@MacarloHost.Net - @Macarlo's News

SWsoft announced today March 27st, 2007 the release of new Plesk control panel version: Plesk 8.1.1 for Both Linux and Windows. The latest update of Plesk 8.1 is now available for download. This release is also available through auto-update. To install this new Plesk version read SWsoft instructions clicking here. Plesk has improved it's control panel at the state-of-te-art maximum level we saw since it's first version we used since the today deceased and buried Feature Price, in Fort Lauderdale. With this new version all Plesk users running Linux can reboot the server secure and quickly by the Plesk button in the <Server> option (available at left frame - now this frame can be hidden by a click of mouse just like Netscape sidebar!!). Then, Plesk users running latest release simply wants not requests remote reboot for software issues, like to free Linux RAm for example. Servers (dedicated, no VPS) we are running can have it's RAM freed in around 65 seconds by Plesk reboot system!! We did it a dozen of times in various dedis and encounterded not only one problem!! But note: DOES NOT click the Shutdown button or your server goes down and a physical reboot will be wanted. At this time we are evaluating some real dedis (not VPS/VDS), including one from ZipServers ordered with a WHT coupon and all of them are rebooting just fine by Plesk reboot. The average media for returning is around 1minute 05 seconds. Note please this Plesk reboot does not replace the physical server reboot (remote port) for hardware issues.

Below is a list of the Top 5 features for each platform included in this release:

Plesk for Linux:

1- MIVA Merchant 5 and Fast Track Modules.
2 - Fedora Core 6 Support
3 - Ability to restore backups made by Plesk 7.5.4
4 - Client permission to manage php safe mode.
5 - Vendor update management through AutoInstaller

Plesk for Windows:

1- Ability to operate multiple SQL databases whether local or remote
2 - Management of DNS zones for domain aliases
3 - Ability to generate Wildcard SSL certificates
4 - Use FTP over a SSL connection
5 - Configure the Master SSL domain on the client level.

What's cool in Plesk 8.1

20% discount on Fotolia stock photos SWsoft has partnered with Fotolia, the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to buy and share stock images and illustrations. Fotolia offers the largest image bank of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, web or print. For a limited time, you can receive a 20% discount.

AWStats support AWstats is a powerful statistics program which creates advanced statistical reports by analyzing log files. If both AWstats and Webalizer are installed, it is possible to choose the statistics program on a per domain basis.

Mobile IMP support Mobile IMP is a Horde web mail extension that allows access to web mail through mobile devices such as WAP phones or PDAs. Basic IMP functionality is available, including mailbox viewing and paging, viewing messages, deleting, replying, forwarding, and composing new messages.

Summary of All Features

Backup/Restore functions
FTP Web Control Panel
Anonymous FTP management
DNS Management
Webalizer statistics (updated daily)
Awstats statistics (updated daily)
Custom Error Documents
Customizable Interface
Password-protected directories
Log Rotation management

Domain Features
Unlimited Subdomains
Unlimited Domain Aliases

Database Features
Unlimited MySQL Databases
Unlimited PostgreSQL Databases
Access to phpMyAdmin

Email Features
IMAP/POP3/Webmail Access
Unlimited Email Accounts
Unlimited Email Forwarders
Unlimited Mailing Lists
Unlimited Mail Groups
Unlimited Mail Aliases
Unlimited Mail Autoresponders
Email Address Control Panel
SpamAssasin Spam Filtering
Dr. Web Email Antivirus Scanning

Scripting Languages
PHP 4 & 5 Support (Accelerated)
CGI Support
mod_Perl Support
mod_Python Support

Backup Features
Scheduled Plesk Backups
Offsite Server Backups

Other Features
FrontPage Extensions
Ecommerce Ready (SSL support)

Software Versions
PHP 4.4
PHP 5.1
MySQL 4.1
Apache 2
mod_Perl 1.9
mod_Python 3.1

For more details visit swsoft home at http://swsoft.com

The release of Plesk 8.1.1 continues SWsoft's OPEN FUSION initiative of enabling integration of all types of web hosting software. This new version of the software contains over 25 new features which further integrates Plesk with Virtuozzo, 3rd party, and other web applications as well as continuing to deliver innovative ease of use, the highest levels of stability and performance, security and unmatched value. Also with this version, we have templated the Plesk software for both Linux and Windows users using the template technology in Virtuozzo. To download Virtuozzo templates for Plesk, please visit SWsoft download page. Before starting the installation or upgrade process we strongly recommend that you create a full system backup of the entire Plesk server.

Plesk is the most advanced control panel for both Windows and Linux currently available and Plesk Migration Manager can migrates various servers to only one at the same time. But cPanel cannot migrate accounts from Plesk 8 at this time, only 6x. A new cPanel version capable to migrate accounts from the latest Plesk releases is in development at the moment.vThe Plesk migration is complete: all clients. all domains with its all email accounts, forums, databases, customizations and more...Migration Plesk to Plesk is the state-of-the-art but you will be a Plesk slave for life we suppose... Personally I prefer Plesk over cPanel simply because of the software version(s) of apache/mysql/php and the lower resource intensive nature.I'm not sure how Plesk is for buggy updates for their software, I really like to get a Plesk box and see how it performs. I've used both with different companies I manage - I recommend Plesk definItely. cPanel is more idiot-friendly (if you don't have some of those yet, you'll get some ) but Plesk is a much, much more stable platform. If you want to 'sell' hosting, cPanel is your best bet due to the features. Plesk is less resource intensive, more secure (better, up to date software) - and generally 'simpler' for the basic things, but cPanel wins with more features and simpler access to all those extra features that web hosting providers usualy need for their clients. Note: Is it possible to run Plesk & cPanel on the same server. I would like to have both on the same server or will there be problems. I'm not trying to have the same accounts under each but let customers choose at sign up which, control panel they would like. cPanel and Plesk operate on different ports already. I think it should be ok but, I would hate to have to reinstall a server with a bunch of clients on it. Plesk is the creme de la creme but also have some serious problems if you are using it from Virtuozzo templates:1 - If a misconfiguration appears you cannot fix it easy and a lot of manual adjusts are wanted 2 - In 60% of snapshot tasks (entire VPS backup) directly from Plesk CP backup fails if the shared CPU resources are high loaded. Note: 3 - Webalizer fails and your statistics on traffic stops and if you face this problem, just SSH to server and run this script /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics. 4 - Watchdog fails to correctly monitor httpd (Apache) if it is very unstable and a square golden icon replaces the normal round green one. In this case you have to set a cronjob to restart Apache minutely. 5 - When you migrates from a server to another using PMM snapshot and client and domains backups cannot be migrated, then you must have them in a external server. Note please: If you want to copy the backup made via VZPP to another server - this is not possible at the moment (of course except you are the admin of the backup node). But you could rsync everything to another VPS instead of creating a backup and undump it...for this task i strongly recommen BQ Internet Corporation, available at: http://www.bqinternet.com/ 6 - Due "normal" misconfiguration the embedded CP in Virtuzzo and vice-versa for login simply cannot be performed. 7 - If you forget your pswd this one cannot be retrieved by clicking the recover option.

If you rent a dedi and install Plesk by autoinstaller for shared web hosting purposes in this case you have not problems...À

cPanel/WHM server admin level and user level guides: http://cPanel.net/docs.htm

A great resource are the cPanel Forums at: http://forums.cPanel.net

Principal Improvements

Plesk 8x presents a lot of important improvements as follows:

Brand-new Desktop interface option - Plesk 8 boasts quick and efficient task-oriented desktop, while retaining the ability to use old, traditional interface, and offering the options of switching between old and new interfaces, and even using both at the same time. Now administrators have quick access to major management functions and they have immediate access to mission critical information and statistics. The task-oriented design also allows administrators to create "favorites" and "shortcuts".

New generation of Backup Utilities - The improved backup/restore utilities based on Plesk Migration Manager engine let administrators backup and restore client accounts, selecting which client's domains to backup/restore and whether the client's information should be backed up/restored. The improved domain restoration brings now a domain to the very state the domain had during the backup. Backup files are no more digitally signed, which lets domain administrators to migrate their domains from server to server by themselves. This generation of Backup Utilities also allows to backup/restore Site Applications and Application Vaults.

Auto-installer V3.0 - This improved feature lets administrators deploy and upgrade multiple servers in an efficient, cost effective manner. The new architecture allows for improved dependencies tracking and increased speed during installation and upgrade. All of this makes the support of new operating systems simpler and easier.

New and improved Acronis True Image Module - Plesk now comes with a new ATIS module. Using this module, administrators can create server disk backup images without interrupting server operations and perform easy and fast recovery of the entire system. The module enables scheduling backup tasks, launching manually backup tasks, selecting the compression level for backup images, setting up passwords to protect backup images, and other useful features.

Watchdog 2.0 - The second generation of Watchdog utilities, Watchdog 2 tremendously improves its predecessor capabilities. In addition to previously available features Watchdog 2 now monitors your hard disks, scans your server for security vulnerabilities such as rootkits, backdoors and local exploits, and displays CPU and RAM usage statistics.

Interface Control Management - This feature introduced in Plesk 7.5.3 enables Plesk administrators to easily and efficiently manage the visibility of the control panel buttons. Plesk administrators have the flexibility to maintain a simpler, cleaner interface for end-users by hiding the controls for features that are not installed from Plesk users. Plesk 8 introduces the concept of client interface templates, which eliminates the need to adjust interface settings on a per-client basis. This can considerably speed up your client interface management.

Domain Aliases support - This new feature lets domain administrators set up alternative domain names which act as nicknames for websites and e-mail addresses, and modify their DNS records.

SSL support for subdomains - This feature provides SSL support for subdomains, enabling you to create and use subdomains that use Secure Sockets Layer protocol for authentication and security.

Wildcard SSL certificate support - By popular demand, in this release you can use SSL certificates with wildcards as domain names (a.k.a. wildcard SSL certificates). This feature also supports the creation of self-signed wildcard SSL certificates and generation of Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) for wildcard SSL certificates.

Protection of cgi-bin directory - Due to numerous requests, Plesk 8 adds the ability to protect your cgi-bin directory, securing the access to it. You can also create protected directories in cgi-bin directory, increasing the flexibility of your secure content structure. This means that you can now restrict access to your dynamic web pages that use CGI scripts.

MySQL 4.1 support - This release adds full MySQL 4.1 support, eliminating all possible problems with local characters in MySQL databases.

Improved usability of DNS records management - Plesk 8 drastically improves the security and usability of DNS records management, employing dynamic DNS records generation forms. With new simplified DNS management interface and dynamic forms the possibility of making a mistake when managing your DNS records is close to none.

SOA DNS records management - In this version you can manage Start of Authority (SOA) DNS records through Plesk Control Panel. With added support for SOA DNS records management, Plesk offers you more DNS fine-tuning options than ever before.

Multiple Remote Databases support - Plesk 8 allows you to use remote database servers for storing client databases. Moreover, you can easily employ and manage multiple external MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers at once.

Improved databases administration - This release offers extended database administration capabilities and improved PhpMyAdmin and PhpPgAdmin integration. Plesk server administrators now have the full-fledged database administration ability via phpMyAdmin and PhpPgAdmin, being able to create database users, manage their access rights and remove users, if necessary. Improved database administration capabilities now allow you to choose the default user for DB WebAdmin feature.

Simultaneous migration support - Plesk Migration Manager now allows simultaneous (a.k.a. multisession) migrations. This new feature is a definite time-saver, especially for Expand migrations. Simultaneous migration is easy and convenient way to migrate data from several servers at once.

Simplified IP mapping during migration - Simplification of IP mapping in Plesk Migration Manager makes migration even quicker and easier than it was before. All excessive IP mapping is removed, as you only need to map those IPs that are actually used by migration objects.

Site Applications and Application Vaults migration - the ability to migrate Site Applications and Application Vault is a great new functionality for Plesk Migration Manager. This feature is another big step towards perfect migration brought to you by Plesk team.

PostgreSQL databases migration - Plesk Migration Manager now can migrate PostgreSQL databases from one Plesk server to another, further increasing the functionality and flexibility of migration.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) support - Plesk 8 adds the support of popular and very effective SPF (Sender Policy Framework) spam prevention system. SPF is based on using special DNS records that specify which machines are authorized to transmit e-mail for a specific domain, thus making it easy to distinguish genuine e-mails from those forged by spammers. For more information about Sender Policy Framework system, refer to http://spf.pobox.com/howworks.html.

Pluggable Authentication Modules authentication support - In this release the support for Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) authentication was added. PAM authentication is flexible mechanism for authenticating system users, further improving Plesk server security.

APOP authentication support - In this release encrypted APOP authentication for POP3 protocol is added. Your mailbox passwords will never be transmitted in plain text again - APOP is using MD5 hash, providing quality encryption and secure authentication of transmitted e-mail credentials.

Qmail Queue Management through Control Panel - This feature allows administrators to manage the Qmail message queue directly through Plesk Control Panel. With this feature, you can manually delete spam and other unwanted mail from the queue, using quick and intuitive sorting options.

PHP 4.4.2 upgrade for FreeBSD - FreeBSD versions of Plesk 8 come with PHP upgraded to 4.4.2 version. PHP 4.2.2 offers increased performance and security among other improvements.

Dr.Web 4.33 updated - Dr.Web anti-virus is upgraded to new 4.33 version in Plesk 8. Additionally, brand-new Plesk Autoinstaller V3 can successfully update all Dr.Web components, thus making previous Dr.Web autoupgrade problems obsolete.

SpamAssassin 3 upgrade for FreeBSD - FreeBSD versions of Plesk 8 come with SpamAssassin 3 included. This new SpamAssassin version further improves the quality of spam filtering, while fine-tuning SpamAssassin's already outstanding performance.

Use of mod_jk module instead of mod_webapp module - Plesk 8 now uses mod_jk module instead of outdated mod_webapp module for its Java-related needs.

Improved support of Chroot Shell Environment - Plesk 8 vastly improves disk space usage for Chroot shell environment in vhost. Now disk space usage for chroot shell environment in vhost is minimized, saving your precious free HDD space.

Secure administrator password retrieval - This new feature allows Plesk server administrator to retrieve and change the administrator's password without logging in to Plesk and without compromising the Plesk server security.

Host name validation during install - Plesk 8 now validates the host name during the installation process, checking the compliance of host name with IP address. This eliminates several possible problems during the installation, improving Apache and MySQL operation consistency.

New informative welcome screen - When you log in to Plesk 8 for the first time, a welcome screen with short and to-the-point description of new features will be presented. This will help you familiarize yourself with plethora of new features available in Plesk 8.

Initial configuration improvement - Plesk 8 allows you to configure default IP addresses at the first startup, making the process of initial Plesk configuration quicker and easier.

MD5 authentication in XML RPC - Plesk 8 gives you the option to use MD5 authentication in Plesk XML RPC. This vastly improves Plesk Control Panel security when using Plesk API, enabling you to encrypt the passwords and protect Plesk from potential hacker attacks.

Improved SpamAssassin and Dr.Web API management - With Plesk 8 you can manage SpamAssassin and Dr.Web through Plesk API much more effectively than before, utilizing a wide range of commands and options previously unavailable for API management.

CLI interface utilities update - Beginning with Plesk 8, CLI interface utilities do not use .sh name suffix anymore. We recommend all Plesk 8 users to use the new, more convenient syntax. While the old syntax will be supported for a while, it is outdated and its support will eventually cease.

Plesk system administration features

°Firewall configuration module
°Watchdog 2.0 module for monitoring of system services with optional notifications and automatic restart
°RkHunter tool for detection of rootkits included in Watchdog module
°Migration of accounts from external systems (cPanel, Ensim, Plesk, etc)
°Automated installation and upgrade of new Plesk components
°Add and remove skins from the control panel
°Configure conditional responses to events using Event Manager
°SPAM Filtering with SpamAssassin Software (requires PowerPack)
°17 pre-installed 'skins' plus custom skin creation
°Customizable (click and install) Plesk "Application Vault" (requires PowerPack)
°Integrated server statistics (Disk Usage, Full Traffic Monitoring, System Uptime, RAM usage)
°Customizable Button creation with hyper linking and interface locale selection
°Private Folder Management
°Quick Configure and manage applications such as Apache and FTP
°Quick Backup and restore (Full System, Client level or a single domain)
°Pre-integrated Mail server or use a third-party mail solution
°Pre-integrated DNS or use a third-party solution
°Run, stop or restart services (Email, DNS, Apache, Stunnel, Tomcat etc)
°Control Panel Branding (upload a new logo or change it in a skin
°Standard Unix/Linux security scheme which is proved to be secure on thousands Unix/Linux servers all over the world
°Quick and flexible mail configuration (POP3, SMTP authorization, open and closed relaying, white and black lists, MAPS spam protection, SPF verification)
°Mail queue viewer with search function and ability to delete problematic messages
°Automated DNS Templating for new domains
°Manage SSL certificates for domains and subdomains
°Manage Control Panel Sessions (Idle time, login attempts etc.)
°Choose default skin and language, change Admin's skin and language
°Automate System Notifications (select notification events, select recipients, personalize the text, set expiration notifications and limits exceeded notifications)
°Pre-create and Automate Domain Parameters using Templates
°Register and use remote MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers as well as local servers
°Manage databases on local and remote database servers using WebAdmin under administrative account
°Create and Manage MySQL and PostgresSQL (requires PowerPack) databases
°Pre-create and Automated Client/Reseller Parameters using Templates
°Monitor and Log User's while they work using the Action Log Management Interface
°Set and Automate Chronological System tasks Server-wide and per domain
°Pre-create and Upload Custom Domain Skeleton directories
°Select and Restrict IP's from access to the Control Panel
°Easy domains management
°Restrict the use of specific applications to specific users
°Bundle applications and server resources for targeted customer segments
°Automate new site deployment
°Template Domains and re-use them as default for quick Domain creation
°Track supported applications and allocated resources such as disk space, monthly bandwidth, number of webusers, mail user and other limits
°Create an unlimited number of targeted templates for Clients and Domains
°Bundle and meter top requested features such as multiple MySQL, PostgreSQL databases and webusers. Anonymous FTP access
°Choose different security options during site creation (allowing SSH access, scripting, allow scripting to webusers)
°Disable any button in Plesk interface and assign such customized Interface template to clients
°Assign customized Desktop presets to specific users
°Restrict access to Desktop or standard interface only
°Use International Characters in Domain names
°Perform Domain backups to a repository, FTP server, or workstation
°Schedule domain backups on a Cron and preset backup files rotation
°Preview websites before DNS propagation
°Create Sub-domains
°Add and Manage Site Applications to the Application Vault (requires PowerPack)
°Automatically create a new site with point-and-click ease, based on a domain template or custom requirements
°Automatically create DNS and appropriate application entries, such as Apache, FTP
°Upgrade the resources available to an existing site, manage permissions
°Manage all domains on the system with a single login
°Monitor bandwidth on a per site basis by traffic type: http/https, pop3, SMTP, IMAP, ftp, anonymous ftp.
°Webalizer is included for traffic statistics. Quick view traffic history
°Manage webusers
°Manage multiple MySQL databases per site
°Create email, mail groups, autoresponders
°Create protected directories (SSL and non-SSL), assign users to them
°Protect the cgi-bin directory or subdirectories within it
°Log Rotation Management
°Upload and manage site files using File-Manager
°Manage Anonymous FTP settings (bandwidth, incoming dir, simultaneous logins)
°Manage site using FrontPage Web-Admin
°Switch entire domain ON/OFF
°Create and manage Mail lists
°Manage Domain skeleton
°Create Domain aliases

Application Vault (included in PowerPack)

The Plesk Application Pack is a completely customizable repository of Site Applications giving Admins the ability to add, deploy, configure, and remove applications for any domain on the system. The Plesk 8.0 for Linux/Unix Application Pack comes standard with a extended group of applications including a Mambo CMS tool for creating and deploying dynamic web content.
Inclided applications
°post-Nuke (CMS)
°osCommerce Ecommerce software
°phpBB (bulletin board)
°gallery (picture gallery)
°phpBook (guestbook)
°bbClone (counter)
°gtChat (chat engine)
°AdvancedPoll (Poll system)
°AutoIndex (File statistics and file manager)
°b2evolution (Blog)
°Coppermine (Photo gallery)
°CSLH (Customer support)
°DocFAQ (FAQ system)
°openbiblio (Library )
°Owl (Knowledge base)
°phpAds (Banner system)
°phpBugTracker (PHP clone of Bugzilla)
°phpDig (Search engine)
°phpMoney (Account management)
°phpMyFamily (Genealogic tree)
°phpsurveyor (Surveys creation tool)
°phpWiki (Documentation management)
°pLog (Blog)
°Tellme (Network tools (whois, traceroute etc.))
°TUTOS (Work process organization)
°typo (CMS)
°UebiMiau (Webmail)
°WebCalendar (Calendar)
°WebShopmanager (Online store creator)
°WordPress (Publishing platform (blog))
°xrms (CRM)

This letter was generated by security scanner started on host server.macarlohost.net at Mar 2, 2007 10:00 AM.

Note: It is recommended that you re-run security scanning on the machine via Plesk control panel before you make any changes to the machine configuration.

Security scanning generated the following warnings (the full scanning log is available at /var/log/rkhunter.log):

[10:00:53] ---------------------------- History files ---------------------------- [10:00:53] WARNING, found: /etc/.crontab.swm (data) [10:00:55] ------------------------- Security advisories ------------------------- [10:00:55] Warning: root login possible. Change for your safety the 'PermitRootLogin' ---------------------------------

Scanning Status Warning: Scanning completed at Mar 2, 2007 10:00 AM. Considerable existing/potential security problems were detected in the system. For details, see the log below.

cPanel or Plesk?

Changing H-Sphere, vDeck etc by an universal control panel is your chance to obtain real freedom in your web hosting business. If your next level from reseller is VPS or dedicated you have to choose between cPanel and Plesk (the leaders) and DirectAdmin, Ensim, Webmin and more. Webmin is for free and it is the default control panel for many servers in some providers. Webmin is for experts, for Linux hard users that does not want a sophisticated CP like Plesk, Ensim, cPanel, Helm, Direct Admin and more. Webmin is not a replacement for a commercial control panel. It is an open source, free web-based control panel. However, wee think the term web-based configuration wizard might be a less misunderstood term. It is worth noting that you will not have any less control of a Webmin VPS than a conventional Webmin Linux server. Do not choose Webmin if you are not used to manually provisioning a Linux server for use. This means if you do not know how to configure Apache, do not choose Webmin. If you are not familiar with MTA softtware supporting mailboxes, do not choose Webmin.

There is a lot of confusion over what webmin is and what it can do. We wish to clear this up.

- Webmin is not a replacement for a commercial control panel

- Webmin is not for web hosting companies

- Webmin is not as user friendly as WHM/Cpanel or Plesk

- Webmin does not have allow you to automatically generate <users> or <accounts> which have their own access to web services (ie, their own control panel). - Webmin creates no relationship between web, FTP, mail, dns <users>.

- Webmin can manage system users but creates no relationship between them and hosted websites, email addresses, DNS zones, etc.

Overall, Webmin does not centrally configure your server for simplified management... ! But these control panel are only an interface to turn easy a server accounts administration and more. If you really know what you are doing the best control panel is the command line...Per example: if you are using a Plesk for 10 domains only you can start a Linux shell and setup 100 domains or 1,000 domains hosted in your server. Obviously, only 10 will have control panel. Well, control panel is essential for your customers...The great advantage of control panels really improved is provide you the ability to migrate easy and quickly from one server to another preserving all setups in all accounts. On this issue I strongly recommend Plesk because it is the best in show in migration, but note that Plesk 7.5.1 Reloaded cannot migrate data from the new Plesk 8.0.1...Plesk Migration Manager migrates fine from cPanel reseller account (if your reseller hosting gives you a sudo...) and all setup will be migrated fine, including all email accounts, forums and more! But cPanel at this time cannot migrate accounts from Plesk 7.5.4. and 8.0.1. yet, only from old Plesk versions as releases 6x. A new cPanel capable to migrate from recente Plesk releases is in development and coming soon. SWSoft found some bugs in it's new 8.0.1, fixed all of them and a new Plesk relase will be out at the next December.

We recently migrate a lot of gigas from Washington to Texas at 252kbps in media using Plesk 8.0.1. and migrated fine from Houston to Dallas between 512/650kbps in media without only one error!! In another PMM migration we did it at 900kbps carying a lot of websites of our customers and the configuration of all of them was preserved just fine, including email accounts, forums etc. We are specialized in host for VIP and intellectuals and we own various VPS and dedicated around the world; constantly we are migrating fine and we migrate using Plesk only. With Plesk you will be free for migrations but you will be a Plesk sale for life...

Cpanel is a nice control panel but it has frequent problems when you update it, all kinds of things seem to break every update, even using the stable or release versions. My advice is to keep updates to a minimum if possible. As a server admin I would want cPanel, but the panel is not for you but for your clients, they need an easy to use interface, Plesk has been able to provide such interface and the main reason many hosts end up using it, another reason is that you would like to have a panel for both Windows and Linux/Unix servers, Plesk allows you to manage many servers at same time, to me Plesk is the way to go.

Personally I prefer Plesk over cPanel simply because of the software version(s) of apache/mysql/php and the lower resource intensive nature.I'm not sure how Plesk is for buggy updates for their software, I'd really like to get a Plesk box and see how it performs. I've used both with different companies I manage - I'd recommend Plesk definItely. cPanel is more idiot-friendly (if you don't have some of those yet, you'll get some ) but Plesk is a much, much more stable platform. If you want to 'sell' hosting, cPanel is your best bet due to the features. Plesk is less resource intensive, more secure (better, up to date software) - and generally 'simpler' for the basic things, but cPanel wins with more features and simpler access to all those extra features that web hosting providers usualy need for their clients. Note: Is It Possible To Run Plesk & cPanel on the same server. I would like to have both on the same server or will there be problems. Im not trying to have the same accounts under each but let customers choose at sign up which, control panel they would like. cPanel and Plesk operate on different ports already. I think it should be ok but, I would hate to have to reinstall a server with a bunch of clients on it.

Backup
Restore
Mail
Manage email accounts (add, remove, change password)
Webmail for all accounts
Auto-responders
Custom mail filtering
Forwarders
Mailing lists (mailman)
Ability to modify an MX entry
Spam filtering (SpamAssassin)
Stats
Webalizer web stats
Webalizer FTP stats
Analog stats
AWStats
View latest visitors
View bandwidth usage
View error log
Download raw log file
FTP
Manage FTP accounts (add, remove, change password)
Anonymous FTP controls
Ability to change FTP login message
Ability to kill FTP sessions
Site Tools
Web Protect (.htaccess editor)
Ability to change site and FrontPage password
Custom error pages
Redirects
Ability to edit MIME types
Ability to edit Apache handlers
Install/Uninstall FrontPage Extensions
Search engine submit tool
File Manager
Subdomains
Ability to add/remove subdomains
Subdomain redirects
Stats for subdomains
Advanced Tools
SSH access
Manage GPG keys
Cron jobs
Pre-Installed CGI Scripts
Interchange Cart
Agora Cart
Bulletin Board
Java Chat
HTML Chat
phpMyChat
CGI Wrapper (for non-suexec installs)
Random HTML generator
Advanced Guestbook
Counter Generator
Java Clock Generator
Java Countdown Generator
Secure FormMail clone
CGIEmail
Entropy Search
Entropy Banner
Network Tools
DNS Lookup
Traceroute
Database Management
Manage MySQL databases
phpMyAdmin access

SWsoft Recognized by IT Week
As a Top Technology Innovator of 2006

SWsoft has been chosen as one of the Top 50 Technology Innovators of 2006 by IT Week magazine.

IT Week (http://www.itweekmagazine.com) is delivered electronically every Monday to 100,000 information technology (IT) professionals. It contains the latest news, reviews, product information, opinion and trends.

This is the second year in a row that SWsoft has appeared on IT Week's annual Technology Innovator list. Last June, the company was also named to IT Week's Top 100 IT Vendors of 2006. The accolades continue in 2007 with InfoWorld magazine recognizing SWsoft's Virtuozzo for Linux 3.0 for Best Server Virtualization (OS Virtualization) in its January 1 issue.

"Our company continues to make great strides and our flagship Virtuozzo software product sales have shown great traction with customers," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. "The industry recognition is testimony to our progress, which we intend to accelerate in 2007." The IT Week issue can be found at http://itweekmagazine.com/issues/issue251.pdf. SWsoft's listing is on page 98.

Virtualization Manageability and Performance With Virtuozzo, a single Linux or Windows operating system instance can be dynamically partitioned into multiple, isolated virtual environments (VEs). Unlike virtual machines and hypervisors, Virtuozzo OS virtualization addresses the challenges faced by today's datacenters of operating system sprawl. Virtuozzo's unique architecture and suite of management tools make it the ideal solution for easily provisioning, monitoring and managing virtualized server resources.

Virtuozzo enables each virtual environment to scale up to the full resources of the physical server and maintain performance at levels consistent with a native server. Virtuozzo enables density of up to hundreds of virtual environments on a single physical server. Virtuozzo provides manageability and performance that result in the lowest total cost of ownership and fastest ROI.

About SWsoft

SWsoft is a global leader in server virtualization and automation software. More than 10,000 customers rely on the proven performance and management capabilities of SWsoft products to optimize their IT infrastructures. Founded in 1999, the company has offices located throughout North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, call 703-815-5670 or visit www.swsoft.com.