Could we assemble a list of hosting services that use Virtualmin, along with a discussion on how they integrate VM into their system, and problems they have with VM, along with solutions that were found? I'll start with my hosting service, Joyent:

Joyent uses VM in two ways:
1 - Their shared hosting uses VMPro, customized to provide the services they want to give to their shared hosting customers. They are oriented toward not only web sites and mail lists, but also programming with good support for Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, SVN and a host of other services. These are all managed by the hosting user via the VM front end.

2 - Their dedicated hosting service provides a simpler VM GPL front end, assuming dedicated clients may want to use their own administration, via ssh and the Solaris administration tools. They DO, however, offer an upgrade path where you can buy a VMPro license, and they will use that to set up a VMPro front end to the dedicated system. The goal is to have the power of a dedicated, root accessible system, but with the ease of use of VMPro.

We're new at this, but when working with the Joyent and Virtualman teams (who work well together, BTW), our project ran into a problem with mailman installation and VM use. The teams worked out the problems and a fix is in the works if not already solved. A plus for both Joyent and VM is that Joyent has now created a pkgadd for mailman which was not available in other Solaris repositories (Blastwave, Coolstack).

So, any one else want to chime in? It would be interesting to hear about moving from one VM hosting service to another as well .. how well the backup/restore works and solutions for problems.

Joyent as in http://joyent.com/ ?? Really?

Here at podunk Chattanooga Online - http://chattanooga.net/ this is what we've experienced...

We've been using Webmin for several years, mostly as an email & web hosting system, the above site & our webmail system is running on a webmin server, and our email server with a few thousand addresses is also running webmin.

My co-worker runs a major filesharing torrent tracker under webmin.

We have many websites still running on webmin servers, though we tend to transition them to our cPanel servers when customers ask for upgraded functionality. It's just an easier sell and very simple to manage -- most webmasters know the user interface.

This year, we tried Virtualmin for a couple of projects.

I use it to run the semi-dedicated server that houses http://skatepark.org and a few other sites with which I am personally involved. It's more of a boutique server that's optimized for PHP/MySQL running Joomla, Wordpress and phpBB -- the main site is running under mod_php with eAccelerator, while the others are doing fCGId and either local cache or a hybrid local/eAccelerator. I'm really happy with the performance, and the users like Usermin just fine for webmail... however we're only talking about ~5 sites and ~50 users... mostly web traffic, and using Postini for spam/virus filtering. The server is awesomely fast and is never under heavy load (bandwidth is only about 10 Gigs a month - mostly skatepark.org).

My co-worker has used Virtualmin on some custom projects that run on VMWare virtual servers. Example: a dedicated email/webmail/marketing system for a major manufacturer that hybridizes Squirrelmail, PHPlist and Virtualmin and uses Postini for spam/virus filtering. The need was for a secure email system that the manufacturer's marketing dept can use to verify their ~1500 distributors and retailers have received and read communications. While the system runs very well and serves up PHP pages fine, Virtualmin bogs down whenever changes need to be made to a user account... 5 minute page loads just to list the users? Another 5 minutes just to create or modify a user? Ouch. He's looking for a better solution, probably using SQL database to manage the users... but it works for now.

We have a colocation client who recently moved several hundred domains to a VMPro server. He is struggling with the load that Spamassasin and ClamAV are causing. He was not doing any filtering other than realtime blacklisting on his old server, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. But his server's load is higher than he would like.

For the majority of our hosted websites, cPanel + Postini makes the most sense... For personal projects, dedicated servers and development, Virtualmin is great.

I personally like VM a lot. I have learned a ton during the process of setting up a server and developing a few sites on it. I see it as more of a solution for a server that is managed by developers and admins. However, it's not quite ready to compete with cPanel for the majority of low-level hosting customers.

I realize VMPro is pretty much still in beta... and it's working quite well. I love it. The new theme, coupled with better performance for multi-thousand user management, and a billing solution would really make it KILLER.

Post edited by: PlayGod, at: 2008/03/28 05:31

Hi,

we are using vm with 10 licenses / server as we are only hosting our website clients. For this small amount of domains on one server a cpanel would be overkill (and to expensive).

But with max 10 clients (usually even less) on one server it is just perfect. Our expierence over the past half year (only using it that long)is very positive. It has reduced setup time as we never offered the usual shared hosting (and we will not).

Just my 2cts.

Uwe