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Why do some people think Virtualizor is better than SolusVM? Sorry to open this can of worms again.
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Why do some people think Virtualizor is better than SolusVM? Sorry to open this can of worms again.

edited March 2020 in General

This was the year I was going to make the switch. I installed Virtualizor onto my SolusVM master and on one of my OpenVZ 6 nodes (yea I know, that is besides the point) and imported that nodes Solus settings for testing.

I immediately ran into at least 2 deal breakers. First of all, there does not appear to be any serial console that works. I only see a java console which doesn't work on most if not all browsers anymore. Secondly, I cannot get callback to work with WHMCS. I am quite sure I have it all configured correctly but callback refuses to work. I can only get it to work once in awhile and only when I make changes directly on the Virtualizor CP. It never works when I make changes on WHMCS.

The other thing is the support. I opened tickets for the above problems and each time they did not respond to the problem correctly. Saying there is no VNC for OpenVZ (which was not my question). On the callback issue they thought I was saying the settings were not changing. I specifically said the settings were changing. It was only the callback of those setting changes that was not working. So my first impression of their support is not good.

Please tell me what is so great about Virtualizor compared to Solus? I cannot make a case for making the switch based on my initial impression. The apparent lack of a functioning serial console for OVZ 6 (and maybe 7?) is a definite deal breaker. We need callback to WHMCS working as well. Who knows what other bugs we will run into.

I plan to also test KVM since that is what most of our nodes will be moving forward. Solus KVM features/functionality are not great and I have heard Virtualizor does a better job there. But so far my impression with Virtualizor OVZ functionality is a total dud. We will have to stay on Solus for OVZ 6 and probably for OVZ7 as well.

I also had another look at Proxmox but it's just not designed for a hosting business and there is no decent WHMCS module. I know about the ModulesGarden module. If it's anything like their other stuff it's junk. We would probably code our own if we were to use ProxMox which we probably won't

I don't care about maybe 80% of the extra bells and whistles that Virtualizor has compared to Solus. I just want something that works.

Comments

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited March 2020

    Time it took me to turn up a working virtualizor node > time it takes me to turn up a working solusvm node

    I've never enjoyed saying this but SolusVM is more polished, better documented, and I propose it's a much better experience for an admin. Virtualizor just lacks a lot of points of clarity, and though I can't recall what those are by name right now, it wasn't but a month back that I landed on this from the experience of purchasing license and setting it up for a private cloud (I went to proxmox instead).

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
  • edited March 2020

    @jar said:
    Time it took me to turn up a working virtualizor node > time it takes me to turn up a working solusvm node

    I've never enjoyed saying this but SolusVM is more polished, better documented, and I propose it's a much better experience for an admin. Virtualizor just lacks a lot of points of clarity, and though I can't recall what those are by name right now, it wasn't but a month back that I landed on this from the experience of purchasing license and setting it up for a private cloud (I went to proxmox instead).

    I should point out that I was planning to have customers only use WHMCS. That was the appeal of Virtualizor since end-users can do almost everything there. So polish was not too much of a concern to me because I would be the only one using the Virtualizor CP. I don't need polish but I do need stuff to work.

  • I went to Virtualizor never looked back. With solus I had to alter config files to get novnc and windows working.

    I also had to make my own templates or download third party.

    But I especially went to virtualizor because of thin provisioning.

    Thanked by 2PulsedMedia Synatiq
  • edited March 2020

    @marvel said:
    I went to Virtualizor never looked back. With solus I had to alter config files to get novnc and windows working.

    I also had to make my own templates or download third party.

    But I especially went to virtualizor because of thin provisioning.

    That is all KVM stuff. Not OVZ. I am still considering Virtualizor for KVM as I don't like how Solus works with KVM.

  • @LosPollosHermanos said:

    @marvel said:
    I went to Virtualizor never looked back. With solus I had to alter config files to get novnc and windows working.

    I also had to make my own templates or download third party.

    But I especially went to virtualizor because of thin provisioning.

    That is all KVM stuff. Not OVZ. I am still considering Virtualizor for KVM as I don't like how Solus works with KVM.

    It is all KVM stuff but virtualizor supports it better. Plus it's cheaper.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    LosPollosHermanos said: I also had another look at Proxmox but it's just not designed for a hosting business and there is no decent WHMCS module. I know about the ModulesGarden module. If it's anything like their other stuff it's junk. We would probably code our own if we were to use ProxMox which we probably won't

    Can you elaborate on that ModulesGarden module? We were thinking about buying it as open source to setup Proxmox stuff - simply because i am way too lazy to code all those graphs etc. myself :)

    Tho i will first test out Ubuntu MaaS as we have both bare metal and VM plans for future. We srsly need to automate our dedis

  • jhjh Member

    Last time I checked, Solus support was also junk. Not sure if Plesk improved it?

    That ModulesGarden Proxmox module is trash - don't waste your money. IMHO it is worth considering a bespoke Proxmox module but maybe that's because we're a dev shop.

  • Having experience in both, I dont' think either are great.
    It is a big job but building your own or customising an open source one like OpenNebula seems like the way forward to provide better services.

    Thanked by 1webcraft
  • @FalconsCloud said:
    Having experience in both, I dont' think either are great.
    It is a big job but building your own or customising an open source one like OpenNebula seems like the way forward to provide better services.

    I agree, both are pretty limited but decent enough for basic host providers. If you want a little bit more you would go to openstack, opennebula etc.

    Thanked by 1webcraft
  • MadRabbitMadRabbit Member
    edited March 2020

    I only see a java console

    And I stopped reading there and just disregarded it in my books. Java, really?! Last time I tried a product, cant really recall which was it, also had Java console...yeah good luck getting that to run properly on suse.

  • edited March 2020

    @MadRabbit said:
    I only see a java console

    And I stopped reading there and just disregarded it in my books. Java, really?! Last time I tried a product, cant really recall which was it, also had Java console...yeah good luck getting that to run properly on suse.

    KVM has an HTML5 noVNC console. I have it working on Virtualizor but not on WHMCS. I haven't spent much time on it though. Hopefully I can get that working.

    Thanked by 1PulsedMedia
  • Virtualizor just works. No fiddling around.

    Support isn’t as fast as SolusVMs, but you don’t need it because it all works.

  • @Synatiq said:
    Virtualizor just works. No fiddling around.

    Support isn’t as fast as SolusVMs, but you don’t need it because it all works.

    I 2nd that.

    Thanked by 1PulsedMedia
  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    Just Works(TM) is what's commonly required for hosts over all the latest bells & whistles ... Well almost all the time :) We like to NOT update stuff if it just works, stable beats bells & whistles every. single. time. and. again.

  • @LosPollosHermanos said:
    This was the year I was going to make the switch. I installed Virtualizor onto my SolusVM master and on one of my OpenVZ 6 nodes (yea I know, that is besides the point) and imported that nodes Solus settings for testing.

    I immediately ran into at least 2 deal breakers. First of all, there does not appear to be any serial console that works. I only see a java console which doesn't work on most if not all browsers anymore. Secondly, I cannot get callback to work with WHMCS. I am quite sure I have it all configured correctly but callback refuses to work. I can only get it to work once in awhile and only when I make changes directly on the Virtualizor CP. It never works when I make changes on WHMCS.

    The other thing is the support. I opened tickets for the above problems and each time they did not respond to the problem correctly. Saying there is no VNC for OpenVZ (which was not my question). On the callback issue they thought I was saying the settings were not changing. I specifically said the settings were changing. It was only the callback of those setting changes that was not working. So my first impression of their support is not good.

    Please tell me what is so great about Virtualizor compared to Solus? I cannot make a case for making the switch based on my initial impression. The apparent lack of a functioning serial console for OVZ 6 (and maybe 7?) is a definite deal breaker. We need callback to WHMCS working as well. Who knows what other bugs we will run into.

    I plan to also test KVM since that is what most of our nodes will be moving forward. Solus KVM features/functionality are not great and I have heard Virtualizor does a better job there. But so far my impression with Virtualizor OVZ functionality is a total dud. We will have to stay on Solus for OVZ 6 and probably for OVZ7 as well.

    I also had another look at Proxmox but it's just not designed for a hosting business and there is no decent WHMCS module. I know about the ModulesGarden module. If it's anything like their other stuff it's junk. We would probably code our own if we were to use ProxMox which we probably won't

    I don't care about maybe 80% of the extra bells and whistles that Virtualizor has compared to Solus. I just want something that works.

    Hi,

    We have the serial console option. You need to enable it from master settings in the admin panel.
    We haven't enabled that option by default because it really doesn't solve any purpose and we didn't like the idea to have a system user created for a vm where you can ssh into the vm directly.

    I am not sure what is the callback issue you are facing. Please share your ticket id with me and I will get it checked by a senior dev asap. Also the callback is made to work when you make changes in Virtualizor cp so that whmcs is aware of it. When you make changes in whmcs an edit api call is made which is not a callback. We are very much happy to help you solve your queries and make sure you are happy with Virtualizor.

    Regards

    Thanked by 1TimboJones
  • jfracjfrac Member, Host Rep

    I'm setting up my vps business, tried and solus and I really didnt like it, the user panel looks antiquated and a lot of stuff required manual setup. Virtualizor is a lot easier and integrates a lot better with whmcs, besides looking better for the users.
    Still, it still needs fixes, for example IPv6 subnets are not srcmac protected, had to write my own hook for ebtables to guard them.

  • edited March 2020

    @Synatiq said:
    Virtualizor just works. No fiddling around.

    Support isn’t as fast as SolusVMs, but you don’t need it because it all works.

    I wish I could agree with you. Right now it's callback and noVNC that we can't get working properly. I'm pretty sure I can get noVNC working eventually, but the callback thing seems to be a bug to me.

    It's a total non starter for Ovz 6 without an HTML 5 serial console. So we are going to be sticking with Solus for that until we don't have any OVZ 6 nodes left. We plan to keep using those as long as we still have customers on them.

    Probably not even going to use OVZ 7 and just use KVM moving forward. That seems to be what Virtualizor is mostly used for and tested with and designed for now. A lot of the OVZ stuff in Virtualizor seems half baked to me. The lack of a functioning serial console would be a deal breaker for a lot of people so that tells me there must not be very many people using it for OVZ.

  • edited March 2020

    @virtualizor said:

    We have the serial console option. You need to enable it from master settings in the admin panel.
    We haven't enabled that option by default because it really doesn't solve any purpose and we didn't like the idea to have a system user created for a vm where you can ssh into the vm directly.

    I am not sure what is the callback issue you are facing. Please share your ticket id with me and I will get it checked by a senior dev asap. Also the callback is made to work when you make changes in Virtualizor cp so that whmcs is aware of it. When you make changes in whmcs an edit api call is made which is not a callback. We are very much happy to help you solve your queries and make sure you are happy with Virtualizor.

    Regards

    OVZ serial console is definitely enabled. I see it in WHMCS and Virtualizor. That is not the problem. The problem is that you appear to only have Java serial console for OpenVZ (at least for v6) which has not worked on any browsers for a long time. We need an HTML 5 serial console for OVZ 6 on the WHMCS module. I was quite surprised to discover you apparently don't have that feature. I would think that would be an absolute must-have feature for anyone using Virtualizor with OVZ. It definitely is for us.

    The problem with callback is not the changes being made that should in turn fire the callback. That is all working from WHMCS via the API. The problem is not the configuration of callback either because it is enabled and does work sometimes. The problem is the callback itself does not fire all the time when a change is made, and when it does work, there is a delay. Anywhere from about 30 seconds to 5 or 10 minutes. It varies each time we make a change, if it works at all. I don't think that has anything to do with our configuration so it seems like a bug to me.

    The bigger issue is that if these problems we are finding are bugs or missing features, that would mean nobody is using these features and complaining about it so that they get fixed. So if there are no eyes on it or testing of these things we consider very important fundamental features we have concerns about that moving forward.

    I am not just picking on Virtualizor. We have had that concern about Solus KVM slaves for awhile now. There doesn't seem to be a lot of people using Solus for KVM slaves. At least not how we use it which we think is fairly standard for hosting. We don't want to be the ones constantly reporting problems after updates and realizing it's the first time support has heard about it. That seems to be the case with Solus KVM. I sometimes get the feeling we are one of only a very few customers actually using Solus KVM slaves. They deny that but I only know what I see as an outside observer.

  • What is the use case for serial console vs the html noVNC console? I've always used noVNC just fine. I think serial console is antiquated (i think I have it in only one or two old providers) so am curious why it's critical for you. Especially after being told the reason they don't make it default enabled.

  • edited March 2020

    @TimboJones said:
    What is the use case for serial console vs the html noVNC console? I've always used noVNC just fine. I think serial console is antiquated (i think I have it in only one or two old providers) so am curious why it's critical for you. Especially after being told the reason they don't make it default enabled.

    VNC is for KVM. There is no such thing as VNC for OVZ. Only serial console. You are thinking of serial console on a physical serial port which is different.

    Thanked by 1TimboJones
  • jfracjfrac Member, Host Rep

    I'd love a html5 serial console for KVM, should be a lot faster than VNC and make it a lot easier to copy paste commands when needed.

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