Why you decided to choose this resource?
I decided to review this resource as our firm is deploying Plesk as a control panel option. There are many options in the control panel space and deciding on one can be a difficult task. In the end, it comes down to features versus price versus environment. A CTO or IT professional must first decide what type of environments his organization needs to control and how much money will it cost. More importantly, does that cost justify the return of just having an employee manually control server environments?
What did you learn from it?
I learned that the days of managing servers through Remote Desktop and FTP are dead for the enterprise. A software firm simply cannot feasible control hundreds of servers manually without making numerous mistakes. Also, many software firms include automation as a selling piece and therefore would be violating their agreement with clients if they opt to not use dashboard and control panels.
Key points
• FTP and RDP server control is dead
• The cost of a control panel versus a manual human is substantially lower
• Humans still have to use control panels, however tasks are executed the same way every time and in a standard process without mistake
• Humans also save more time and can apply saved time to billable clients making the firm more money as opposed to costing them money
• Control panels are fun to use and can perform tasks in parallel (where humans cannot)
How are you using what you learned?
We are deploying Plesk in our Amazon web cloud. The process has been smooth so far. The only major issue was the configuration that is required and testing out certain features. IT professionals have very specific and unique environments which will always need customization no matter how much control panel vendors promise out of the box support.