Cloud setup, can it be done with Plesk?

[laughingbuddha]

Hi all,

I'm trying to plan my future expansion in server setup and hardware setup.

My issue is scaling. At the moment a single server is working, but only for a limited amount of sites and low amounts of page views.

Currently I'm working on a web project that I know will need allot of resources when it launches to the public, so preparing for this I want to setup, or at least learn about what I will need (software/hardware) to setup a cloud hosting solution and for that matter if Plesk can do it.

I've never really worked with load balancing or cloud computing, but being able to operate a small and expandable cloud platform with redundancy (dns, database and hosting redundancy) and backups would mean a greatly improved, faster, and stable service which is my aim.

Thanks

Matt

 

[laughingbuddha]

So no-one has any idea then?????

Matt

 

[atomicturtle]

Sure, Ive done it. There are a lot of different ways you can go to do it. Plesk Expand is one option, its probably the most integrated way to do it. The other side of the spectrum are things like openssi, or the linux virtual server project.

A quick and dirty web configuration would be to use a plesk system to manage content, and then have that distributed across a layer of dedicated web servers sync'd up with whatever you want (rsync if youre poor, SAN's if you're rich). Load balancing can be done with dedicated systems, or round robin DNS.

Even more high end configurations would add in a layer of mysql and memcached servers.

 

[laughingbuddha]

Hi Scott, thanks for the reply.

Expand sounds like a simple solution, but after reading what others have said about expand I'm not convinced its a great idea.

Not 100% sure how to distributed a site(s) across a layer of dedicated servers. Of course the other thing to think about is redundent DNS. At present both my NS1 and NS2 are on the same server, but the problem there is if that server dies the site(s) go down.

I think SAN's is a simpler solution for storage, costly but seems a little less problematic than rsync.

Matt

 

[atomicturtle]

I really need to do a big book of plesk tricks sometime.

For DNS, stealth primary configs are the way to go. I use Everydns.net (free) for my DNS, they run as secondaries and pull the zone from my plesk servers. Major advantages for having both 4 dedicated DNS servers, and the portability. If you pack up and move your box to another hosting company, you just have to update EveryDNS, instead of domain*n updates at various registrars.

GFS and other clustering file systems are an option if you dont have a SAN.

 

[laughingbuddha]

I got a question with DNS. It's a little confusing, and I've tried to get my head around many differnt methods and posts on the web. Here it is:-

Basicly at present I have one dedicated server called s1.maindomain.net, on that server lives the domain maindomain.net. In the DNS records for maindomain.net I have an A record for s2.maindomain.net which points to a VPS.

Now my dedicated server (s1.maindomain.net) is also both of my nameservers, ns1.maindomain.net and ns2.maindomain.net.

My problem is I understand this is risky. If s1.maindomain.net goes down, all the domains on the server go too, but on top of that I can't reach s2.maindomain.net (the VPS), unless I use the IP direct.

I need to look at some kind of secondary DNS or 2 other nameservers being ns3 and ns4 hosted elsewhere.

How do I do that and what is the best method?

Now my second question is this. Say I have now got another 2 nameservers or secondary DNS. If I add a domain to the VPS, do I also need to add the domain to s1.maindomain.net as well and point the dns entries to the IP of the VPS (s2.maindomain.net)?

See how I'm a little confused.

Thanks,

Matt

 

[atomicturtle]

I use a stealth primary configuration, my 4 authoritative DNS servers are at everydns.net. These are secondaries off of my plesk server(s).

Advantages to this solution:
1) there are 4 separate physical DNS servers
2) its all managed from plesk
3) if you change IP's on your plesk server, its a single change at everydns. No updates at the registrar level required

 

[laughingbuddha]

Thanks Scott. Your da man

How do I implement this? and if I run multiple servers (in my case 1 server and 1 vps) is it implemented the same on each server?

I'm hoping this will be a solution to not having to go down the Expand route. I've read posts on ART forums that it's not the most stable of all the Parallels solutions even though it seems simple enough for rapid deployment.

Matt

 

[atomicturtle]

Its really really easy, you just set up the everydns.net servers (for example) in the global ACL's in the server->dns settings. Then you just create the domain at everydns as a secondary, and point it to your plesk box. After that you'll be managing your zones from plesk, and unless your IP changes you wont even need to log into everydns again.

 

[Amin Taheri]

I am interested in the distributing sites across multiple servers aspect of this

beyond the normal directories/files like
/var/www/vhosts
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/php.ini
/etc/php.d
/etc/psa/.psa.shadow

are there any other files and directories?
How would you handle logs and statistics?

 

[atomicturtle]

For coordinating the password/group data we did it with LDAP, /var/www/vhosts was shared over NFS and later GFS on a common SAN.

Statistics were tracked from the load balancer (squid! it really is the swiss army knife of loadbalancing!)

 

[Amin Taheri]

You wouldnt happen to have any documentation on this process would you?

 

[atomicturtle]

No, I dont do documentation. Thats just another way of saying "bug report"... you know that!

 

[superbock]

Curious here.... what was the approach to MySQL scalability?

 

[laughingbuddha]

Its really really easy, you just set up the everydns.net servers (for example) in the global ACL's in the server->dns settings. Then you just create the domain at everydns as a secondary, and point it to your plesk box. After that you'll be managing your zones from plesk, and unless your IP changes you wont even need to log into everydns again.

Sorry scott, I didn't understand what you ment by "Then you just create the domain at everydns as a secondary, and point it to your plesk box.".

I've currently got ns1.mydomain.net and ns2.mydomain.net on the same server, but each using a differnt IP. What I was hoping to do is have my nameserver as the primary, then use the everydns as secondary, so it would look like this in a domains whois record:-

ns1.mydomain.net
ns1.everydns.net
ns2.everydns.net
ns3.everydns.net

Is that possible. I plan to add another server soon, but currently I have 1 dedicated and 2 VPSes.

Thanks,

Matt