How much do you know about Red Hat as it pertains to dedicated hosting?

Red Hat is one of the largest and most recognized companies in the Open Source community, probably best known for their enterprise-class operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The advanced platform really eliminates the costs and complexity of enterprise-class virtualization, high availability and storage management.  Here is more about the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 server from the developers:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available in two variants for servers. A base Red Hat Enterprise Linux server is designed for small deployments while Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform is designed for mainstream customers and provides the most cost-effective, flexible, and scalable environment. Both versions are based on common core technology. Both include a comprehensive suite of open source server applications and virtualization capabilities.

To learn more about Red Hat as a dedicated hosting OS of choice, be sure to check out this link:

• http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/

For dedicated hosting needs, Red Hat is one of the best of the best.

Many people may like to backup their dedicated server using fsdump.  The question is which folders should you backup?

In most cases, you should only need to backup your website’s content, databases and e-mails.  Other things like PHP, Apache and some applications don’t need to be backed up because those can be eaisly reinstalled in case of some issue.

I would encourage backing up httpd.conf and any other configuration files that you’ve changed though.  Re-installs might get Apache working if the drive went bad, but it would be a bare bones re-install without the virtual host stuff you might have added.

So that should give you a little more information on backing up your dedicated hosting account.

Want to see a demostration of how great a control panel Plesk really is?  Look no further, than the official web site:

http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/demo/

Plesk is one of the most user-friendly control panels out there in the market that really caters to all users.  With the Plesk control panel you can jump in, administrate your dedicated server and then jump right back out with ease.  Parallels Plesk Panel is the leading hosting automation control panel on the market and the best option to bundle with your servers.

Powering more than 200,000 servers, 6 million domains and 10 million mailboxes worldwide, use the Parallels Plesk Panel to create service offerings that will improve your bottom line.

This is a continuation of our article from yesterday, Dedicated Hosting Vi Introduction (Part 1).  Enjoy!

vi filename: edit filename starting at line 1
vi +nfilename: edit filename starting at line number n
vi +filename: edit filename starting at the last line
vi -rfilename: recover filename after a system crash

Moving the Cursor

space key, l, right-arrow key: one space to the right
h, left-arrow key: one space to the left
w: one word to the right
W: one blank-delimited word to the right
b: one word to the left
B: one blank-delimited word to the right
O: beginning of line
j , down-arrow: down one line
k, up arrow: up one line
): end of sentence
(: beginning of sentence
}: end of paragraph
{: beginning of paragraph
Control-F: forward one screen
Control-B: backward one screen
nG: to line n
G: to last line

Read on…

This will allow your site to point to your own nameservers: ns1.yoursite.com and ns2.yoursite.com.

1. Registering domain (if you don’t have one already)
Register your domain if you do not have one.  This domain will be used as your nameserver.  (eg. ns1.domain.com and ns2.domain.com)

2. Will need 2 available IPs
Your dedicated host provides 2 IPs with the dedicated server.  One is for the server itself and one of the nameservers, and the other IP can be used for the other nameserver. You can have your primary domain and one nameserver both on the same IP address.

Read on…

This is how you would setup a remote access key in Web Host Manager (WHM).

The first thing you would need to do is login to WHM. From the front page, click on "Cluster/Remote Access". Next, click on "Setup Remote Access Key".

If you are incorporating an external script that automates account creation and management, it will ask you for a remote access key. WHM automatically creates the encrypted code for you. Simply generate the key, copy and paste into your script. To generate the new key, hit the button marked "Generate New Key" button.

After doing so, you will be able to setup a remote access key in WHM.

This is how you would delete an account using Web Host Manager (WHM) on your dedicated hosting account or server. This way you can get rid of any accounts you may not wish to have, or you are no longer using.

The first thing you would need to do is login to WHM. From the front page, click on “Account Functions” and then click “Terminate an Account”. Now, you are on the Terminate an Account page:

Locate the account you wish to delete.

You can also select the account by clicking on its associated user name. To delete the account, hit the “Terminate” button. Having done so, you have now successfully deleted the account in question from your WHM install for your dedicated hosting plan.

Want to manage your parked or pointed domain names via Web Host Manager (WHM) on your dedicated hosting server?  Here is the easiest way to get that done.  First step would be to login to WHM, and then click on the link for DNS Functions.

On the DNS Functions web page, you want to click on the link for Park or Point a Domain.  Now, select an existing domain on your server on which you would like to park a domain.  Then, in the text box to your right enter the domain that you would like to park or point.  Double check your settings, and if all is correct hit the “Do it” button.  You have successfully parked a domain on your server.  Now if you point your browser to the parked domain, it will send you to the domain name you specified.

You can also remove it by logging into WHM, and then going to the Account Information page.  From there click on List Parked Domains.  You can see the domains you have parked and you can unpark them from here too.  Now you have a little more control over domain parking on your dedicated server or account.

It is important to keep your eye on your resources when you have a dedicated hosting plan so that you know when and if something is about to or has gotten out of hand.  Here I hope to give you a few handy tips when it comes to monitoring your site resources and statistics in Plesk.

First thing you need to do is login to your Plesk control panel, and click on Limits.  As you can see Limits displays the resource limits allocated to your account.  It lists such details as:

• Maximum Number of Subdomains
• Disk Space
• Bandwidth
• Maximum Amount of Traffic
• Maximum Number of Web Users
• and more…

Now click on Up Level at the top of the Limits window for your domain, and click on Report.  The Report will show you all account resource limits & usage, as well as users and a full list of all available scripts, utilities and resources.

FTP Stats will show you a history of FTP activity on your site – both in upload as well as download. 

Traffic History will display information on traffic usage by Months and Years on your dedicated hosting account.  To view the detailed traffic statistics used by various services at the domain, click on the Traffic button.  The page will open displaying the traffic usage table.  You can send a copy of the report to an e-mail address you specify too at the bottom of the Report screen.  You can also set up a schedule for automatic delivery of the reports. 

The last detail about monitoring dedicated resources inside of Plesk is the Web Statistics Preferences screen.  From here you can set some of the preferences that will dictate the display of refers in your stats.

Now you should be a little more handy when it comes to stats and resources inside of your Plesk control panel via your dedicated web hosting account.

Have a trouble maker in your dedicated server?

Now we will explain how to suspend a user account in Web Host Manager (WHM).  Now there are a variety of reasons you might need to temporarily suspend an account.  Examples would be non-payment, breach of your own TOS, overages in bandwith and more.  Now lets say you have a trouble maker your hosting on your dedicated account and you want to suspended him.

Login to WHM, then click on Account Functions.  From there, click on Suspend/Unsuspend an Account.  Now you should see a two columned list of all the accounts your hosting on your dedicated server.  Select the account you wish to suspend.  Now you need to enter a reason for the suspension (keep it short and sweet) and then hit the suspend button.  Now if you want to unsuspend an account go into:

Account Functions > Suspend/Unsuspend an Account

Then click on the account you wish to unsuspend, and hit the unsusupend button.  Your done!  Now you can have a little more control using WHM with your hosted accounts under your dedicated server.