[Plesk 9] Automatically suspending domains due to exceeded disk usage

[IgorG]

Hello

We have just upgraded from Plesk 8.6 to Plesk 9

We use Plesk Control Panel as mail server.

Problem we are experiencing is that the domains are disabled automatically when their limits are exceeded.

What is the best solution to this problem?

Manually go set overuse policy to allow on all domains individually?

Or is there a global setting which can allow or modify overuse policy on the related domains?



Please advise.

Thank you

frozensphere

You can just go to domain's limits and allow overusage there.

 

[Steve Douzos]

What is the point of your response? First of all, this topic is over 6 months old and nothing has still changed to Plesk, even the version 9.2.2 has been published.

Secondly, you're missing the whole point/problem here. The mentioned problem is that in Plesk the statistics are just messed because you cannot use any "hard limits" that are shown in statistics bars (like how much of the bandwith from the actual limit has been used) but these has to be set to "unlimited" if you don't want angry customers with automatically closed websites after overusage.

This is because Plesk 9 doesn't still allow setting enough options what do do when limits are overused. Now theres only two choises:

1) allow overusage (including allow users to create as many as mysql databases, mailboxes or any other resources imaginable withouth any limits which suites badly for the hosts that want to offer different kinds of web hosting packages with pre-set amount of resources).

OR

2) don't allow overusage (which means that if you have set limit of disk space or bandwith and these are exdeeded, Plesk automatically suspends the domain / client account).

Because we dont want to use option 1 (to allow our clients freely create whatever they want) we need to use option 2. However, option 2 makes our customer very angry if their domains get suspended because of the overusage, so we had to set all the domains disk space and bandwith limit to "unlimited".

The problem - of course - is now that all the statistics are messed because there are no limits of bandwith and/or disk space limit anymore. And this makes it very hard to follow which of the users are using how many bandwith and disk space as they cannot be listed in statistics with informing progress bars.

(And this has no relation weather is the "notify user when the limits are exceeded" is checked or not. The limit that is shown in the statistics is only the hard limit, not this "soft limit" that is defined in the "notify user" part.)

I think the only proper way to solve this problem is that Parallels will add an extra option to Plesk where admin should be able to define what Plesk does when the set bandwith limit / disk space limit is exceeded (and not only close the account, like Plesk now does.)

There should be options like "do nothing" and "forward the domain to specific "This account has been closed page" to www..."

I have - and I have heard that many other users have been requested this option to be added to Plesk from Parallels, as its one of the major flaws when moving from Plesk 8.x to 9.x but - suprisingly - nothing has yet happened.

I could not agree more with you.

There should be an option with available actions to be taken if limits are exceeded, like:

A. Inform the Owner and/or the ServerAdmin... about the overuse and Suspend the account/domain.

B. Inform the Owner and/or the ServerAdmin... about the overuse and Prevent access to Plesk Panel for that user.

C. "Do nothing you mindless Plesk. I am the master of the known universe.
Just tell me who it is and I will decide what to do with him".
***Some humor to lighten up...
.
.
.
And the list goes on.

We are now at Plesk version 9.3.0. Has anything changed on this issue ?

 

[shefbel]

the way to change default overuse behaviour for 9.3 Plesk Panel

Folks, I wanna change the default behaviour of suspending clients and domains if they exceeded the Resource usage (disk space or traffic)
FROM

Overuse is not allowed Overuse policy tells Parallels Plesk Panel what to do when resources are overused.

TO

Overuse is allowed Do not block the overuse of resources, allowing the domain to use more resources than initially provided. Actual resource usage can exceed the initial resource allocation

I have 50+ clients per server so, I wish to know if following SQL for PSA database is correct:

update clients set overuse = 'true';
update domains set overuse = 'true';

and what I have to do in order apply changes. Should I restart Plesk for applying changes and perform some actions?

Regards,
Victor

 

[Scy]

shefbel: Do you want your users to be able to create unlimited mailboxes, unlimited databases etc despite what settings are set in your client/domain templates. If not, I really cannot recommend enabling "overuse is allowed".

What you should do is to set every disk_space and max_traffic to unlimited to prevent Plesk suspending the domains. You could use disk_space_soft and max_traffic_soft instead of those (which can be set in resources page in part "Notify upon reaching").

So far the Parallels has refused to address any immediate efforts to fix this issue, even though it causes troubles to every admin. See my requests in TOP3 Plesk bugs: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=100264

 

[shefbel]

I wanna execute a couple of SQL scripts in order to get the same behavior as it was at the previous version installed at my server. I have made upgrade from 8.4 to 9.3. I do not wish to examine every client and domain for checking "overuse" option. So, I am focused on the "how to switch this option automatically or by script" instead of "how it's working".

 

[Scy]

You could try following bash shell scripts I requested from Parallels engineers at some time ago when facing this very same problems:

This moves max_traffic to max_traffic_soft and should also set max_traffic to unlimited:

#!/bin/bash

mysqlcmd="mysql -Ns -uadmin -p$(cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow) -Dpsa"

echo "SELECT id, value FROM Limits WHERE limit_name = 'max_traffic' AND value > 0" | $mysqlcmd | \
    while read id hardlimit ; do
        echo "REPLACE INTO Limits (id, limit_name, value) VALUES ($id, 'max_traffic_soft', $hardlimit)" | $mysqlcmd
        echo "UPDATE Limits SET value=-1 WHERE id=$id AND limit_name = 'max_traffic'" | $mysqlcmd
    done

This moves disk_space to disk_space_soft and should also set disk_space to unlimited:

#!/bin/bash

mysqlcmd="mysql -Ns -uadmin -p$(cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow) -Dpsa"

echo "SELECT id, value FROM Limits WHERE limit_name = 'disk_space' AND value > 0" | $mysqlcmd | \
    while read id hardlimit ; do
        echo "REPLACE INTO Limits (id, limit_name, value) VALUES ($id, 'disk_space_soft', $hardlimit)" | $mysqlcmd
        echo "UPDATE Limits SET value=-1 WHERE id=$id AND limit_name = 'disk_space'" | $mysqlcmd
    done

I want to point out that if you run these scripts, do it on your own risk. I don't take any responsibility if your Plesk data gets corrupted. However, these scripts proved to be working and doing what they should be: automating these moves and fixing the problem (returning the Plesk 8.x behaviour).

The only setback in this way is that after setting the hard limit values to unlimited, any statistics page that shows indicator bar, doesn't show any bars properly, as the comparing maximum limit is "unlimited" and Plesk doesn't seem to compare to any soft limits if they're set.

Anyways, hopefully this helps

 

[shefbel]

Scy, I've got your point.
But I wish to leave Limits for traffict and disk usage without changes and switch
FROM Overuse is not allowed TO Overuse is allowed . So, I'll be notified if limits are reached without suspending any client/domain.

It seems that I have to check

update clients set overuse = 'true';
update domains set overuse = 'true';
at my DevBox

 

[Scy]

Scy, I've got your point.
But I wish to leave Limits for traffict and disk usage without changes and switch
FROM Overuse is not allowed TO Overuse is allowed . So, I'll be notified if limits are reached without suspending any client/domain.

The very exact same behaviour happens if you move the disk_space limit to disk_space_soft and set disk_space to unlimited, as then Plesk doesn't suspend any domains (as disk_space is unlimited) but nofify's you as the disk_space_soft limit is reached.

It seems that I have to check

update clients set overuse = 'true';
update domains set overuse = 'true';
at my DevBox

If you want to allow your every single customer to do whatever they want including creating freely as many as mysql databases, create as many as mailboxes and overuse every single limit you set just freely then you can set of course "overuse is allowed". To me it doesn't make any sense if you bill your customers like web hosting package of 500 MB and 2 mailboxes and 1 database - and they can use unlimited amount of space, unlimited amount of mailboxes and unlimited amount of databases without paying for anything

But if you let your customers do that, you can go ahead and set "overuse is allowed"

 

[shefbel]

The very exact same behaviour happens if you move the disk_space limit to disk_space_soft and set disk_space to unlimited, as then Plesk doesn't suspend any domains (as disk_space is unlimited) but nofify's you as the disk_space_soft limit is reached.

Scy, Thank you for you notice, it will be usefull me.

 

[David Bakker]

Scy,

Have you found a way to notify clients of their "disk_space_soft" limit rather than using the "disk_space_limit" of unlimited.

My clients are receiving these overage notifications because we need to keep them in check, however I can't use "disk_space_soft" as a field in the notification. Are you actually notifying clients or are you just notifying yourself about these accounts?

 

[Scy]

Have you found a way to notify clients of their "disk_space_soft" limit rather than using the "disk_space_limit" of unlimited.

My clients are receiving these overage notifications because we need to keep them in check, however I can't use "disk_space_soft" as a field in the notification. Are you actually notifying clients or are you just notifying yourself about these accounts?

My reply may come a bit late, but it's better than nothing:

If you check page notifications you can see that there is a different template for "disk_space_soft" limit notifications and different template for "disk_space_limit" notifications. These are:

disk_space_limit exceeded -> sends notification "Domain has been suspended"
disk_space_soft exceeded -> sends notification "Domain is about to expire"

(Sorry that I cannot remember the exact names, but you can find them in the "Notifications" section.)

My solution was simply to set the "disk_space_limit" to "unlimited" and set off the "Doman has been suspended" notifications.

After that I set "disk_space_soft" to limit I want to use and set the content for "Domain is about to expire" notifications template.

This way the Plesk 9.x limit behaviours just like in Plesk 8.x, and when the limit (soft) is exceeded, Plesk sends e-mail notification to client, admin and whoever you would like to send them.

Of course you need to set these templates (by clicking the appropriate receivers) in the "Notifications" page. I hope this helps.

Anyways, still the initial problem is that the most of the statistics in the Plesk GUI won't show any graphical presentation as the disk space & bandwith limit is "unlimited" in this case. It's still better than suspending the domains..