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Archives for 2008

ThePlanet.com Support Reviewed

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ThePlanet.com Support Reviewed

I do lease a dedicated server at ThePlanet.com and have been with them for almost a year now. I was with Softlayer before (coming from ThePlanet). Anyway – during the last year my server has been running rock solid and seems to be very stable. I can honestly say I have not had many problems at all (knock on wood).

Since I am hosting many websites I need different IP addresses all the time. This time I had the choice between getting new hosting in addition to what I have already (and add more complexity with this step) or utilize what I have more efficiently. I did some research on pricing and options, but could not really decide what I wanted to do. I wanted IP addresses on a different Class C subnet for several reasons. I contacted ThePlanet Support to see what they could offer me. Heck, all I can say is that they took the ticket and “ran with it” really fast. My questions were addressed properly and the time frame this happened in – well, check for yourself (I replaced the actual names with either “Me” for myself or “ThePlanet” for their support members):

Me – Friday May 16th, 2008; 9:18 AM CDT

ThePlanet – Friday May 16th, 2008; 9:30 AM CDT

Me – Friday May 16th, 2008; 9:39 AM CDT

ThePlanet – Friday May 16th, 2008; 9:42 AM CDT

ThePlanet – Friday May 16th, 2008; 9:59 AM CDT

Me – Friday May 16th, 2008; 10:10 AM CDT

ThePlanet – Friday May 16th, 2008; 10:39 AM CDT

So, within 1 hour and 21 minutes the issue was addressed. Communication was detailed and good. The time frame for handling this ticket was excellent. I think this is a great example of how ThePlanet.com handles support issues and assisted me with my request. So, I am a very happy customer right now – knowing that I have chosen a provider I can rely on.

Check out ThePlanet.com.

Update: ThePlanet.com currently has some super specials going on. Check out deals at the Planet.

Script to configure ISCSI settings on VMWare ESX 3.5

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Script to configure ISCSI settings on VMWare ESX 3.5

If you have only a handful of ESX hosts it is not such a big deal to install and configure them by hand, but once your number of ESX hosts exceeds the fingers on one of your hands this becomes a major pain in the rear. Especially when you consider that sometimes rebuilding is the better option than troubleshooting an issue and waiting for VMWare’s support to eventually come back to you. Currently I have it down to rebuild and configure an ESX host in about 20 minutes (plus a few minutes maybe to disconnect the existing storage for safety reasons).
For a set of 4 new ESX hosts we moved from SAN storage to ISCSI storage and that required a different look at the scripted install. We are using the ESX Software ISCSI and are going through 4 different NICs and 4 different controllers for redundancy. This bumps the ISCSI related number of IP addresses up to 32 (4 Ips for the NICs and 4 Ips for the additional service consoles). Configuring this by hand would probably take 15-20 minutes per host. “No, Thank you!”

So, the following post installation script configures the ISCSI related pieces via shell sripting. The entire process now takes about 2.5 minutes per host + one additional reboot. So, if you want to script the ISCSI settings on your host you could use this script for VMWare ESX 3.5 U2 (probably works for any 3.5 flavor). just replace names and IP addresses to match your environment and your are. I have a total of 4 scripts now that I run as a post install script (with some other pieces included, but for here we are only looking at the ISCSI stuff).

Let’s start with creating the virtual Switches for the ISCSI connections. This section creates the switches and assigns physical NICs.

# Create vSwitch2 (ISCSI)
esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch2
# Add physical NICS to vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic4 vSwitch2
# Create vSwitch3 (ISCSI)
esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch3
# Add physical NICS to vSwitch3
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic5 vSwitch3
# Create vSwitch4 (ISCSI)
esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch4
# Add physical NICS to vSwitch4
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic6 vSwitch4
# Create vSwitch3 (ISCSI)
esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch5
# Add physical NICS to vSwitch5
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic7 vSwitch5

Next we want to create the Vkernel Port Groups for the ISCSI

# Create VMKernel Port Group for ISCSI
esxcfg-vswitch -A 10.10.244-A vSwitch2
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 10.10.244.10 -n 255.255.255.128 10.10.244-A
esxcfg-vswitch -A 10.10.244-B vSwitch3
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 10.10.244.140 -n 255.255.255.128 10.10.244-B
esxcfg-vswitch -A 10.10.245-A vSwitch4
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 10.10.245.10 -n 255.255.255.128 10.10.245-A
esxcfg-vswitch -A 10.10.245-B vSwitch5
esxcfg-vmknic -a -i 10.10.245.140 -n 255.255.255.128 10.10.245-B

As the next step we want to add the Service Console to those virtual switches

# Add a Service Console to the vSwitches
esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg="Service Console 10.10.244-A" vSwitch2
esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg="Service Console 10.10.244-B" vSwitch3
esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg="Service Console 10.10.245-A" vSwitch4
esxcfg-vswitch –add-pg="Service Console 10.10.245-B" vSwitch5
esxcfg-vswif -a -i 10.10.244.14 -n 255.255.255.128 -p "Service Console 10.10.244-A" vswif1
esxcfg-vswif -a -i 10.10.244.144 -n 255.255.255.128 -p "Service Console 10.10.244-B" vswif2
esxcfg-vswif -a -i 10.10.245.14 -n 255.255.255.128 -p "Service Console 10.10.245-A" vswif3
esxcfg-vswif -a -i 10.10.245.144 -n 255.255.255.128 -p "Service Console 10.10.245-B" vswif4

Now let’s enable the ISCSI Initiator

# Enable iSCSI Initiator
esxcfg-swiscsi -e

If you want to use the Dynamic Discovery of the ISCSI Controller targets, you will want to add them. The "wait" is needed for each command to complete. This is where you will need 2 minutes off the 2.5 I promised earlier.

# Add ISCSI Targets
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.244.3:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.244.4:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.244.130:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.244.131:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.245.3:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.245.4:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.245.130:3260 vmhba32
wait
vmkiscsi-tool -D -a 10.10.245.131:3260 vmhba32
wait

Good, we’re almost done now. Let’s change the cryptic ISCSI Name to something more readable

# Change ISCSI Host Name
echo "InitiatorName=iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:hostname.mydomain.com" > /etc/initiatorname.vmkiscsi

Excellent. We’re pretty much done. Let’s reboot the server automatically.

# Reboot the server.
reboot

If all went well, your ISCSI configuration is now fully scripted.

Great Time to get a cheap Dedicated Server

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Great Time to get a cheap Dedicate Server

 
We just got word that “The Planet” Launches their September Promotions. Even though it is late in the month, it looks like these offers will run until the end of September. If you are in the market for a new dedicated web server, you should definitely look at ThePlanet.com. This very website (Web Hosting Resource Kit) is hosted at The Planet and we enjoy excellent service.

Here are the offers for this promotion:

 Offer Includes Discounted Dual Xeons, Return of Double Down

 Beginning today, the Pentium4 2.4 – IDE is now priced at $79 per month, down from $109, a savings of 28 percent. The single-processor, single-core server is configured with an 80GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM and 750GB of bandwidth. (Note from WHRKIT: I just checked the website and pricing has not been updated yet. Give it a little bit and try later today (9-24-2008 / 10 AM MDT))

 Check out more details here

 The Planet has also discounted select Dual Xeon servers by more than 50 percent. The Dual Xeon 2.8 – IDE and SCSI are now $125 each per month, down from $259 and $269 per month, respectively. The Dual Xeon 3.2 – SATA and SCSI are now $135 each per month, formerly priced at $299.

 Check out more details here

 Double Down – The Planet’s most popular promotion – returns today, offering customers the choice to double RAM, hard disk space or bandwidth for free on standard server orders.

 Check out more details here

The offers are good through Sept. 30, 2008. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.theplanet.com/dedicated-servers/server-specials.

Read our support review about The Planet here.

 

 About The Planet

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 12 million Web sites worldwide. The Planet Alpha division provides the widest array of self-managed dedicated servers and advanced services backed by 24x7x365 support. The Planet Northstar Managed Hosting division combines a proactive methodology and seasoned IT experts to deliver a fully managed hosting solution. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com/recommends/ThePlanet.php.

 

 

 

Which Firewall Ports are needed to be open on a cPanel/WHM Server

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Which Firewall Ports are needed to be open on a cPanel/WHM Server
 
As a system admin today you have several choices to protect your system when it comes to picking a firewall. While all firewall products are probably a little different in functionality and setup, the one thing they have in common is that theyt provide you with the option open or close specific ports to protect your web server.

cPanel and WHM install and use a number of different services on your system. Many of these services require an outside connection to function properly. Therefore, specific ports in the firewall will need to be opened for these services to function properly. The following list is a starting point you can use to make your system secure. You should carefully review this list and make adjustments to meet your server needs accordingly.

Firewall Ports
20 FTP (Consider SFTP over SSH as is more secure than FTP)
21 FTP (Consider SFTP over SSH as is more secure than FTP)
22 SSH (Consider switching SSH to a different, non-standard port for security reasons)    
25 SMTP (some ISPs block port 25 so that a mail client cannot reach the mail server to send mail)  
26 SMTP (alternate SMTP port option – see notes for port 25)
37 rdate (needed to retrieve date and time information)
43 whois (part of generic DNS features)
53 bind (DNS)
80 http (Apache / Web)  
110 POP3 (Email)
113 ident (authentication)  
143 IMAP (Email)   
443 https (Web / HTTP over SSL)
465 SMTP (TLS/SSL)
873 rsync (remote sync)  
993 (IMAP SSL)
995 (POP3 SSL)    
2083 cPanel (SSL encrypted)
2087 WHM (SSL encrypted)
2089 Licensing (Must be open to contact license server)
2096 Webmail (Horde, Squirrelmail)
3306 MySQL (MySQL remote connections)

This list should be a good starting point to secure your web server. Make sure to test carefully as otherwise server functionality might be at stake. Also make sure not to lock yourself out. I usually have a running SSH session + WHM at the same time, just to be safe.

How to repair all MySQL Databases on a cPanel/WHM Server

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How to repair all MySQL Databases on a cPanel/WHM Server

There can be different reasons why one wants to repair a MySQL database. Database corruption maybe due to a lack of disk space or an unexpected server shutdown that caused the database to go bad. Queries that worked before suddenly stopped working and overall the database is not behaving anymore as expected. This guide shall not be a full database troubleshooting guide, but rather give you a hand on doing a MySQL repair on all databases on a cPanel/WHM server (or any other server running MySQL).

The situation: Your server crashed hard and when it is back up the MySQL side of the house is not working anymore. You do your normal troubleshooting. If all other troubleshooting and verifications are done, you come to the conclusion that you will need to run a repair as the next step. A full database restore from a (hopefully existing) good database backup would be your last choice.

Repairing one MySQL database is fairly easy, but how do you do this for an entire server holding20, 30, 50 or over 100 databases? You will need SSH access as the root user to the server running MySQL. So, log in as the root user and then do the following to repair your MySQL databases:

Option #1

Check if you any need DB repair:
myisamchk –check /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

Then try a ‘safe-recover’ as the first step:
myisamchk –safe-recover /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

If the ‘safe-recover’ does not work, run a full recover:
myisamchk –recover /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

Then use the ‘force’ flag to get things back to normal:
myisamchk –safe-recover –extend-check –force /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

or:
myisamchk –recover –extend-check –force /var/lib/mysql/*/*.MYI

Option #2

Use the mysqlcheck tool to repair your databases.

mysqlcheck –all-databases -r #repair
mysqlcheck –all-databases -a #analyze
mysqlcheck –all-databases -o #optimize

There you have it. By using one of these two options you should be able to repair and recover your databases. Please be advised that you should backup critical databases before running any of the commands above. If something goes wrong you can revert back and try again.

Web Hosting and Disaster Recovery

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Web Hosting and Disaster Recovery

I have already written about different DR (Disaster Recovery) Scenarios in the past. This last weekend an explosion brought down a large portion of an Data Center owned and operated by ThePlanet.com. As a result 9,000 customer servers were down – some for days. During the recovery portion a temporary generator broke – taking down some of those web servers again that were just back up and running. Fortunately no customer server was destroyed during the entire time.

If you are running any kind of online business this would be one of your worst nightmares to experience. How would your business survive with servers down for several days? I am not asking in regards to ThePlanet.com, but as if you would be a customer of ThePlanet.com being affected by this outage. Many people who rent dedicated servers only do backups to a second hard drive on the same server. If the server is down, they have no access to their backups. So, what is a good strategy to avoid disaster? Or what would you do, if the explosion would have destroyed your server and you would not have a backup somewhere else other than on your (now destroyed) secondary hard drive?

The answer is called remote backup. Here is an example of how The Web Hosting Resource Kit backups up websites. We actually do have a server with ThePlanet.com, but in a different data center. We backup all websites and databases to a secondary hard drive. From the secondary hard drive we backup to a SAN location (SAN = storage area network) inside the same data center. We also backup all data to an external storage provider in a different geographical region. You can see that we have several copies of our data in different locations.

Coming back to the beginning, how would one recover from a catastrophic event where an entire data center goes down? There are several options. Scenario #1: In this case some parts of the data center were back online fairly quick and the problem would be solved by itself. Let’s assume we were not that lucky and our server would still be down. Scenario #2: Let’s assume that the SAN was in a different part of the data center and is running. ThePlanet.com has servers available and (depending on the situation) a new server could be purchased (leased to be exact) and the data could have been restored from the SAN. A DNS change would have been needed, but overall data recovery would have been done in an acceptable time of approx. 18-24 hours. Scenario #3: The SAN is down, too and 24 hours later there is no sign of your server coming back online soon. We lease a new server with a different provider somewhere else or in a completely different data center of ThePlanet.com. Once the server is online, we copy our data from the external storage provider back onto the new server and restore our sites. We update the IP addresses for our DNS servers at the domain registry and we are backup and running again (with some minor loss of data depending on when the catastrophic event happened and when the last backup ran).

Conclusion: This is just one way to protect your online business in case disaster strikes. There are other options, but it also always depends on your financial situation how far you want to go. In our case the monthly cost is about $50 – $60 total and includes SAN storage, secondary hard drive and remote backup solution. I consider that cheap even though it is a lot of money, but it lets me sleep at night as well as it allows me to “ride out the storm” when disaster strikes. A great choice for remote backup solutions are Mozy and Box.net

 PS: ThePlanet.com is open for business. Events like this can happen everywhere. I think ThePlanet.com is doing a good job in how they handle the situation. If you need a good dedicated server, I still highly recommend these guys. Check out ThePlanet.com

LiquidWeb Reviewed and Rated

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LiquidWeb Reviewed and Rated

We have written about Liquidweb in the past quite a bit, but there is always a good reason to write about a solid web hosting provider. The year 2008 is now 5 months old and we are close to reaching half-time. Liquidweb has performed very well over the last 5 months. We have not run into any support issues with them and uptime has been excellent. We could almost stop writing this web hosting review here, but think that you deserve more insight and more information about Liquidweb Web Hosting.

As you probably know Liquidweb offers shared web hosting as well as dedicated server web hosting. While we are looking at the shared hosting side of things as well, we mainly concentrate on the affordable dedicated web servers that Liquid Web offers. Liquidweb offers fully managed servers to customers and takes away the administration nightmares many customers have faced at other providers. Usually you lease a cheap dedicated server and either administer it yourself or you outsource support to one of many 3rd party providers (hoping and praying for the best). Many people have been burned that way and that is where the fully managed dedicated solution of Liquidweb really makes headcount in our opinion.

Liquidweb advertises their support as “heroic support” and we believe that this quite justified. Quick support responses and great solutions are provided to customers. We have talked to several people who stopped being worried all night once they finally settled for a dedicated web server with Liquidweb. One administrator we talked to said that Liquidweb helped to him fix problems that have been bugging him for 1.5 at his old web host. His server uptime went from the upper 80s to above 99% on a permanent basis. Another admin consolidated servers from 3 different providers and leased all his hardware from Liquidweb once he had used them for 1 server for about 6 months. The confidence people use talking about Liquidweb is amazing and it also explains the success Liquidweb has as a web host. They run 2 large data centers and are growing. I would not be surprised if they are already looking at a 3rd data center very soon.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a web host that offers very cheap dedicated web servers (and great shared hosting), make sure to test drive Liquidweb. We think they are with no doubt one of the best options out there for you. Click here to see their current Liquidweb specials. Click here to visit the Liquidweb homepage.

Dedicated Server Specials

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Dedicated Server Specials

ThePlanet.com is after you with some Super Server Specials. If you are looking for a new server, this is the time you want to be around. ThePlanet.com offers up to $110 Off their Newest Servers. These are not some old servers that came off lease or so. We’re talking the real deal here. Check out the price list below that they send us and you can decide for yourself.

The Planet is offering their newest web servers at a discounted rate , featuring the latest in Intel Dual Core and Quad Core technology at prices competitors cannot only respond with “awe”. These prices make these dedicated servers more affordable and valuable than what I have seen in quite a while. Whether you need a box for a basic web application, or you’re in the market for a large and powerful database server, they have the dedicated hardware to meet your needs. 

The Planet also introduced the new Dual Xeon 5405 which utilizes 45-nanometer technology and boasts more system cache per processor – 12 MB to be precise.  You get more efficient processing because this technology nearly doubles the density of transistors over the previous 65-nanometer technology and reduces power leaks. This might help to consolidate several servers into one and to reduce your leasing cost significantly.

Take advantage of the low prices now. The Planet notified us that they have a limited supply of servers at these promotional prices. When these servers are gone pricing will go back to normal (still very affordable in my opinion, but when you can save a buck now ….)

Visit ThePlanet.com to check out their current stock.

The Planet Dedicated Servers Website

ThinkHost Exclusive Coupon and Discount – Save $30

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ThinkHost Exclusive Coupon and Discount – Save $30

Many visitors to the Web Hosting Resource Kit already know that the visit is well worth it. We offer great web hosting tutorials and information about web hosting and server management. But we also offer great information about ongoing deals at different web hosts. By now there should be something for every taste I’d say. Lately we have seen a couple of people asking about green web hosting. We followed through on that topic and reviewed one of the best options out there: ThinkHost

ThinkHost is a green web hosting company completely powered by wind and solar energy. The will even plant a tree on your behalf. We decided to see if we can work out an even better deal for visitors of our website. Once approached, ThinkHost was very open to our suggestions and as a result we are able to offer an exclusive (!) coupon code that you cannot find anywhere else on the Internet. This exclusive coupon is only good for people visiting the Web Hosting Resource Kit. Use this coupon to save $30.00 OFF your order at ThinkHost.

Here are some details of how web hosting at ThinkHost looks like. The normal price for their web hosting is $7.95/per month (before coupon is applied).

Unlimited domains – unlimited databases and emails.
 $400 in software, tools, bonuses and so much more!

Main Features:
» 100 gigabytes server space!
» 1000 gigabytes bandwidth!
» Unlimited MySQL databases included!
» Host unlimited domains/sites!
» FTP access
» Powerful file/site manager
» Account control interface
» Secure Telnet (SSH) access
» Unlimited POP3 e-mail accounts
» Full featured Web mail system
» Unlimited autoresponders
» Unlimited email forwarders
» PHP 5 + Perl 5
» FreeBSD Unix/Linux Apache server
» mod_rewrite and other modules
» Full cgi-bin capabilities w/ SSI support
» Free dedicated IP with SSL support*
» Raw logs and detailed traffic reports 
» WAP/WML support
» Ruby on Rails support
» FastCGI support 
» Python support
» Full .htaccess capabilities

Are you ready to check out ThinkHost? Grab the coupon code “WHRKIT2008” and head over to ThinkHost.

ThePlanet.com – Great Promotion ending soon

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ThePlanet.com – Great Promotion ending soon

I just received word that ThePlanet.com is having a huge sale going on that will end very soon. If you are in the market for some high-end servers at a very low price, this might be for you. If you are not familiar with ThePlanet.com – they are one of the biggest web hosting providers on the planet (literally). They have several data centers. This very website is actually hosted on my own server at ThePlanet.com and I am a very happy customer with them myself.

Quote:
Looking to beef up your server? The Planet introduces the first-ever blowout sale on our most powerful servers! Load your cart with our powerful single-processor/single-core servers or our robust multi-processor/multi-core servers, many discounted over 25%! The Planet also offers huge savings on various Xeon and Dual Xeon servers as part its virtual private rack solution.
End Quote

Here is a direct link to the promotions at ThePlanet.com

Of course there are more specials available than just high-end servers. How about the following:

2x RAM, HD, BW for FREE
Double your RAM, Double  your Hard Drive or double your bandwdith Bandwidth for FREE! – Click here

Save setup fees for one of those ready to go servers – Click here
No Setup on Ready To Go
Free Setup on Ready To Go Servers

Are you an existing customer at ThePlanet.com? Save big on system upgrades for your existing server. – Click here
50% off upgrades
50% off Component and Backup Upgrades for Existing Customers

Read our reviews about ThePlanet. See Links below.