Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Software and Control Panels : cpanel and whm questions

[netfiremedia]

I've never used remote management software, but am looking into buying cpanel. I looked at their site and couldn't figure out if whm is including in the liscense or if I had to buy that seperatly. Anyone know the answer to that one?

I also was looking at whm autopilot as well. What is different about whm and the autopilot version? Should I lease liscenses for all of this stuff? Are there lease to buy options available for cpanel and whm autopilot.

Lastly, how does the payment gateway on whm autopilot work? Do I still need to setup a merchant account with somebody or does it take care of that?

[eddy2099]

WHM/CPanel comes as a single software package. WHM is for server management and Cpanel for the individual site management. When you purchase the license, you get both.

[ExtremeIS]

whm autopilot is for client management, support, etc...., it does not come with cpanel, cpanel is required though to use whm autopilot.

[netfiremedia]

ok, i was just checking modern bill and whm autopilot out to compare them. i think i wanna go with modern bill since they have better domain registration stuff. it looks pretty awesome though, has anyone used it? if i buy this, do i still need to purchase a merchant account with somebody? i'm a little confused on how that part of it works. if somebody wouldn't mind explaining, i'd really appriciate it.

[netfiremedia]

yeah, um more on that...
the licensing for whmap, mb, and ce all really confuses me. clientexec seems to be the cheapest, so maybe i'll go with that for now. i just don't understand why they ask for the name of the domain you will be installing clientexec on during signup rather than the ip adress. anyone got any ideas?

[eddy2099]

Not sure but it is likely that they want to tie in the license key to your domain instead of the IP address. This gives you more flexibility since you can move server without requiring a new license key.

[bear]

Yes, the license is keyed to the domain name with Client Exec. I believe it's also tied to the install location (directory), so choose carefully when you install.

You should also be aware that so far, there is no direct WHM support in ClientExec (except for a hack developed by a member of the forum there). It will manage your clients and accept orders, but you will have to manually set up accounts in WHM after the order is placed.
The author claims that integration will be in the next major release, but the release date is not determined fully yet.

If you need something to interact directly with WHM and set up accounts, Modernbill, or WHMautopilot are decent choices. There are others as well.

[netfiremedia]

i guess i'm not really sure yet. i'm still looking around. i just want to make sure that my control panel software and my billing software interact like you mentioned.

ensim and modern bill look nice. do you know if there is a lease license for ensim pro? also, you can administer multiple servers by installing something like cpanel/ensim on just one server can't you? same with modern bill?

[eddy2099]

You could lease from http://hostingyourwebsite.net/ensim_rent.html . I purchase my license from them and they actually installed it for me.

[netfiremedia]

awesome, thanks for the link, i think i will do that when i'm ready to start hosting. i can install ensim on a single server and then manage multiple servers right? and do you know if ensim works with modernbill? their website wasn't very clear about that. thanks again!

[eddy2099]

Not too sure about that. I got my Ensim Pro license to manage my own sites on a single machine.

I believe the Ensim license allows you to manage a single machine and not multiple servers. I have no idea about modernbill. You might want to check with Modernbill support in regards to that.

I believe you might want to be looking at H-Sphere as I know it allows you to manage multiple servers. http://www.psoft.net/h_sphere2_info.html

[bear]

Originally posted by netfiremedia
ensim and modern bill look nice. do you know if there is a lease license for ensim pro? also, you can administer multiple servers by installing something like cpanel/ensim on just one server can't you? same with modern bill?

I think you might be a little confused here.

Modernbill, CleintExec, and all these client managers are just that...scripts for managing your clients and billing. They can (some of them) contact your WHM or Ensim on your server to set up the account, not do it by itself. Some of them have the ability to set up accounts (again, through the WHM or Ensim) on more than one server.

Ensim, WHM and Cpanel are tools for managing your server,not your clients. These control panels make it simpler to set up accounts, manage DNS, bandwidth and so on. You buy a license for these per machine/server, and can control only one with that license (excepting clustering, which is another subject altogether).

The 2 types of scripts/programs are very different, in ability, function and purpose.

[netfiremedia]

i was aware of the differences and how they interact with one another. the thing i think i didn't understand was if you can use it to control several machines server settings. maybe clustering is what i'm looking to do, do u mind explaining that a bit?

[bear]

Clustering (in a nutshell...borrowed info):
A multiple server layout, called a cluster, the main server in the cluster is the actual Control Panel machine, then you have the mail machines, and the database machines, and then the Web Hosting machines. The concept of it is a bit different than your standard CPanel reseller setup. You, as a reseller will have access to all these servers. i.e.

mail.yourdomain.xxx
cp.yourdomain.xxx
mysql.yourdomain.xxx
web.yourdomain.xxx (plus all the other unix servers)
etc., etc.

As you can see you will not be bound to 1 server, but clustered among all of these.

I believe there are a number of advantages to your server that is hosting websites not having a control panel running directly on them, mainly because it leaves the server CPU and RAM to serve up your sites, not serve up a little bit of everything( ie. CP, databases, web sites, mail on same machine).

[netfiremedia]

cool, doesn't totally make sense, but i kinda get the picture. i'll probably only have one or 2 servers anyway, so maybe i'll just buy another liscense.