Dec 16, 2013

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting guide for newbie (like me)


Choosing your VPS provider
I just managed to get my own website up and running (I’ll host my wedding photos and invitation here woohoo ^^ !). I got a deal at $4/month for VPS hosting with www.reversehosts.com , and signup my own domain at www.name.com
Their offer (@$39.95/annually valid as of 16th Dec 2013)
SDVPS 2048 – (4 shared vCPU cores )
Disk Space: 100 GB
Bandwidth: 2 TB
RAM: 2048 MB
Burst: 3072 MB
IPv4 Addresses: 1
IPv6 Addresses: 16
Port: 100Mbps
Control Panel: SolusVM
Technical Support: Yes
Management: Unmanaged
My advise: DO READ REVIEWS about your VPS before signing up. Some offer too-good-to-be-true deal, which ends up really bad service or interruptible hosting. I read some about this company and so far so good.
Get your first website:
Step 1: Setup domain and websiteUsually your VPS will offer domain registration service as well as VPS hosting. So if you registered with your VPS provider, good, just SSH to your server.

Otherwise you can register your domain elsewhere, for me, I chose www.name.com , they got pretty good prestige and feedback. I knew GoDaddy.com is another choice, it’s up to you. Usually they are comparable and equivalent.
Step 2: point your domain to the IP of your VPS
Each domain registrar offer different way to do it, but most likely there will be a page for your to configure like this:
image
The most important is your A record (to map the domain to the IP of your VPS).
Step 3: SSH to your VPS to test
On Windows, you can use Putty , on Mac / Linux, just use SSH. Using either Putty or SSH you can connect to your VPS IP or your domain name (after step 2, your domain is already mapped to your IP).
At your SSH console, try these command first:
a. To test your VPS performance:
#root@myvps:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && rm -f test

Output:

16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 9.53016 s, 113 MB/s


b. To get more info about your VPS CPU & to test your VPS network bandwidth speed:

#root@myvps:~# wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/nul|bash

Output:

CPU model :  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1270 V2 @ 3.50GHz
Number of cores : 4
CPU frequency :  3500.024 MHz
Total amount of ram : 2048 MB
Total amount of swap : 1024 MB
System uptime :   2:02,
Download speed from CacheFly: 10.8MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 9.77MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 10.6MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 8.73MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, NL:
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 5.27MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 6.90MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 5.63MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 11.0MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 9.38MB/s
I/O speed :  105 MB/s


Step 4: Setup your web server and FTP:

Most of the VPS provider already setup your OS with Apache (well, or lighthttpd). So figure out which web server your have. If not, install Apache in Linux

For me, I have Apache 2, so at SSH console, I’ll test my web folder

root@myvps:/# cd /var/www
root@myvps:/var/www# ls


index.html

Nothing much, my web contains just a file. The next step is to FTP something to our webserver. I’m using FileZilla, and SFTP is so easy.
image

That’s it. Now you can start FTP whatever static content your want to your web.
Next blog will be about how to setup the rest on your VPS (DB server, lighthttpd, XWindows (Gnome/KDE), VNC for remote desktop). Keep reading !

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