Should we set up my server for VPS or cPanel? This is not a spam message. I will be asking this on just a couple web sites to make sure I receive plenty of feedback to help us decide on which way to go. Here is what I am planning on doing.

I already have one server that I use that is dedicated specifically for four of my vBulletin web sites and I will not add anymore to the server. The reason being is I want to leave room for expansion for these web sites. One of these sites is already fairly large and I expect the others to grow also.

I have purchased another server and as of right now only will be hosting one web site on it for myself. I would like to also open it up to let other people host web sites on it like vBulletin and whatever they want. The reason for letting other people host is not to make money but to help defer the server cost and the rack space. The server is not a small server. I will not be hosting a lot of accounts, as I said this is not a money making machine. I just want some users that are willing to help share the server cost and know they will be treated right and will have room for there sites to grow.

The server will is 6 30GB drives at 15k rpm on a raid 5 that will give me a total of 139.69gb of space, 8gb of memory and 2x Intel xeon 2.2 GHZ processors, two power supplies, 2gig Ethernet links. It is a Dell server.

With that said, the question I have is how should I set this server up? Should it be set up to take on other accounts as a VPS or just use cPanel to host other sites?

We have the server on hand and are setting it up with Open Source and we are leaning towards cPanel because we are not going to set this up as a profit machine. Since we are going to have limited accounts then my thought is that we will not have a need to VPS.

With note anyone interested please contact me.

I'd stick with using it as a shared server. Just because you have an extra server laying around doesn't make it a good idea to make it into a node. That server is no where near beefy enough to be of good quality for any sizable amount of VPS to be placed on it. However, it's probably better quality than half of the nodes being populated down in the offers forum... so... consider that as well.

What we do is we have a vps node and we create a vps on the node and use it for shared web hosting. So you can do that too. Create a vps account then install cpanel and the license will only cost you $15 for it. Cpanel vps optimized.

What we do is we have a vps node and we create a vps on the node and use it for shared web hosting. So you can do that too. Create a vps account then install cpanel and the license will only cost you $15 for it. Cpanel vps optimized.
I am confused about this cPanel license that you mentioned. What do you mean it will only cost me $15. Cpanel is something like $382 a year.

I really recommend most people using reseller accounts, it is allot to manage a VPS and you get allot better management IMO by being on a reseller with a lower accounts per server. That way you can focus on running your site and not upgrading apache or apply the latest security update.

I believe what dualpacket means is that a vps optimized license is $15.00 a month (actually $14.00 -$20.00 depending on the reseller) if you wanted to create one vps on your server to save money on licensing fees. Although, I am not sure how many companies do this.

cPanel actually requires you have 3 cPanel VPS's licensed on each hardware node. So if you are looking to have a dedicated with 1 VPS, it is actually not within there license as you can imagine allot of hosting companies would consider this (we actually did, as we pay cPanel so much money, if it wasn't for there free parties every so often, we would keep trying to figure this out)!