and with the click of the button you can offload sites to this new server. This is in my opinion the best feature of sphera.

This isn't really true. Ensim and Sphera both have gui based drop and drag *if* the server and sites are reachable. If the box is down, dropping and dragging will do no good data restore. However, if your server gets a pig, then this feature is excellent in that you can move it on a new box to lessen the load.

I wish Ensim would come out with a domain name drop and drag feature to lay under the VDS drop and drag. Now that's a feature. :D

And about the 1000 VDS on one server. It's a tough number to reach, but to be honest, we've got a customer from India and he places those numbers of accounts on his servers all the time. He now plans to put at least 1500 accounts on a single P3 server....well, I hold my breath

Sure, for basic shared. VDS's use one hell of a lot more resources then a basic site. Each VDS you add needs its own resources to run the independent instances. I really can not see 1000 possible. This is why I would love to see the bench marks.

Yes im very impressed with sphera, but im wondering who this sales rep for them is, you need to go back to sales 101, your not pointing out the key features thats on every ones minds, but rather trying to preach to a group of hosts how the hosting biz works, about the dumbest move you can make.

As this thread does not take place in the advertising forum, he is not allowed to point out the other key features of his software. He is allowed to reply about any misconceptions about his product, and his replies follow the rules of this forum just fine.


Sure, for basic shared. VDS's use one hell of a lot more resources then a basic site. Each VDS you add needs its own resources to run the independent instances. I really can not see 1000 possible. This is why I would love to see the bench marks.

Correct, that's why I stated it would be a tough number to reach. You will need a very powerful machine for this.

Delegating authority to a seemingly brain-less application is a major risk. Always review all options before entrusting your business to an application like this ;)

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

Trust me, you want to stay as far away from this software as possible.

See http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43150


Here's a partial list of problems we found with Sphera's "software" (I am copying and pasting this list from my sys admin, so any specific questions about these I may need to defer to him). Some of these only cropped up after we had real users on the box doing what real users do, in other words some of these issues were unnoticeable during our testing phase:


1) Default email forwarding doesn't work
2) Multiple domains per VDS is not yet possible in a scalable way
3) Server is not user friendly when it comes to email. (setting VDS as smtp
versus using ISP smtp server always causes problems for new clients and
makes them think the software does not work right)
4) Resellers cannot brand in a scalable way.
5) No cron job
6) No compiler (c/c++)
7) All name based VDSs listen to https and this crashes them. They really
should be turned off by default. Fixing this is a major hell cause
customers add and delete VDSs all the time. As in the case of most fixes,
not scalable to undertake cause it would be major micromanagement.
8) Sphera limits power apps to the version on the control panel. Late on
Frontpage and real server already.
9) All mail that is sent to a VDS that is not valid sits on the mail queue
often growing quite large. This is because when email is returned to
postmaster it is mapped to root. Root is not maped by default (something
that should be obviously mapped to the VDS user). Thus mail queues fill up
and customers get upset cause their servers crash.
10) The fact that this is proprietary software makes us totally dependant on
them to fix problems (perhaps end user courses would be good)
11) Normal things like formmail.pl sometimes work and sometimes not
12) Majordomo installs with misspelled directives.
13) Move VDS does not really work as promised. We encountered many messed
up VDSs
14) Every customer we have hates the java user interface.
15) VDSs that go over quota cannot be modified by Resellers unless they
figure out how to lower their quotas.
16) Every customer complains about the high number of 404 errors on their
sites. Sphera says that it is because the servers are listening for
https. Again refer to #7 above.
17) Cannot restrict incoming email nor modify the sendmail conf files for
VDSs Which means,we are at the mercy of the defaults given to us by Sphera.
No spammers database, no way to reject a sender (which in todays day and age
seems ridiculous or out of touch to design this way)
18) Clients concerned about telnet security have no option when it comes to
name based VDSs

Therre's even more, but that's all we've documented.

I would like to address each issue individually.

1) Default email forwarding doesn't work

Not quite sure what this referesed to but both forwarding to an email address on the VDS as well as to an address outside the VDS both work. Catch all has also been added to 3.5

2) Multiple domains per VDS is not yet possible in a scalable way

This has been added to Version 3.5 to be released mid April. It included full virtual host management within the control panel, as well as the creation of the zones for each new domain.

3) Server is not user friendly when it comes to email. (setting VDS as smtp versus using ISP smtp server always causes problems for new clients and makes them think the software does not work right)

This is an option you can remove for the GUI 3.22. Because of concerns it has been removed for the GUI in 3.5

4) Resellers cannot brand in a scalable way.

This has been added in version 3.5, and was not a supported option in 3.22.

5) No cron job

This has been added in version 3.5, it was not an option in 3.22.

6) No compiler (c/c++)

This does not come standard but can easily be added in both 3.5 and 3.22. On most accounts you do not want customers compiling things anyway as it consumes much system resources and should be allocated wisely :)

7) All name based VDSs listen to https and this crashes them. They really should be turned off by default. Fixing this is a major hell cause customers add and delete VDSs all the time. As in the case of most fixes, not scalable to undertake cause it would be major micromanagement.

This has been resolved in 3.5, and a patch will be availabe for 3.22 in approx. 1 week. However a manual fix is very easy.

8) Sphera limits power apps to the version on the control panel. Late on Frontpage and real server already.

Customers can easily update the PowerApps in the control panel using the SDK available for both version 3.22 and 3.5. In addition we insure the the most widely used version is in the system. The latest and greatest is not always the best in terms of security as we know.


9) All mail that is sent to a VDS that is not valid sits on the mail queue often growing quite large. This is because when email is returned to postmaster it is mapped to root. Root is not mapped by default (something that should be obviously mapped to the VDS user). Thus mail queues fill up and customers get upset cause their servers crash.

Mail that is bounced goes back to the user that sent the mail, not to postmaster, it is sent from postmaster on the bouncing server. The problem you are experiencing is due to a VDS spamming, and the mail servers blocking it on the other side. When this happens it sits in the VDS queue (as with any mailserver) and waits to resend it. Each time the queue is flushed all the mail again sent and since it is blocked thus the process repeats. This is difficult to avaoid aside from cancelling the spammer account.

10) The fact that this is proprietary software makes us totally dependant on them to fix problems (perhaps end user courses would be good)

Again, with the SDK you can change or update apps, but it is true to a certain extent the software must be developed by Sphera (we are not Open Source). However the same holds true for any commercial software.

11) Normal things like formmail.pl sometimes work and sometimes not.

They work, however FormMail had a odd way of storing the order of a few variables. By flopping to the two variables the script works fine. ForMail as has been notified of the issues, and the VDS has since been modified in 3.5 to be a little more forgiving to work around it. Thus the sometimes, and sometimes not some cleints may have the new version, some may have the old.

12) Majordomo installs with misspelled directives.

Fixed in 3.5

13) Move VDS does not really work as promised. We encountered many messed up VDSs

This is a very complex issue and involves several changes that were not part of the MoveVDS feature. Without goign into detail this was a very isolated case and can be tracked to changes made on the source machine. Setuild files were removed as a security concern on the source machine thus the MoveVDS feature did nto like the fact that there were missing files. This was overridden and the move was successful, however a small number of VDS's had to be manually moved (less than 10 if I remember right)

14) Every customer we have hates the java user interface.

End user control panels are in HTML, only reseller control panels are in Java. However I agree I dont like Java as well, but this will change very soon to HTML as well.

15) VDSs that go over quota cannot be modified by Resellers unless they figure out how to lower their quotas.

I dont undertsand what they need to figure out?

16) Every customer complains about the high number of 404 errors on their sites. Sphera says that it is because the servers are listening for https. Again refer to #7 above.

This was traced back to only occur under high server loads. There is a mechanish that starts a name based apache process then hands it off to the HTTPD process. This issues was that under high loads the HTTPD process did not start fast enough, thus the mechanish timed out. This has been reolved by increasing the timeout as well as making this value configurable. This has been fixed in 3.5 and will be available as a patch for 3.22 in about a week as with thr other fix.

17) Cannot restrict incoming email nor modify the sendmail conf files for VDSs Which means,we are at the mercy of the defaults given to us by Sphera. No spammers database, no way to reject a sender (which in todays day and age seems ridiculous or out of touch to design this way)

Teh sendmail.cf can be edited by both the VDS owner and the sysadmin. Any rules can be added, and if necessaary the sendmailmc is provided for advanced administration. RBL lists for spammers have been successfully installed into a VDS but for obvious reasons this is not the default. Each end user may or may not wish to have this so to make it default might not be a good idea.

18) Clients concerned about telnet security have no option when it comes to name based VDSs

Not sure why you xperienced this but SSH2 works for both name based and ip based sites. I would not suggest telnet by any means. This is the default in 3.22 and 3.5.

With all that said these concerns are all valid. We have taken these suggestions, which I have previously heard offline and raised them all to product management. Although all of the above have been resolved, feeback is always appreciated.

What I didn't like about the Sphera system is this kind of thing.

A customer puts french characters in the autoresponder and all of a sudden the xml tags get messed up and resellers can't log in.

Also, I had one customer set an autoresponder on two email accounts, tested it from one of them by mailing the other and the loop took all the clients down. It would have been nice to have ahd the VDS have some "real" isolation. When it took the server down, it was hard to argue to our customers theat the VDSs worked in an more isolated environmnet than Virtual Hosting.

Foreing Domain names cause probelms too because of the way Sphera name servers.

Looks sexy though, but the looks was not good enough for opur customers ...

Denisdekat

We also got a little tired of the old "fixed in the next version" syndrome which went on and on......

If you are interested in a real virtual server environment take a look at sw soft. They start the virtualization at the hardware level (if I remember correctly) with virtual mac addresses and all. The Virtual Environments are totally isolated, can be limited in hardware resources (as in can't hog the porcessor and memory) and if you can load any flavor of linux you want. So you can sell debian to the hardcore linux kids and redhat to the others. Mandrake to the few ;)

DenisDeKAt

Originally posted by rbro
We also got a little tired of the old "fixed in the next version" syndrome which went on and on......

I understand the frustration, however 3.5 is only version to be released after the one you are running on. So in this case unfortunately "fixed in the next verison" it is true, however agreeably maybe not soon enough.

Yes, not soon enough. Here's what I DON'T miss:

Actual snippets of emails from customers (some ex-customers :angry: ) using the CURRENT version of Sphera:


> I am beginning to have VERY serious doubts about the ability of the
> Sphera
> folks to provide anywhere near a decent hosting product. Their package has
> had so many problems that it is beyond me that they even took it to beta
> yet let alone full production.

and

> I still get 'page not found' about half the time when I first try to
> open any of the Sphera domains. Today I got the following email errors.
>
> It is working now, but this is still an issue to me regardless of what the
> Sphera guys say...
>
> At 9:35:07 Mail failed first with; ERR POP Service disabled, then
>
> ERR Sorry, no mailbox here.


and

> I'm sorry, but I start being very disappointed with the service.
>
> This whole systems turns out to be extremely fragile and inoperative.
>
> 1. When a VDS reaches the disk limit, the site goes down. Can you
> imagine the extreme dangers of this situation? It means that all domains
> hosted on the system can be easily shut down by ANYONE on the internet,
> simply by sending a couple of large emails. This is completely
> unacceptable.
>
> 2. Then, when a VDS reaches it's quota limit, from the Control Panel,
> it's impossible to increase it's quota, an error message "User xxxxx
> exceeds disk quota limit" and the site stays down.
>
> 3. Disk quotas should be dynamic. It's completely unacceptable a domain
> goes down because of disk quotas while we don't even use 20% of our real
> 500 Mb. quota. Sometimes, large emails can be received by ANY domain. Of
> course it's impossible to scale all VDS's to take care of that punctual
> and temporal situation.
>
> 4. Last week we were unable to log into the Reseller Control Panel. We
> had to email you to reset the password.
>
> 5. I created the xxxxx.com VDS... and it's still unused, but right
> now I'm unable to send email to xxxxx.net or x***********, just
> because my reply-to address is @xxxxx.com. And now even worse: The
> mails just get lost, I don't even receive the messages returned. This is
> an error of the SPHERA software. This is very annoying and to me,
> another proof of failing software design.
>
> Right now, xxxxxx.net is down, because I tried to install urchin on
> the VDS. It turned out to occupy 5 Mb. The VDS exceeded the quota and
> now the only way to solve the problem is: FTP data out of the VDS,
> increase the quota, and FTP the data back into the VDS. Do you think
> this is acceptable? To me, it's not.

AND

> Well, you can't say that I did not try...
>
> The Sphera service has been nothing but trouble from day one.
> I spend most of my time trying to figure out why things that worked
> one day do not the next. Or why things that should work simply do not.
>
> I ahve had to rig each individual email accounty in my office to get them
> to work. Some will send, but not receive mail. Some can get mail but always
> error on sending. I had to install a personal SMTP server on several user
> machines here just so they could send email...
>
>
> I have been sending tech support snips of my error logs
> that show the server shutting itself down, and refusing to restart...the
> worst
> example was a four day vacation. Then it mysteriously re-appears.
>
> This is not the least expensive hosting solution available...but I am
> willing
> to pay a little more for the quality service we have had from your company
> in
> the past.
>
> Unfortunately, the Sphera solution has fallen way short of my worst
> expectations.

At some point we had to say "Enough is enough" and cut our losses. I just don't want others to make the same mistake we did. Judging from the posts I've seen regarding Jumpline, their customers are not too happy either....