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Living without a control panel for one year

General Discussion by pieter_rtm 7 replies 776 views
pieter_rtm

Member OP

#1

As said, I dumped cPanel/WHM last July. To be honest, I expected pain. The reality was different.

What I run:

  • 8 VPS across 3 providers (OVHcloud, Vultr, one bare metal at a colo)
  • Debian 12, nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis
  • ~40 customer sites, mostly static or Laravel

Daily workflow:

  • ssh + tmux for everything
  • Ansible-playbook site.yml for deploys
  • certbot --nginx for TLS
  • journalctl -u service -f for logs
  • Custom bash scripts in ~/bin/ for backups to rsync.net

Numbers:

  • Panel license cost: $0 (was $45/mo)
  • Time per new site: 4 minutes vs 12 minutes with panel
  • Memory overhead: ~0 MB vs 300-500 MB for typical panel stack
  • Uptime: 99.97% (same as before, to be honest)

The memorization is overstated. I have 14 aliases and 9 functions. Muscle memory handles the rest.

Dotfiles: 

https://github.com/OVHcloud/pieter-dotfiles

Unexpected GitHub stars: 340 as of this morning. To be honest, I do not understand why.

Questions welcome. I will answer in batches.

Containers before it was cool
RAJ

Member

#2

Guys this is solid work. Any leads on reselling this setup? I have 20 clients on a panel now, thier margins are eating me alive. Recieved a quote for $35/mo just for licenses

Also how do you handle client handoffs without a GUI? Most of mine panic at terminal black screen

your margin is my opportunity
lucgone

Member

Le Baguette

#3

Now it is possible to do that in sleep mdr.

Your dotfiles are very clean, I will steal some parts

Since 2 days I try to migrate my DNS to octoDNS, do you have try this? I think it is good for multi-provider.

Vive la résistance... électrique
btrfs

Member

snapshot obsessive

#4

1) response to thread
A) one year is significant sample size
I) n=1 though
Ii) self-reported
2) technical assessment
A) ansible is correct choice
I) idempotent
Ii) version controlled
B) missing from stack
I) monitoring -- https://prometheus.io
A) mentioned journalctl
B) no pager alerting
Ii) database automation
A) manual PostgreSQL?
B) patroni omitted?
3) dotfiles repository
A) 340 stars
I) viral coefficient unexplained
Ii) possibly HN front page
A) check referer logs
4) personal note
A) I use similar setup
I) but with nixos
Ii) reproducible builds
B) to be honest
I) nix learning curve steeper
Ii) worth it

qasimgsm

Member

BGP dreamer

#5

The black screen you mention ji— it is not black but full of possibility— like unlined paper before the poet's hand—

Your ansible playbooks I have seen— they are clean like mountain stream is it—

The memorization you fear— it is not memorization but meditation— commands repeated until they become breath—

I have no panel also— for three winters now— my servers hum in Lahore datacenter— I know their songs by heart is it—

The stars on GitHub— strangers leaving footprints in your garden— a kind of blessing—

ospf, bgp, babel — speaking all
Fritz48

Member

Datenschutz First

#6

As far as I know, the GDPR angle here is underexplored. Most control panels log extensive metadata—IP addresses, timestamps, full request paths—often to jurisdictions with inadequate adequacy decisions. Your ansible approach allows:

  • Hosting exclusively within EU if desired
  • Minimal data collection by design
  • No third-party JavaScript or telemetry
I have audited WHMCS installations where the panel itself generated more personal data than the hosted applications. As far as I know, this is standard industry practice. To be precise, your $0 license cost should include compliance cost savings. I would estimate €2000-5000 annually for a proper DPA with typical panel vendors. Have you documented your data processing register? I would be interested to see how you handle Article 30 without automated exports.

Neuland. Aber schnell.
readerkrakw

Member

Backup Paranoid

#7

Which ansible version, 2.15 or the debian repo one

emalite

Member

Lisbon

#8

Tmux + ssh is the way

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