Hello,
I'm a long-time Linux admin who has had dedicated servers in some form (colo or dedicated through a provider and even VPS as of late) for nearly 15 years. While I can add servers to meet our expanded customer based, I find that I personally don't scale well. So I'm considering getting a reseller account through someone like innohosting to pass the day to day server management over to someone else.
Over the years I've grown very accustomed to being able to ssh in and look at logs and address issues for customers as necessary. I think this will be the biggest and most difficult thing to get used to with a reseller account. Just how much control will I or won't I have with a reseller account? Will I be able to ssh in and look at my customer's logs with my own account or will I need their credentials? (And yes, I'll be asking the reseller provider about these things too).
I'm looking for people's experiences with reseller accounts. Specifically any experienced Linux admins out there who are now using reseller accounts.
Thanks for any responses.

This is exactly what's driving me away from reseller accounts - the frustration at being unable to do things for myself.
Client credentials aren't necessarily a problem because you can drop in a key, but you need to find a provider that allows you SSH access to your client accounts. Unfortunately this seems to be rare - mostly they'll only give you SSH on your own, if that.
But even with full access to client accounts you still won't get to the main server logs (particularly the mail logs) or be able to restart services, or lots of other things you're probably used to.
If you're asking the question, you should probably be looking for a managed VPS instead.

Ya a low end VPS or a low end Celeron or P4 server should solve that problem, the only problem is you are looking at increased cost from the get go.
thanks, Ben

Yeah, and finding a provider that offers a good managed service is a bother, not just a reactive managed service or a monitoring solution and then they go restart a service for you.
Steve

Yeah, and finding a provider that offers a good managed service is a bother, not just a reactive managed service or a monitoring solution and then they go restart a service for you.
SteveYa you need one that views their managed boxes the same as all other boxes, or is a fully managed company and then you are looking at a pretty big jump in cost.
thanks, Ben

This is something I dealt with in the past. You pretty much just have to swallow your pride if you go the reseller hosting route; you're pretty limited as far as what you can do. If you need the full control, you'll have to go VPS or dedicated. Otherwise, look around a find a reliable provider and learn to lean on them.