Getting Started with Plesk Control Panel

Plesk is the control panel that many web hosts use to provide their clients with both Linux based website hosting and Windows based website hosting. Plesk is complicated control panel, since it incorporates many different features that you are able to use to administer nearly any aspect of your website and website hosting package that you have purchased from your web host. In order for you to be able to make the most of your web hosting package, and to be able to administer your website with ease, you will need to be able to find your way around the Plesk control panel and must know how to use certain features in ways that will be able to benefit you and your website. If you are unable to use Plesk correctly to ensure that you can administer your website correctly, you might find that you are unable to get your website back online in the case that you have changed web hosts, and if you are uploading your website for the first time then you might find that you are unable to setup any aspect of your website such as email accounts and FTP accounts that are needed to allow you to upload your website into your web space. For those who are new to Plesk, this article shall help you setup the most important aspects of your website including FTP accounts to allow you to upload your website to your web space; screenshots have been included as well to make the learning process for Plesk as easy for you as possible, meaning that you should be able to have your website running on your new Plesk website hosting account in no time.

First Logging Into Plesk - The Desktop

When you first log into Plesk, you will be presented with the ‘desktop’ screen which was first introduced into the control panel in version 8, and is a place where you are able to place links to your most used parts of Plesk which means that you can access the sections that are most important to you with ease. The ‘desktop’ screen that you are presented with should look like this:

The ‘desktop’ feature of Plesk also provides you with counters that tell you how much space you have left for use in your web hosting account out of the space that was assigned to your account on sign up. The amount of bandwidth that you have left for use with your website or websites is also shown, which means that you are able to see how long your website will be online until you have to purchase more bandwidth. Other tools are provided so that you are able to manage your package without having to investigate each domain that you have hosted to ensure that you have enough space and bandwidth left for use with your account.

Viewing the Domains That You’re Hosting and Other Domain Features

Like anyone who has a Plesk website hosting account, you will want to be viewing the domains that you have hosted on your hosting account and will want to be able to access them for easy management. At some point, you might also consider adding new domains to your web hosting account so that you can make use of any spare web space or bandwidth that you might have, although you might want to reserve a small amount for other websites since you can easily find that your other websites are running out of bandwidth or space for a reason such as an increased visitor count. In order for you to view domains that you have hosted, and to create new domains, you will want to access the domain section of Plesk which can be found in the left panel of Plesk (circled red):

The domains page in Plesk should provide you with the following options for domains:

• add new domain - this option allows you to add more domains to your Plesk website hosting package so that you can host their email and websites, as well as other relevant services that might be provided by your web host
• domain templates - you can use domain templates as bases for hosting packages for domains which you want to host within your account, since multiple options are provided to allow you to create different templates with different specifications
• summary report - this will show you all the domains that you are hosting and will provide you with data on how much disk space they are using and how much bandwidth they have used for the current month, you will also be able to see data such as the amount of mailboxes each domain has setup
• traffic - this Plesk feature will provide you with a report showing you how much bandwidth each domain that you have hosted is using, as well as the bandwidth cap which has been placed on the domain - a graphical counter for each domain should be displayed as well.

Creating a Domain

You should already be in the domains section of Plesk, meaning that you are in the right place if you want to add your domain to your website hosting package so that you can host the email addresses and website that are related to it. When creating domains within Plesk, you have the option to create one using one of two formats - with the use of a domain template, and without the use of a domain template. If you choose to create a domain using a domain template, then you need to ensure that you have at least one domain template created within your web hosting account; with the use of a domain template, you are creating your domain based on a set of parameters that you specified when creating the template. If you are creating a domain without a template, then you will need to specify the necessary configuration settings in the process of setting up the domain concerned. To enter the domain creation wizard, you will need to select ‘add domain’ from the domains screen (circled red):

You will then be directed to a screen (below) where you will need to enter the following variables regarding your domain:

• domain name (circled red) - it is highly suggested that you check the box labeled ‘WWW’ which precedes the domain name box, since if people try and type in ‘www.yourdomain.com’, they will be unable to reach your website
• domain template (circled green) - if you have your own custom rules set out, then you should choose a template for use with the new domain.

You will then be asked to choose which type of hosting (below) you want your new domain to have, and the different types of hosting come in the following three forms:

• physical hosting (circled red) - this means that the website and domain for the domain will be hosted on the server hard drive physically, and that anything else relating to the domain such as the DNS will also be hosted off the server concerned
• standard forwarding (circled green) - this means that anyone who enters your domain name into their web browser will be automatically redirected to another website of your choice - the URL of the destination website will be displayed within the visitor’s browser address bar
• framed forwarding (circled blue) - this means that anyone who enters your domain will be redirected to another website of your choice, but unlike standard forwarding your domain, the one which is entered is retained within the visitor’s browser address bar.

If you choose the physical hosting option (below), then you will be asked to select and enter a range of parameters related to the domain that you want to host within your Plesk website hosting account. The main parameters which you should set out for your domain include:

• FTP/Microsoft Frontpage password
• amount of disk space to be assigned
• which scripting languages will be supported within the domain’s hosting environment.

If you choose the standard forwarding option (below), then you will be asked to enter the domain (destination URL) which you want your website’s visitors to be sent to; the same is applicable for the framed forwarding option.

After Domain Creation

Once you have completed the necessary steps to create your domain in Plesk, and have assigned it to have either physical hosting, or some type of forwarding (either standard or framed) you will be redirected to the management panel where you will be able to start configuring other aspects of your domain’s hosting if you have chosen for it to have physical hosting, and where you will be able to change the destination URL if you have chosen to use some type of forwarding to forward your website’s visitors to another website of your choice. The management panel for a domain with physical hosting should look like this:

As you can see from the above picture, the management panel allows you to take control of the following main features related to your domains hosting:

• mail - this includes the management of email accounts as well as the link to the webmail panel
• DNS settings - this area allows you to manage the DNS settings that are hosted for your domain
• databases - you can manage the databases for your domain through Plesk, and access the necessary web administration panel (PHPMyAdmin for MySQL databases and ASP.NET enterprise manager for MSSQL databases) to enable you to remotely manage your website’s databases
• certificates - you are given the ability to install SSL certificates within your web space without the need for any intervention from your web host, just as long as you have a dedicated IP address that you are able to use for the certificate
• ODBC data sources - in the case of Windows based Plesk hosting, you are given the option to create DSN connections to databases that you can then integrate into your classic ASP and ASP.NET based web pages and scripts.

Other features provided allow you to control and configure certain settings to enable you to customize your hosting environment; for example you are able to customize certain settings related to the running of the ASP.NET scripting language through the section labeled ‘ASP.NET’. If you want to view the website that you have uploaded for your new domain, but the necessary DNS has still not taken effect then you can use the site preview function to fully interact with the content that you have uploaded into your web space.

Uploading Your Website Into Your Web Space

There are two ways in which you can put the files related to your web space, these are via a simple FTP session and via the file manager that is built into Plesk to allow you to manage the files that you have hosted within your web space.

In order to upload your website via FTP, you will need to an FTP account so that you are able to login to your web space through your chosen FTP program; to create an FTP account, you will need to go to the FTP account manager which is reachable through the hosting management panel (circled in red):

If you have no FTP accounts created for your web space, then you will need to select ‘add new FTP account’ (circled green):

Once you have reached the page where you are able to create new FTP accounts, you will be asked to enter the following data to ensure that an FTP account can be created successfully:

• FTP account name (circled red) - the chosen FTP account name will be the name which is used to login to your FTP space along with the chosen password
• home directory (circled green) - this is the highest level directory that the account being created will have access to, for example if you enter ‘httpdocs’ then the account will only be able to access any folder under the directory ‘httpdocs’
• disk space (circled blue) - you are able to set the amount of disk space that one FTP account is able to use up
• read and write permissions (circled purple) - if you give an account read permissions, then it is able to view the contents of all directories to which it is allowed access, and if you give it write permissions then it is able to paste and upload files into any directories to which it has access.

Once you have create an FTP account for use with your website, you can proceed to accessing your web space via FTP using your chosen FTP explorer with the login details that you provided when creating the FTP account that you are going to use.

You can also upload your websites files using the built in Plesk file manager if you feel that you don’t want to use FTP to transfer the files from your computer to your web space so that they are viewable by your website’s visitors. In order to do this, you will need to select the file manager option from the hosting management screen:

Once you have done that, you should then navigate your way to the directory in which you want to upload the file - one thing to note is that you are unable to upload files into your ‘home’ directory, since this is where all the important directories related to your website reside. Once you have reached your chosen directory, you should choose the ‘add new file’ button located near the top of the screen:

Once you have reached this screen, you will be presented with three upload boxes in which you can click the ‘browse’ button (circled red) to navigate to a file on your computer that you want to upload to your web space. You should ensure that you have the upload radio button checked near the top of the screen (circled green):

Once you have clicked the ‘ok’ button near the bottom of the screen, the chosen file should then proceed to be uploaded.

Adding an Email Account in Plesk Control Panel

Plesk is a control panel which is used by many web hosts to provide their customers with Windows and Linux based hosting solutions so that they can easily serve their websites to their audiences, but at the same time provide their employees and colleagues with email solutions so that they are able to communicate with each other effectively and conveniently without the need for memos or any other type of paper based communications. Email is being increasingly used by people in today’s internet connected society to allow them to communicate almost instantly, and share other things such as computer files without the need for having to be face to face, which without emails people would have to be since there is no other electronic way to transfer computer files almost instantly; this means that you can communicate with someone on the other side of the world to you almost instantly without the need for having to be close to them, although something of this scenario is achievable with phone conversations.

Many companies are increasingly using electronic based communications such as emails to allow them to communicate with customers in many different areas; for example many companies are now providing customer support with the use of emails, and you are now also able to receive invoices for any purchases you have made whether they have been face to face or over the internet to your email address which means that you only have to print the invoice off if you need to, which means that the company from which you have received the invoice is saving in paper because in most cases people would throw the invoice away.

If you do not currently use emails within your company, then you should try and deploy some sort of email solution for your employees as appropriate, since you could improve your sales and customer satisfaction if you are able to provide your customers with email based support and sales advise, since it is one thing which many companies fail to provide; you might also be able to improve your employee production if they are able to communicate with each other more conveniently in a much quick fashion.

Unlike other forms of communication, you are normally able to store emails for as long as you want meaning that you are able to refer back to them in the future if needs be; you can also access them whilst mobile if needed since most new mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs have some sort of built in email application that allows you to download your emails from your email server as well as allowing you the ability to create and send emails whilst on the move, just so long as you have the appropriate mobile signal.

One downside with emails when compared to other forms of communication is that you can be easily targeted by spammers, which means that you will receive many unwanted and useless emails in your email inbox which you might not necessarily have asked for - although these emails might not do any harm, they can be very annoying and their contents can prove very disgusting and in some cases worrying; for example some spam emails request that you provide certain details to someone since there is a cash reward awaiting you - if you provide details then they will most likely be used for identity fraud and the cash reward that you have been promised probably doesn’t even exist - at the end of the day, the same message has probably been sent to thousands or even millions of unsuspecting people.

Spam however can be easily stopped with the use of anti spam programs, such as those that are normally installed on Plesk based web hosting servers; for example SpamAssassin is one of the best known free server side spam solutions and is used by many web hosts to help stop spam on most Windows and Linux based web hosting servers. You can also consider downloading a third party spam application that should scan any emails which you download into your desktop email browser; in some cases these can prove to be more effective than server side ones since most are more specific with the rule sets that they use to catch spam emails.

Adding an Email Account

Creating an email account in the Plesk control panel is a fairly simple process, although there are certain options that you should try and custom configure when setting up the email account in question. As previously mentioned, most web hosts utilizing Plesk allow you to use the SpamAssassin installation on the server on which your website resides to scan your incoming and outgoing email to ensure that none of it is spam; in some cases you are also able to use the server’s anti-virus to scan your incoming emails to ensure that you aren’t receiving any emails that contain malicious threats which you damage your computer and even steal any data that it happens to hold. To start off with, you will need to navigate to the mail control panel for the domain that you want to alter by selecting the mail icon on the domain’s hosting control panel:

You should then reach the following screen:

If you are unable to navigate to the hosting control panel for your domain, then please refer to this article which will discuss how to reach there; once there, you will be able to create and manage email accounts.

Once you have reached the email control panel, you will need to select the ‘Add New Mail Name Option’:

You should then reach a screen where you will be asked to enter the following details to aide in the creation of the email account:

• mail name (circled red) - this is what you want the name of the email address to be, the domain for which you are creating the email account should follow the text box preceded by the ‘@’ email symbol
• password (circled green) - it is important to ensure that you password protect your email account as to make sure that no one is able to gain unauthorized access to your emails
• control panel access (circled blue) - this is something which doesn’t need to be set unless you want to enable the person for which the account has been made for to manage their email account, it is not a factor that affects the running of the email address
• mail box quota (circled purple) - you should only set this if you want to put a limit on the amount of space out of your overall web space that you want to allow an email account to use, if you select unlimited then the account will be able to use up as much web space as you have left.

Once the email account has been created, you should then be taken to the mail control panel where you are able to manage the following features and aspects of the new email account:

• add new alias (circled red) - using this option you can create more aliases for which you want to be used with the email account concerned, any emails sent to an alias will be received under the email account for which the alias has been created
• preferences (circled green) - you can use this option if you want to manage factors such as the actual name of the email account as well as the password that you want to be used to access it
• mailbox (circled blue) - if you disable this option then the email account will no longer have a physical presence on the server which it resides, in this case you could then only use it as forwarding address
• redirect (circled purple) - if you enable this option then you will make any emails that are sent to the email account concerned be redirected to another email address of your choice
• auto-responder (circled pink) - if you enable this option then any emails that are sent to the account concerned will receive an automatic reply which you decide on yourself when enabling the feature.

Congratulations - you have just created and configured your first email account through Plesk!

VPS can be complicated environments that need to be managed effectively to ensure that they are secure against the latest malicious threats which are able to threaten the safety and security of your VPS and the data that it contains. If you do not manage your VPS effectively, then you might find that hackers are gaining access to it and taking advantage by installing malicious programs such as viruses and root kits so that they can then use your VPS as a base to launch attacks on other vulnerable VPS and servers that are openly attackable from the internet.

One of the main steps that most VPS administrators take to ensure that their VPS are easily manageable, as well as safe and secure to ensure that they can’t be compromised is to install root kit hunting software as well as other pieces of anti-virus and normally set them to automatically scan their VPS at least once a day to ensure that their virtual environment doesn’t contain any malicious software - in a commercial environment such as one where you are hosting website design clients, you might want to set your machine to be scanned more than once a day to ensure maximum security for your clients and their data. Other steps that can be easily taken to ensure that you can manage your VPS effectively is to install some sort of control panel to help you manage the different aspects of your VPS; the control panel doesn’t have to be a web hosting related one, such as cPanel, since these are more likely to not be what you want especially if you are wanting to use your VPS for one specific purpose, in this case you should consider a server related control panel such as Webmin. Some server control panels that you should check out include:

• Webmin - http://www.webmin.com/
• HSphere - http://www.psoft.net/hsphere-overview.html

If you are looking to host clients on your VPS, then you should consider a control panel since this will allow you to manage all the people that you have hosted within the environment effectively, in most cases through a web based administration panel that is provided with most hosting control panels; a client control panel is also provided so that your clients can easily manage their hosting account that they have purchased from you. Some web host control panels that you should take a look at include:

• cPanel - http://www.cpanel.net/
• Plesk - http://www.swsoft.com/plesk/

cPanel VPS Hosting

cPanel has released a new version of its control panel product for use specifically on VPS servers, since it has been specially optimized to use a lower amount of memory when it is idle and not being used. cPanel for VPS contains the same features as the standard cPanel, but has certain parts of it tweaked to ensure that the amount of memory that it uses at idle time is reduced by up to 60% in some situations. For web masters and web hosts who are hosting their clients on cPanel based VPS, this will allow them to host more domains per VPS since there will be more memory that will be available for websites which are hosted on VPS, which means that web hosts can cash in on this extra memory so that they can host more customers per VPS. For example, testing with a VPS that has 500MB RAM has shown that with the standard installation of cPanel, the server only has 248MB RAM free at any given time, even when its idle, which means that cPanel is using up 252MB of RAM when it isn’t even being used by anyone; cPanel for VPS was then installed on this VPS to see what the change would be, and it was found that when idle, cPanel for VPS using up a maximum of 90MB RAM leaving at least 495MB of RAM free for use by other programs.

cPanel has managed to optimize its control panel to ensure lower memory usage by tweaking the Apache instance that is installed along with it, which is what serves the websites that are hosted on the VPS to the people who are viewing them; Apache is known to be a bit of a memory hogger on Linux machines, which means that with some tweaking it is able to run at the same speed, but without using so many resources - other programs that are installed alongside the cPanel control panel have also been optimized to reduce the amount of memory which they use. Since the amount of memory used has been reduced, it enables web hosts to provide clients with a more economic hosting solution, since they don’t have to have as many physical machines since they can use VPS which means that they only need to have one physical machine for a certain amount of VPS. cPanel for VPS is still in its EDGE build, which means that there isn’t a stable release of it available for wide use at this moment in time; for now, you should only test cPanel for VPS and should stick with a regular cPanel install in a live environment since the fact that it isn’t stable yet could mean that it would affect the performance of your VPS.

E-Commerce Shopping Cart Hosting

One of the main things which many people and businesses want to add to their websites these days are shops so that they are able to sell their products or services via the internet; this is because that many are discovering what a powerful selling tool the internet can be for them, thus meaning that they want to sell their products via the internet as well just face to face or through their retail store since it gives them an extra source of income. The number of online shops has started to grow over the last few years since adding one to your website has become much easier than it previously was since there are now methods which allow you to add a shop to your website yourself which mean that you don’t have to pay a website designer or developer to install the application for you.

By adding an online shop or e-commerce store to your website, you are giving yourself an extra source of income since it means that you are able to sell the products which you might otherwise sell through your retail store or face to face directly to be public, meaning that you are also able to grab yourself another audience which might otherwise not be aware of your brand and the products that you sell. By optimizing your website and online shop with the use of previous articles within this blog, you are able to make sure that visitors who are looking for a product or service which you happen to sell or provide find your website and online shop through the use of a keyword search on a search engine that your website happens to be listed; this means that you are able to get customers which you might not otherwise get if you were to not have an online shop, and were to sell only through your retail store if you have one, or just face to face if that is the sales method which you use.

When setting up an online shop for your website, the main decision that you will come across is choosing the application that you want to base your online shop on; although this decision might sound like a basic one, it can be a fairly hard one to make because there are many different shop applications that might meet your needs in some areas, but not in others - you might also have limitations that you will have to take into consideration when choosing a shop application, although most are designed to function in range of different environments.

The main items that you will take into consideration when choosing a shop application for your website will include how many products or services you are able to list within your chosen shop application, whether it is commercial or open source and how it compares to other shop applications that are available; these features are important to consider since you don’t want to keep on adding new products or services to your online shop and then find that you aren’t able to add any more since you have reached the limit in that area, you also want to check whether the application which you want to use is open source or commercial - and if it is commercial you should consider the cost of it, and finally you should always see how your chosen shop application compares to other both commercial and open source applications since you might want to purchase a commercial application since it meets the needs of you or your business but there might be an open source application which is just what you want and suits you or your business’s needs more.

You should also consider whether or not your chosen shop application makes SEO friendly URLs with the use of a URL rewriting program out of your product listings to ensure that search engines see your product pages as search engine friendly, thus increasing the amount of visitors that search engines deliver to your website; you should also consider whether or not your chosen application has a search facility to ensure that your customers can easily search through your products or services if you happen to have many listed - this also means that your visitors and customers will be able to find their way around your online shop hassle free.

SEO Friendliness

One major feature that you should consider within a shop application is how search engine friendly it is, since if your chosen shop application isn’t that search engine friendly then search engines might not take kindly to it thus giving up on indexing your shop at a certain point, or might end up lowering the score that they gave you after your first crawl; if you happen to choose a search engine friendly shop application then you will find that search engines will take more of a liking to your online shop, meaning that they will give you a higher score thus giving your website and online shop more visitors which might even mean that you receive more sales through your shop in turn increasing the amount of money which you are able to earn from your shop.

The most basic SEO function which most shop applications under take is the generating of search engine friendly URLs for categories and products which are keyword rich to ensure that they are related to the content of the page that they have been generated for - the page titles of the pages for categories and products are also keyword rich as well since it gives visitors an idea of what they are about to view without having to wait for the entire page to load; both of these basic SEO methods are favoured by search engines since they allow search engines to match your website to more keyword searches that are made through them, meaning that search engines are more likely to place your shop higher up in the search engine results for certain keyword searches that are made by people who are looking for a shop or website which happens to be along the same lines as yours.

You personally should also try and ensure that the descriptions for your products are as keyword rich as possible, since search engines will also favour this since as is the case with keyword rich title tags and URLs, because of the fact that they can then relate them with more keyword searches thus providing your website and shop with a higher rank in the results page as well as an increased search engines score; this means that ensuring that your new online shop is search engine friendly is something which you have to make sure of as well, meaning that you can’t rely on the built in functions of the shop systems that you have chosen to use.

Choosing the Application that You are Going to Use

Choosing a shop application which you are going to use for your website can be a hard decision to make, since there are many different factors that you should take into consideration based on your requirements within this type of application; you should always ensure that you make your final decision based on information that you have read on your chosen application - this is especially important if you are planning to purchase a commercial application since you might not be able to get a refund if you purchase the application but then realize that it isn’t what you want.

The main factor which you should consider when choosing a shop application is whether it will run within your hosting environment or not - this is especially important since you don’t want to purchase an application but then find that it won’t run within your hosting environment, in this case you will probably not be able to get your money back; this means that you should always start out by using open source shopping applications, since you are then able to gain the knowledge of the hosting environment in which your hosting account resides, meaning that you know what kind of specifications to look out for when you look to upgrade to a commercial shop application in the future - this also means that if you decide to use an application that isn’t compatible with your hosting environment, you won’t loose any money since you haven’t paid anything for the right to use the application since it is open source meaning that anyone is able to use it for free.

You should look around at the different applications that are available for you to use as a shop on your website, since some may meet your needs in certain areas whilst others do in the areas which aren’t covered by some shop applications; you should always look around at both commercial and open source applications, meaning that you shouldn’t dismiss open source applications if you have the money to spend on a commercial application, and shouldn’t dismiss commercial applications if you want to use an open source applications but do have the necessary funds to cover the cost of a commercial application.

Conclusion

In conclusion, with the use of SEO friendly shop application, you will be able to bring more visitors to your main website as well - but you can’t just rely on the application itself to be SEO friendly, since it is up to you to make sure that your product and category descriptions are keyword rich since it will give search engines something else to favour in your website.

You should also be aware of the many factors that you should take on board when considering a shop application that you want to use on your website - the most important factor being whether you want to pay for the application that you are going to use, or whether you just want to use a free one which you can easily setup; this is because you don’t want to purchase a shop application for your website but then find that it doesn’t suit your needs, or find an open source application which happens to meet your requirements more than the commercial application does - however, one thing to note in this situation would be that you will not be able to get a refund on the license that you have purchased for the commercial application that you were using.

You should also make sure that before you purchase any application, or before you try and install any shop application within your hosting space, that the application which you want to use is actually usable within your hosting environment - whether you’re on a shared, VPS or dedicated hosting package; this is because if you want to use a commercial application but find that it doesn’t work, you won’t be able to get your money back and you could cause yourself a lot of frustration if you don’t use the right type of package.

Limitations of a VPS

Although VPS hosting might seem like the perfect solution for you if you want the ability to have and administrate your own dedicated server, but don’t have the necessary funds to pay for a dedicated server and that your budget will not stretch much further than what a top level shared website hosting package; however, VPS hosting does have limitations which differentiates them from dedicated servers, and if you don’t take the necessary steps to ensure that your VPS doesn’t reach reach these limitations you could end up having your VPS temporarily shut down because its affecting the performance of other VPS which are hosted on the same node as you. In the case that the software which your hosting provider uses to virtualize their servers to ensure that they are able to host multiple VPS doesn’t automatically close your VPS down for the over usage, you might find that processes which are being run within your VPS are being killed off instead; in most cases the process within your VPS which is the resource hogger will be shut down, meaning that the rest of your VPS will carry on running as normal.

Many people go for VPS since they seem to think that they are just a virtual version of a regular dedicated server meaning that there aren’t any virtual limitations - in the end these people often find that the applications which they want to host on their VPS server are too resource intensive meaning that the programs which are being used to run them, for example in the case of a website this would be Apache, is being killed off to ensure that the performance of other VPS servers which are hosted on the same node is not being affected. If a VPS starts to take up too much of a certain resource, and exceeds the limitations without having any processes killed off or being shut down itself, then it can easily take down the host node on which it resides meaning that it can easily take down the rest of the VPS that are hosted on the same node as it; something like this would result in the suspension of the VPS concerned, and might even lead to the hosting company asking the customer concerned to leave or terminating their contract since otherwise it could leave the hosting company with more unhappy customers than happy ones, and nearly any business would rather have pleased and satisfied customers rather than ones which are threatening to leave since they are not happy with the level of uptime that they have received - in other words the hosting company concerned would rather keep 10 customers and lose 1 rather than keep 1 customer and lose, the 1 customer being the one who has taken down the hosting node, and the 10 customers being the others who are hosted on the same node as him.

In some cases, hosting companies restrict you as to what software you are allowed to install your VPS, since some programs are able to interfere with the performance of other VPS servers who are hosted on the same node as the one on which the program concerned is installed; in most cases, this is only because of the virtualization program which your web host uses to ensure that they can easily split a physical server up into many VPS, since most web hosts do allow you to install any programs of your choice on your VPS meaning that you can use it for almost anything that you want to - if you do happen to be with a web host that does limit you on the programs that you are allowed to install on your VPS server, then you should move to another web host that does allow you to install any programs that you want to within your VPS hosting environment.

The fact that some resources of VPS are limited means that they are somewhat different to a dedicated server, not only in the way that they run but in the way that they manage their resources as well; for example certain commands on Linux VPS return the details wanted of the actual host node, and not those of the VPS server meaning that you might have to learn some VPS specific commands to ensure that you can get the information that you need from your VPS.

CPU Sharing

One of the main resources of the host node which has to be shared amongst all the VPS which the host nodes is the CPU - this is what the VPS will use to run their processes effectively; the one thing with the CPU of a host node to note is that in most cases it isn’t even shared between all the VPS, meaning that any VPS on the node can use as much of it as it wants - however, the virtualization software used by the hosting company will in most cases shut down a VPS or kill a hogging process after it has started to use a certain amount of the CPU and is starting to affect the performance of other VPS that are hosted on the same node. Every program which is hosted on any VPS will be using a small amount of the host nodes CPU, or some of the CPU which has been individually assigned to your VPS for your use only, some programs and applications use more CPU than others; CPU intensive applications tend to be ones which are used and accessed more regularly, and you will find applications which have to do a lot of processing such as the Apache web server can easily become CPU intensive applications.

At the end of the day, it is your responsibility to ensure that programs and applications which you have installed within your VPS are not taking up too much CPU, since if you use too much of the host node’s CPU then your VPS will most likely be automatically shut down, and if too much of the CPU which has been individually assigned to your VPS gets used then you will find that your CPU will just automatically crash without any prior warning. Depending on the virtualization software which your web host uses, you will find that you either have to share the main CPU of the host node with the other VPS servers that are hosted on the same server as you, or if you are on a higher end server or VPS hosting package then you might find that you have a certain amount of the CPU assigned directly to your VPS meaning that it will always be available for your use; the second CPU scenario is perfect for you if you are planning to hosts CPU intensive applications within your VPS since it means that you are able to do so without interrupting the performance of other VPS which are hosted on the same server as you - the first scenario is fine for you if you are planning to just use your VPS for testing applications of some sort, since it means that you can easily get a large amount of CPU for a second or so when you might need it.

If you happen to be on a VPS hosting package in the scenario where the CPU is not evenly split between all the VPS hosted on the node and that all the hosted VPS can use as much of it as they want (unless they happen to get shut down after a certain amount of usage) then you might find that the node on which you are hosted can be easily bought down by either your VPS or the others which are hosted on the same server as you; this is because if a VPS on the same node as you or your VPS start to use CPU intensive applications which are driving the CPU crazy, you will find that the server will just crash after a certain amount of time because there is just no CPU left for it to use. If you find that the node on which you are hosted is starting to go down at regular intervals because a certain VPS on the same node has started to use too much CPU, then you should consider asking your host to move you to another VPS node to ensure that you are no longer affected, but if you want ultimate assurance that you won’t be affected again then you should consider moving to another web host who provides a VPS hosting package similar to the one which you are currently on.

RAM

In most cases, RAM is individually assigned to each VPS hosted on a node - this RAM is known as guaranteed RAM since it will always be available for use by your VPS, and not by any other VPS which may be hosted on the same node as you; most VPS packages also come with ‘burst’ RAM, which is additional RAM which your VPS can use for a certain amount of time if it happens to go over its guaranteed RAM limit - burst RAM is available for use by all the VPS which are hosted on the same node as you, meaning that there might not be burst RAM available for you when you need it. RAM is used by programs which are hosted within VPS environments to temporarily store data to allow the program concerned to operate as quickly and as efficiently as possible - as it goes, the more RAM that you have available for your VPS, the more programs that you are able to run at one time; this means that if you want to host many different applications on the same VPS, then you should consider a higher level package since this will mean that you can easily achieve this without affecting the performance of the other VPS which are hosted on the same node as yours is, but you should note that if you do happen to need to reach into your burst RAM at times then you should consider purchasing a second VPS so that you can take a certain for certain uses since you might find your VPS crashing if it happens to run out of RAM.

In some cases, web hosts allow you to purchase more guaranteed RAM that you can then use for your VPS server since most hosting nodes have a lot of spare RAM both for use as burstable RAM and so that the RAM of VPS currently hosted can be easily expanded - for example most modern hosting nodes have between 12 and 32GB of RAM, meaning that there is more than enough extra RAM for you to purchase; this means that you won’t have to purchase an extra VPS for those extra services, which can save you a lot of money - one thing to note is that web hosts which don’t allow you to increase your share in particular resources will allow you to upgrade your existing VPS to the next highest plan - in some cases this can be cheaper than buying extra of certain resources and also means that you will have increased the amount that you have of other resources.

The only time when you will need extra RAM is when you want to increase the usage of your VPS, or if you are looking to install other programs on it so that you can make more use of it; this is because more use will mean that there are more programs that will need to store there data temporarily somewhere, which means that you will have to beef up the amount of RAM which you have - you will also notice a general performance increase if you beef up the amount of RAM which you have, since existing applications will have more space in which they can store their temporary date, and your VPS will happily run along without the need for the use of burst RAM. Like many resources, RAM is a limited resource because the amount that you are able to assign to your VPS is limited by the amount which is physically installed within the hosting node chassis, as well as by the amount which has been taken up by the other VPS which are hosted on the same VPS hosting node as you; this means that you should be careful as to what programs you use on your VPS since if you use too RAM intensive applications then you might just find your VPS crashing every so often, which is not something that you want or need.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when compared to dedicated servers, the resources that VPS servers come with are very limited meaning that you should be careful as to which programs and applications you install on your VPS server; this is because if you install applications which are too resource intensive, you will find that your VPS will crash or will be automatically shut down by the VPS daemon software to ensure that your VPS does not start to affect the performance of other VPS which are hosted on the same node as you are.

CPU and RAM are precious resources when it comes to VPS hosting since they are limited ones which means that you should be very careful as to how you use them, since CPU is one resource which you can’t expand on unless you replace it physically within the host node, and RAM is a resource which is limited by the physical amount which your web host has installed within the host node; this means that if you do need to increase your CPU share or the amount of RAM that you have then you may be asked to upgrade your VPS hosting package or to even move to a dedicated server since your requests for resources are becoming unmeetable because of the other VPS which are hosting on the same server.

Another limited resource assigned to VPS servers is bandwidth - bandwidth is the amount of data that can pass between your website or server and the client computers which happen to visit it, normally during an assigned time frame which in most cases is a month, although this can vary to a year in some cases; the price of bandwidth is one which is ever increasing meaning that you should try and keep down on the amount of it that you use - this can be helped by using low graphics web pages and if you don’t need that many people to, then try and minimize the number of visitors which you receive to your website is you don’t have the money to fork out on extra bandwidth if you happen to go over your limit.