We currently have a very old Ensim box with EV1, so old that consultants we've talked to have recommended simply getting a new box and going from there instead of trying to update through all the various itterations.

Since getting a new box seems like the cost effective route, I want to explore using Plesk or cPanel instead of Ensim. (currently 3.1.9.2).

We only host our own sites and don't resell. (about 10 sites on the box). Obviously, if I stay with Ensim, upgrading "should" be easier. On the other hand, I really don't like how much Ensim really locks us into old version of mySQL and PHP without extensive modifications. It seems like Ensim is always a year or two behind on supporting stable versions of mySQL and PHP.

Will I have better luck staying current on PHP and mySQL if I move to cPanel or Plesk, or are these control panels also so 'tightly' integrated so as to make updating various services (such as mySQL and PHP) just as problematic as on Ensim??

Any thoughts on which panel I should consider?

Plesk is not as bad as ensim but it still locks out some versions.

cPanel is VERY forgiving for everything except perl. You can source compile php/apache/mysql and just about anything else and you won't have any problems. Of the 3 panels that ev1 offers cPanel is the one that operates the "highest" of any in terms of sitting on top of the OS vs being integrated.

As far as an easy migration from ensim to ensim box, hah good luck with such an old version! The automatic backup scripts would require you to do a multiple major upgrades before you could use the backup files on a new server and you probably know the chances are decent you will mess up the server on each and every upgrade

cPanel also has some scripts to help move the site over to it from ensim that will take care of most thigs.

At this point, I think I'm interested in a panel that sits pretty 'high' away from the system. Once domains are set up, we don't really use the panel much except to add new FTP accounts (almost daily).

With regards to Perl on cPanel, what are the major limitations? We do have some custom perl scripts running in both site specific cronjobs and at the root level. With the current Ensim box we had to do some pretty ugly hacks to get the 'box-level' modules to show up and be shared by all the virtual domains without having to individually install them in to each domain. (some sort of 'mount' as I recall). In any case, I think I'd be okay so long as cPanel supports 5.6.x and allows installation of CPAN modules.

cPanel runs perl 5.8.x, I don't know about backporting to 5.6.x. As far as cpan modules go you can install whatever you want.