{"id":6627,"date":"2013-03-22T17:40:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T17:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=9fe025382897409fd076bd35fde28300"},"modified":"2013-03-22T17:40:17","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T17:40:17","slug":"choose-the-right-tool-for-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/choose-the-right-tool-for-the-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Choose the right tool for the job"},"content":{"rendered":"

by, Adam Bogobowicz, Director of Product Marketing for Service Providers, Parallels<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This Blog is a follow up to a conversation on Parallels Forum. It highlights Parallels Plesk Automation (PPA) architecture options and related hardware and licensing fees. My forum response is reposted here as it may be of interest to a broader audience or hosters considering Parallels Plesk Automation as their next Professional Hosting Platform. The core of the forum question was related to business logic of Parallels Plesk Automation for micro-hosting scenarios. My answer comments on a broader set of scales and architecture options possible with Parallels Plesk Automation.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

_______________<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

With the number of Parallels Plesk Automation deployments increasing I am now able to provide an answer to your questions based not only on product architecture but also on experiences from in-production deployments. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

From what I can see it is quite clear that value of PPA over a single Parallels Plesk Panel deployment increases with the scale of the system. This is consistent with the way PPA is architected. We wanted this product to be the platform for professional hosting and optimized it for hosters for whom hosting is a full time business. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

This means that if you are running a hosting business with 100 or less customers\/domains Parallels Plesk Panel is the best solution in town. It is simpler than Parallels Plesk Automation and with 100 customers, scale and management is still not a problem. It still makes sense to run at this scale with Parallels Plesk Panel Unlimited dedicated license to qualify for free support but if money is short, you can find a discounted Parallels Plesk Panel 100 domain licenses with one of Parallels infrastructure partners.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

At even smaller scale of micro-hosting you will find an even lower cost solution with Parallels Plesk Panel 10 domain offered for free by many of our partners. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Please Note: There are specialized hosting services scenarios, where security or customer requirements dictate isolation and multi-server architecture with low customer counts. If this is of interest to you I am happy to address it separately.<\/em>  <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Now the good news is that you do not need to start your hosting business on Plesk Automation to be able to move up to it later on. The transition from Plesk 11 to Plesk Automation is easy so when your business grows you can simply make the choice to move to the professional hosting platform. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

You should consider Parallels Plesk Automation for the first time at the 300-500 user level or when the number of VPSs and server you are managing starts to be (technical term) “a pain to manage”. Managing more than 4 servers without centralized Management Panel would give me a headache. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Here you have a choice of managing a Plesk Automation on a series of VPSs or managing a dedicated server that you provision containers onto. My advice is, if you have the skills, you should go with the dedicated box and run Parallels Cloud Server virtualization on it. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

I suggest one quad core server with 32Gb RAM and 1Tb hardware RAID 10 storage like Dell PE620, Intel Xeon 2609 2.4 Ghz 4C x 2, 32Gb RDIMM RAM, 300Gb SAS 6Gbps x 8 (1.2Tb available storage), Perc H710 Hardware RAID 10 (Dell offers it for $171\/month lease) and run 4 Parallels Cloud Server containers on it. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

I would run:<\/span><\/p>\n