Hello,

I plan to start reselling Unix hosting services soon. What can I do to prepare myself for the technical aspect of providing support to my customers? I have no experience with Unix or managing servers, however, I am very eager to learn.

What do I need to learn? Where should I start?

Thanks for any advice, comments, and recommendations!

Well, the majority of the nitty-gritty should be found on your host's site. Things like path to perl, etc. Some things you are going to have to email your provider and ask, then pass on the information to your client. Not entirely sure what you want to know...

If you are reselling you would need the best support as possible, because from my experience mostly I mostly I don't get questions like perl path or sendmail path. Users are more educated these days.

Actually I tend to disagree. A lot of our support is exactly that, regardless of the 5 meg or so of support documents we have. Simple questions like the path to Perl, and how to upload Frontpage, to how to set up their e-mail. Occasionally we'll get a curly one regarding perl modules or sym-links but for the most part it's hosting101 stuff.

As a reseller you're best option is too become familiar with the environment you're working in. If you can run your own account without skipping a beat most of your support will cover the same areas. Anything that needs to be done by your upstream, take note of for the next time it arises. E-mail your customer with the steps needed, then contact up stream. Keep the customer informed as things happen and all wil be well.

Preferably, learn how the system works, understand Linux (or Windows if you resell on that platform), and try to pre-empt questions before they arise. Your job is always to be one step ahead of your customers needs, regardless of whether you resell, or run the box.

Greg Moore

Thanks for the comments...

However, I'm looking for resources to learn more about maintaining Unix based servers. I need enough knowledge so I can eventually manage a dedicated server. Where's a good place to start reading about Linux and managing dedicated servers?

[Joseph]

Oh, for that....

Build one, install linux and start working on it.

Be sure to go to the bookstore and get some books. Linux Unleashed and Apache Unleashed are 2 of my favorites.

You need to learn more than Linux to run your own stuff. Apache, DNS, Sendmail / POP or Qmail, etc. And that is assumming you are going to colo and have a network administrator. If not, that is another area to learn.

It takes a while, and you will either love it or hate it.

I love it, but do not know nearly all I want to know.

Chris

Originally posted by labzone
Thanks for the comments...

However, I'm looking for resources to learn more about maintaining Unix based servers. I need enough knowledge so I can eventually manage a dedicated server. Where's a good place to start reading about Linux and managing dedicated servers?

[Joseph]

Get the cheapest Unix server around (i saw some around $40-50/monty) for your own site(s) and mess around with it. Read mailing lists and newsgroups. Be prepared to spend at least 13 hours/day in front of a computer :D

Originally posted by PagesUSA
Build one, install linux and start working on it.

Be sure to go to the bookstore and get some books. Linux Unleashed and Apache Unleashed are 2 of my favorites.


That's what I recently did.

Bought 6 Linux books from the local bookstore.

1)Teach Yourself RHL in 24 hours - Sams
2)RHL 7 Weekend Crash Course - IDG
3)Linux - I didn't know you could do that.. -Sybex.
4)Teach Yourself Linux - IDG
5)Master RHL Visually - Maran books - IDG
6)Linux Complete -Sybex

Hehe, I haven't finished reading all the books but I sure did learn a lot how to set up Linux with 5 partitions(root, var,etc, temp, swap, and testing all the RPM. I am buying some used P3 computers/parts to intergrate it for networking and hopefully can master as much as I can during my spare time, so no "happy hours" after work and on weekend for at least a few months .

Wish me luck...... and hope to learn more pratical experience from all you experts at WHT where I check for new threads daily and new things to learn.