There are quite a few domain names that I own, and they have to be hosted too. Some are small few page-sites, and others are medium to large. But they will all do just fine with shared hosting-, or virtual private server hosting solutions. And each account is only using about 50% of the capacity.

Individually each account is affordable, cheap, works just fine, and could work with a few parked and add-on domains. But as soon as a site peaks in traffic there could be problems. And some have the potential to do so. However, all together the bills I pay add up to quite a bit. A solution was needed, but the solution must have potential to grow without doubling the costs quickly.

In the back of my mind I am also telling myself I need to learn linux more, go back to my roots which was UNIX. I loved playing and working from the console. But with Windows98 there finally was a nice GUI which made a lot of things a lot easier. But now, with doing everything on a OSX system which has UNIX under the hood, and doing helping with tech support for a few sites like DeskPro.com and vBulletin.com, I feel I should learn it all again so I can do a better job.

Additionally I would love to understand more about LAMP in general. This is Linux Operating System, Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP programming. I’ve spend too many years focussing on just XHTML/CSS.

Due to the problem with my eyes it can get quite frustrating trying to solve puzzles and problems when you are trying to set up a domain name and a web site, or code something in PHP for it, or figure out why there’s a configuration issue with MySQL, etc. I rather use the time productively; Working on that thing I am working on. Which brings me to the dedicated hosting solution.

Instead of having shared hosting solutions upgraded to a reseller account to make it easier to quickly manage accounts (and have more resources). And instead of moving the reseller accounts to a VPS solution and merging things together, etc. I rather go back to basic and host everything on a good dedicated solution with a well known hosting provider.

I’ve decided and went with theplanet.com, and got a hosting solution on a ‘dual’ box. It has two CPUs, two times a gig RAM, two hard drives which are pretty fast SCSI 10KRPM drives, and two gigabit connections. Though the account uses 100Mbit for the internet traffic. I’ve went with CentOS5 since it’s the most commonly used OS for hosting at this moment (so what I learn can be used in practise properly). And no control panel.

For security reasons I’ve limited the daemons that are running, and I’ve changed their configuration to use a secure/encrypted connection where possible. And I’ve changed the default public ports where possible to prevent all those auto-scripts from attempting to brute force and exploit these services. Theplanet.com takes care of the OS upgrades, and I take care of the software and the configuration.

The dedicated box has been paid for a full year, and will automatically start billing per month at the end of 2008 (so there’s no unexpected huge bill I forgot about or something). I have no intention of moving within this year, as I will need the time to set up the domains, the accounts, learn how to properly do all that, and figure out any issues I run into in the meantime.

Talking about issues, I already have a few, but perhaps I will blog about that in the future, with a bit more detail.

The benefits of a full dedicated server is that I am not sharing it with other people, full resources are to my disposal and I have my own IP block and have full control over the box. Not just from the root level up, but a customer control panel with ticket system for support from the hosting provider, and options to increment services such as hardware, software, managed-support, firewall, security, etc. And options to reboot the box, shut it down, or reload the os, etc.

Other benefits are that I have enough space to create a sandbox environment on the server for mirroring live sites and developing them with the staff. Hosting multiple accounts is a huge benefit. I can now get family and friends hosted without having to worry about space or traffic or bandwidth. From a single point I can control log files, access to the box, do crontab entries properly and have my own scripts run for backups of accounts, files and databases, stuff like that.

A great way to learn more about linux again, get into the specifics of what is involved in doing all this. Finding out issues I run into and learning from that; so I can help others if they have the same problems. A great way to get back into writing bash scripts, perl, php, etc, etc.

A major downside of course is, I am no longer enjoying the benefits of having multiple accounts at multiple hosting providers, at multiple data centers. So, imagine in the past if a site was under attack or there were routing issues, the other sites would still be online. I could even migrate quickly if needed. Right now, if this happens, all my sites are down and I just have to wait until it gets fixed. The more important it will be now to make complete and good quality back ups so if the problem does not get reoslved within a timely matter it is posible for me to just move to anther provider for a bit.

Talking about moving between providers, I will try and write up a blog entry about this in the near future, explaining how I have done it, in a way to ensure as little downtime as possible (at least for me).

To close this up since I am sure you are already bored reading all this text (thanks if you’re still with me hehe), I strongly recommend getting a good quality dedicated solution with a good control panel, good software and hardware, with a good hosting provider. If you have a site that is growing and has the potential to get only bigger. If you can afford it, go for it. It saves you the trouble of having to go through shared > reseller > vps > dedicated > clustered > colocation > eh .. data center. If you don’t know what you are doing, go with a fully managed solution. If you do know what you are doing and don’t need a fancy control panel just leave it out. They are resource hogs anyway and probably only make it harder to work from the console anyway (upgrades are usually already outdated).

Since dedicated hosting can get really expansive, try to go with a VPS if you can’t afford it. I would almost recommend to go with VPS hosting, instead of shared hosting. They’re almost the same price now, and your site will run so much better.

For dedicated hosting you could check out steadfast.net, staminus.net, theplanet.com, or sites like softlayer and alike. For VPS hosting you could also go with them, or find small hosting companies that are getting pretty known, like asmallorange.com or bitfolk.com, or viper.uk.net. For shared hosting or reseller packages you could check out hostgator.com, hostmaven.com, or viper.uk.net, or asmallorange.com. For reviews, more advise on hosting, or finding hosting solutions I recommend to check out webhostingtalk.com.

Ok, I’ve moved my sites over to my new dedicated box, so apologies if you have had some issues connecting to our site. I’ve done my best to keep downtime to minimum. Also, I have a few more sites to move over, which will be done next week and early January.

If you have any suggestions for me about dedicated hosting feel free to register on this blog and leave a comment. You can also comment if you have any feedback at all about this blog entry. And I invite you to come back soon for more.

Related posts

• yum update script (0)
• Top 10 Apple Products (1)
• Rebuilding The Office (0)
• What Goes Where On My System? (1)
• Explaining And Expanding The IRC Network (0)