Rack-Soft has been busy in recent months with the release of several products and offerings. Last month, it launched the 4PSA Clients Area 3, its new customer management portal integrated into the company website. Prior to that, the company launched a free VoipNow Browser Module, enabling click-to-call functions in all web pages.

Using the ClamAV antivirus engine, 4PSA Clean Server tackles key email antivirus scanning issues that Plesk administrators face on a day to day basis. The solution introduces distributed scanning, delivery policies and advanced antivirus control features.

Traditional antivirus solutions perform email scanning on the hosting server, whose CPU intensive processes can typically lead to sub-pair performance. High email flow used on a hosting server with an old generation antivirus can particularly lead to Denial of Service or delayed email delivery.

Many providers have tried to solve these problems associated with host level email scanning by deploying specialized email filtering appliances in front of the hosting servers. But according to Rack-Soft, these solutions "usually introduce single points of failure, can scan a limited number of emails, hardly integrate in an automated environment, and are not economically efficient."

Rack-Soft's 4PSA Clean Server 4 uses a new approach to solve these issues by clustering the scanning processes. The product can be installed on one server like a traditional antivirus, but the web host can add specialized scanning nodes that handle email scanning for the entire infrastructure as the number of server increases.

Scanning requests are distributed automatically between scanning nodes and email delivery is not affected even when a hosting server is flooded with emails.

The software can be deployed in two scenarios. The first is designed for small business, single Plesk server, where small companies that own a single server or VPS can install the product  so that both the scanning agent and the scanning engine to be deployed on the same machine.

The second is designed for hosting providers, many Plesk servers, where the web host can install the Clean Server scanning agents on all Plesk servers and will connect them all to the scanning nodes.

Those interested in learning more about 4PSA Clean Server 4 can read the product's FAQ section here.

"4PSA Clean Server 4 is our first public release of a product based on 4Grid framework," says Bogdan Carstoiu, general manger of Rack-Soft. "Together with our customers, we tested the new version in large environments with more than two hundred Plesk hosting servers. Our testing partners were excited to see that the product took the scanning load from the hosting servers, allowing these to better answer to requests and serve more customers. With 4PSA Clean Server, hosting businesses are no longer limited by email volume."

4PSA Clean Server 4 is compatible with Linux/Unix servers running Plesk 8.2.0 and newer versions. The product is also available in Virtuozzo installation templates format, making it easier to install on virtualized servers.

Server licenses for 4PSA Clean Server 4 start at $99 for 10 domains, $139 for 100 domains, and $159 for an unlimited number of domains.