Hi,

I plan to get a RackShack server in the future and need to decide whether or not I will need to use Ensim.

Currently I only have one site that will be running on the server, but I want to offer my subdomains to paying members to host their own pages, with ftp access and a set amount of space and bandwidth so they can't take advantage of things. I don't have enough Linux experience to setup DNS, bandwidth, and space limits, so I thought Ensim would be a plus in this situation, correct?

In addition I may add a few sites in the future, but nothing huge or resource needy. My current site will require GZIP, ImageMagik, GD, PHP, MySQL, and I believe PHP Accelerator. Will I experience any problems installing these features onto a RackShack server w/ Ensim loaded onto it? I don't want to run into file upload issues and things like that as my site is very dependent on those features working correctly.

Thanks,

Mark

Ensim will probably be perfect for you. It has all those bandwidth features you are looking for. It comes preinstalled with everything you listed, except I'm not positive about gzip, imagemagik, the accelerator, or gd. I imagine it would - I took the Ensim off my server, but I do remember all the rest of that stuff to be on there.

You'd probably be better off trying to get a RS Plesk server. Ensim has really let me down. The software Ensim includes in the CP is outdated and updates come once in a blue moon. Also installing extra packets on the server with Ensim installed is more difficult than with most other CP's.

Plesk seems to be releasing for more updates lately and Plesk maintains the Redhat file structure, unlike Ensim, making things far easier to install.

If you're new to dedicated servers, Ensim will work fine and offers everything you are looking for, until you get to the point where you start understanding what managing a dedicated server means and you start wanting to keep everything up to date and secure.

That's the problem I have with Ensim now. I've just come to a point where I expect the control panel to be an aid and not something I manage the entire server with. The only true way to manage a server is via SSH.

Something in favour of Ensim: it's a nice secure panel.