cPanel Server Maintenance - Without Management Co. : How do you do it? - Knowledgebase

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cPanel Server Maintenance - Without Management Co. : How do you do it?

Posted by InfiniteTech, 03-26-2008, 12:34 PM
Hey, I got around 5 servers running and added one more last week. Its becoming a pain managing them all. Updating, setting up new policies and restrictions, securing or whatever other tasks that are needs to be executed on ALL these servers. Wanted to know how you guys are doing it. I know that some hosts use HSPc, HSphere, Helm, etc to manage the entire cluster. But what about the lot who use cPanel? I hope to find a solution to my back breaking problem. -- Ganesh
Posted by tanfwc, 03-26-2008, 01:25 PM
Write scripts for the job you need and deploy them across those servers
Posted by Tim Greer, 03-26-2008, 01:41 PM
You have to have the time and the knowledge to do it manually or to create scripts to help automate some things, but you are never going to be able to automate every aspect and will need to be hands on. There's no way around the need for the time and skills factor when administrating a system. Once it becomes too much of a burden for you and your current staff, you simply hire more qualified staff and as you grow, so does your employee base. There's no way around that.
Posted by InfiniteTech, 03-26-2008, 02:00 PM
Well, thats what I am trying now. I have already written about 3-4 scripts set as cron jobs to do weekly and monthly maintenance. But some actions that are one time is a pain. Let me know if there any updates on your thoughts. I have subscribed to the thread.
Posted by Tim Greer, 03-26-2008, 02:13 PM
I think it just depends on the issue and how it can be resolved. Some might take some more complex logic in a script, and some might literally require some manual intervention where there's just no way around it and no way to automate it. Sometimes it can't be automated and sometimes there are just so many varied versions of the content, config file, compile options or whatever, which might change dramatically from server to server, where it's safer to do it manually. Anyway, yes, a lot of things can be done via a script. I have many scripts that do a great deal of things across server farms just for that reason (cpanel server or not), and they can save you a lot of time and hassle. Provided you're careful in what you do, what pre-checks it does, backups it makes and how it can reverse the change if something goes wrong, are the primary concerns.
Posted by pmabraham, 03-26-2008, 03:26 PM
Greetings: I cannot write from the perspective of cpanel providers, but H-Sphere makes updating a cluster a breeze with 3.1/2 making life easier in the not too distant future. Thank you.
Posted by Tim Greer, 03-26-2008, 03:40 PM
Well, regardless of what control panel you might use (if any) and clustering abilities (if they exist in the product you use), you still will find the need to create custom scripts to do tasks and updates, etc., and some of them will require manual intervention. There's just no way around proper staffing with well qualified personnel to keep your servers secure, stable, efficient, up to date, and so on. I guess no one's disagreeing with that, but I just hope no one thinks that one product over another will result in having to do very little to no actual, real administration.
Posted by pmabraham, 03-27-2008, 09:52 AM
Greetings Tim: H-Sphere does not require any customization in terms of their update process; it is typically a cake walk for most people. However, you bring up an excellent point in terms of day-to-day security... that's a must no matter what system. Thank you.
Posted by Tim Greer, 03-27-2008, 02:22 PM
I wasn't clear. I had actually only mean the aspects that the control panel didn't handle. Clustering for updates that it can/does do, is definitely a benefit over those that require a separate login to the control panel or SSH as you step through a large server list to run an update script manually.