I am a potential customer for ThePlanet, looking for 1 server to begin with and expect to add up to 10 servers within a year.

I am looking for web hosting service (no reselling) on Windows 2003 server with ASP.NET and SQL Server Express. We will be offering Ad supported, free hosting to a limited community. We have around 50,000 existing members and we are trying to migrate to ThePlanet from another data center. We currently use proprietary control panel, which has limited functionality.

I have some basic questions:

1. Is HELM suitable for us as the control panel? Or, do you have other reccommendations?

2. How do we add domain names? Can I allow our members to add domain names to their account themselves through their control panel, which will be automatically entered into ThePlanet's DNS and ready to use instantly?

3. Does the servers come with pre configured security so that when a new user is created through the control panel, is his security automatically set appropriately so that he will not have access to the resources of other members and system files?

4. How does the backup/restore work? Will it restore the complete OS with all user data, installed software and OS settings? Or, it is just file backup?

5. How can I allow members to register for hosting service? Does control panels (Helm ?) provide registration screen which can be customized? Or, do I have to use our site for this purpose and then our support person has to manully create user account through control panel?

I am sorry, so of the above questions are general hosting questions not specific to ThePlanet. Our current hosting provider does not offer control panel and we have custom software to do many of those tasks and we do the rest manually. I am trying to find how much I can automate.

Thanks for your time.
- Matojo

My apologies for this weirdo Ernest. We've deleted his posts.

In response to your question though, someone will be by shortly to help you out.

I am by no means an expert but I can give you some experience I have. I use cPanel as my control panel on a RHE4 box. I add the primary domain name of the client and they can add their own subdomains. If you get an unmanaged server, you will not have the server preconfigured with security software. There are plenty of posts on securing the server in this forums so do some research before purchasing. I am not sure how the in house backup works for TP but I have automatic backups everynight to a 2nd HDD. It saves all of the user's control panel settings, their email accounts, ftp accounts, website, mysql databases, etc. In the case of a disaster and the primary HDD goes out or is compromised, I can reload the OS and restore the backups to save the clients data. About the signing up part, some billing software will automatically create accounts on the server after you approve it. I use WHMAutopilot as one of my billing softwares and when a client purchases hosting, I review their purchase and make sure the payment went through. I then click a button and it automatically installs their clients info and creates their account. I know cPanel does not come with the feature you speak of but do not know about the rest.

Hope that answers some of your questions.

1. For Windows, HELM is the only way to go in my opinion. Cpanel for Linux. Stay away from Plesk + Windows unless you hate your life.

2. Errr, Helm will automatically add Domain names when users do. TP DNS should not be used unless it's 1 website. Running your own DNS is preferable and not hard with Windows 2003.

3. By default no, Helm will secure sites.

4. Backup/Restore works depending on how you set it up.

5. I believe Helm would set them up without invention BUT Helm comes with API so you could develop a custom system for it instead.

Remember, this is UNMANAGED Hosting and ThePlanet will help you out with nothing unless it's related to network or hardware or you pay them LOTS of money.

Most customers who sell hosting would use their own nameservers. I don't specifically know about helm, but with cpanel for example you would typically get a minimum of two servers (or a server and vps) and with a couple clicks you then have a dns cluster. Then when a customer adds a domain or subdomain in cpanel, it's automatically added to your nameservers. I think the Planet's DNS is great for someone running a couple of websites or who has a single server, but I think for offering hosting it's advantageous to run your own DNS.

One of the Planet techs will hopefully give you some information about what is possible with disksync.
A full disk image would be nice for instant restores. But I believe that at this point most customers are still doing file backups and if a catastrophic failure occurs they would have the OS reloaded and then restore settings, reinstall custom software, firewalls, and harden the server, and then use the control panel to reload customer data (which for example with cpanel can be done with a couple clicks and it will restore either a single account from backup or all accounts from the backed-up backup folder.)

As doc says, there is add-on software to integrate billing and sales with the major control panels; but the major challenge you will face is combating fraud orders. If you allow one bad apple on your server your fragility as a hosting provider is that if you let one bad apple onto your server, they can bring your server down through abuse no matter how secure you make it since most everyone wants the ability to do dynamic things now vs. just serving static pages, with freedom and power comes responsibility. So it's definitely in your best interest to screen all orders carefully to prevent fraudulent orders.