Thread

I am pushing the limits of my shared hosting. It has been great over the years as I have gotten literally millions of pages loads off of a couple of bucks per month (Dreamhost & 1and1).

However, it’s time to move on to bigger and better servers so I want to start with a VPS. Slicehost has a great package starting at $20 a month - but the problem is that I am not a linux admin. So while slicehost keeps telling me I can messup my system and then just re-install - that isn’t very inviting knowing that at any time someone might crack my box and make off with all my data. Yet, $500 is a bit out of my price range.

So here is my situation, I tought myself everything else - Server/PC construction, Programming, Video production, and Graphic Design. Is it worth the time to try jumping into the server admin world? Or am I just trying to save some money when I should just suck it up and pay $80 a month somewhere else for a “managed” box?

How hard is it to break into a Ubuntu/CentOS box? What are the software updates like? Are they automatic or do I have checkup on them everyday?

Setting up a web server isn’t all that hard, its quite easy actually. Maintaining (keeping up todate) isnt all that hard either. Nothing is going to tell you that you need to upgrade your software, then again you dont need to be on the bleeding edge of updates. (People still run PHP 4 on there server!) The really hard part comes in when something stops working and you have to figure out why and how to fix it.

When you setup your server you will notice instantly that people are trying to hack it. This is a snippet of the connections that were attempted on my server before I changed the SSH port from 22 to something else.

sshd:
  Authentication Failures:
    unknown (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 129 Time(s)
    root (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 15 Time(s)
    adm (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    apache (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    bin (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    daemon (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    ftp (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    games (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    gopher (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    halt (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    lp (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    mail (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    mailnull (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    mysql (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    named (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    news (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    nfsnobody (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    nobody (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    operator (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    rpc (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    rpcuser (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    shutdown (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    smmsp (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    sshd (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    sync (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
    uucp (akj98.internetdsl.tpnet.pl): 1 Time(s)
  Invalid Users:
    Unknown Account: 129 Time(s)

To keep people out of your server, use iptables to block ports and restrict access to your server. Also keep a strong password, disable the root account (super user) and use su or sudo. Then you just have to monitor it every day to make sure nothing is happening.

Another host I would recommend is linode.com

Here is a wiki article about how to setup a CentOS server on there system:

http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/CentOS

I would say you could easily catch on how to run a server. If you can teach yourselve all that then you should have no problem learning how to manage a server. I might not throw a 5 million impression site on to a server your managing right away though. I would mess around with it first.

If you decide to go the “learn how to be a server admin” route, Slicehost has some great articles on getting your slice up and running—from configuring the firewall to securing SSH to setting up virtual hosts in Apache.  I think they’d definitely be the best choice if you are going to go that route.  I’ve used them for a year now and have not had any problems and have never had to contact their tech support.

Second the slicehost articles.  Even for experienced admins there are some things in there that you might learn.  Setting up a server on slicehost or linode is ridiculously easy and the price is unbeatable.  I have a 512M slice with them and have 6 sites plus a dev environment running without a single problem since I set it up.

Got broadband at home? What i would do is get an old PC, install CentOS on it, map a route through to it on your firewall on some port so that it is isolated from anything else you have connected to the broadband and host some test websites on it.

Then you can do all the learning from home on your own time and not worry about important things crashing. What you do on your home server you can do on your hosted one, if it brakes your home server, don’t do it on the hosted one!!

In my opinion that is the best way to teach yourself. You could even have a virtual machine running on your PC that is linux and have that as your web server! That way you can build it so it works and take a snapshot as a backup and then if you do bust something you just restore the snapshot and away you go!

Just wondering what limits of shared hosting you are pushing?  In general people using our VPS solutions are pushing millions of page views per month, or have specific corporate policies requiring dedicated resources, or are shared by the “shared” concepts from the usual shared hosting horror stories.

Of course usage levels all come down to design and what you are running in a web hosting environment but on average our load-balanced shared hosting accounts can easily push 100’s of thousands of page views per month, and we have people on our Shared Pro accounts pushing the lower millions of page views per month at times.  Our “shared” hosting is vastly different then places like 1 and 1 or Dreamhost powering everyone on single boxes and hoping for the best.  Reason why places like State of California, Department of State, University of Michigan, Stanford, Nike, and many others are running even high profile/high traffic sites from our Shared and Shared Pro level of accounts on a daily basis.

Shoot me a PM if you have specific questions, but honestly I would only recommend our load-balanced VPS solutions (as you are running 2 VPS web servers and a VPS based database server in a private cluster at that point), if you really are pushing millions of page views a month, or you have specific needs to run heavy/long running MySQL queries, etc. so private resources are more important.

Don’t want this to sound too sales pitchy, just wanted to outline that not all “shared” hosting is alike.

I think you’d have to like system admin to go the unmanaged route. It’ll be taking away from your more profitable development time. You might want to go with a quality managed vps to start. Here’s one starting at $44: http://www.wiredtree.com/managedvps/.

http://webhostingtalk.com is a good place to evaluate any host.

Just wondering what limits of shared hosting you are pushing? In general people using our VPS solutions are pushing millions of page views per month

From the higher price, and quality of code I see in projects like CI, I might be looking into your hosting service as it seems to be much beefier than regular hosts.

It’ll be taking away from your more profitable development time.

That is the main problem right now. I will eventually move into managing my own servers as I always like to do things myself. However, I the moment I don’t have a lot of extra time to devote to learning.

The really hard part comes in when something stops working and you have to figure out why and how to fix it.

It has taken me years to learn how to strip down & harden an XP install and I can’t afford that much time to learn the same for linux. My PHP projects are a higher priority and I can’t afford my server being compromised.

Thanks for that link to WiredTree, I had never heard of them before. Based on their feature list I am guessing they actually know what they are talking about. Not many hosts mention geeky things like FFMPEG, Mod_Evasive, & ServerShield Hardening in their feature lists. The fact that I can get them to spend their time monitoring and updating my server is worth the extra $24 bucks I would save with slicehost.

All WiredTree accounts come with proactive security updates for any system packages on your server in which a high-risk vulnerability is discovered. This includes vulnerabilities such as kernel exploits, SSH, control panel, or any other root-level exploits. WiredTree staff constantly monitors many security information outlets including web sites, vendor mailing lists, security mailing lists, and forums to learn of new vulnerabilities as they are announced. When a new vulnerability is announced, we immediately take preventive measures, such as patching, firewalling, or hotfixing systems to prevent against an attack, and then update all vulnerable packages when an update is made available. We take the security of your server very seriously.

So I don’t know at the moment - lets see what other good links popup. Maybe someone has some benchmarks for these hosts.

Actually, I checked around and found that the coupon “50PERCENTMORE” upgrades the $49 package to make it a pretty good buy.

Intel Dual Xeon Harpertown
384MB +50% = 576MB Guaranteed SLM RAM
40GB RAID-10 Disk Space
600GB Bandwidth
4 Dedicated IPs / cPanel / WHM

And the coolest thing is that with a phone and email support I can bug them all I want as I learn. They boast that they actually answer help tickets within 30mins which is more than I can say for dreamhost, 1and1, and bluehost.

I like what this guy says:

I decided to shoot off an email simply because I liked the design of their website. My thinking was “If they can design a nice website like this, then they gotta be smart people”.

Here is the latest wiredtree offer on webhostingtalk.com:http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=868217&highlight=wiredtree. There is the coupon you mention and a couple more. There is an ip to ping and a download speed test near the bottom.

Man, you have the coolest avatar.

Anyway, I told a friend about this host and he like it so much that as we speak he is buying a plan with them. That means that I will be able to try-before-I-buy.

I love rich friends. ;P

 
I am sure you will not be disappointed. My boss has had about six web host providers and this is the one that he has had the longest. He reckons the support is personal, quick and very good. There are no standard replies, each problem is treated quickly and on an individual basis.
 
 
 

I love the VPS route, but it’s definitely a lot to consider.  In general, keeping up with updates is not hard as long as you’re using the package management system (and assuming the repositories are good and recent).  For some things, you’ll end up rolling your own solution (e.g., nginx).  Will you need to set up postfix and dovecot (or similar)?  That takes a little bit of time, but it isn’t too bad.  Just consider the importance of your sites.  If something goes down at 3am your time, are you going to have pingdom or similar wake you up, or is it going to be down until you wake up and get to it?

You’ll definitely learn a lot working as a server admin, but it will take time both up front and on a regular basis.  Is the benefit of the VPS worth that additional time to you or would you rather spend that time developing?

I got an unmanaged VPS. But I only host a java instant messaging application server there. No webserver, no E-mail server, what so ever, very stripped down, not even a control panel.
So that was quite simple to do, especially as I use a linux box for development, so i am accustomed to the linux way of doing things.
But after that experience, i would think twice of hosting a complete web server environment on an unmanaged vps, because you can get reasonable-price managed vps, and then you don`t have to worry about it.
If you only look at the economics, a full-fledged web server on an unmanaged vps, is probably not such a good idea.
If you enjoy learning the admin stuff (which is a different beast then developing/debugging code!), then a vps might be for you.
But in that case, you should at least have a local linux box, to mess around and learn the linux way. I think the step from Windows XP shared hosting to linux vps is quite big, especially if you are at home in the Windows world…
The real advantage of vps/dedicated is that you are free to host/install what you want, like in my case. If you just need PHP/MySQL, a good shared hosting is still the most hassle-free solution. If you need the performance of VPS, consider managed vps a good thing, because there is a lot involved with running a webserver, an e-mail server, a database server etc. by yourself (like anmanaged vps), and have them all running all the time securely. Let the specialists do that, and focus on your development work instead, out-source!
Just my 50 cents
Michael

Disclaimer: I could have figured out my issues, but time and $ was a factor, so ...

I had VPS unmanaged at Spry ... hated in ... i had issues with mail and spam assassin taking all my precious resources, was sick of trying to figure it out while trying to design/develop to make $ ... that was the last straw. Support was ok, but not super. Running cpanel and spam assassin on their 512MB plan had resources strained even with low traffic sites! I was moving all clients to google apps for mail ... which is good and all, but not always the fit and a hassle.

Dealing with hosting related issues is not a prudent use of my time, especially if you fall into the “host only your clients” category like me. Not a linux guru or even a tweaker ... i dabble ... that’s it ... VPS was just PIA.

VPS was more control than i needed/wanted. Others had mentioned that to me here, but i was like ... c’mon ... less control? forget it! i wanted control! Well ... turns out i didn’t.

YMMV ... but for me, like said above ... better things to do with my time!

I’m on the Mosso cloud now and very happy. It has it’s issues and not perfect, but the environment is set up secure, good for dev and i never need to deal with client spam issues. It’s getting better ... it’s now changing it’s name to rackspace cloud.

I’d take a look ... I so glad to be done with cpanel!