I put this as a post, but am making it a thread to get more exposure.
Here goes:

How likely is it for something to go wrong on a dedicated server?
How ofter do you get problems?

I mean, can you always expect something to go wrong, where you need to reinstall something, or restore a backup? Or does this kind of thing only happen after maybe a couple of months?

What kinds of problems can take place?
How likely are they to happen?
How often can they happen?
Why do they happen?
What can be done to prevent them from happening?

Is it possible to back up only configuration files and sites, so that if the worst should happen the main parts you would already have.

Also, how many clients would everyone recommend be put on a server like rackshack 300gig bandwidth 1gig duron 512mb ram etc.....

Thanks
Anayet

personally would not go over small 100 sites, 70 medium/big:)


Chris

Because of the IDE drives?

I would think 250-300 small to medium sized sites would be fine given a RAM upgrade to 1 GB.

I have no experience with my own dedicated server, but ~200-400 would seem the norm from my experience with shared servers.

You're asking a lot of questions nobody can answer. Unless you want a statistical research done and you're interested in theoretical results.

Dedicated servers should be just fine for a long time, if they're setup right. And if the administrator knows what he's doing and the security precautions are taken. And if and if and if...

What could happen? Any number of things, same as if you walk down the road... you could get bird poo right in the eye :D Then agin, you might not.

In everyday life - 1GHz Duron with 512 MB RAM can easily take hundreds of small sites. It can take hundreds of large static sites too. What happens when you get a couple of large PHP/mySQL sites? Tweak it, try it out... you'll see. Sooner or later, you'll have to either upgrade the hardware or get a new server. When will it happen? The only way to know that is to try. By that time you'll already have more than one server, if you're smart.

BTW, current version of Plesk does have troubles with more than 250-300 sites. Simply because of the way Apache handles large numbers of virtual sites and because of the way Plesk is using httpd.conf and httpd.include. Many providers are experiencing troubles with Apache not coming back up after adding/changing domains on large Plesk servers. I'm saying this because you're mentioning Rackshack...

Ales

The number of sites per server depends purely on the kind of sites they are (eg. php / cgi heavy, resource intensive scripts, plain html) and the amount of traffic they have.

You can host a lot of small html sites with a minimal amount of traffic onto a server with no problems whatsoever, yet you may only be able to host 25 higher traffic sites with full backend databases connected to a php front end.

Just monitor the serverload closely, ensuring it doesn't get too high...

Matt

Well
We run 300 sites per server on our 1GHz 1GB servers (not rackshack)

We use cpanel as the backend for our domain registration service (10MB free web hosting) and have had as many as 2050 sites on one server with 512MB of RAM and no down time ever.

Gordon

We balance servers out carefully-no automated account setup. That way each server has a representative cross-section of accounts and resource requirements.

Note: We have some shared servers with as few as 2 to 8 accounts...these are all bulletin board servers.

Uptime ranges from 99.87% to 99.99%.....generally few server problems. Longest running as of this minute, without reboot or downtime, is 5 months, 21 days, 16 minutes.

GordonH, glad to see someone has finally proved it can be done.

Yes
Its basically about looking at what the accounts are used for and making sure there are resources available for them.
We have a reseller server with over 1500 accounts on it but 3GB RAM. Runs perfectly well with CGI and MySQL running on many of the accounts.
However you need the hardware to back that up.
You won't do it on a RAQ4 :)

Gordon

I had a VB site alone in a box like that, with no more than 80 BW month, and the load got picks of 50!!!!
I have to say the the forum got 900 users online at the same time :P

Gordon, do you find Web host Manager takes up a lot of cpu time when you have many sites?

Alan, we find that user_mod takes up quite a percentage of cpu time, this is part of WHM.

Matt

Originally posted by SplashHost.com
Gordon, do you find Web host Manager takes up a lot of cpu time when you have many sites?

Not really
It runs slow but I can't say I run it that often so its not really a problem.
To put you in the picture I have a seperate control interface for all the servers which sends data to them without having to open up WHM (runs on my desktop).

Gordon

The thing about RackShack that you need to understand very clearly is that they are not a managed hosting provider. As such, your box can go down for whatever reason outside of your control and the amount of support that you get depends on factors beyond your immediate control.

Those 1GHz Durons are pretty okay for static websites. You should be able to run quite a number of sites without any issues. I have, however, successfully crashed one of my servers with only 15 clients on board because of a few processor-intensive sites. You want to watch out for clients who use VBulletin, PHPNuke or similar forums/content management systems that are CPU intensive. Monitor their traffic, and the overal server load average. If you're consistently above 1.5 on load average, you should start looking for a second server.

Good luck,

Leo

Our signups are automatically spread out over 4-5 different servers, each one capping out at 3-400 accounts. These servers are dual 1.26ghz with 4gb ram and SCSI disks so they can handle this load pretty easily.

-Brendan

How much bandwidth (on average) are you guys finding that each of your servers push?

1/2Mbit, 1Mbit, 2Mbit, more?

Hmm. I see here that Plesk retards a server if there's over so many people on it, correct?

Well, the cheapest Rackshack boxes always come with Ensim. Anyone know how much that drags down a server?

Just curious... it seems like many people end up uninstalling a lot of shells because they SUPPOSEDLY interfere with it's performance. But I don't know how 'touchy' these systems are/why they'd do that. I know Webmin is well behaved, since it just helps you write a few config files and doesn't load down the server with any unnecessary processes.

Just interested in hearing what you guys have to say about the pro (pay, rather) panels hindering server performance.

In general, Plesk doesn't retard a server - in fact, the performance hit is unnoticeable. On occasion (rare, but it does happen), apache doesn't restart when you edit an account.

You just have to be aware of these issues and always check that everything works after making any changes -> but if you're dilligent, you would do that with any system, irregardless of whether it is Plesk, Ensim, or whatever.

Best,

Leo

Originally posted by leonardteo
In general, Plesk doesn't retard a server - in fact, the performance hit is unnoticeable. On occasion (rare, but it does happen), apache doesn't restart when you edit an account.

You just have to be aware of these issues and always check that everything works after making any changes -> but if you're dilligent, you would do that with any system, irregardless of whether it is Plesk, Ensim, or whatever.

Best,

Leo

Hey, Leo... Since you seem to know about Plesk systems... let me ask you... can you tweak them out for speed without Plesk minding? (or can you get it NOT to mind?)

I.E., can you install TUX or thttpd web servers, with autofallback to Apache, without Plesk minding? How about custom compiles of php and mysql? (and apache, too, for that matter)? Stuff like that?

And anyone here know Ensim well enough to answer the same things? In general, I've found the level of technical expertise amongst users of Ensim at the Ensim forums, to be much lower than what I've found out of Plesk users on WHT, the plesk forum, and elsewhere. To balance out my knowledge, I'd like to hear from an Ensim "Zen master" sometime. :)

Originally posted by jmars

I.E., can you install TUX or thttpd web servers, with autofallback to Apache, without Plesk minding? How about custom compiles of php and mysql? (and apache, too, for that matter)? Stuff like that?


What exactly do you want to do with the system? The reason I ask this is because you would run Plesk if you are managing multiple websites or clients - otherwise, you can just compile your own Apache server and run it without any of these management utilities such as Ensim or Plesk. These just give you 'knob turning' factor and high level management tools.

Having said that, I think it would be far too difficult to install another http daemon and have it autofall back to Apache because of the multiple accounts management. Everytime you make a change to hosting in Plesk, it modifies an httpd.include file (included at the end of httpd.conf) and restarts apache. You could probably write your own custom scripts to hack it, but it may turn out to be too much angst for little gain.

You can, indeed, compile in your own version of PHP with custom flags. I've done it many times as my content management systems specifically require GD.

Regarding MySQL and Apache - you'll need to check (make a posting on the Plesk forms at http://forum.plesk.com/), but I think the general concensus is - if it works, don't fix it.

But if you really want to 'tweak for speed' - take a look at the Zend Optimizer (http://www.zend.com). I can't confirm that this works with Plesk as I have been unable to try it myself (though I don't see why it shouldn't).

Best regards,

Leo

Not an Ensim Guru but I can say its a weird system.
Installs Mysql but not DBI or DBD
You can't install these easily as the installation also removes the gcc compiler.
So you have to reinstall that before you can install the modules.

Its also a bit too complicated in the way it handles directories and paths.
Also it runs individual logs for each user in their own account space.
I have a cron runniong to clear out the *.1 and *.2 ones on a daily basis otherwise some of the accounts just fill up with them and cause a lot of support enquiries.

Final note:
As soon as you do anything (even open the httpd.conf file)
you invalidate the warranty.

I would not reccommend it unless you are reasonably confident in amanaging systems (...... or have someone on the staff who is).

Gordon

Name around 5 of the last problems you guys had with your servers and how you fixed them:)



Thanks

OK

Cpanel:
Suexec stopping scripts running:
Tried the clean up script but ended up disabling suexec on the affected server.
Logs filling up /usr since the subdomain logs started:
symlinked them to /home/logs

Ensim:
User accounts filling up with logs.
Set a cron job to delete all *.1 and *.2 logs once per day,
No resume on FTP upload, added it to the affected accounts proftpd.conf but seems to be no way of forcing them all to be set that way.

These are all minor, normal issues.
We have not had any big problems for a while.

Gordon