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VirtPanel screenshots
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VirtPanel screenshots

DamianDamian Member
edited December 2012 in General

@Jarland's CatalystHost have recently moved to VirtPanel for VM control. It looks interesting and intuitive, though I don't think I could handle trusting the master CP to an outside company.

Since not everyone will see it, here are some screenshots:

After logging in. Apparently i'm a reseller? THis must be due to having multiple VMs with Catalyst:
image

Clicking on "Accounts" gives me the 'usual' listing of my VMs:
image

The control interface for a VM. I'm not sure what the "disk i/o" means.
image

I can change my VM resources if I so choose to. This is somewhat dangerous, as I have a VM with Catalyst in Texas and Colorado, and I can move resources from Texas to Colorado and vice versa.
image

I like this disk i/o graph. I wonder where it gets its data from?
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There's API access. The API documentation ( http://www.virtpanel.com/documentation/docs-api/ ) is terrible, though.
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Comments

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    NIce job @jarland. I am too sick and tire of old Solus/WHMCS setup, monopoly wont help things progress, at least not fast enough.
    Sadly, the free solutions either lack good IPv6 support (commercial ones have the same problem, tho), or are not really known.
    Thanks @Damian for this highlight.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited December 2012

    Pretty new things! I've wanted all along to move away from cookie cutter.

    @Damian said: I don't think I could handle trusting the master CP to an outside company.

    It was definitely something that had to be talked about a good bit beforehand. Ultimately we felt that this was a positive move.

    @Damian said: Apparently i'm a reseller?

    While the developers have been working with us extremely well, each VM currently has it's own account and a reseller can control multiple accounts. Sort of a work around for the time being.

    @Damian said: I can change my VM resources if I so choose to.

    This should fail if you attempt to as you don't actually have any available resources or the ability to delete a VM. At least shouldn't...

    @Maounique said: NIce job @jarland. I am too sick and tire of old Solus/WHMCS setup, monopoly wont help things progress, at least not fast enough.

    Thanks brother. The best way seems to be found in being willing to say to developers "I'm serious, here's my proof." It's scary to take the leap, but always nice to have the terminal ;)

  • A couple of questions that come to mind:

    Are you able to maintain your own OS templates?

    @jarland said: It was definitely something that had to be talked about a good bit beforehand. Ultimately we felt that this was a positive move.

    Do they send you periodic dumps of client data? What happens if they disappear?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited December 2012

    @Damian said: Are you able to maintain your own OS templates?

    We are, although maintaining it is more manual now than it was in Solus, I don't mind the extra work.

    @Damian said: Do they send you periodic dumps of client data? What happens if they disappear?

    Cool thing about it is that the panel is very simplistic in how it interacts. I have records of what VPS belongs to who, the panel only really interacts via SSH. So if I lost the whole thing right now with no backups of their data, the only work would be on my part. I've halted our growth while we work this out so that if any manual work is involved for my part (emphasizing that containers are not in danger at any point), the work is manageable and I could manually rebuild a database in 2 hours by hand if I had to.

    Soon they'll allow me to download backups on my own, but they're very willing to work with us. I really want to brag on these guys right now. They have restructured their approach and their dedication to this panel.

  • gameongameon Member
    edited December 2012

    Cool and interesting indeed :)

    Also @Damian , Your email id as well as node IP address's are visible in the image posted. You might want to hide em (if you would want :) )

  • rskrsk Member, Patron Provider
    edited December 2012

    We are also considering virtpanel on our new deployments for openvz- if we go ahead with it, that is.

    Seems good :)

    Wopps

  • Saw this the other day but their approach to the panel before this was really off-putting.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    By the way, here's the e-mail I just sent to clients. Hoping to rally support for alternative solutions to the normal ways of doing things.

    Hey guys,

    I want to share, with those of you who care, why we've moved from SolusVM. I want to be clear that it is not a result of any issues with the software or it's creators. The team at SolusLabs has been nothing but amazing and their work is wonderful. With that said, this decision wasn't a terribly difficult one. I always knew that I wanted to do something like this, and I took the dive before we reached the point where it was just too difficult to do it.

    From the moment we created Catalyst Host we knew we wanted to be different. There are too many hosting companies out there doing the same thing. From a customer perspective, it's hard to tell which of the million cPanel shared hosting providers is better than the other, the same goes with SolusVM and low end VPS companies. It has become increasingly apparent that any idiot can purchase a license for WHMCS and SolusVM and run a VPS host for months without any major issue, despite knowing nothing about what they're doing. The automation of SolusVM is both a blessing and a curse.

    This isn't in protest of the fact that SolusLabs made a product so incredible that even idiots can be successful with it. It doesn't take away the usefulness of their product to someone who knows what they're doing. The point is that the presence of it doesn't make you question anything about us. No longer is the question about how we are different, the question is now about why we are different. We're shifting the conversation.

    So why are we different? We don't want to merely exist in our market, we want to impact it. I hear customers and providers constantly going on about how SolusVM is fine, but they want something different. Everyone wants something fresh to look at from time to time. No one is proving themselves willing to invest significantly in a new product and few are showing any interest in developing a product that can do the job for a provider of reasonable size. I am not the right person to develop this solution, nor can I hire developers to take on the task. Instead, I'm going to throw what weight I have behind someone who clearly wants a chance to take on this market. Those people are the developers at VirtPanel. For too long many have flirted with the idea of backing another solution. For too long these developers have been sitting on the sidelines saying "Pick me!" while most providers are simply too afraid to move away from "tried and true."

    We have taken a bet on these guys. Maybe we'll regret it, maybe it'll be the best decision we ever made. Breaking out of the cookie cutter mold isn't comfortable, and it isn't always the best PR move. Your VPS is safe, your data is safe, but the status quo is not.

    Jarland Donnell
    Catalyst Host

  • I kinda want to get a VPS with Catalyst just to try this out

  • ryanarpryanarp Member, Patron Provider

    I don't think we would stop you :) We are keeping orders off temporarily while we make sure everything is perfect with the new panel. So stay tuned or put in a ticket and we will let you know when our plans are back up.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited December 2012

    Small issue of the panel not supporting vSwap or working alongside a container with vSwap enabled. I think we're in the <24 hours window for this fix. Most have been temporarily converted to burst, but I don't want to sell any with burst instead of vSwap.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    vSwap added!
    <3 VirtPanel

  • Any new more about this panel?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    They've been adding requested features constantly. Great interaction with them.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited December 2012

    @Zen said: No way in hell I could trust a third party with my customers

    Don't really have to for the most part. I run the servers, I run the billing. I can disconnect their panel (and make it's stored information useless) about as quickly as I can flip a light switch. They don't have any private information about my customers.

    As for security flaws, you'll find them in nearly anything if you look hard enough. There is no such thing as a public facing web server that is completely invulnerable, without human intervention, to the most determined and knowledgeable. However, I'd trust them a lot more than some of the lazy LEB hosts that float around, and you'd have to agree on that point. A lot of people just turn on automation and let it fly, without much care for security.

  • VirtPanel looks real interesting.

    Is it just OpenVZ specific? What's the licensing / cost model for them and can you do installs on your own hardware or is this just an outsourced model?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited December 2012

    @Zen said: Other than access to all of their data, no?

    Sort of. I suppose technically they could get access through some workarounds, but root passwords are not stored in plain text or anything like that. Certainly they could execute at least some commands. Backups are a big deal to me though. I certainly had to be sure that they at least matched the level of security that I had with my installation of SolusVM. I will admit that it is a potential point of failure, but I won't say that it's more of one than SolusVM. The big difference being that it isn't on my server and I can't directly view their logs. There is a level of trust here, for sure. They've earned mine, but I can understand why they haven't yet gained yours. For my clients I just ask that they trust me, and if I misuse it in any way I hope they'll be here to shout it from the mountain tops.

    @pubcrawler said: Is it just OpenVZ specific? What's the licensing / cost model for them and can you do installs on your own hardware or is this just an outsourced model?

    It is OpenVZ and VirtualBox. It runs $5.99 per server. Quite affordable alternative to SolusVM. It's not a huge difference, but the lower the overhead, the more I get to spend on other things. I think we picked up the difference by adding DNSimple DNS hosting with our servers. Just something small but mildly unique.

  • @jarland said: It is OpenVZ and VirtualBox. It runs $5.99 per server. Quite affordable alternative to SolusVM.

    Do they have any plans/interest in adding KVM?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @Damian I haven't asked but it's incredible how open they've been to all of our suggestions and our needs.

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