Are we being "Forced" to upgrade our VPS accounts?

[meavic]

Tickets: DGS-76691-315 & BFX-14092-160

I've got two tickets open on support with both of them only able to be sorted by upgrading to a new VPS.

First off DGS-76691-315. This is apparently a problem with SpamAssassin. It's only recently started (a week or so) and essentially the problem takes out either my qmail or courier-imap services on the server forcing me to either reboot the server or restart the services. The only available resolutions to this problem are for me to either upgrade to a new HSPC VPS or have everything reinstalled on the VPS I have. This is because I'm running Fedora Core 2 with Plesk 7.5.4 and FC 2 has been marked end-of-life and therefore no updates are available.

The other, BFX-14092-160, is a request for initially PHP 5.2.5, which I can sort of understand - if the software doesn't support it, then the software doesn't support it. My problem here is that first Plesk is restricting me to a down to version 5.0.4, and then FC2 is restricting me to no update at all. Again my only solution is to upgrade. This URL http://kb.swsoft.com/en/378 shows that PHP 5 has been supported since Plesk 7.5.4 but now it's the FC2.

So really I've got no choice. If I want a server that is going to handle email for 24 hours without breaking then I need to upgrade the package. This is then either going to cost more or not, depending on whether I believe what is written in the forums or what support tell me.

Is there some sort of push to upgrade and the techs have been advised to suggest this at all possible chances? Or is it just an unfortunate coincidence.

[ikaruz]

I cant' speak for everyone here, but have being clients for PowerVPS since 2004, and we had changed our VPSs to catch the OS upgrades. Our fist VPS had RedHat Enterprise, then we buy a new one with Fedora, and now we have 3 Centos 4.6. As OS is bind to the Node, you can't upgrade the VPS itself, so there is no way to have a recent OS on an old node. (Can't imagine node OS upgraded)

Our recommendation is to buy a new VPS and migrate everything to the new one with the tools the panels provide, this migration should be almost transparent for every client. Yes is a pain in the neck to config a new vps, but can tell you it worth the effort. This is if you need/want to have a feature that is not present at your current OS.

Regarding spamassasin, all spam filters are resource hugs, ones more than others. If you have to restart your mail server to often that should means that you are reaching the resource limit, so there are two solutions, upgrade, or tweak your config to use less resources.

Hope that helps

[Daniel]

Is there some sort of push to upgrade and the techs have been advised to suggest this at all possible chances? Or is it just an unfortunate coincidence.

Especially since you are on a Fedora system, you are not getting security updates or anything along those lines.

Newer versions of software that require the latest system software will start breaking eventually. While this may not be what is happening on your VPS, it could very well happen soon.

The technicians are not (or shouldn't be) "forcing" you to do the upgrade. However it is in your best interest to do this, which is why they suggest it a lot.

Fedora Core 2 reached its End-Of-Life in 2006. If you do not / can not move to our HSPC offerings due to pricing reasons, we can also rebuild your VPS with CentOS 4. This will make you have some downtime however, while you reupload your backups after all your data is erased. However, with CentOS 4, your system will be in a much better position than with Fedora Core 2.

[Fred]

Also, about spamassassin, yeah, a real ressource hog. One important point is to manage blacklist in exim. So you do not process the mail and load spamassassin to manage the blacklist. This will save a lot of ressources ( cpu, memory, etc )

zen.spamhaus.org and rbl.spamcop.net are very good.
BUT
1) zen blocks dynamics IP... So if your customers connects to your smtp to send their mail, you should use zen.spamhaus.org. Use xbl-sbl from spamhaus instead... ( I do )

2) I noticed during the years that rbl.spamcop.net is blocking some mail that shouldn't. They are more restrictive than xbl sbl...

3) The spam: You can't forward them. They are not accepted at all. The server refuses to accept the mail. You won't be able to monitor the content of the mail... Your customers "may" loses mail. But in my experience... it's very rare.

I'm using xbl-sbl because i can't use zen ( some customers use my smtp )... One year ago, i was filtering everything using spamassassin ( well, it's mailscanner but that's not the point ).
The "spam filtering tool" was tagging 7000+ mail every day as spam...
It was too much.
I did set the blacklists in exim and now, my "spam filtering tool" is tagging as spam 2000+ mails every day. Something near 6500 or 7000 mails are intercepted by the blacklists.
This means a lot of ressources :)