VPS Guides
Tips, Tutorials and Guides for your Virtual Private Server
What is a VPS – A Beginner’s Introduction
In: General
14 Apr 2010One of the things I get asked often is “what exactly is a VPS“? So I’ve decided to write this article to explain it as simple as possible. If you’ve ever created a website, you know that one of the first things you’ll need to get it online (besides a domain) is a hosting package. So you ask around or google for webhosts and you’re presented with a plethora of choices.
Chances are you’ll pick the cheapest intro package which will give you x amount of space for something like $9.90 a month. This will also allow you to host a few domains on it. This simplest form of hosting is often known as Shared Hosting which means that you share the server with up to hundreds of other users. The pros on this is that its cheap and easy to manage with a control panel and the techs take care of everything else for you. The cons of it is that you can’t have access to the inner workings on the server such as installing/upgrading software like PHP, MySQL, Perl, etc. Another minus is that you have to share resources (RAM) with others, meaning if someone else uses a lot of processes (in the case of a huge traffic spike), your website can be affected. Read the rest of this entry »
How To Ban An IP Address
In: Howtos
19 Jan 2010
Within a few days of starting this blog, I found the content being scrapped to another domain. The speed at which these sites are setup are astonishing. You can spend hours writing and posting articles and it’ll be ripped within minutes. There are a few options that you can take to minimize such thefts.
Since this is more of a hosting blog, I’ll focus on banning an IP address. There are few ways to do it. First of all, you have to identify the IP address. Be very careful about this. If you ban your own IP will not be able to login to undo it! Or sometimes a client could be using a service or software to monitor your site. Don’t be too quick to identify it as a ‘hack attempt’… In my case, I’m sure of the site scrapping my content. I ping-ed the site and also cross-checked with the logs to confirm the offending IP. Read the rest of this entry »
Setting Up Your Own Web Hosting Company
In: Business
30 Dec 2009
One of the great things about a VPS Server is the ability to setup your own hosting company. A VPS will allow you to host multiple sites which will generate residual revenue for you. Basically you buy a server, label it with your own brand and resell smaller ‘chunks’ of it. For example, a 30GB server might set you back about $49/mo. You can easily partition it into thirty 1GB hosting packages at $9.95/mo each. That’s nearly $250/mo profit!
There’s also other income potential when you offer related services like domain registration and web designing/consulting services. There are many domain registrars that offer an affiliate program and you can partner with a local web design team for referrals.
It does require some technical know how and research, but there’s good income potential. Some hosts also provide technical support for you for a small fee.
Its easier when you use a good control panel like Plesk that allows your clients to self-manage their FTP, email and databases.
You’ll be surprised at the number of websites that don’t require the full capacity of a dedicated server, but just need a simple hosting solution.
Here’s a quick checklist on some of the things you should be looking into.
- A website. Get a good domain and design a simple site. Be focused on the kind of service that you offer – keep it simple and attractive. I like hosting sites that have few preset packages. Orders come through this site and you can link it to Paypal or some other payment gateway.
- A good VPS host provider. As you know, we highly recommend ServInt as our favorite VPS host. They’re reputable and reliable, and you have a choice of 2 locations in the US.
- A good invoicing system. We love Freshbooks. It’ll generate invoices based on your recurring schedule, you can bill monthly, bi-annually or yearly.
- A good helpdesk system. Kayako and Cerberus are some popular choices. This’ll allow you to manage support requests efficiently. You can even hire off-shore staff from places like ODesk, Scriptlance and Elance.
- Education – especially on Linux (basic commands, software, etc). Hanging out at forums like Web Hosting Geeks and Web Hosting Talk can be very educational too.
- A web services partner like GoDaddy that you can get domains and SSL certs from.
- Get the word out! Use Adwords, forums, social networks, etc to promote it. Consider giving some free hosting space to charities and non-profits in exchange for a link. That’ll help your Search Engine Optimization too.
- Here’s a good e-book that’ll give you more information – “How To Start A Successful Hosting Company“
Any other tips or experiences you’d like to share?
Servint On The West Coast
In: General
17 Nov 2009Our favorite VPS host ServInt has just announced the availability of their awesome VPSes at their LA Data Center. From our initial tests it looks like another winner. Here’s some of the features at their new location:
- Closed, private data center facilities
- CCTV Surveillance and biometric access control
- Fault-tolerant power redundancy
- Powerful industrial class generators
- 24/7 monitoring
- Liebert temperature-controlled server environment
- N+1 and redundant AC/DC UPS Power
- Ample cooling capacity
- Technical staff on premises
Migrating Email Accounts on FreeBSD
In: Howtos
18 Aug 2009I’ve been busy the past few weeks consolidating servers. We have some really old servers from one of our VPS providers that really needed to be decommissioned. The problem with a project like this is that the older they are, the more stuff is built into it – crons, url rewrites, custom DNS, the list goes on. And since these are working sites, we could not afford downtime and each migration needed a few undisturbed hours.
One of the major task was to migrate email accounts from our legacy VPS running FreeBSD 4.7 to newer ones running 6.3. Here’s how I did it. Read the rest of this entry »
Super Sweet Geek Hosting!
In: General
11 Jul 2009There’s something really sexy about a server company that’s run by geeks (not that others aren’t, but most make decisions based on business more than geek-sense). Along comes www.geekstorage.com, a hosting company with a difference. I really like their website setup, maybe because it appeals to the geek in me, but check this out:
- LiteSpeed web server (instead of the ubiquitous Apache) which according to GS, boasts of speeds up to 9 times faster than Apache and 50% PHP.
- Ruby on Rails ready.
- Anti Spam SMTP Proxies.
- OS Choice: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Suse or Ubuntu.
- Free migration.
I’ve yet to try them. Hoping to get my hands on one of these babies to test the performance. I’ll publish a review if I get a chance. Helloo…. anybody from GeekStorage marketing reading this? 
5 Linux VPS Performance Tips
In: Howtos
22 Jun 2009This is a guest post by Christopher Pace
As a freelance Linux consultant, many of my clients are often interested in making their VPS (Virtual Private Server) as responsive as possible. Since VPS servers by nature have somewhat limited system resources (often less than 1 GB of RAM), getting the best VPS performance can be a crucial part of running a successful server. To make matters worse, most clients assume that the VPS host has already optimized their server- which simply isn’t true (even Rackspace, a wonderful VPS host, doesn’t do this). Therefore, I’ve written this article as a brief introduction to some of the more common ways to get the best performance from a VPS. Read the rest of this entry »
OpenVZ Explained
In: Software
12 May 2009This is a guest article by Robin Dale
What is OpenVZ?
OpenVZ is server virtualization software provided by SWSoft, Inc. licensed under the GPL version 2. OpenVZ is the software that every system administrator requires. It allows you to host multiple Virtual Environments (Aka VE) on a single server. The only limitations are RAM and CPU.
OpenVZ is an operating system-level virtualization technology based on the Linux kernel and operating system. It allows a physical server to run multiple isolated operating system instances, known as Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or Virtual Environments (VE). Read the rest of this entry »
No Joke Upgrade At ServInt
In: News
1 Apr 200950% off your first month’s bill at ServInt! Use this code: SPRINGVPS at www.servint.com
If you’re been following this blog, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of ServInt and with their latest announcement today, you’ll soon see why! Once again (on an auspicious date), they’ve announced another round of updates. For example, the Essential VPS has RAM up to 758MB doubled space from 15GB to 30GB and bandwidth from 500GB to 1TB.
That’s an astonishing feat of doubling the capacity each of their awesome VPSes can handle. So its not just being able to fit more in, but with the extra bandwidth and RAM, it’ll be able to handle the load.
And not just that, they’ve also announced their “Dedicated Server Replacement” campaign to prove their new VPS range has better resource than many dedicated server configurations offered by their competitors.
Read my earlier post on my experience with ServInt and why I think they’re the best VPS host I’ve ever worked with.
Watch this space for a discount coupon coming real soon so you can experience what my hype is all about!
ยป Click here to experience the ServInt.com VPS
Hurry and sign up with the following:
$100 off the setup of any Dedicated Server: SPRING-VS
50% off the first month of any VPS or SuperVPS: SPRINGVPS
Tips For A Happy Hosting Experience
In: General
30 Mar 2009Smashing Magazine carries an interesting article called “9 Steps To A Happy Relationship With Your Hosting Provider“. Not quite related to VPS per se, but the principles hold – Don’t choose based on price alone, check their uptime, reputation, etc.
Always take your time to choose a good host. Once you have a number of sites and email accounts running on one, its really not that simple to migrate as you have to coordinate many issues such as database and scripting language versions, email configurations and that dreaded period in between DNS propagation…
About VPS Guides
I've been using Virtual Private Servers for the past 11 years. I'd like to share these experiences here, so I'll be writing Tips, Tutorials, Guides and other helpful hints...
Categories
- admin: Haha... yes. I think I might have published this one a little too early, I've been compiling but hav [...]
- unmetered vps: So uhm.. where is the comparison? [...]
- tayfun: thanks for the hint. I have been searching this dns stuff and i was about to get crazy :) [...]
- Infrenion: Nice post, I would recommend using WHMCS Billing system (http://www.whmcs.com) and Vision Helpdesk S [...]
- michael: Thanks. This helped me. You know how frustrating these simple things can be!! [...]
- What is a VPS – A Beginner’s Introduction
- How To Ban An IP Address
- Setting Up Your Own Web Hosting Company
- Servint On The West Coast
- Migrating Email Accounts on FreeBSD
- Super Sweet Geek Hosting!
- 5 Linux VPS Performance Tips
- OpenVZ Explained
- No Joke Upgrade At ServInt
- Tips For A Happy Hosting Experience
