Newby Windows VPS Initial Experience

[rprastein]

I'm new to VPS and new to Plesk, all of which is aggravated by the fact that I'm restricted to 32-bit Windows due to the nature of our application, so I never know when generic VPS information applies to me... To top it all off, our corporate ant-SPAM apparently devoured my original forum registration, so I haven't been able to post questions here that could have relieved some of the stress on Bilal and the other great tech support guys who have been laboring through the holiday.

I'm not a reseller; I don't need a domain name; I have one custom servlet application that I need to run. This immediately seems to make most of the functionality of Plesk superfluous for me. However, I do need HTTPS access to server controls because of our corporate firewall, and I need managed services to keep patches up to date. So, for Windows, Plesk is it.

Comment #1: 384MB RAM is not enough to run Plesk 8.4 with PowerPack and a Remote Desktop session on 64-bit Windows 2003. I can't imagine why 256MB is even offered, and in my opinion, 384MB should be soundly discouraged. It might be marginally OK on a 32-bit system, I don't know. We had to up to 512MB and haven't even started running our application yet.

Comment #2: Unless you specify otherwise, all new Windows VPS accounts get 64-bit Windows. Fortunately, whether thanks to the 2 free admin hours/mo for managed services or due to the fact that this is still initial setup, that was changed over quite quickly.

Comment #3: The sales people don't really understand the distinction between Apache Web Server and Apache Tomcat. Plesk for Windows does not come with Apache Web Server. It comes with, and runs off of, IIS. Tomcat 5.5.4 and JDK 5.0 are part of the PowerPack add-on, but do not appear in the Plesk UI that Jaguar currently offers (it looks like they do in a later version of Plesk).

Comment #4: Jaguar's 64-bit Windows nodes come with Plesk 8.4. 32-bit nodes come with Plesk 8.3. Another area that I asked about and got an incorrect answer to.

Comment #5: I suppose this should be obvious, but never having done DNS server admin, it wasn't for me. And again, the sales and support information were misleading and contradictory. I don't need a domain name, but I need DNS services to be able to resolve external domain names. Jaguar provides two additional IP addresses and hostnames for you to set up your own name servers, but I don't need them. Jaguar *does* also provide DNS access to its own name servers for resolving names. If you have Remote Desktop access, you can easily find out their IP addresses by doing an ipconfig /all. If your corporate firewall blocks RDP and all you have is Plesk, you're SOL. I suppose it doesn't really matter because it's not like I'd be referencing the name servers in any code or configuration files, but still, it was confusing.

Comment #6: Somehow I had been hoping that PowerPack support for Tomcat meant that they had hooked up IIS as a front-end for it. That appears not to be the case, at least in Plesk 8.3/8.4, but I'm still not completely sure. I was told that the PowerPack facilitates loading and starting and stopping Tomcat applications, but I see no evidence of that in these versions. From what I've read online, attempting to customize Plesk's IIS installation to play nice with Tomcat is "a nightmare."

Comment #7. The Application Vault is only for PHP applications; furthermore, if I'm correctly understanding the linux Plesk admin manual I was pointed to, it's not for just *any* PHP applications, only for ones that have been packaged up into distributions intended for deployment using Plesk.

Comment #8. Virtually all of the Plesk tutorials and most of the documentation are oriented toward the reseller/domain/client model, and very little toward basic server administration. IIS's FTP setup is bewildering, to say the least, and IIS itself is (not surprisingly, since it is at the core of the Plesk UI) hidden away and accessible only via Remote Desktop.

Comment #9. If you create additional Plesk admin users through the Plesk UI, those additional admin users do not have Virtuozzo PowerPanel access. This is by design (but not documented that I could find).

I think I finally have a sense of the lay of the land, after 3 days of two of us futzing around and one node change. Apparently my planned use is quite atypical and I will need to disable a bunch of unused functionality and install my own replacements for the functionality I actually want.

Some outstanding questions in the next post.

Rebeccah

[rprastein]

On to some outstanding questions:
1. I'm no longer sure what benefit I'm getting from the Plesk PowerPack, since the version I have doesn't have any Tomcat management in the UI.
2. If I want JDK 6.0 instead of 5.0, will the managed services still cover the patch management? My understanding was that Parallels actually manages Tomcat/JDK patches, as part of their support for the Plesk product.
3. Can someone explain to me how FTP is set up at the VPS level (I don't want to create any domains if I can avoid it), and how I would substitute an FTP service that supports SFTP (FTPS?) - anyway, some secure version of FTP.

Thanks,

Rebeccah

[rprastein]

4. Will Jaguar be offering Plesk for Windows 8.6 or 9.0 any time in the near future?
5. Will there be any unintended consequences to disabling IIS entirely? I thought it looked like Plesk stuff was pretty intricately tied up in there, but I just had a support tech tell me I could disable IIS if I want my tomcat app to run on port 80.
6. Can anyone tell me what the SSLWrapper service is? It was the only service that was stopped when I first got my VPS.

Thanks, all.

Rebeccah

[rprastein]

Just some follow up, for the benefit of any other lonely Windows VPS newbies:

My comment #3 was in error. Apache Web Server is there, and the Plesk HTTPS UI runs off Apache on port 8443, not off IIS. That must be why tech support told me I can disable IIS if I want. Apache is installed in c:\SWSoft\Plesk\admin. Tomcat is in c:\SWSoft\Plesk\Additional\Tomcat. JDK 5.0 is in c:\SWSoft\Plesk\Additional\JDK.

Meanwhile, I found a Parallels KB article that helped me figure out how to proxy tomcat requests through IIS - just add the URIs to be forwarded, to uriworkermap.properties in C:\SWSoft\Plesk\isapi (after adding the war file to c:\SWSoft\Plesk\Additional\Tomcat\webapp s). At least in Plesk 8.3 as I received it, everything else was already hooked up.

It also seems that port 8880 is required to be open. It's nominally for Plesk Newsfeeds, but it also provides a plain (unsecure) HTTP interface to Plesk. if you block that port in the Windows firewall (by unchecking Plesk Newsfeeds), then you get a Service Not Available error in the main Plesk (HTTPS) UI. Perhaps HTTP rather than HTTPS is used to display icons, even on the HTTPS UI; I don't know.

Rebeccah

[Pawel Kowalski]

I'm not a reseller; I don't need a domain name; I have one custom servlet application that I need to run. This immediately seems to make most of the functionality of Plesk superfluous for me. However, I do need HTTPS access to server controls because of our corporate firewall, and I need managed services to keep patches up to date. So, for Windows, Plesk is it.

Comment #1: 384MB RAM is not enough to run Plesk 8.4 with PowerPack and a Remote Desktop session on 64-bit Windows 2003. I can't imagine why 256MB is even offered, and in my opinion, 384MB should be soundly discouraged. It might be marginally OK on a 32-bit system, I don't know. We had to up to 512MB and haven't even started running our application yet.

Hello. Plesk to get around a firewall seems like quite an overkill. Are there any ports that your corporate firewall doesn't block? RDP can be configured to use a different port:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306759

I do realize you currently don't have RDP access, but I would guess support could make this change for you.

If your corporate firewall blocks RDP and all you have is Plesk, you're SOL.

I have never used plesk but really if you are running any kind of windows server I can't imagine administering it with plesk. RDP is a must for any kind of real administration. So your best bet will be to find a way around your corporate firewall, hopefully using a different port will work for you.

Can someone explain to me how FTP is set up at the VPS level (I don't want to create any domains if I can avoid it), and how I would substitute an FTP service that supports SFTP (FTPS?) - anyway, some secure version of FTP.

SFTP uses SSH, SSH is not available on windows, at least not by default. If you have a VPN at your office (if you have a corporate firewall there is a good chance you do) you can VPN from the server to the office and communicate using IPSEC. Otherwise you can look at the following application I found googling around, I never personally used it:

http://sshwindows.sourceforge.net/

[rprastein]

Thanks for the suggestions, Pawel.

Hello. Plesk to get around a firewall seems like quite an overkill. Are there any ports that your corporate firewall doesn't block? RDP can be configured to use a different port:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306759

I do realize you currently don't have RDP access, but I would guess support could make this change for you.

And thanks for that MS link. We can access RDP when we work from home, but that can't work in the long run.

I have never used plesk but really if you are running any kind of windows server I can't imagine administering it with plesk. RDP is a must for any kind of real administration. So your best bet will be to find a way around your corporate firewall, hopefully using a different port will work for you.

You are quite right. Any real administration requires RDP, which is why I've been working from home since the day afer we ordered the VPS.

SFTP uses SSH, SSH is not available on windows, at least not by default.

I've read that they will enable SSH on the Windows VPS quickly upon request. I hadn't realized that SFTP uses SSH. I was planning on using SCP (putty's PSCP), which also uses SSH. Does SFTP have the annoying multiple-port issues and active/passive mode issues with firewall configuration that regular FTP has?

If you have a VPN at your office (if you have a corporate firewall there is a good chance you do) you can VPN from the server to the office and communicate using IPSEC.

Good thought, but our VPN requires a hardware dongle on the client side.

Otherwise you can look at the following application I found googling around, I never personally used it:

http://sshwindows.sourceforge.net/

Thanks. I'll take a look at it.

Rebeccah