New Plesk, reliable for large user base?

[mparadis]

I have a project which requires a very reliable email setup for some 2500 to 10,000 users. I've been using plesk since it's earliest version, buying the SUS year after year, keeping a small server going. I keep this server going for a handful of people who enjoy the GUI and integration.

It's always been ok for the most part, kinda flaky on some things which never seem to have been fixed and so long as you don't upgrade it too often. Space and limits get weird, so that I have to give problem users unlimited to get back what ever the problem is. Spam is insane even on a rudimentary level it can barely block much at all. That's with the built in spam AND SpamAssassin. I've always had to use external filtering. Other than email and limits, it's been pretty reliable other than it's VERY fragile on upgrades.

So I've never given it much thought as a serious server, always going to qmail, apache and other non integrated tools.

Now that it's been sold yet again, at first, I thought this was great, might mean yet more reliability but I'm not sure now. For example, the simplest thing of all is broken, support. From the panel, I can't send support an email because the panel complains that my license is over, when it's not until Aug. So I can't even reach support. I email them well over 2 months ago about Virtualizing and have not heard a peep back. These things concern me.

A question I have for those of you who are happy with it is, how well could it handle 2500 to 10,000 email accounts for example? I've been way too afraid of it to put that many accounts on it.

Can a few of you talk about reliability for this number or more accounts. And how do you handle backups? I've simply used the tool to backup then moved it off the server. I've always wanted to just set up an identical server, keep it updated to the same version and unlicensed but ready to switch over should my production one die. Any issues with doing it this way?

Basically, just thoughts and input would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

 

[yurtesen]

Hi Mike,

The amount of email accounts or normal accounts you can keep in a server depends on your users and what they do as well as the server itself. It is difficult to estimate specific numbers. You cant really compare results from some company using a super fast high end server with another which has a lower end server.

However, if you need such advanced features like keeping identical servers etc. you might want to consider another product from Parallels which is called H-Sphere. H-Sphere can load balance web and mail clusters natively.
http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/sysadmin/understanding_load_balancing.html
As well as you can add more servers to your cluster without needing to buy more licenses.

SA configuration
http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/admin/spam_assassin.html

In a nutshell, H-Sphere is a product with similar pricing to Plesk but with similar feature set of Parallels Business Automation. If this sounds interesting to you, youmight want to register to H-Sphere forums http://forum.psoft.net/ and you can post more questions about H-Sphere.

Thanks,
Evren

 

[mparadis]

Anyone using PSA 8.4 with 2000+ email accounts?

Thanks for the reply.

>The amount of email accounts or normal accounts you can keep in a server depends on >your users and what they do as well as the server itself. It is difficult to estimate >specific numbers. You cant really compare results from some company using a super fast >high end server with another which has a lower end server.

This is not my question however.

What I am asking is to hear from others who are using the PSA server with a user base of 2000+ email users, to know if PSA is in fact a reliable consideration.

As I said, I bought PSA when it was just a baby and have kept it going since then but have never really considered it for critical business level services, it's simply too finicky at times.
Also, PLESK would never admit to problems, ever, basically, being left hanging until an update would be put out. There are things which I've posted about where I've never seen an answer other than others asking the same things. I'm wondering how the new owners are going to handle things.

Hardware and resources aren't an issue, I can put what ever I need to into a powerful server but I'd like to know if PSA can be counted on for mission critical use. The only way to know that is to hear from others who are using it in such a way, not from marketing types trying to sell me on something I'm already sold on (Not meaning yourself by the way).

>However, if you need such advanced features like keeping identical servers etc. you >might want to consider another product from Parallels which is called H-Sphere. >H-Sphere can load balance web and mail clusters natively.

Running identical servers is not that advanced but the way PSA runs makes it an advanced feature. If it were not for how it handles it's licensing, I could easily just run a cluster of a couple machines sharing say a GFS pool. In fact, that might be the cheapest alternative, to just buy another copy with just one domain for my critical customer, keep them in sync, not clustered but using a shared GFS pool and load balanced on the front end.

>http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/sysadmin/understanding_load_balancing.html
>As well as you can add more servers to your cluster without needing to buy more >licenses.

I'll definitely take a look at this and see what the total cost options would be.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from end users who are using regular PSA for 2000+ email accounts, and how you feel things are going, etc.

Thanks for your input.

Mike

 

[yurtesen]

I am just a user, not a marketing person if you have questions about h-sphere you can ask at h-sphere forums http://forum.psoft.net/

About PSA with 2000+ accounts, I dont see why it wouldnt scale up as long as you can put in a powerful enough server. 2000 to 10000 is not such a large number of email accounts. In any way, whatever input you receive will probably not reflect what you will experience. Somebody can come up and say that they had 200 accounts and server got busted, but wait, they forgot to mention they were using a 386 server As long as you have a powerful server, having 10 accounts or 10000 accounts wont make difference. The system works the same way independent of the number of accounts.

I know this is not what you are asking but this is what I can give as an input, I have just checked one large H-Sphere cluster and it had 10134 mailboxes, 394 mail aliases, and 696 mail forwards with 2542 domains the box is an athlon64 3200+ with 3gb ram and sata software raid1 on FreeBSD. But of course with clustering and load balancing I dont think anybody hit any limitations yet. Even with hardware specs, H-Sphere allows extensive amounts of settings in how mail works, somebody else might have experienced different results with different settings using similar hardware. These are the settings that the cluster admin can influence:
http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/sysadmin/qmail_configuration.html

Thanks,
Evren

 

[mparadis]

>I am just a user, not a marketing person if you have questions about h-sphere you >can ask at h-sphere forums

I have no problems with a marketing person replying either, just wanted to be clear that I'm looking for user input . Thanks, this is good to hear so far.

>put in a powerful enough server. 2000 to 10000 is not such a large number of email >accounts. In any way, whatever input you receive will probably not reflect what you will >experience.

This is very true. Also, I certainly would not think that a few thousand email accounts should be too much but you know how it is, sometimes PSA burps and stutters and problems arise. For example, on my machine, can't turn on RBL or it kills the SMTP server. Things like that which I've never seen replies to.

>powerful server, having 10 accounts or 10000 accounts wont make difference. The >system works the same way independent of the number of accounts.

Yes, another good point indeed.

One of the things I've always wanted to do but have not yet tried because I read it cannot be done, is to move some of the directories off to very powerful NFS shares I have across my network. I've read that one cannot move things on PSA, so that putting say the vhosts directory on a fast, reliable NFS filer would not work.

Anyone know if this is true or not? Because, if it's not, I'd love to do that much.

Mike

 

[sonic79]

Hi Mike,

to come back to your question.

Generally I wouldn't use Plesk for a 2000+ User Domain, because in those installations you have mostly situations where you must be able to tune up your installation. Like for e.g.:
- changing server software (pop3/imap server)
- adding functionality
- ...

And with a closed source software you have mostly not the free space you need to ensure the extensibilty (dependencies etc.).

BUT! I've already did it
We had same situation at customers side and setup our mail system with Plesk and OpenSource Software. Plesk is used only as Configuration-Frontend for the Users.
- Creating User
- Changing Passwords
- Providing Webmail

The OpenSource Part is a Postfix Mailserver configuration which extracts Mail-Accounts from the Plesk database and replicates it to some frontend Mail-Exchangers.
99% of the Spam Protection is done on the Postfix MX's using RBLS/GREYLISTING etc. Mail which arrives at the MX's are forwarded to the Plesk system(s).
Plesk System is only used by the authenticated users for fetching and sending mail.

AND - It rocks!

 

[mparadis]

>Generally I wouldn't use Plesk for a 2000+ User Domain, because in those installations
>you have mostly situations where you must be able to tune up your installation.
>
>Like for e.g.:
> - changing server software (pop3/imap server)
> - adding functionality

I agree, this has been a problem all along. The PSA server generally needs to be left alone as the software is easy to break if you mess with the OS. Even keeping it small, I've had cases where I wanted to make some changes but was never able to else problems would arise. One very big nasty with PSA has been when making changes and upgrades constantly overwrite those changes.

Though, in our case, if I could remove horde for something else, that might do the trick so long as PSA can handle the traffic which it seems like it can. One or many as the other person stated, so long as the hardware can handle it.

>Plesk is used only as Configuration-Frontend for the Users.
> - Creating User
> - Changing Passwords
> - Providing Webmail

So they can manage their email using the PSA panel then. That's good because it is a nice panel.

>The OpenSource Part is a Postfix Mailserver configuration which extracts Mail-Accounts >from the Plesk database and replicates it to some frontend Mail-Exchangers.

So this must be something you programmed or had programmed then? This is not a tool which I can find on the net is it?

It's a cool idea but I guess I'm not sure why I would then use PSA. I could set up POP/IMAP and a better webmail app on the other server. In fact, I've been running Qmail servers for a long time but wanted the ease of the PSA panel for those helping to maintain users.

Mike

 

[sonic79]

>So this must be something you programmed or had programmed then? This is not a tool >which I can find on the net is it?

right. Extraction scripts has been programmed by ourselfs.

>It's a cool idea but I guess I'm not sure why I would then use PSA. I could set up >POP/IMAP and a better webmail app on the other server. In fact, I've been running >Qmail servers for a long time but wanted the ease of the PSA panel for those helping to >maintain users.

Right. Same what i wrote. In general I wouldn't use PSA. But customer wanted the interface for configuration.

A project which sounds good: http://trac.brachium-system.net/cpves/


Andreas

 

[mparadis]

>right. Extraction scripts has been programmed by ourselfs.

Not something I can get into at the moment, my plate is overflowing .

>A project which sounds good: http://trac.brachium-system.net/cpves/

Thanks for the lead, it looks interesting.

Mike