Maintenance Tips for Web Hosts | Article about:
This article covers two important maintenance tasks for web hosts. The first two sections cover backup and recovery strategies. The third and fourth sections cover how to set up a new WHM cPanel server.
Maintenance Tips for Web Hosts | Dedicated Servers – Backup and Recovery Strategies for Web Hosting Companies
What kind of backup recovery strategy should a company have for its dedicated server? Web hosting companies have been debating this architecture since their existence began. It is really a question pondered by the whole IT community. There are many right solutions, dependent on your company’s ability to handle downtime. The correct solution for you will factor in the amount of redundant protection you need against the overall cost.
Before we discuss the different options for backing up and recovering your dedicated server, we should mention that the server hardware, data center, and fiber connection are all critical to reliability. This article is specifically focused on strategies to backup and recover your server’s data.
At a minimum, you can create a partition in your hard drive and backup your server weekly or monthly. There is no cost to this kind of solution, but the downsides are obvious. If your hard drive crashes, you will lose your backup as well. This kind of solution is only recommended if you can afford to lose all of your data, which most web hosting companies cannot.
Next, you can contract a remote backup service to set up offsite backups. These backups can be run daily, weekly, or monthly. The cost of this solution is around $30-$50/month depending on the web hosting provider. This option gives you a solid backup in case your hard drive crashes. The downside is that recovery time will take 6-12 hours or more depending on how much data you have. The data has to be manually copied over, and this is a slow process. If you can afford the cost, this solution is part of an overall backup system, but it is not recommended as your only solution.
The next backup option is to have a second hard drive installed on your server and have it set up to do daily, weekly, or monthly backups. Most web hosting companies that provide dedicated servers will charge between $15-$30 for a second hard drive. This is a nice compliment to the previous solution if you have the budget for both. The recovery time is faster then a remote backup. But unlike a remote backup, if your dedicated server or the datacenter are down, then you cannot access the backup. For most small web hosting companies this is not a problem. If their entire server or datacenter are down, they have larger issues to worry about. We recommend this as a complimentary option with a remote backup.
Next, a web hosting company can use mirrored RAID drives. This option will cost $50-$80/month more, but it provides the fastest possible recovery in case of a hard drive crash. You can just reboot using the mirrored drive, and you are back in business. The cost is a little higher, but this is a nice luxury. The downside of this option is that if your server is unavailable, then you still cannot reach your data. Additionally, if the hard drive becomes corrupted it will also corrupt your backup. This is why we recommend mirrored drives as part of a larger solution that includes other backup systems.
Finally, there are mirrored servers. This entails the largest cost and is really not necessary, except for those web hosting companies that can tolerate no downtime at all. In this scenario, if the server itself dies you can have another server ready to take the load. In fact, if your company is large enough, you might already need this kind of solution for performance. Some websites require multiple servers to handle the performance, and it is load balanced across them. In this case, if a server dies the system still runs. This is the best solution but it is not always necessary. And, of course it is costly.
We recommend a weekly remote backup to provide you with a fail safe version. Even if the datacenter burns down, you will have a copy of your data. To this we would add either mirrored RAID drives or a second hard drive, depending on your hosting company’s needs. If you are more worried about recovery time from hard drive crashes, which is the most frequent hardware problem with dedicated servers, then go with the RAID drives. If you are more worried about the hard drive getting corrupted, go with the second hard drive.
We hope this article provides you with the information you need to adequately back up your dedicated server!
This is a guide to setting up a new WHM/cPanel Server to be used for web hosting accounts. It is intended for web hosting company administrators and dedicated server owners. For under $99 per month, it is easier than ever to manage and run your own dedicated server. You can have guaranteed uptime from your datacenter, and outsourced support starting at $30/month. All you need to do is set up the server and get going. Whether it is for a web hosting company or a couple of personal websites, an inexpensive linux server is powerful, reliable, and easy to setup.
WebHostManager(WHM) is a common linux based tool for managing websites on a server. cPanel is a common control panel to manage an individual website. It allows you to add email accounts, view stats, make backups, install programs, etc. These 2 tools are the most inexpensive set used commonly to manage hosting accounts, and you will find them very prevalent in the budget shared hosting world. It usually adds about $20/month to the cost of a dedicated server but provides most of the features of the more expensive tools.
Whenever you order a dedicated server from a datacenter, you will receive a welcome email with details of the server including the server name, ip addresses, and root password. This information will allow you to setup and configure WHM so that you can host websites and use your own custom Domain Nameserver instead of a raw IP address.
The first thing you need to do is the setup of WebHostManager(WHM). This includes configuring the default Domain nameservers, main IP address, and server contact email address.
1) Login to root WHM (http://:2086)
2) In the left margin, click Next to run the setup wizard
3) Agree to the end-user license agreement
4) Edit setup
a. Server contact email address: info@yourdomain.com
b. Default Cpanel theme: x
c. Default home directory: /home
d. Home directory prefix: home
e. Main shared virtual host IP: xx.xxx.xxx.xx (should be main IP of server)
f. Hostname: server.yourserver.com
g. Primary nameserver: dns1.yourserver.com
h. Secondary nameservers: dns2.yourserver.com
i. Leave everything else unchanged
j. Click Save
Next, you need to setup the system quota. To do this follow these instructions:
5) Click Next Step in left margin – system sets up initial quota. No need to wait for initial quota to setup…. Click Next Step again
6) DO NOT enable namesever. Click Next Step again
Now we need to setup the Resolver. This is specific to your datacenter and the information will be provided in the Welcome details for your dedicated server.
7) Resolver setup:
a. Click Continue
b. Primary Resolver: xx.xx.xx.xx (this is datacenter specific)
c. Secondary Resolver: xx.xx.xx.xx (this is datacenter specific)
d. Tertiary Resolver: leave blank
e. Click Continue
f. Click Next Step
8) Not necessary to enter a MySQL root password
9) Click Finish
Initial setup is done, and you should now be able to login to root WHM. Now you can create the accounts needed to setup the nameservers that you want to use on this dedicated server.
1) Login to root WHM again
2) “Create a New Account” (this is to be the main account: yourserver.com). Do not give this account a dedicated IP…. It will use the main server’s shared IP address.
3) Under “IP Functions”, click “Show IP address usage”. If only the main server IP is listed, that means you have to add the additional IP address to the server. Click “Add a New IP address”, and enter: xx.xx.xx.xx-xx Leave subnet mask unchanged, and click “Do It”
4) Click Show/Edit Reserved IPs, and check an IP to reserve it, and enter a reason (i.e. dns2.yourserver.com)
5) Under “DNS Functions” click “Edit DNS Zone”, then select yourserver.com and click “Edit”. Use the main IP address for the first 2 lines and the next IP address assigned to the server for the third line.
a. Under “Add new entries below this line”, enter:
server 14400 IN A xx.xx.xx.xx (leave far right box blank)
dns1 14400 IN A xx.xx.xx.xx (leave far right box blank)
dns2 14400 IN A xx.xx.xx.xx (leave far right box blank)
b. Note: The above entries are DNS entries for the two nameservers being created, and the sever name dana.hostyourself.com. Once you’ve enter the three entries, click “Save”
6) If you get an “Error reloading BIND” error, go to “Restart Services” and click “DNS Server (BIND)”, then click YES to restart Bind.
That’s it! Now the server is all setup and ready to host cPanel hosting account with the nameservers dns1.yourserver.com and dns2.yourserver.com. Of course you still need to go to your registrar and register these 2 new nameservers and wait for normal propagation of 24-48 hours until the new nameservers will work.
If this is a server being setup for a dedicated customer, be sure to tell them:
1) IP addresses of nameservers so he can register them with his registrar
2) Root login information
3) Login info of main account you created for him
4) Tell him NOT to delete the main account, since doing so will also delete the DNS zones you setup above
5) New DNS zones should be added to the old server to help with DNS propagation.
If you follow these simple instructions once you get your server from the datacenter, then you will be ready to load websites and hit the internet. With cheap outsourced support companies available and world class datacenters providing under $99 servers there is no reason not to tackle the world of dedicated servers and web hosting for yourself. | | | Top 10 web hosting plans: |
