We move quite a few customers from one hosting provider to our own or setup additional servers. One of the things we frequently run into … Read More
A very quick tip. If you are trying to use the Crontab section of a CPanel (reseller account, etc), you may have some issues trying … Read More
We ran into a situation recently, where a wildcard SSL cert was purchased for a customer. When setting up the cert for the entire server, WHM/CPANEL would not tag the default CPANEL account with the new cert. Apache would serve the SSL, but the Apache conf file was not picking up the domain name.
We are often times asked to work on clients servers that range greatly in hardware and software platforms. It seems that no two VPS/Cloud servers are configured the same, nor do they have the same user permissions to install/compile modules into PHP/Lamp.
This can be a pain if we need to install a third party module like PHP SSH2 to securely transfer some files between servers for backups.
We recently started research work for a potential grant and some of the project focused on dynamic visualization of data sources. A few years ago we had done some work for a client in visualizing aircraft telemetry data using the stand-along Google Earth client. At that time, the Google Earth browser plug-in was not yet mature and still had a few issues.
With our current project, we needed a quick way to geographically visualize a large set of data. A years worth of Apache log files, a perl script, some PHP code, and we were able to create a fully automated data integration and visualization system with no cost.
As part of one of our data integration projects, we were asked to process some web form data through a third party webservice. The web form was built in PHP, and our standard PHP webservice library has always been to use NuSOAP tool kit (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nusoap/). It has always been easier to deal with and integrate and diverse hosting platforms, that is, up until this past project.
We’ve recently moved a large client from an ill performing “Virtual Private Server” hosting provider to a more robust solution at a different vendor. We came up with a generic questionnaire to help future clients plan for a move/new system.
1.) What are your needs? Is it a new deployment or are you dissatisfied with your current hosting provider and are looking for something better? They will directly affect your costs, in both startup costs and the potential downtime you will have if you are currently a site. Migration involves, coordinating downtime with customers, moving mail servers, updating database servers on the new server during a move, ensure mail is working on the new server, setting up the new VPS so it is configured like the previous, etc. Its sometimes easier to hire someone that does this on a regular basis.
2.) Does scalability matter? Do you see yourself needing either dedicated hardware and/or a higher rated VPS solution in the future? Make sure the new VPS company has that ability. Is the storage on the server large enough now AND for the future. Some VPS hosting providers force you to move to a new server, if you run out of room.
Do you see yourself needing dedicated hardware in the future? Does the vendor maintain dedicated servers, thereby easing the move down the road?
From Wikipedia , Cloud computing is described as:
Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.
When you are purchasing hosting from a hosting company, beware that the term “Cloud” may be mis-used and may not be what you think it is!
If you run a linux site that is exposed to the internet, check the /var/log/auth.log or /var/log/secure log files. Chances are you’ll see a bunch of ‘ Failed password for user ‘ attacks on your site.
I recently was having horrible download rates on some VMWare ubuntu images that are hosted on a beefy Win7 box.
