Removing Plesk

I decided to remove Plesk from my VPS setup. I like Plesk, but have decided that it's worth saving the memory and disk space that it consumes on the server. I intend to do all my admin tasks via Remote Desktop, and get to know the server better than I would if I let Plesk handle everything.

I started with a clean install of my VPS from the template, and logged into the Power Panel. I went to Add/Remove Software (under Container Management) and chose to remove "Plesk 9.2.3.0 for Windows application template" from the list of installed software. Applying the changes started a lengthy process that took just under 15 minutes to complete.

I'm not really sure how the removal of Plesk is automated by the Parallels Power Panel, but a short while after logging off my Windows session on the server the free RAM is showing in Power Panel as 736.6 MB, significantly more than the 710 MB or so that was free after originally starting the server with a "clean" install from Webfusion's template. Logging back in via Remote Desktop, the desktop shortcut and tray icon for Plesk have gone, the Plesk Control Panel process has gone, and it doesn't appear in the list of installed programs in Control Panel; it's definitely been uninstalled. However the C:\Parallels\Plesk folder is still there, which I will delete manually to free up a bit more disk space.

Update:

When I tried to delete the C:\Parallels folder to free up some disk space, I got the message that I "needed permission" to continue, which suggests that it could have been read-only. However, I have found a cleaner way to remove Plesk. Since I removed it from the list of installed software in Parallels Power Panel, I have re-installed the container (choosing to delete container files). It looks like Power Panel automates the Plesk installation when you install from the template; without Plesk selected it seemed much quicker, and this time there is no trace of Plesk on the VPS. The initial free disk space is 25.81 GB, compared to 25.35 GB for a "clean" installation with Plesk.

Update:

Anyone planning to install SQL Server 2008 will probably want to start with a clean VPS template without Plesk, as described above. It seems that having Plesk included in the VPS template installs some kind of installation of SQL Server 2005 which conflicts badly with the new SQL Server 2008 installation. The only way that I have managed to install SQL Server 2008 Express is by starting with a clean template. I will describe full details of setting up your VPS with IIS and SQL Server Express in a separate post, coming soon.

Upgrade from "VPS 2.0" to "Community" VPS

Some time in late November 2009, I noticed that my VPS 2.0 server had gone down, taking all my sites offline. This was caused by Webfusion's migration from a data centre in Germany to a new location in the UK. Apparently there had been some problems with the new Dell hardware that the VPS machines had been moved to. The server stayed down for several days and I decided that since my sites were offline anyway it would be a good time to upgrade to Server 2008, which Webfusion had recently started offering as part of a new range of VPS options. I chose their bottom-end "Community" VPS, which provides more RAM and disk space than the old VPS, and for £5 less per month.

More Resources

To compare the resources allocated to my two VPS servers, I opened the Parallels Power Panel for each one. For a Webfusion VPS, you'll find the Power Panel at https://your_VPS_IP_address:4643. Note that for this site it is normal to see a warning in your browser relating to an invalid SSL certificate, which you should be able to ignore.

Power Panel shows total hard drive for the old VPS as 7.32 GB, with 512 MB of guaranteed RAM. The new VPS gets 26 GB of hard drive space and 1 GB of guaranteed RAM. Before I've made any changes to the server there are 711.3 MB of RAM free and 25.35 GB of unused disk space. (Note that free RAM had dropped to 710.2 MB when I refreshed a while later, and again to 705.5 MB when I checked again shortly afterwards - I'll be checking this again, but the next time I checked the free RAM had increased again and seems stable). The CPU is idle at 0.00 % usage.

Initial Checks

I made a few further checks before I continued to login via Remote Desktop, including several pings from my current location in South West England - typical response times are in the 50 - 60 millisecond range and seem to match the response times of the old server, which is to be expected, since they are located in the same data centre.

The system properties show the "Windows edition" as Windows Server Enterprise, Service Pack 1. The processor is an Intel Xeon CPU, E5520 @ 2.27 GHz (2 processors). There's also 1.00 GB of RAM, which corresponds to the Parallels Power Panel info. Since I started my Remote Desktop session and opened My Computer, looking back at the Power Panel, the free RAM has dropped to around 500 MB. I think this is due to my Windows session since I just logged in, and the Windows Server Initial Configuration Tasks window alone is using around 73 MB of RAM.

The Plesk page for the server is online as expected - this can be found at https://your_VPS_IP_address:8443. However as part of my efforts to reduce the RAM usage of the VPS, I'll be trying to uninstall Plesk from the system and use Remote Desktop instead for all my admin tasks.

It could be worth noting that there are traces of Microsoft SQL Server in the program files directories and the registry, which may cause problems when I attempt to install SQL Server 2008 Express. I will provide more details on this in a later post.

Welcome

This blog is dedicated to the subject of Webfusion Ltd's VPS (Virtual Private Server) web hosting services. In particular, I will be talking about their Windows VPS platform.

What's a VPS?

I won't discuss here what a Virtual Private Server is, but please note that other hosting providers have different names for this type of server - such as "Virtual Dedicated Server" or simply "Virtual Server", for example.

Why Webfusion?

I have used a Webfusion VPS for about two years now and although uptime seems generally good, initial configuration was far from easy. I have recently upgraded my VPS from Webfusion's old "VPS 2.0" with Windows Server 2003 to their new Server 2008 "Community" VPS, and therefore must set up the system from scratch. I will provide some help on this in subsequent posts.