Input Forum Members: Please help Plesk Google Cloud Users!

[G J Piper]

Hey all!

Those of us who are using the new Google Compute Engine with Plesk/CentOS7 instances are having to use third-party (expensive) SMTP servers because Google thinks it is a bother to allow their email ports to have outgoing traffic.

Please help our cause by voting for the "feature" of getting them to open up these ports! They are close to allowing it, but we need a little more "demand" to get it over the finish line. I appreciate all you fellow Pleskians! :-D

PLEASE VOTE HERE:
Send and receive email using TCP SMTP IMAP ports

 

[MarkM]

I voted. I'm just glad you figured that one out before I wasted time on GCE.

 

[Sergio Manzi]

@G J Piper, OK, I voted for that even though I'm not (and can't be, given the state of the art...) a GCE user, but I have a question for you: what makes you GCE so important to fight this battle instead of just voting with your "non-paying dollar" and move to a more (SMTP) friendly environment? I mean it: is it really so better than "the rest of the pack" in all other aspects? I've followed your threads and I've seen that even to configure DNS the way you like it (and not the way they like it) you have to do some somersaults, so... why?

 

[MarkM]

It's all in the name.... just like AWS.... It's **** with a beautiful name.

 

[G J Piper]

@G J Piper, OK, I voted for that even though I'm not (and can't be, given the state of the art...) a GCE user, but I have a question for you: what makes you GCE so important to fight this battle instead of just voting with your "non-paying dollar" and move to a more (SMTP) friendly environment? I mean it: is it really so better than "the rest of the pack" in all other aspects? I've followed your threads and I've seen that even to configure DNS the way you like it (and not the way they like it) you have to do some somersaults, so... why?

Short answer: I hate moving 200 customers to a different service, and I'm a fixer.

Bottom line: I'm prepared to believe that every service has its own quirks, disappointments, and strong points. I guess I prefer the quirks I know and can figure out how to fix, compared to the unknown problems a new system may present.

I have had a few caveats with this service, but I have everything working well enough now, except for the expense of needing an external SMTP server. I have to give Google credit for a few of these extremely positive aspects I've never had before in a server:

• Incredibly adjustable virtual hardware — CPUs, Memory, and Storage all can be raised (or lowered for CPU and Memory) with a few settings in the Google GUI with just a reboot to set the changes.
• Cloud distributed hardware reliability — it would literally take an entire datacenter to go down before my server would experience any downtime from failure, and the data could be relocated within minutes to a different (time)zone anyway from backup.
• SSD (virtual) Hard drive as a choice — holy crud the speed of this virtual server is fast. Who needs RAM when your HD is so fast lol. (of course I'm used to the usual hardware-locked shared virtual servers)

When I decided to go with them, I had no idea what things would need to be handled (like the DNS issue) but for me as long as I can figure it out, the problems have been really not all that serious. There may or may not be better services, but if they are I don't have any personal experience with them, and you can never fully rely on someone else's opinions in the end — especially with such a wide degree of difference in people's experience, ability, and preference.

This kind of performance doesn't hurt either (a site I host):
Pingdom Tools

THANKS FOR VOTING EVERYONE... KEEP IT UP! :-D

 

[Sergio Manzi]

Thanks for answering, @G J Piper! And... I like the "I'm a fixer"
Good luck!
Sergio