BIG. MISTAKE.

The damned thing squirreled setup files everywhere, and thinks it owns the server. I keep trying to pull the plug, it keeps finding new ways to thwart me and fight back.

I’ve had the hosting service disable my Plesk license to keep it from doing any more damage while I sort this mess out.

After encounter an issue that the server can’t reboot into safe mode.

The BUG is:
try to reboot your server into safe mode.
after the login screen is shown , after some sec. automatic reboot will be done.
and no matter what you will do , you will not be able to boot your server into safe mode.

Yes, if you wonder your self , after you install Plesk Control Panel over Windows Server 2003 you can forget your safe mode.

The bug exist from version 7.6 until version 8.6
Version 9.2 was not checked yet. BUT I 99.9% sure that this bug also exist in 9.2 version of Plesk Control Panel.

The BUG IS:

install Plesk Control Panel and forget Safe Mode.
Yes , Absolutely YES.

After installing Plesk Control Panel on Windows Server 2003.
You can forget rebooting your server into Safe Mode.
The OS will make automatic reboot after showing the login screen.

SWsoft/Parallels doesn’t worth your money.
They dont care about customer , all they care is about releasing more and more products but the word Quality is Unknown at SWsoft/Parallels Developers.

My suggestion is:
Dont use Plesk Control Panel.
If application make the platform to stop working correctly then such software need to be abandoned.

What Sw-Soft, now Parallels, IS responsible for is supporting their product and this is where they fail time and time again. If you blackmail customers into SUS and support fees, you as Parallels should be invested in the problems and the solutions. I am sick and tired of running into a problem and reading back from the, “oh. That is a known issue. You need to do this to fix it…” NO. YOU need to do this to fix it. You created the bug, you fix the damn thing. You make me pay thousands for your crappy support and then have the nerve to tell me to fix it myself? Plesk should be able to detect minor bug patches and apply them with forcing an upgrade of the entire system. Back when I was a DOS programmer we had a program called patch.exe that just went in and fixed the boo-boo spots.

Bite me.

Don’t even get me started on HSP.

On the day of the change-over I personally telephoned Support and asked if they were ready for the final step: updating all of the IP’s inside of HSP and the nameserver’s. They reported that they were ready. I was prepared upon return from the old data center to update our nameserver records at GoDaddy and gave the go ahead.

When I arrived at the data center 4 hours later I telephoned again and verified that the transition was taking place. Since all the new servers were in place, software loaded, and verification received that SW-Soft was moving forward I began the process of taking down the old network. All that SW-Soft had to do was update the IP’s in HSP, and run a script that they had that would rewrite all of the DNS zone records per domain.

13 hours later when I returned I found that SW-Soft had not done AHYTHING. They had not even started and all of our old servers had been pulled from service and the entire network disassembled. My entire business was now offline!

Frantic calls to SW-Soft got me nowhere. I was asked to specify exactly what it was I needed to have done — this in spite of detailed written instructions. I scrambled to assign nameservers to individual servers but to no avail in immediate terms.

One major issue was that I was specifically told that I needed to do fresh installation of Plesk 8.2 rather than attempting to migrate existing VZ hardware nodes. Without questioning their instructions I did as I was told. Because I had paid SW-Soft for “professional services” that included consultation and planning I did not presonallt read the Plesk 8.3 release notes.

To my shock, I learned the hard way that as part of Microsoft’s EOL of FrontPage, SW-Soft was no longer installing FrontPage extensions. Although installation of Virtuozzo and Plesk involved installing a FrontPage template package, and although the Plesk 8.3 still contained FrontPage documentation for the Plesk control panel, and although I had read the Pleks 8.3 manual — FRONTPAGE WAS NOT INSTALLED. I scrambled to learn how to manually force the extensions onto 25 Plesk servers. I went days without sleep. Customers with FrontPage had to turn off FrontPage and thgen turn it back on. In many cases they had to republish large sites.

SW-Soft butchered my business so badly and created so many errors that even today remain unresolved. I opened a total of 151 support requests, often because tickets were closed but incomplete. Or a Support Rep. would report that it was resolved but yet nothing had been done. Tickets marked Urgent would remain unanswered for 48 hours or more. Bear in mind that I have 15 Virtuozzo servers with 25 Plesk installations.

Last week, with no advance notice and minutes before midnight, I received an email from my “Customer Relationship Manager” informing me that my support contract had expired. Since I had not emailed him it was clear that SW-Soft was waiting to spring this on me on a Friday night, at midnight, of a three day week-end. How childish and arrogant.

Even though each purchase of Virtuozzo and each purchase of Plesk contained a license stating one year of unlimited email support, SW-Soft demands that larger customers have an annual support contract based on the number of licenses and regardless of when they were purchased. This means that a license purchased in December with one year of support would only get one month of support based on the annual support contract that cost me $2000 above the cost of the licenses. Even their current web sites states that a purchase includes one year of email support.

SW-Soft has determined that 151 support tickets generated largely as a result of their hack job on HSP was excessive. Do the math. 15 Virtuozzo servers and 25 Plesk servers equals 2.6 support tickets per server over one year. Most of these would never have been opened had SW-Soft done its job correctly.

We are now initiating legal action. My business has been destroyed at a time when I need every dollar. My 6 year old daughter has brain cancer and my income has plummeted as a result of over 1000 lost customers and 5 dedicated managed servers paying a premium.

Avoid SW-Soft at all cost! Now that they have purchased Ensim we’ll see what they can do to destroy those customers as well. I can prove everything stated in this message.

;~)

A system should have the bare minimum to operate. plesk will screw with your user system also.

Up until last year we were entirely Ensim. But with one server after another getting hacked into, or mail issues constipating the servers so badly that they would crash, I was convinced by my SysAdmin to take the entire plunge and not only switch to Plesk, but to buy HSP and Virtuozzo for a complete top-down, turnkey solution.

This has been one of the worst decisions I have ever made (besides hiring the SysAdmin not once, but twice.)

Support of HSP, Plesk, or Virtuozzo generally sucks and even at the provider level. When something breaks so badly that I need to contact SW-Soft I expect and insist on support. I pay them THOUSANDS each year because they require a SUS fee and support fee PER LICENSE. Whether used or not. If I contact them just once a month on one server I expect and insist on quality support.

Don’t hold your breath.

The Russians may be fine people, but trying to communicate through broken English, either via email or telephone, is worse than going to the dentist and not getting pain killers. They do not seem to understand the written word, and more importantly, pass the ticket from one person to another, each not reading the prior support history. Solutions, therefore, tend to go all in the wrong direction. When they do fix something often times it is wrong and breaks something else.

Getting support often requires a 48 hour wait. Even an emergency ticket placed last night took three hours and was only answered because I telephoned them. If I open an emergency ticket, dammit, I mean its URGENT.

Last nights issue involved a server that ran out of “file descriptors.” This particular server runs Virtuozzo with Plesk on top (actually a great solution for many reasons.) I had paid SW-Soft to install the VE, the OS templates, and Plesk. SW-Soft staff failed to address an OS issue that limited file descriptors to 1024, so when the 450th domain was added Plesk borked in many areas. For more than 24 hours customers complained and since we couldn’t find the source we opened the emergency ticket. Even Google failed to have the answer and the SW-Soft forums where another user posted the same problem went unanswered by anyone.

Hours later we were informed that we had to recompile apache, php, openSSL, and reinstall numerous RPM’s — even though Virtuozzo has OS templates that hate being side-stepped. The intructions provided were flawed. Moreover, SW-Soft refused to step up to the plate and accept that it was their responsibility to address a KNOWN ISSUE in the OS when they created their OS template. They refused to accept that it was their responsibility to fix the issue.

In fairness, Plesk and Virtuozzo are actually great products — until they break. I clearly prefer them over Ensim and cPanel and can easily get 1000+ domains on a decent server. But their refusal to do the right thing time and time again has brought me to a boiling point and I am ready to switch back to Esnim. At least with Ensim I can open an emergency ticket and get immediate help.