Feature Request: Multiple Server Support / Cluster (especially email)

[lhwparis]

Hi,
we discussed that a few month ago but there was no more answer from parallels. so i post it now as "official" feature request:

I suggest a feature to use a second server as email server, managed by plesk "main" server. (like its possible with database server)
email with many email adresses and anti spam sollutions is very resource intensive. any incoming mail starts antispam solutions, harddisc has to write the the mail log files and so on. with all the spam out there sometimes you get more then 1 email each second and this slows down web-hosting.

a sollution could be:
a special mail server psa package which has to be installed on the second server.
it provides qmail or postfix and a remote-config-solution.
on the plesk main server there should be an option like it is with database server to either use localhost or a remote server for email.

are there any plans to implement a feature like this or will you add it to your "possible features list" ?

 

[IgorG]

What about using Centralized Mail server in Parallels Expand?

 

[lhwparis]

thanks IgorG, is this scenario possible with this solution:
webspace for domain1.com at server1 (webserver with plesk)
mailboxes for domain1.com at server2 (just email server, managed by server1 with plesk installed)
this solution for every domain! webspace at server1, mail at server2.
mail management should work from plesk at server1 as it work when mail server is "localhost"

where can i get infos about that? cant find many informations about plesk expand on your website

 

[IgorG]

Look at http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/expand/

 

[lhwparis]

thanks IgorG found that page but cant find many informations. now i looked in the documentations and there is more information ok it seems to be possible
now a few questions:
1. is plesk10 supported? i can only find informations about 8.x and all screenshots i see also look like plesk8.
2. is it true i need a full plesk license for the "centralized mail server" too?
so if i host 100 domains i need:
- 100 domains plesk license (for the (main) webserver)
- 100 domain plesk license (for the centralized mailserver)
- plesk expand license

 

[IgorG]

No, Plesk 10 is not supported yet. More details in http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=434345.
Ok, I think suggestion of Expand is not good idea but feature duplicating in different Parallels product is also not good idea - a lot of resources are required. We have already submitted feature request about Plesk clusterization possibility and I think that your request can be covered by this global request.

 

[lhwparis]

Thanks again Igor!
ok now i know more but cant understand why parallels plan Expand support for Plesk9 in 2011? Why dont skip it and release a version for plesk10 or, like suggested in the thread you posted, use your resources for a native multi-server solution for plesk10.x?

i think clusterization is a big thing with load balancing and so on (dont know how deep you plan to implement it in plesk), support for "external mail-servers" could be a first step in this direction and not so difficult to implement. hope we ll see this feature, or a bigger clusterization solution in the future

 

[Scy]

I would also like to suggest a solution:

- What comes to resource intensitivity of spam scanning, usually it can be dramatically cut down by using Black list spam blocking (MAPS). Instead of spamhaus.org we are using free gbudb.net which works fine. So using Black list spam filtering there is no much left to do to Spamassassin and it won't eat no longer resources (at least in our case), so we can keep the mail server on the same server than Plesk.

- What comes to centralized controlling, Plesk 10 includes Customer & Business Manager that can centralize the command center for several Plesk installations.

In our case we're using the default Plesk configuration of services, exept we have duplicated the nameservers with the solution provided by AtomicRocketTurtle. Seems to work fine: http://www.atomicrocketturtle.com/Joomla/content/view/50/29/

 

[lhwparis]

Thanks Scy,
thats true it saves resources if you use a blacklist before spamassassin. we are doing that too. but resources are used too to "scan" the blacklist, match it to email and so on. we are using greylisting too and there are all mails stored for a time so they are written to disc. system has to check greylist entries by each incoming mail...

i dont say servers cant handle this, no problem our plesk servers are doing it very well. but if you have 2 or more servers it could be much better to run ALL http services on one server and all mail services on the other server instead of running half of your customers on each server.
we are doing it that way with two servers without plesk and it performs very very well. much better then two servers both with email and http