I'm interesting in acquiring a new ded server and am intrigued with the idea of setting it up with virtual dedicated servers. What sort of experience do you all have with this? Is this common? Is this expensive to do? Or are can this be done with free packages?

One reason I want to do this is to isolate the various users on my box. Perhaps this isn't necessary if I were to use Apache 2.x. Is Apache 2 far enough along yet? Or do the virt ded servers provide additional advantages?

Umm, sorry, but as you can see, I'm pretty much ignorant on this subject. Maybe I'm really off base with my above questions. If so, just sort of push me in the right direction.

Thanks.

You want to provide VPS for others (ie resellers) or you just need a VPS instead of a dedicated?


Mac

What I wanted to do was to isolate web hosting customers from my sites. Some mechanisms provide a little bit of security, such as PHP safe mode, but I wanted something more hermetic. I figured the most secure way would be to have my sites in one VDS, and my customers' sites in another VDS. As an option, I could give each customer their own VDS for an additional price if they wanted the added security and features for themselves. However it seems that VDSs are still not so mainstream and it probably won't be easy for me to do.

Its pretty clear from his post that he is looking for ways to provide VPS, since nocster by itself is already a dedicated server.

<edit>
looks like Abu and I were posting at the same time.

You can search the forum archive for VDS or VPS. One that comes to mind is freevsd.org
</edit>

Peter

safest thing too do is to run multiple copies of apache.

If you can pay a lot of money :) you can choose ServerExchange from Ensim. Unser it you can run several Ensim Web Appliances.

Each web appliance has its own dedicated RAM and CPU process time.

If you do not like to pay very much go and see WEBCP. I doubt if it can ceate real VPS on your server but it seems it can create individual unix file structures (virtual) for each website.

There are some products that enable you to run multiple instances of an Operating System (Windows, Linux, ..) but while I do not remember their names I know that they are very expensive.

Mac

Originally posted by foe
safest thing too do is to run multiple copies of apache. I've heard of this but don't know how to do it. Is this something new with Apache 2? Or can this also be done with Apache 1? What are the advantages of doing this? How does it work? What do I need to do?

Thanks.

setup such as /usr/local/apache1 /usr/local/apache2 etc...

start them with /usr/local/apache1/bin/apachectl start

point all the apache's to point @ /usr/local/php dir assuming you installed it there and so on.

then change the httpd.conf in the /usr/local/apache1/conf directory to suit your needs setup virtual hosting which is at the very bottom i think you will need an ip or so for each virtual server.

by the way i have never done this i am merly putting in my opinion on how it should work

hope all goes well mami

zdwebhosting

I am not sure if you can do easily.

By the way you can not bind two programs to a single IP address on port 80 therefore each apachee must be binded to a separate IP addresses.

And something else. This will not isolate users from each other. If a user runs a script that hangs the server all users will be effected.

While on a VPS each user has it's own separate virtual server. If a VPS hangs up another VPSs on that box will continue workinf.

This is the case on a real VPS though. Server Exchange and web Appliance create such a real VPS.

If you need some information see remarkablehosting's comments about their VPS services. I have a VPS there and every VPS owner has root access on his appliance and sites hosted on it.

Regards,
Mac

Originally posted by wmac
And something else. This will not isolate users from each other. If a user runs a script that hangs the server all users will be effected.I'm mostly concerned about users snooping around the system. I would like to isolate them in their own "server" so they can't get into too much trouble.

One of my problems is that I need to run some of my PHP scripts with safe mode OFF, but I want my "customers" to only run scripts with safe mode ON. I discovered that with the newer versions of PHP that each Apache virtual server can have its own safe mode setting for PHP. This partially solves my problem.

The best solution would be to get two dedicated servers, one for my sites and another for my customers. But then I'd eventually have to ask the warden for Internet access. Alas, I don't have the moola for this setup. I can only afford one box.

Thanks everyone for your comments.

i know you need an ip for it thats why i said you did in my post at the bottom
"i think you will need an ip or so for each virtual server."

Zac
Originally posted by wmac
zdwebhosting

I am not sure if you can do easily.

By the way you can not bind two programs to a single IP address on port 80 therefore each apachee must be binded to a separate IP addresses.

And something else. This will not isolate users from each other. If a user runs a script that hangs the server all users will be effected.

While on a VPS each user has it's own separate virtual server. If a VPS hangs up another VPSs on that box will continue workinf.

This is the case on a real VPS though. Server Exchange and web Appliance create such a real VPS.

If you need some information see remarkablehosting's comments about their VPS services. I have a VPS there and every VPS owner has root access on his appliance and sites hosted on it.

Regards,
Mac

I'm always puzzled when I read threads about setting up virtual servers and people who talk about this do not have physical access to their server.

I am the only one who's wondering how you manage the whole thing remotely?

Originally posted by cyansmoker
I'm always puzzled when I read threads about setting up virtual servers and people who talk about this do not have physical access to their server.

I am the only one who's wondering how you manage the whole thing remotely? Most everything can be handled remotely. Everything except the big red switch. And even for this you can find service to remotely access the power and reset switches.

I'm not sure if you're referreing to virtual servers (virtual web servers defined by Apache, IIS, etc), or Virtual Dedicated Servers. But in any case, they're both merely entities that are software defined. The only thing here that's hardware is the actual physical dedicated server. It can be administered remotely either by command line by control panel. The only time you need hands on is if the box just dies and has to be reset, or if the hardware fails and has to be fixed.

Sorry I was refering to virtual dedicated servers.
Some of them, such as UML, require that you patch the kernel, I think...

No, actually, UML is only a userland application. You can just install an RPM, no kernel patching required.

Although, the performance is horrible.

Peter

Well... Maybe this will help :D

http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/miscprj/s_context.hc