Server advice from seasoned vets

laughingbuddha · Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:24 am

I'm not sure if this really is the place to ask this kind of question, but I wanted to get an honest answer from the people in the know.

I'm going into web hosting as a key part of my buisness, and as such moving from my current WebFusion (Pipex) Plesk 7.3 VPS to a dedicated server.

I bought a second hand server about 4 months back but haven't done anything with it. It's a HP 1U Dual Xeon 2.8GHz, 1GB mem, 2 x 72GB SCSI U320 drives (Mirror RAID). Software wise I was looking to install CentOS 5.1, Plesk 8.3 and atomic it up for security.

I plan to spend allot of time pushing the hosting and will at some point need a new server and expand my services further.

My questions are:-

Is my server man enough for hosting?
How many sites could it coupe with?
What server spec should I consider?
What server back solutions should I use if I should at all?
and finaly
Should I consider a centeral management service like Plesk Expand?

I appreciate your feedback on this one, I use to build servers but they where mostly multi cpu card based industral automation servers with the expection of a set we built for Level 3 Communications for web hosting, but this was in 1998 and things have changed allot since then.

thanks guys,

Matt

Highland · Unread post by **Highland** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:27 am

The only thing I would change on your hardware is to max your RAM out. You can never have too much RAM and 1GB is a tad on the low end.

As far as sites it could handle... really couldn't say. Are they basic HTML sites or PHP? Are they high traffic? I have 130 sites on one server but only 2 or 3 break 5GB/mo.

laughingbuddha · Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:16 pm

I have 31 (last count) on my VPS. Some static html sites, but I do have:-

4 x Joomla sites
1 x SMS Call Back Service in PHP (I developed for a leading Pizza firm in the UK)
2 x WordPress sites
1 x Zen Cart site
1 x PHP/CMS drive site for a pub
And I'm currently developing my dj social networking and promotion site (thedjbook.com).

According to the server stats (not that this means anything), I'm using only 15% of the 12.21GB Swap space. Virtuozzo says my CPU Load average is 0.15, 0.06, 0.01 and I'm only using 828.02MB of the 9.77GB on the VPS......Humm not allot.

How much RAM should I aim for as I'm going to have to get 4 matching sets which should bust the bank a tad.

Do I need to think about full server/disk back up like Acronis True Image for an off server back up?

Should I consider a centeral management service for DNS like Plesk Expand if/when I add another server to the setup? I know I'm a little ahead of myself as I haven't got this first one up yet, but I can't help think ahead.

Thanks for your response on this.

Matt

Highland · Unread post by **Highland** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:22 am

How much RAM should I aim for

I wouldn't break the bank but I would put as much in as you can afford. RAM in Linux is used for caching. The more RAM, the more you can cache. The more you can cache, the faster your server performs. I would suggest no less than 2GB of RAM.

Do I need to think about full server/disk back up like Acronis True Image for an off server back up?

Possibly but if you're using Plesk I find that a full Plesk backup can do the trick. I've not dealt with Acronis, tho, so I'm not sure how easy it is to manage vs another backup system.

Should I consider a centeral management service for DNS like Plesk Expand if/when I add another server to the setup?

I wouldn't bother. Scott actually has a pretty nifty system for free that I find works very well and requires no additional management on your part.
http://www.atomicrocketturtle.com/Jooml ... iew/50/32/

Unread post by **scott** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:42 am

rsync is a great dirt cheap backup system. I use a combination of that, and the plesk backups. We also use rdiff-backup internally, on all our internal servers.

laughingbuddha · Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:52 am

You gentlemen are legends.

Thanks for your advice. I just checked out my server model and it is a HP Proliant DL360 G3 which is allot better then my last Dell PowerEdge 3250 IA64 cpu based server. Due to the cpu's I couldn't run Plesk as they didn't do a version for the IA64 based systems. That sucker went straight back on ebay!

I'm so impressed with the Proliant DL360 that I think my next server will be the same, but brand new this time.

Thanks again guys. I'm going to have a read up on that DNS function, but won't implement it till I get a second server.

Thanks again!

hiddenidentity · Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:33 pm

scott wrote:rsync is a great dirt cheap backup system. I use a combination of that, and the plesk backups. We also use rdiff-backup internally, on all our internal servers.

I second that - I use rsync for everything...

1. Regular cron backups of all sites and mySQL databases to a remote rsync server (rsync.net) (running every three hours - but your only moving the file diff's so low bandwidth).

2. Backups of my development laptop to a remote rsync server, email, code, etc.

3. Deployment of client sites from development to live - much quicker and precise than FTP can ever hope to be since rsync keeps perfect sync between the file systems.

laughingbuddha · Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:11 pm

Ok ok I submit, rsync is great I surrender

I must admit I only back up the current VPS once every few months, which is naughty of me. WebFusion only allow you to have a max of 2 backups of a VPS which sucks, so I haven't attempted to setup a cron yet. To top the fact that it is Plesk 7.5 and I can't update it, they have also removed YUM as well, so I can't even setup ART or update the MySQL + Plesk.

Sooner I get the server running the better.

I will hop over to rsync.net and check it out.

I have used Smart Sync Pro for the past 2 years for all local back ups of my production laptop and Vista Shuttle PC to 2 seperate external drives.

Thanks again guys!

Matt

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:31 pm

I really like BackupPC with the rsync over ssh backend.

laughingbuddha · Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:47 pm

How do you setup cron backups of all sites and MySQL databases to rsync server?

I've never used cron before.

bibliopegist · Unread post by **bibliopegist** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:09 am

without rpm for rsync for my 82x64 fc6 server, I am a "take me by the hand and show me the way" guy.
What are the commands to compile the software?

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:47 am

Ne need to compile anything. yum install rsync should do it. Note that Fedora Core 6 has reached End of Life though.

bibliopegist · Unread post by **bibliopegist** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 8:12 am

rsync is not yummy for my system, so here is what I did:

create

/var/directory

wget http://www.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync-3.0.0.tar.gz

tar -xzvf rsync-3.0.0.tar.gz

cd rsync-3.0.0

./configure

make

yes I know about fc6 eol and believe me I am less than happy about 1and1 selling it to me 2 months ago, as a matter of fact, I am quite p#%@*^ o%@. Why is 1and1 selling obsolete software, it makes no sense at all, it does not cost them more to sell current software and would avoid angering customers. On smarts I would give 1and1 an f minus.

My fault, I should have done my home work, so I'll have to live with it as the contract is for 2 years I believe, and I fear changing system. I have had trouble restoring back ups for the server although I followed instructions carefully. The phpbb on one domain transfered fine and another one refused, until 1and1 and swsoft got involved. Not something I am looking for any time soon.
I think my next server will be a centos and this time I may have to hire help.

But to the matter at hand, now that I have rsync installed, what next?

Unread post by **scott** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 9:15 am

You could re-image that 1and1 box with CentOS5 using this:

wget -q -O - http://www.atomicorp.com/installers/aooi |sh

Select "local" install. For some reason the network installs dont always work there.

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 9:34 am

bibliopegist wrote:rsync is not yummy for my system, so here is what I did:

[snip]

I don't know what's wrong with your yum configuration, but here are some direct links to the Fedora Core 6 rpms:

32-bit: http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/ ... 6.i386.rpm
64-bit: http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/ ... x86_64.rpm

Dag's third party yum repository also has rsync 3.x packages: http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rsync/

But to the matter at hand, now that I have rsync installed, what next?

Read some documentation. man rsync is a start. Another hint: dump databases and backup the dumps instead of backing up live databases.

I like using rdiff-backup better than using plain rsync. But BackupPC really rocks my socks (I'll keep repeating that).