Dedicated Server Reviews

We want to make sure everyone out there knows about the first of our upcoming series of WHIR networking events, particularly those of you in Toronto. First off, the registration link is right here. The first event takes place in just a few weeks in Toronto, Ontario on January 29, 2009. These events are going to be modestly sized, so we expect them to fill up fast. Register as soon as you can (right now, for instance) to make sure you have a spot at the event. Our plan with the events is to provide a venue in which you can do business, make contacts, learn about some of the colleagues operating in your local area and have a little fun while youamp;rsquo;re at it. These events are financed by sponsors (in the case of the Toronto event, GigaPark), which means they are free to attend, and that food and drinks will also be free. The Toronto event will be held from 7:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. at Maro, a very nice spot in Liberty Village. Click here for more info on the venue and schedule, including a map. We hope to see you there. Make sure you sign up as soon as possible toamp;nbsp;reserve youramp;nbsp;spot. For info on future WHIR Networking Events, click here.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=qi6t7s.P"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=qi6t7s.P" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=yyVS6W.P"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=yyVS6W.P" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=m0B2Tx.P"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=m0B2Tx.P" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=1uqAMI.p"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=1uqAMI.p" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/thewhir_blogs/~4/504591575" height="1" width="1"/

Many business people are glad to put 2008 in the rear view mirror and begin afresh in 2009. January is also traditionally a strong buying season for those customers who are selecting a new web hosting account. This also translates into a great selling environment for web hosting providers. The buying season spurs companies to compete aggressively for your web hosting dollars, and that leads companies to create special offers and promotions. I searched around The WHIR website and looked over a few promotional emails that I have recently received to create this list of web hosting deals for the New Year. I hope you can find something here that fits your web hosting needs. Hostway offers free setup and extra RAM on dedicated servers - From a well known hosting provider that has been around for many years. You can double the RAM on a dedicated server that starts at $99 and pay no setup fee. See the offer here: http://www.hostway.com/dedicated-servers/promo/tf/index1.html#. Superb Hosting offers 20 percent off on all dedicated servers - Another industry stalwart that has a long history with The WHIR. This offer was recently updated to include all servers and also remove all setup fees. View the offer page here: http://www.superbhosting.net/dedicated-servers/holiday-server-promo-2008.php. SoftLayer doubles bandwidth or doubles RAM on servers - SoftLayer has a number of special offers to select between. Starting at $159, SoftLayer servers will give you your choice of doubling bandwidth or RAM. You can view the special offers here: http://www.softlayer.com/specials.html. SingleHop has extended its holiday specials - SingleHop offers 20 to 35 percent off on its most popular dedicated server models. Both self-managed and managed servers are being discounted. See the complete details here: http://www.singlehop.com/servers/2008-holiday.php. UK VPS provider 34SP.com is offering the first month of VPS for 1 penny - For those looking at UK based hosting, 34SP.com based in Manchester has VPS servers for 1 penny and no setup fee for the first month. Details on the VPS hosting offer are here: http://www.34sp.com/vps-hosting. Apollo Hosting is offering free trials of their hosting accounts - You can try out a VPS or dedicated server for 7 days for no charge. Details are here: http://www.apollohosting.com. Verio offers a free 60 day trial on Microsoft Exchange 2007 hosting - Free setup, free Outlook, free antivirus and spam protection with seats starting at $11.95. View the details here: http://www.verio.com/?utm_campaign=banner_thewhir_sponslink_exchange. Of course you can always check out the web hosting directory here at The WHIR to find other great deals on professional web hosting products and services. Good luck on finding a great offer on the hosting that's right for you this year! This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for The WHIR.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=bnQrN3.P"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=bnQrN3.P" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=OyE7aB.P"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=OyE7aB.P" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=J6YVVe.P"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=J6YVVe.P" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?a=FYtJGG.p"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/thewhir_blogs?i=FYtJGG.p" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/thewhir_blogs/~4/503485098" height="1" width="1"/

Many people may like to backup their dedicated server using fsdump.  The question is which folders should you backup?

In most cases, you should only need to backup your website’s content, databases and e-mails.  Other things like PHP, Apache and some applications don’t need to be backed up because those can be eaisly reinstalled in case of some issue.

I would encourage backing up httpd.conf and any other configuration files that you’ve changed though.  Re-installs might get Apache working if the drive went bad, but it would be a bare bones re-install without the virtual host stuff you might have added.

So that should give you a little more information on backing up your dedicated hosting account.

On a dedicated hosting server, Fuse may be needed.  However, you may need to do a few things before you can get it up and running if you are using CentOS as your operating system of choice.

To have fuse installed, first make sure you have the rpmforge repository installed. If not, refer to:

http://wiki.centos.org/Repositories

Once rpmforge repository is added, install fuse, dkms and dkms-fuse packages using yum (dkms and dkms-fuse install the fuse kernel module).

Now you should be good to go!

I enjoy using CPAN because it installs Perl modules with a simple interface, fetches dependencies, and warns you when things are about to end badly. However, one of my biggest complaints is when it constantly confirms installing dependencies. While this is an annoyance if you have to install a module with many dependencies (or if you’re working with CPAN on a new server), you can tell CPAN to automatically confirm the installation of dependencies.

To do this, simply bring up a CPAN shell:

Run these two commands in the CPAN shell:

Now, exit the CPAN shell, start the CPAN shell, and try to install a module that you need. All dependencies will be automatically confirmed, downloaded and installed.

The first line sets your dependency policy to follow rather than ask (the default). The second line tells CPAN to write the changes to your user’s CPAN configuration file to make them permanent.

A big thanks goes out to Lee Hambley for the fix.

WARNING: There are some occasions where you would not want to install dependencies from CPAN. Examples of these situations are when your operating system’s package manager (yum, up2date, apt-get, aptitude, etc) has installed Perl modules in an alternative location or when you have manually installed modules in a non-standard way. I’m a Red Hat guy, and these problems rarely arise on Red Hat/Fedora systems, but your mileage may vary.