Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Software and Control Panels : Control Panel NT

[brain2b]

Anybody know of any NT control panels or any tools to ease my job as nt sysadmin, i have to manually setup about 10 accounts everyday, and it is a real pain. each accounts gets ftp,email (IMail),dns(BIND), frontpage extensions,

Help me!

[RobertW]

Reading the previous threads the only Control Panel for NT that is out there appears to be http://hostingcontroller.com

[kunal]

A lot of people dun like hostingcontroller.

[mattan]

its like the only 'off the shelf' Windows Hosting package available... (or one of the few)

but it is bit buggy. I've had it hang on me twice after the demo expiration...

but still worth trying..

[SteveJ]

Looking at all the posts nobody knows of any otehr than hostingcontroller ther must be another program out there somewhere

Steve

[fastquest]

Are there any hosts that post here using http://hostingcontroller.com control panel? is it worth setting up the demo?

[rajiv]

I tried the demo...
Lot of Bugs...etc...

Rajiv Mehta

[fastquest]

I have tried the HostingController Demo, yes there is a tons of problems if you try to install in on an existing server. I found that if i install the software on a fresh install everything worked fine. I had a few questions on their Transaction/Quota features. So i sent them an email, Still waiting for a reply. it will need some modifications to get it the way i want it. but for the most part the core functions i was looking for did work. I can build around that.

[rajiv]

It needs to be improved a LOT

Thank you,

Rajiv mehta

[fastquest]

Originally posted by rajiv
It needs to be improved a LOT

In what areas needs improvement? I would like any comments on what to look for as far as bugs, I am evaluating the software and would like to get some other first hand knowledge, so I can fully test out the software before I consider making a purchase.

[rajiv]

See,
It does not support features like subdomains, pointers, etc..
Then it had lot of bugs in ODBC - sometimes DSN is not created..
Then when a person forgets his password it has bug in sending password - IT SENDS WRONG USERNAME AND PASSWORD...
Then it is not able to configure it self with earlier created sites and then gives lot of errors..
You cannot change custom errors and mime types with it...
It does not support good mail servers like mdeamon - http://www.deerfield.com - Products
You will face lot of problems with MS SQL
and I faced many more problems......

Thank you,


Rajiv Mehta

[avehost]

I have just tested the latest version and here are some points to consider (for Adv Comm) and to be aware of (for customers/users) and to thank AdvComm for some feature fixes:

1) First, things ARE improving, the setup went very well and I found very few errors in the installation process besides sometext being cutoff on a couple of messages that aren't important.
2) Still, the LiveStats configuration is still not mapped properly for the correct freq of log file retirieval or date format setting (i.e., if you pick "3" for yy/mm/dd and then you pick "6" for 6 hour log retrievals, the resulting LiveStats config shows DD/MM/YY and 5 Minute Log scans. Also, the password is still not being set to what you plug in and is being set to "Default".
However, the long wait times that was pre-bugfix release for such in 1.1 is still fixed in 1.3. Also, the writing to the db for the stats instances added is fixed. I guess they just haven't figured out how to map the date and time translations to the LiveStats db, which is no easy task, I has a programmer try it just to see if I could make a fix myself. Still, I am also disappointed they have not taken my good advice and added the webadmin's username as the Server ID for each stats server instance, this would prevent the problem with the domain name custoff's at 13 characters, as usually, usernames are unique and less than 13 characters, right?
3)I am VERY happy that they have done a beautiful job of getting the ACL file permissions straightened out, they seem to work fine in my tests.
4) Also, and equally important as the permissions fix, they finally got the password working correctly with a new user being added, at least for FrontPage and the IIS metabase. However, they STILL have not gotten the password to transfer to Imail correctly, at least in my tests it didn't.
5) The "back" link on the FrontPage Extensions area is a dead link.
However, I found the FrontPage Extensions to be created correctly and work fine even with Office Server Extensions Vs. FrontPage Extensions.
6) Beware MS-FTP Admins: no users are associated with the MS-FTP accounts that are created. I have not yet tested HC 1.3 with Serv-U FTP but will be doing so soon because I want to use this version of HC but not with MS-FTP even though I wanted to.
7) I am also concerned but intrigued with their creation of a new win2k annonymous web account for each virtual server instance. This concerns me because the user they have created when a new IIS website is created might not have all the priviledges of a "Guest" account because they don't become part of that group automatically--I have to test this more (e.g., in one test, with the domain name "testnewhc.com", the annonymous user created was "testnewhc.com_web"). But what intrigues me is that now you can more easily tell which website annonymous user
is accessing what at any given time, when before, all you could see from the server point-of-view is there are a bunch of IUSER_computername sessions that are live.
8) I note the addition of a button for "Index Server" in this version of HC, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to use index server instead of the FP WAIS engine since Index Server with 100+ catalogs, or perhaps less, can bring a server to its knee's in a HURRY! The WAIS text engine is fast and efficient and does the job beautifully. Thus,
what's the point with the new link, let's NOT encourage the use of index server and end up giving NT hosting a bad name like "slow"?
9) I am not sure that I appreciate the "whois" link that is created at the bottom of newly formed website Default.htm pages that links to an OPENSRS RSP's site that tries to sell domain names to whomever may come across the default page. Especially since we at AveHost.com also register domain name's as an OPENSRS RSP. Oh, well... Perhaps this
should be only in the "demo" versions but not the purchased/licensed versions but it happens to show in both.
Conclusion: I would and am upgrading my servers to the new version, version 1.3. It might be far from perfect but it's an improvement.

I hope this helps potential upgraders and the like, and possibly AdvComm, in their valiant fight to rid HC of its many bugs, they are improving but there is still more exterminating to do!

[rajiv]

I am going to test it...

Thanks,


Rajiv mehta

[markcastle]

Re:

> 7) I am also concerned but intrigued with their creation
> of a new win2k annonymous web account for each virtual
> server instance.

Hi All,

We've set all our (Shared Server) sites up like this since day one as it helps secure accounts. Consider a client using file scripting objects that can maybe guess the location of another clients site on the server - they can retrieve anything they like from it if all sites are running under one IUSR_ account - especially DB connection strings and passwords from a global.asa file for example!!

Makes a bit more work to get all the permissions right but is well worth it in the end - much better than removing the FSO component.

This is probably the main reason we've kept well clear of commercial "controlpanel" systems as none have so far allowed for separate IUSR_ accts.

Have a look at the Interland Developed tool which is available from Microsoft at ....(NT and 2000 compatible)
http://www.microsoft.com/ISN/downloa...ising_tool.asp

Or the new webadmin tool (we couldn't get the darn thing to work though)........Looks like some nice DNS admin components included.

http://www.microsoft.com/ISN/downloa...erview.asp?A=0

Their Scaleable Hosting Solution also has some interesting parts.....
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/iis/shsover.asp

Other interesting packages....
Perl Provisioning Tool....
http://www.microsoft.com/ISN/downloads/provperl.zip

Admittedly none of these are complete control panels as such but could well provide enough building blocks to start with.

Cheers - Mark Castle
Shared Knowledge Ltd
http://www.sharedknowledge.net

[Exbodyguard]

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the Microsoft Management Console is perfectly suited for this job. With a script written in VB to create the account's with inputed (sp) info you should be able to create your multiple accounts in minutes. It would require writing the script of course and creating the plugin, but this should do it. I believe this comes with service pack 6 for nt 4. If not than you can Download it from microsoft.