If you take the plunge and upgrade or are running EDGE builds, please post your experiences with it.

I'm not going to run it until some feedback starts coming out ... :smash:


Cheers

I have it on a few of our vps. It seems faster and uses less memory.

Seems running fine here :)

Have either of you guys discovered any caveats?

Nop, works excellent for me.
YOu have a VPS or do you run vps service?

This just dropped into my inbox

cPanel VPS Optimized
-------------------------------


cPanel VPS Optimized is a new version of cPanel / WHM specifically designed to run on Virtual Private Servers. cPanel VPS Optimized provides the feature rich functionality of cPanel / WHM while reducing memory usage by up to 60% on VPS instances.


cPanel VPS Optimized represents a great step forward for cPanel customers. The reduction in memory usage for each install allows web hosts the ability to host more domains per virtual machine. This increase enables hosts to provide a more efficient and eco-friendly server base with fewer physical machines.


The upgrade to cPanel VPS optimized will require no interaction. Once cPanel VPS Optimized has reached the build tree on your server, automatic updates ( or manual) will upgrade the current cPanel / WHM installation to a cPanel VPS Optimized installation. cPanel VPS Optimized is currently only in EDGE builds.


Information about cPanel VPS optimized can be found at: http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpvps/

This is a GREAT advanced that they have created! Thanks for sharing this.

The question is, why wouldn't you always want to run Cpanel VPS optimized even if you didn't have a VPS? Sounds like less memory usage is good in any instance. Maybe there are tradeoffs in speed or some other areas...

Does this work on dedicated servers?

The question is, why wouldn't you always want to run Cpanel VPS optimized even if you didn't have a VPS? Sounds like less memory usage is good in any instance. Maybe there are tradeoffs in speed or some other areas...

I was wondering the same thing.

Reading the announcement, it looks like this has been specifically optimized for VPS's, not dedicated servers.

I think cPanel is starting to recognize how much of a legitimate hosting packages Virtual Private Servers are.

I, for one, am pleased to see that cPanel recognizes that VPS's generally have less resources than dedicated servers do, and are fine tuning their software to allow for better RAM usage.

I have a feeling that they might take some of this stuff and port it over for a dedicated server at some point.

Score one for the VPS guys!

Once the dedicated server one comes out, I'm hopping on it, hopefully. (That is, if I have the server then)

We received this email this afternoon as well and it is MOST welcome

Parallels (formally SW Soft) has always failed to help with cPanel on Virtuozzo as it competes with their Plesk Control Panel.

We offer Plesk but everyone wants cPanel so we have always fought the war of getting WHM/cPanel working properly on the VE's (now they call them VC's for Virtual Containers)

This will make everyone's job easier and the user experience less frustrating

We are going to try it right away

cpanel released some new "optimized for vps" version or something?

cpanel released some new "optimized for vps" version or something?

http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpvps/ :)
-steve

I am glad that cPanel is doing this for VPS owners. Guess we have more cPanel VPS owners in future ;)

There is already a thread for the same thing in the hosting panels section :p.

I am going to have to upgrade to this and see how it works on one of my test VPS server.

So far everyone is posting Positive results. Seems impressive.

What are the cutbacks from the standard server edition?? I mean, if it using x amount less memory for the same task, there must be some drawbacks to running it, less feature's etc?

Cos if there isnt, would'nt it just make more sense to release it as an all distro all version update, with far less memory usage in general?

It's alright them saying it uses less memory, but we want to know exactly how this is achieved...

:)

I am interested too in knowing the tradeoffs & cutbacks, its a valid point if they can do that for a VPS it would have been better to do it to the existing product, why an optimised version for VPS only why not for dedicated too.

Hopefully someone from the cPanel team will be here to answer.

@ chopperb & MrGeneral can you people shed some more light on the difference you people are experiencing?

@ Rus & Douglas as you people are more experienced in this field can you shed some light?

They are also talking about TailWatch (http://www.cpanel.net/support/articles/tailwatchd.html) but not enough information there on this too.

Surprisingly cPanel VPS Optimized has not been mentioned or discussed on cPanel's own forum.

I upgraded my main vps to this version last night. Apart from the fact that it took over three hours to upgrade (going from stable to edge, which required it to re-install perl?) it seems to be running smoothly. However, CPU usage seems to have increased with no activity on user accounts. Otherwise business as usual. Have not yet seen any performance trade offs with the new TailWatch service. Ram usage without Spamassisan running was around 132 megs (with optimized Mysql, Apache) now sits at 72 megs after upgrade.

However, CPU usage seems to have increased with no activity on user accounts. Otherwise business as usual.


Hmmm... doesn't make sense...

Anyway, I'd love to see some benchmarks on this. I'm sure we'll figure out the drawbacks soon enough (and if there really aren't any, well :beer: )


Cheers

ccnc


MrGeneral: I'm a user, and very happy in VPS land... was able to dump my dedi and still get the performance and features I need!

Hello, I've switched to WHM/cPanel VPS Optimized and I have to say that you REALLY feel the difference. Before I was using around 236MB of Ram, after the switch 138MB, so I could save around 100MB of Ram in a small VPS (xen, 384MB ram, 25GB disk, 300GB bw).

Look the beautiful screenshoot.

Greetings!.

Heh, looking good. That's quite a lot of RAM saved.

Well, I couldn't wait to upgrade, and the result is pretty impressive !!

I would say, don't hesitate and use edge release :).

Well, I couldn't wait to upgrade, and the result is pretty impressive !!

I would say, don't hesitate and use edge release :).

Don`t hesitate? I think I`ll wait thanks until the full release is out and they have tested it more. Too risky on a production or any server at the moment.

Yes, I wonder what has been squeezed out to make this a more compact/optimized version?

Just tried it on a server, and personally I didnt notice much difference. Put it back to RELEASE now though, don't really trust cPanel EDGE updates at the best of times lol.

:)

This is all very interesting, but I sit here looking at the stats on VMware console and see VMs running the curent version of cPanel and see memory usage of... 40 - 100mb Does that mean that this new version will mean that it doesn't use any memory? It couldn't be much lower if I turned it off!

I talked to someone at cPanel when they were randomly calling partners for comments on their software. I told them to optimize cPanel under VPS and they said they had an option in the Release version a couple of months ago under Tweak Settings:

Conserve Memory at the expense of using more cpu/diskio.

This setting also shows up under cPanel installed on dedicated servers.

I turned that on and it did decrease memory usage.

I think it's the same option with the VPS Optimized or maybe they did more optimizations for memory or just rebranded it to make it widely known to everyone.

Do you think it swaps memory to disk or something? Isn't it bad to increase diskio especially in VPS environments? At least Virtuozzo 4 now have diskio settings.

If I upgrade to the latest EDGE build, can I later downgrade or am I stuck if something goes wrong?

If you are on a production VPS with important sites, I will not suggest to do that.

Do it if you are facing resources problem to much and if it's worth taking the risk.

Yes, but seeing as it is an edge build do not upgrade to it on a live system hosting anything that is of massive importance because there will be bugs in it! :)

I talked to someone at cPanel when they were randomly calling partners for comments on their software. I told them to optimize cPanel under VPS and they said they had an option in the Release version a couple of months ago under Tweak Settings:

Conserve Memory at the expense of using more cpu/diskio.

This setting also shows up under cPanel installed on dedicated servers.

I turned that on and it did decrease memory usage.

I think it's the same option with the VPS Optimized or maybe they did more optimizations for memory or just rebranded it to make it widely known to everyone.

Do you think it swaps memory to disk or something? Isn't it bad to increase diskio especially in VPS environments? At least Virtuozzo 4 now have diskio settings.

The tweak setting I mentioned to you on the phone basically changed a few parameters on a few scripts, typically to cut the number of child processes to reduce memory usage at the expense of CPU.

In contrast, VPS Optimized is the result of re-coding the means by which cPanel/WHM handles some fundamental functionality, for example: implementing tailwatchd. Instead of weighing CPU vs. Memory (as was the case with the Tweak setting), you're simply running streamlined code.

If I upgrade to the latest EDGE build, can I later downgrade or am I stuck if something goes wrong?

I recommend heeding the above concerns about using EDGE in a production environment. EDGE is not intended for production environments. If stability is a concern to you, I recommend waiting until this propagates to CURRENT and then consider changing the build of cPanel/WHM you are using. CURRENT is considered to be a production worthy build.

However, back to your original question, yes. You can currently go to EDGE and if you don't like it, go back to another build. Typically, this is more of an issue when we are between versions. For example, when some builds were on version 11 and others were on version 10 - due to the substantial differences in the software, it was typically difficult to go back to version 10 from version 11. However, right now since everything is version 11, usually just setting which build you want to use in the Update Config screen and then updating cPanel/WHM will handle everything for you.

Thanks for your swift reply. I'll try it out. My server isn't hosting anything of value at the moment so I'm free to mess around with the system.

:eek: what did you do!?

Server load is halved....
privvmpages is around 300 (500 before)
oomguarpages is around 90-100 (200 before)
mysql processes dramatically dropped aswell (though I think this might have been something else)

Everything seems to running solid! How does the edge system work? What does it do that the old one doesn't?? or vice versa...

I'd imagine one big change (one that we do to all VPS's we setup) is to change the number of spare httpd processes. Stock it is 8, while we normally tune it so 2. This saves a lot of memory, at the expense of having to spawn more processes for busy sites.

I'm sure they did more than that for the "VPS optimized" version -- although I hope they do this httpd change.

Anyone know when cPanel VPS will be be pushed to CURRENT/RELEASE?

Side note: /me requested this 3 years ago...!

Anyone know when cPanel VPS will be be pushed to CURRENT/RELEASE?


Yes, I wouldn`t mind knowing this too. Is there a timeframe for the current/release being put out?

We utilized the full potential of cPanel VPS Optimized on our test VPS servers. Soon after that, we rolled the update and instructions onto our clients I would estimate that a lot of them have updated. If you could get a chance to install CVPO on your VPS I would recommend doing it :).

After having suffered some bugs with EDGE (http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?p=360270#post360270), I went back to CURRENT, but I will be glad when VPS optimized will go CURRENT ;)

Conserve Memory at the expense of using more cpu/diskio.

This setting also shows up under cPanel installed on dedicated servers.

I turned that on and it did decrease memory usage.

I think it's the same option with the VPS Optimized or maybe they did more optimizations for memory or just rebranded it to make it widely known to everyone.

Do you think it swaps memory to disk or something? Isn't it bad to increase diskio especially in VPS environments? At least Virtuozzo 4 now have diskio settings.
I do think this could be a problem on servers with IDE / SATA HDD's and a more than say 5 VPS's on them?


I recommend heeding the above concerns about using EDGE in a production environment. EDGE is not intended for production environments. If stability is a concern to you, I recommend waiting until this propagates to CURRENT and then consider changing the build of cPanel/WHM you are using. CURRENT is considered to be a production worthy build.

However, back to your original question, yes. You can currently go to EDGE and if you don't like it, go back to another build. Typically, this is more of an issue when we are between versions. For example, when some builds were on version 11 and others were on version 10 - due to the substantial differences in the software, it was typically difficult to go back to version 10 from version 11. However, right now since everything is version 11, usually just setting which build you want to use in the Update Config screen and then updating cPanel/WHM will handle everything for you.

We utilized the full potential of cPanel VPS Optimized on our test VPS servers. Soon after that, we rolled the update and instructions onto our clients I would estimate that a lot of them have updated. If you could get a chance to install CVPO on your VPS I would recommend doing it :).
David, when can we expect cPanel VPS Optimized to be stable, or even CURRENT?

Yes, but seeing as it is an edge build do not upgrade to it on a live system hosting anything that is of massive importance because there will be bugs in it! :)

Have you experienced any bugs with it?

Man, I am totally excited about this. I just found out about this today while struggling with RAM usage on one of my VPS plans with KnownHost.

Soon after that, we rolled the update and instructions onto our clients I would estimate that a lot of them have updated.

How can you justify doing that given it's not stable?

How can you justify doing that given it's not stable?

It may not be a stable version yet however after testing it on a few of our own vps's, it proved to work without any problems.

Our vps's were all un-managed until a couple of days ago so it was not mandatory for clients to upgrade. It was an email that was sent out notifying clients that a new release of cpanel was available specifically designed for vps's. If they wanted to upgrade, we provided them with instructions on how to do so. If they didn't, they did not.

Have you experienced any bugs with it?

Not as yet, but then we've only been running it on a couple of test servers that never take all that much load, I suspect if we loaded it on a busier box we'd see some issues.

We have it running now on two very different test environments - no problems so far but it will be nice to see it as a regular release version

Impressed with the lowered mem usage.

David, when can we expect cPanel VPS Optimized to be stable, or even CURRENT?


At this time, I do not have an ETA on when this will propagate to CURRENT (or any other build).

is anyone bothering to wounder why they are not making this VPS version of there software the more standard when it comes to system usage? Why only a vps? Yes i know that VPS are much smaller systems... but why would you a control panel that takes up a lot more of your system.. regardless of what it has under the hood.

David,

Is there a way we can force a Physical server to run the cut down VPS version for testing purposes to see if it makes any difference on a physical since lots of people seem interested...

David,

Is there a way we can force a Physical server to run the cut down VPS version for testing purposes to see if it makes any difference on a physical since lots of people seem interested...

I believe our Technical Analysts do have a means by which to do that. However, I am not aware of that procedure myself.

David,

Is there a way we can force a Physical server to run the cut down VPS version for testing purposes to see if it makes any difference on a physical since lots of people seem interested...

Those of you running EDGE will see some benefit on memory reduction due to code changes in some systems. Some of the VPS specific tweaks will not make any difference on a non-VPS system.

One would also note that dropping memory usage on a 512mb of ram VPS by 100 megs is a huge deal but on a server with 2gb of ram, you're not likely to notice the difference. With that in mind, we've designed the memory usage reduction for VPS systems and have integrated what we can into the dedicated version as well. No announcement about the dedicated memory reductions as they aren't as significant in comparison.

I'm constantly refreshing my RSS reader for the cpanel blog for updates to this Optimized version. I desperately want to see it get released. :)

All the VPS hosts out there offering 256MB RAM VPS plans will surely benefit from this uprade. These customers should see a big improvement.

I'm constantly refreshing my RSS reader for the cpanel blog for updates to this Optimized version. I desperately want to see it get released. :)

All the VPS hosts out there offering 256MB RAM VPS plans will surely benefit from this uprade. These customers should see a big improvement.

You may want to check out our RSS/ATOM feed for changelog.cpanel.net as well (You can get a feed just for the build tree you use, or all builds). Sometimes we miss a PR opportunity on the blog for new features that are pushed out.

I am waiting for this drop to be released also. I like what I see and need it on my VPS servers.

Thanks for the tip Dave. I'll add that now. :)

Is it just me, or does the CURRENT build have a cPanel template with the "VPS Optimized" text on the header?

Be aware that i said the cPanel template and not the WHM template.

Regards,

Edward Tobia.

cPanel VPS Optimized has now hit "Current" build!

WHM 11.20.0 cPanel 11.22.2-C23868

Gotta say its really stable and memory usage has reduced greatly.

Definately worth moving to!

Regards,

Edward Tobia.

I am using it. Looks good to me. Uses really low resources ! Looks like people who choose DA only because of the memory usage will shift back to cPanel !

What are the cutbacks from the standard server edition?? I mean, if it using x amount less memory for the same task, there must be some drawbacks to running it, less feature's etc?

Cos if there isnt, would'nt it just make more sense to release it as an all distro all version update, with far less memory usage in general?

It's alright them saying it uses less memory, but we want to know exactly how this is achieved...

:)With VPS Optimized the memory usage is significantly low but CPU load is slightly higher at idle so I guess that's the trade off.

This is somewhat similar to the option where you could enable "Conserve Memory at the expense of using more cpu/diskio" in WHM > Tweak Settings > System.

I have tested this with a fresh VPS and there has been a significant decrees in memory usage, then I have tested this on a live VPS with load but it does not make a huge deference.

I got error in PhpMyAdmin on some of test VPS, can anyone confirm if anyone getting error like me ?

No error like this here, running release version.

The release version does not currently make use of the VPS Optimized system.

At this moment only EDGE and CURRENT builds use the VPS Optimized system.

Regards,

Edward Tobia.