questions for new server

Submitted by john.brainard on Mon, 10/27/2014 - 06:52 Pro Licensee

Hi. I've got VirtualMinPro-50 on a RackSpace RHEL5 dedicated server. I am thinking about moving to RackSpace's Cloud hosting and have some questions (background first in case it's useful).

Background: I'm a programmer and a bad/so-so sysadmin, which is why I have VirtualMinPro. The RackSpace server is for a small hosting business (and hobby). It's all mine. I don't turn over the UI to clients, they all have mostly simple static websites. My personal sites do more and I mess around with other things (Perl, mod_perl, Python, Django, MySQL, etc.). I use VM for setup and maintenance and then ignore it most of the time. Occasionally I dink around with settings and install additional packages. I've got no interest (or need) in running a cloud for others, but I may be moving into part of the RackSpace cloud (their "Managed Infrastructure" cloud, not the higher levels).

Questions:

On this new setup should I use VM, or the CloudMinPro? I'm guessing I'd stick with VM, but if I'm wrong switch VM with CM in the questions below.

RackSpace says they don't recommend something like cPanel or Plesk on their Cloud set ups. Why? Would this apply to VirtualMin? Do you think I'd have problems using VM in this case? Is this a performance thing or do control panels have deep claws into the system?

I've got a VM-50 license, can I transfer it to a new machine/setup?
I'd also like to transfer the VM specific data (spam database and ... maybe thats all, maybe not) I wanted to pay for you to do the VM setup on the new space. Maybe for transferring the data too, unless it's really quick and easy. I don't need help transferring the actual sites (I've got some thinning out to do in this move too).

I see you have things ready for RHEL7/CentOS 7. Last I heard RackSpace was still customizing their RHEL7/CentOS7 set up and it was not available for customers yet, so 6 is the latest available. Any differences on my end between 6 and 7? (complicate things I'd be doing - Perl, mod_perl, Python, Django, MySQL, and similar). Any reason to wait for 7?

I am thinking of doing my setup and site changes just after Thanksgiving, so I'd need to have everything setup and ready to use on Thanksgiving. How much lead time and advance notice should I give you guys to meet that?

Thanks!

John Brainard john.brainard@gmail.com

Status: 
Closed (fixed)

Comments

Submitted by andreychek on Mon, 10/27/2014 - 09:21

Howdy -- yup, you can continue to use Virtualmin on that Rackspace server. It's no problem to install your license there. There are a number of Virtualmin users using Rackspace Cloud, I'm not entirely certain why they would discourage control panels.

You would want to make sure you had plenty of RAM though; some VPS's come with low amounts of RAM, and that can make it difficult to run the services involved in web and email hosting.

Cloudmin allows you to provision new VPS's. But, on each new VPS, you would still be able to run Virtualmin.

For example, if you wanted to be the next Rackspace, you might use Cloudmin in order to provision a new VPS for your customers.

Regarding the distro to use -- it's all about the software versions available in each. If you're happy with the software provided by CentOS 6, that should work perfectly for you, as CentOS 6 is very well supported.

Down the road, you can always migrate to a new Raclspace VPS running CentOS 7, if you like, instructions for doing so are here:

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/migrate

The above instructions could also be used to transfer your current setup to Rackspace cloud.

You're welcome to do that on your own, or we could handle that for you as part of our professional services. If you would like us to do that, what we'd do is go over your current setup a bit for you, and discuss what you'd like done differently on your new server, if anything.