Yesterday, the popular tech blog GigaOM posted a story about Ian Drew, executive vice president of marketing at ARM Holdings. ARM is known for its low-powered processors that have cornered the market on smartphones, tablets, and many other devices.

Lately, Drew has become quite popular with the announcement that ARM is bringing their chips to the server market. In an arena that has been dominated by behemoths, Intel and AMD, it might surprise some to even think of an ARM processor in a server. But it is no surprise to technology experts working in web hosting, especially in data centers.

Power costs money. Energy consumption is an environmental and financial expense that many data centers are trying to significantly cut. As Drew explained,

“While the x86 world focused on pure megahertz, we have focused on the megahertz per milliwatt”

ARM-powered servers will introduce boxes that are powerful enough to still perform well on the Web, while also reducing energy consumption and, as a result, cost. Drew says the ARM advancement into the server realm will not happen overnight. They will begin testing next year and expect to produce market-ready low-power server chips within the next three to five years.

Source: GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2010/07/29/arm-server-foray/
Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Much of the discussion about web hosting and servers centers around operating systems, software, and web applications. But one should not overlook hardware, which can make or break website performance. Here are a few hardware tips to make sure you get the most for your money.

1. When possible, opt for the quality, server-grade CPUs (i.e. 64-bit Intel Xeon dual or quad core)

2. The more RAM you have, the better. You can never go wrong by adding memory to your system.

3. Get large, fast hard drives, especially if you plan to run virtual private servers (VPS).

4. For large-scale sites, server redundancy is a good thing, if you can afford it.

5. Multi-core processors improve performance, but correlate the amount of processing power you get with your actual needs. In other words, there is no point in having a 64-core processor for a couple of blogs.

6. Find ways to save power, especially if you have to pay for it. Green servers will save you money and save the environment.

7. Remember that technology is constantly evolving. Plan on needing to upgrade in the future.

Photo Source: Flickr

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Over the course of the past year, we have covered many dedicated server maintenance issues, particularly for servers running Linux. In no particular order, here is a list of some of the more important tips you should remember when taking care of your server.

1. When possible, rely on the distribution updates and repositories. Only add third-party software when absolutely necessary.

2. Periodically run fsck to check the file system.

3. Monitor system and service logs.

4. Disable unused services.

5. Periodically optimize MySQL databases.

6. Monitor CPU and RAM usage.

7. Optimize RAM and swap usage.

8. On larger servers, run the database server on a separate machine, optimize the servers for scalability, and consider using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

Photo Source: Flickr

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Web hosting is a vast subject, and we have covered many areas of the topic over the past year. Here are a few tips to help you keep your server in the best web hosting shape possible.

1. Keep backups of all data, both account storage and databases. If possible, keep the backups on a remote server and schedule regular incremental updates

2. Update the kernel and other software regularly.

3. Use a script installation service to help users install web applications

4. Provide a web-based control panel to help users manage their sites

5. Enforce strong passwords and encourage users to update their passwords regularly

6. Use a monitoring service for the web server, mail server, database server, and any other critical services

7. Maximize disk and memory usage only to the point of ideal performance and do not over exert the server

8. Always announce any changes, updates, reboots, or maintenance, giving users plenty of time adjust.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Managing domains on a dedicated server can involve a lot of maintenance, but it need not be a laborious activity. Here are a few tips to keep your domains working as you would expect.

1. Try to manage as much as possible using your web-based control panel

2. Configure DNS time-to-live and other settings to fit your objectives

3. Assign domains that do not need their own IP addresses to shared IPs

4. Use the DNS CNAME function to point several versions of a domain to the same IP (i.e. domain1.com, domain1.net, domain1.org)

5. Use sub-domains only when necessary. Otherwise, use sub-directories

6. Be sure to delete any hosting entries for domains that you do not intend to renew

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GREP, which stands for global regular expression print, is a sophisticated Linux/Unix tool that can serve many purposes, but one useful purpose on a dedicated server is its ability to search files and directories. With grep you can search within multiple files with relative ease. You can also parse printed screen data to simplify results.

To search a file, just enter “grep” followed by the search term and then the filename. For example, to search the file “httpd.conf” for the word “localhost”, you would type:

grep localhost httpd.conf

To use grep, to simplify printed screen lists, use the following format:

ls -al /usr/bin | grep make

This will list all of the files in the /usr/bin directory, but will only display those files that contain the word “make”. For more in-depth documentation, including use of regular expressions, type “man grep” from the command line.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Previously, I mentioned some of the benefits of using the “history” command to display any or all of your previous commands. On dedicated servers, whether Linux or Unix, that use “sudo” rather than “su” to become root, it can be aggravating when you type a long command string only to realize you forgot to type “sudo.”

One easy solution is to press the up arrow, move over to the beginning of the string, and add sudo. But there is an even easier way to replay the command with root permissions.

Right after you have entered the command missing sudo, just type the following:

sudo !!

This will automatically run the last command in the shell history with whatever you place before it (in this case “sudo”). It is quick, easy, and gets the job done. In fact, you can use “!!” any time you want to repeat the previous command. Log in to your server via SSH and give it a try.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Question: How can I easily perform incremental backups on my dedicated server?

Answer: There are few tasks more important than backing up your server. Because of the nature of computers and especially the nature of the Internet, you are bound to have problems. They may or may not cause data loss, but that is not a chance you want to take.

Rsync is a tool that simply syncs the files in one directory with another. What makes it ideal for backups is that 1) it can archive files and compress them and 2) it can use SSH to perform the backups to remote servers.

To run an rsync backup, just execute the command like this:

rsync -avz ~/public_html username@hostname.com:/home/user/backupfiles/

This will backup, archive, and compress the files found in public_html on your server. Finally, it will send those archives to the remote server in the directory specified. The best part about rsync is that, the next time you perform a backup, it will only backup the files that have changed (i.e. incremental backups), saving you bandwidth and time.

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The default port for most FTP servers is 21, and that is how most system administrators will leave it. The majority of FTP clients are configured to use it, and some will not even ask you to change it unless you dig through the configuration. There are, however, a few situations where you might want to change the FTP port for your dedicated server or VPS.

If you do not have other users accessing your server and want to add a little security by making your FTP port something no one would guess, you can easily change the port in ProFTPD or Vsftpd.

To change the port in ProFTPD, edit the configuration file, /etc/proftpd.conf and change the following line:

Port 21

Replace “21″ with whatever port number you want.

To change the port in Vsftpd, edit /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf and change the line:

listen_port=21

When you are finished, you should restart your FTP server to force the changes to take effect.

There are a few issues you should note. Before changing the port, make sure the port you want to use is available and not used by another service. Also, after you free up port 21, you should close it in your firewall settings and open whatever port you have opened to replace it.

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Question: I have one instance of Apache running on the standard port 80, but I would like to run another on port 8080 for a different web application. Is this possible?

Answer: Yes, it is possible, and it is actually easier than you may think. Rather than creating a new install of Apache, all you have to do is create a virtual host that runs on the alternative port.

The first thing you need to do is open your Apache configuration file. On CentOS it is in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.

You should see the default “Listen” like that looks something like:

Listen 80

This tells Apache to listen to all addresses on port 80. You will want to create virtual hosts and have one of them on port 8080. Many web-based control panels have tools to make it easier. If not, simply make the configuration look like this:

NameVirtualhost 192.168.0.1:80
NameVirtualhost 192.168.0.1:8000


Servername main.otherservername.com
Serveralias otherservername.com www.otherservername.com
DocumentRoot /home/path/documents2/


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