So I just came up with one of the sneakiest schemes I think I’ve ever come up with, and I needed to brag about it somewhere.
I told you guys about the new server I have called the babooon. That server runs proxmox as a hypervisor, and one of the VMs is dedicated to virtualmin, which is a very inexpensive web hosting control panel. I had been on various hosting providers that all use cPanel, and that was fine and dandy, until you realize that a license for cPanel for a dedicated server is almost 50 dollars a pop. No thanks… so … here’s where the issues began.
Even though virtualmin says they can restore cPanel backups, most of these hosting providers have installed something called JetBackup into their cPanel. It allows for the user to make and restore backups really quickly and easily, and automatically… I think it and cPanel is garbage, but … anyway … virtualmin will not take one of these jetpanel backups, and I can’t ask them to give me legacy cPanel backups because they’ve literally removed it from their cPanel installations. If the account has a database or a lot of emails, it’s an absolute science experiement trying to uncompress the backup file, and move everything into the right directory, tell virtualmin about the new stuff, etc etc etc… So I’m stuck paying for an account that I shouldn’t need because I have a huge dedicated server sitting here.
What I’m thinking I’m going to do is this … There’s a hosting provider out there that has a 5 dollar cpanel plan. They also offer a whmcs (billing system) license for a little more. So what I’m doing is, I’m taking the accounts that aren’t what I call “complex” … i,e if I’m just using them for static stuff, and recreating them on virtualmin manually, from scratch. The stuff that’s complex will stay with asurahosting on their cpanel … I’ll have WHMCS direct all new accounts to the virtualmin server, and I basically have my server in full prouduction, with my billing system on a separate server for disaster recovery purposes, and 4 more sites where no one will know the difference.
wink