Rice Blogger

Kids, don’t do this at home!

Actually it was not quite a simple task for me to move one of my semi-dedicated hosting to a VPS hosting in two weeks. But to reduce my web hosting cost, I had to go VPS and it also allow me to learn more. Plus I am working as a application system administrator, how can I fail in setting up my own server right?

The main hurdle was that my server keeps going down initially and that was very painful as I am restarting my server from my Nokia E72 or my iPad 2 or via my Laptop at different times. Everytime it goes down I had problem connecting to my server or it is way too slow. Lucky I manage to get some sypmtoms and the default Apache and MySQL setting is actually not suitable at all for server of this size.

Fine tuning the httpd.conf and my.cnf for more than twenty times and finally it has been stable. Although there are times it is using swap memory but I am reluctant to go any more lower. The normal memory usage is only around 225 MB which I think is great.

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For three years I have been working with the unix environment at my 9 to 5 job, it has help me in many ways as a webmaster as well. I would very much recommend any webmaster to have some basic knowledge in unix/linux command line. I have just bought myself some low end VPS to learn all about unmanage webhosting server.

Holding the root is not something new, also I have successfully setup a Ubuntu LAMP previously, so it should be a piece of cake. Not knowing that currently I am working with a low end VPS, therefore I decided not to install any control panel and phpmyadmin. I have moved my personal dormant domain, adiwong.com to the webhosting. It comes with one IPv4, so typing 46.23.67.254 will bring you directly to my server, woohoo!

It is up with Apache (comes default), MySQL (needed some upgrade) and PHP (installed). So my website is up, will restore the original website in days to come. Next plan is to try doing multi-domain with one IP that is given to me. Some OS hardening as this unmanaged service is quite scary as there is no backup and they will do no security. Will come out with a plan whereby I will schedule some backup so that I could restore them when needed.

I am now desperately looking for VPS or Semi-Dedicated server to host some of my websites because my Malaysia Webhosting company, Exabytes said that my website is taking up too much CPU resources. Their customer support emailed me yesterday. I will need upgrade to a semi-dedicated server or a dedicated server, but it is way above my budget. Previously I am only paying like RM200+ a year to host with them, but now it cost me RM209/month (if I paid in advance for 2 years).

There is some difference in VPS and Semi-Dedicated Server but I am hoping that I could get a VPS at a reasonable price, so that I am able to try out different background processor script, but I have no idea what I can do with it too.

My website is currently only using 25GB of its assigned 50GB bandwidth of shared hosting, but unfortunately CPU ussage is too large. I guess it is pretty impossible for a share hosting to reach 50GB bandwidth. Therefore 50GB of bandwidth would be sufficient with 1GB of diskspace (which I am currently using less than 500mb).

I have no experience and have not much idea about VPS and Semi-Dedicated Hosting. If anyone of you guys have some idea about good VPS or Semi-Dedicated Server at a reasonable price, please let me know. My website is mainly targeted for Malaysia Traffic, therefore, I will hope that it is loading quickly for people here.

Currently in my list of is Shinjiru (loads very quickly for Malaysian but website speed test is quite slow from US) and JaguarPC (loads slower for Malaysia Website but speed test is fast from US). Any other suggestion will be much appreciated.