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If you want some help setting up a VPS on Mosso/Rackspace Cloud servers then I have the perfect screencasts.

“Build your own VPS in the Cloud”.

If you want some help setting up a VPS on Mosso/Rackspace Cloud servers then I have the perfect screencasts.

“Build your own VPS in the Cloud”.

My goodness exactly what I was looking for!

I’ll follow your screencast but I’ll use CentOS instead (Fedora user here).

Thanks for sharing!

Here’s my take:

I find a VPS to be great beacuse you can install and do whatever you like. If you are building anything complex with CI, there comes a time when you may need to consider the entire setup - not just the presence of PHP and MySQL.

In any case, I would consider a basic VPS tuned for use with CI. Install the absolute minimum to get the best performance from the plan you bought - Apache (or other flavor if you aim very low), PHP and MySQL. Stay away from control panels. Outsource mail (Gmail is free).

This will allow you to concentrate on, by learning and tuning, just a few packages while ensuring that your VPS is put to work doing what you want it to do - serving up your CI applications and not idling away resources on all kinds of junk.

With regards to hardening the basic install, there are plenty of tutorials out there. Disable root, and as mentioned, any port for SSH other than 22 will quickly bore the script kiddies who prefer to play with their friends on port 22. With few services running, your firewall (iptables) will be easy to configure and if you install something like fail2ban you’ll also have some protection against brute force if your random port is found. Remember that your CI application may actually be the most likely vector of any attack.

Consider also that most “hackers” just move on to an easier target if there is some resistance (like no SSH on port 22). With millions of VPSes to pick on, why waste time?