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Default Managing a VPS?

I pay £35 quid per month for web hosting (it's a long story) it's a
reseller package so I can have as many domains as i like but there are
resource limits (I know!! At that price!)

Plus there are security features (which I understand the need for), eg.
I fire up an old computer and there's an email account with an old,
incorrect password, if it retries numerous times our IP ends up locked
off the server. Or if you are setting up an FTP client and try a few
times with a wrong setting. I end up having to call in to get access
restored.


So i'm looking into a VPS.
I'd be paying less and have more resources and control.

Is a VPS within the scope of someone who knows a little or might I find
myself out of my depth.
Do you just stick cpanel on it and as such i'd be pretty much where I am
now, or is there all sorts of background tinkering that i'm unaware of?
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Default Managing a VPS?

R D S wrote:
Is a VPS within the scope of someone who knows a little or might I find
myself out of my depth.
Do you just stick cpanel on it and as such i'd be pretty much where I am
now, or is there all sorts of background tinkering that i'm unaware of?


Cpanel is a proprietary service so you can't 'just stick it on'. Your VPS
provider might offer that as an additional service. There are frontends
that are free that look a bit like Cpanel (it's been a while since I used
one so I'm not up to date).

For a web server, to DIY you need roughly:

Basic OS install (provided by VPS provider)
Automatic security updates enabled (if not already)
Install web server
Configure TLS certificate (eg Let's Encrypt)
Install whatever PHP/node/Django/etc framework your website might need
Upload is generally better done over SSH/SFTP rather than FTP (which is a
big security pain)

It's mostly command line stuff - there's no GUI for this. DigitalOcean has
some good tutorials on doing this. For example (a bit overkill for your
purposes unless you really need PHP and databases):
https://www.digitalocean.com/communi...n-ubuntu-20-04

It's primarily intended for email but I've used https://mailinabox.email/
which configures everything and also configures a web server. You just run
one script to set it up. There might be something similar aimed at web
servers.

Other things you need to think about:

* Backups. Your VPS provider may offer that as an extra service, or DIY
* Email - does your site use that? It's a bit messy from a VPS for spam
filtering reasons
* Support. You're on your own. If you break it you fix it. There's nobody to
call to get you out of trouble (unless you contract someone else).
* Security. Auto-updates should take care of much of this, but you need to
keep an eye on other things (eg only allow login with SSH keys, make sure
you keep up to date with web packages like Wordpress)
* Resilence. You just have one machine. If it breaks your site goes down.
You might need to set up something to tell you that, and if you need more
robustness you need to build it yourself.
* Scalability. If your site exceeds the requirements of the biggest VPS,
it's up to you to build it to scale out.
* Host quality. Cheap hosts often use less reliable hardware, on less
reliable infrastructure, and they go bust. Obviously less of a problem with
the big ones than those run out of a teenagers bedroom. But again something
you need to manage.

You get complete freedom but complete responsibility too.


What are your actual hosting requirements (space, services, traffic etc)?
It's possible a managed hosting setup at another provider could be more
suitable than complete DIY.

Theo
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Default Managing a VPS?

On 14/06/2021 11:47, R D S wrote:

I pay £35 quid per month for web hosting (it's a long story) it's a
reseller package so I can have as many domains as i like but there are
resource limits (I know!! At that price!)

Plus there are security features (which I understand the need for), eg.
I fire up an old computer and there's an email account with an old,
incorrect password, if it retries numerous times our IP ends up locked
off the server. Or if you are setting up an FTP client and try a few
times with a wrong setting. I end up having to call in to get access
restored.


So i'm looking into a VPS.
I'd be paying less and have more resources and control.


Its handy to use a company that can provide a decent level of support as
well, for times when you do need help.

Is a VPS within the scope of someone who knows a little or might I find
myself out of my depth.


Much depends on how it has been setup. Chances are that the provider
will have made it relatively straight forward with cPanel/webmin or
something similar pre-loaded. (or if you are brave SSH so you can
command line into a shell :-)

Do you just stick cpanel on it and as such i'd be pretty much where I am
now, or is there all sorts of background tinkering that i'm unaware of?


That will depend on what you want to do with it - what things you need
to run on the site etc. Usually the basics (web server, MySql/Maria, PHP
etc) will likely work out of the box.

(not a terribly helpful answer I realise!)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/
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Default Managing a VPS?

On 14/06/2021 12:31, Theo wrote:
R D S wrote:
Is a VPS within the scope of someone who knows a little or might I find
myself out of my depth.
Do you just stick cpanel on it and as such i'd be pretty much where I am
now, or is there all sorts of background tinkering that i'm unaware of?


Cpanel is a proprietary service so you can't 'just stick it on'. Your VPS
provider might offer that as an additional service. There are frontends
that are free that look a bit like Cpanel (it's been a while since I used
one so I'm not up to date).

For a web server, to DIY you need roughly:


Thanks for all the info.
There's Debian 10 installed.
I'd oddly assumed cpanel was open source, not sure where that idea came
from.
I'm looking at Fasthosts, so security/future shouldn't be a concern.
I've a handful of relatively low traffic Opencart installations.


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Default Managing a VPS?

On 14/06/2021 11:47, R D S wrote:
I pay £35 quid per month for web hosting (it's a long story) it's a
reseller package so I can have as many domains as i like but there are
resource limits (I know!! At that price!)

Plus there are security features (which I understand the need for), eg.
I fire up an old computer and there's an email account with an old,
incorrect password, if it retries numerous times our IP ends up locked
off the server. Or if you are setting up an FTP client and try a few
times with a wrong setting. I end up having to call in to get access
restored.


So i'm looking into a VPS.
I'd be paying less and have more resources and control.

Is a VPS within the scope of someone who knows a little or might I find
myself out of my depth.


well they are pretty easy if you can manage a linux machine via the
command line .

Do you just stick cpanel on it and as such i'd be pretty much where I am
now, or is there all sorts of background tinkering that i'm unaware of?


you probably could, if you want to make it insecure as ****

One of the advantages of a VPS is you can use ssh - secure shell.

Happy to help with linux/apache setup, but not cpanel...

--
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early
twenty-first centurys developed world went into hysterical panic over a
globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

Richard Lindzen
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