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Post Cobalt Alternatives?
"Let's break this question into two parts:
a) What have customers been migrating to? I am really impressed with web://cp, and have also investigated Plesk, cPanel, and a few other commercial ones. Most of them require some specific version of Red Hat, which is slightly irritating. I have also considered stock Apache/qmail/vmailmgr/etc, but I'm looking for something that grants a bit more power and flexibility to my end users.
b) How was the migration? We have hundreds and hundreds of e-mail accounts, aliases, mailing lists, etc on our existing RAQ's, and would like the transition to be as seamless as possible. I am looking to finally get around the info@domain1,info@domain 2 issue. Users don't seem to grasp the concept of making an account without a generic name and aliasing info@ to it, so any experiences on this are more than welcome! Our staff is rather limited (I'm pretty much it tech-wise), so the smoother the better!
I am also open to arguments for keeping the RAQ line. I have read that they are open sourcing sausalito and cme, but it looks like there is no short-term stable release of this. I'm looking at a few weeks to a few months as a migration timeframe."
I have upgraded all our RAQs to the newest debian (woody/stable) distribution. The RAQ can be firmware upgraded to support 2.4 kernels. Add to that a modern distribution and it becomes a pretty good server. As for the ssh patch: apt-get upgrade fixed that within an hour of the anouncement. Debian rules!
I have had a little experience with the early RAQ series from Cobalt, and personally I didn't like the setup very much. The management GUI was very nice, but most of the software and hardware was non-standard.
I have used the SunFire V100, and have been very pleased with the results. I use the Debian distribution, which fully supports the SPARC architecture and for which patches are released promptly. The initial install was a little tricky, but far easier than installing Debian on a RAQ (which I did once too). Webmin can provide a nice interface for clients to configure things, and qmail/vpopmail/popauth/omail works well as an email solution.
You can buy a new SunFire for less than $1000 too, which is a great price for an UltraSPARC in a 1U form factor.
Some other interesting notes:
I run software RAID1 across 2 IDE drives.
I use the Tulip driver, not the Davicom driver.
I used the Debian boot cd to load SILO, from which point I can load the kernel of my choosing.
If anyoen wants, I may be able to dig up my notes on the exact install procedure I used for this machine.
I migrated from a Cobalt RaQ setup after many many frustrating moments with the whole net appliance idea in general.
I also needed the migration to be as smooth as possible, including all user auth, mail boxes/folders, lists and aliases.
I decided to go with MySQL based authentication on Postfix, Courier-IMAP, Apache, and ProFTPd, all running on Debian. I Wrote a little web front end using PHP for user administration, and voila, we now have a much more flexible system. All MySQL auth patches and plugins are available in Debian's apt archive.
Check out how-tos on the subject here, here, and here.
It took a little effort to get all of this working, but a little effort went a long way. I was basically able to duplicate the RaQ's functionality on a Debian system that I had full control over as far as software updates, kernel and hardware.
To top it all off, I replicated the config and used Heartbeat to make this into a high availability pair.
Working with a number of ISP's, ie running one myself in the past. I would recommend going with C-panel... The system works well and is updated quite often.
Rolling your own distribution and keeping apache/postfix/frontpage extentions/webmin/etc up to date takes more time than it's worth and eats your profit margin up.
Depending on the space you have available, I would go with some 1u or 2u units. Frankly with 150 domains you can probably run all of them on 1-2 systems with decent hardware.
I strongly recommend against plesk, as they have a number of issues or have had in the past.
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I currently use both webmin, and a cobalt cube (on different servers).
Webmin is really good for the system admin stuff, and setting up new users etc... It also has good support for just about any version of linux, and application (ftp, apache, sendmail, qmail, etc...). I would not recommend using it for end user configuration as it grants a little to much power, and is geared towards the knowledgeable. It is however reliable and secure.
For the end user, there is an addon to webmin called Usermin and another titled Virtualmin. The first is geared towards the end user that needs to read email and such (although it is a poor webmail interface for the end user), and the second is geared towards your setting of end users creating and setting up email accts etc.
hopefully that helps... as it is what i will probably switch to when my cobalt cube dies.
I've never used the RaQs, but I run my ISP using ISPMan. It's a pretty good system that uses the components I like: Postfix, Cyrus, Apache, Pure-FTPD and LDAP.
Wil
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