To enable support for our new VPS.net desktop you just need to go to https://control.vps.net/profile and click “Generate” next to the API key

Once generated goto https://desktop.vps.net and put in your VPS.net username + password. You will be then put into the new VPS.net desktop!

As always have fun and as always if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us

                          

Geo hosting is the latest revolutionary product released from VPS.NET. It’s your data, being processed and hosted in multiple locations. Based off our own market research, at this time, VPS.NET is the only hosting provider to have a product like this. It’s pretty cool – so cool that Ditlev Bredahl, a close friend of VPS.NET’s, and top 100 technology influencer in Europe, called it “the holy grail of hosting.”

What does it do that is so revolutionary? Prior to VPS.NET’s Geo Hosting product, when someone wanted to host their site in multiple locations they needed to use a CDN, which VPS.NET also sells. However, this CDN was only able to distribute static files, such as javascript files, CSS files and images. It wasn’t able to process any data like MySQL or PHP. This meant that the processing power was limited, but also left you susceptible to downtime, especially for clients not using a cloud based web host.

Geo Hosting has truly made cloud hosting what it should be. With Geo Hosting your data is stored, distributed and processed in multiple locations, meaning your risk of failure is spread across up to 6 different locations. So in order for your site to go down, all 6 locations would have to go down. How often have you ever seen 6 different data centers go down at once? If ever? What Geo Hosting has done is taken cloud hosting reliability another step closer to 100% availability, while also further increasing the scaling capabilities.

Geo Hosting is currently in trial meaning it is available FREE of charge for the first month to customers. There are of course no commitments, and we hope everyone give’s it a shot – your visitors will definitely appreciate it!

                          

One of the newest tools we’ve started using to increase the speed of sites is a drop in MySQL replacement, Percona Server. Percona’s been around quite awhile, and like us, they’re also obsessed with speed. They’ve developed a drop in replacement that is compatible with MySQL databases and also cPanel servers.

We’ve found that while MySQL works amazingly well for most sites, sites that see over 20-30 visitors online at a time, Percona accels. Performance is more consistent, while also being sometimes upwards of 30-40% faster. Percona has published benchmarks themselves, which we’ve found to be inline with our own tests. Enough about it the server though, lets get to installing it!

Since almost all of our users will already have MySQL installed, we’ll start with removing it first. We can remove the MySQL service, without effecting the existing databases. Our first step will be to stop the running services to avoid corruption:

/etc/init.d/httpd stop ; /etc/init.d/exim stop ; /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd stop ; /etc/init.d/cpanel stop ; /etc/init.d/crond stop ; /etc/init.d/mysql stop ; /etc/init.d/exim stop ;

Next we’ll want to find out what MySQL packages are currently installed. We can do that by running the following command:

yum list installed | grep -i mysql

In almost all circumstances, we’ll see something like the following:

root@server1 [/]# yum list installed | grep -i mysql

MySQL-bench.x86_64                       5.0.92-0.glibc23              installed
MySQL-client.x86_64                      5.0.92-0.glibc23              installed
MySQL-devel.x86_64                       5.0.92-0.glibc23              installed
MySQL-server.x86_64                      5.0.92-0.glibc23              installed
MySQL-shared.x86_64                      5.0.92-0.glibc23              installed

We can then remove the packages, as they’ll no longer be necessary. As a note, when we remove these packages the databases will still be intact, however, when performing any service maintenance, it is always wise to backup all data. We can remove the packages by running the following command:

yum remove MySQL*

We can now work towards installing Percona. First we’ll need to add the repository:

rpm -Uvh http://www.percona.com/downloads/percona-release/percona-release-0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

We can now install the RPMs by running the following command:

yum install Percona-Server-client-51 Percona-Server-server-51

After successful installation, it is safe to restart all services.

/etc/init.d/httpd start ; /etc/init.d/exim start ; /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd start ; /etc/init.d/cpanel start ;/etc/init.d/crond start ; /etc/init.d/mysql start ; /etc/init.d/exim start

Some users may need to recompile PHP in order for dynamic pages to work properly. cPanel users will want to login to WHM, and go to the Update preferences. From there, simply choose for cPanel to never update MySQL. It should be noted that you will be responsible for maintaining Percona in the future, and will be required to manually update it.

Enjoy the increased performance, and we’ll continue to do what we can to make sure your website is online and fast. If you’re using Percona, you may want to look into using LiteSpeed, which is another way to increase the speed and stability of your site, and is available from VPS.NET for $14 a month.

                          

Of course not. I was using various free web hosting providers – Spree, Tripod, Angelfire, Dencity… etc. You name a free web hosting provider, and I probably used them. Occasionally I did well, and made a site that was worth something, and was able to sell it to someone else for a few days worth of lunch money. Sometimes I turned around and bought a new site that interested me. Regardless, one of the first things I learned was that your hosting provider may be the very single most important part of your website (besides the topic of course). Features, flexibility, and reliability are all three that were important to me back then, and are still the most commonly asked questions we get in the pre-sales queue at VPS.NET.

A Cloud VPS from VPS.NET is able to accomplish all these, while also having several other value addons, like the scalable technology, which when combined with the high availability aspect of the cloud, is something every site could certainly benefit from.

Features
The ease of performing certain tasks ranks high for a lot of users. Having to deal with a hassle is never fun; we’ve attempt to bring in a number of outside features that’ll add a tremendous amount of value for our clients. We offer free billing programs in Blesta and HostBill, free CodeBase accounts and free SSL certificates. Along with that, you can purchase Server Density licenses, a number of control panel licenses (cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk), along with cool tools like CloudLinux and KSplice.

Flexibility
With any VPS, you have the flexibility of a dedicated server, being able to install any services or features that you need. You’re able to run your Cloud VPS as necessary for your site. Not only can you install the necessary services, but unlike a dedicated server, you have the flexibility to pay for only the resources you need. With the ability to scale your resources up and down on demand, you can give your site as many resources as it needs at the time. This will not only save you money, but also, if your site ends up receiving a significant amount of traffic, avoid a lot of downtime.

Reliability
Our Cloud VPS product is built from the ground up for reliability. The way we’re able to offer this is through the auto-healing aspect the cloud is able to offer. If at any time the server hosting your VPS experiences a problem, it is migrated over to a new server. This benefits you in comparison to a dedicated server, as you would wait for the server to at least be rebooted, if you’re lucky don’t have to wait for a hardware replacement . We also utilize redundant SANs (storage area network), which means your data is stored across multiple storage arrays. If one of the SANs experiences a problem, the other SAN will take over the work, and your website will carry on with no problem.

                          

This cloud is based on the same technology as our London H & I cloud, which features the OnApp software on the back end, which is what powers and manages our self-healing cloud infrastructure. The cloud also features the same 48 drive redundant SAN setup; this setup is one of VPS.NET’s advantages over competing cloud hosting companies. The way the system works is there are two 48 drive SANs, each in a RAID 10 array with multipath I/O. What this means is data is constantly going in and out of both SAN units as they’re both in an active/active state, so essentially at all times there are 96 active hard drives at your disposal.

Our Amsterdam location is located in the EvoSwitch datacenter, which is in Haarlem, Netherlands, which is just west of Amsterdam.  The datacenter features 431,000 square feet of datacenter space, of which VPS.NET has a cage. The datacenter has all the necessities you’d expect, like a A+B power grids, and VESDA fire protection. The datacenter is also completely carbon neutral, and has signed on as part of the MJA, which aims to cut power consumption by 30% over 15 years.

                          

Before we get started, I’ll explain the advantages of using the VPS.NET DNS servers compared to hosting them locally on your machine.

1.) Redundancy – Multiple servers in 13 different cities.
2.) Faster – The server located in the nearest city always responds, decreasing DNS resolution time.
3.) DDOS protected – Your nameservers will be protected from DDOS attacks targetted at taking down your nameservers.
4.) Resource consumption – Your server is no longer handling DNS requests, so there’s more resources to use in other areas.

For our demonstration server, I’m simply running CentOS 5.5 with cPanel/WHM installed. Nothing special.

First step is to login to SSH using the root password provided. Then we can download the cPanel DNS Plugin.

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.vps.net/plugins/vps-net-dns-1.2.2.tgz
tar -xvzf vps-net-dns-1.2.2.tgz
cd vps-net-dns-1.2.2
sh install.sh

That’s all that is necessary to do via command line. The rest of the configuration can be done through cPanel/WHM. Since this is a fresh cPanel server, I’ll also be going through the initial Nameserver/DNS configuration section of cPanel.

The first step of the cPanel/WHM configuration is to setup your resolvers. This is not absolutely necessary, but it’s definitely recommended. We also recommend using the Google DNS servers as resolvers. They’re free, fast and extremely reliable.

Next we can select the nameserver service to use. Since our DNS will be hosted on a completely different server, we can select the disabled option.

Next, input the nameservers you are wishing to use for your domains.

In the next section, cPanel/WHM will ask you if you want to create the A entries for your nameservers and host name. It is not necessary to do it now, so you can skip the section. We will be doing it manually later through the manage my DNS section in the VPS.NET control panel. Upon hitting next, you will be finished with the DNS configuration of your server, however we still need to configure the DNS module.

To configure the DNS plugins, load WHM and scroll to the bottom to the plugins section and then choose the VPS.NET DNS Module. Once loaded, we need to fill the information required to connect to the API. Your VPS.NET username will be the email address you login to the VPS.NET control panel with, and then API key can be generated in the plugin section of the VPS.NET control panel.

After configuration, you will see the DNS Plugin sync up with the VPS.NET DNS servers. The final step is to manually create the A entries for the nameservers and the hostname.

For the nameservers you will want to use the IP address 67.228.254.4 for your primary name server and 67.228.255.5 as your secondary nameserver.

                          

Kendall Weaver – Peppermint OS is a Linux distribution derived from Lubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3 using integrated web applications and some system tools sourced from Linux Mint.  Probably the biggest distinguishing factor regarding Peppermint is that, unlike many other web/cloud centric operating systems, we’re trying hard to keep a familiar desktop experience with the shallowest possible learning curve, all while concentrating on speed and stability as our foremost targets.  One thing we did not want to do was make it difficult for users to install and use local applications.

We see Peppermint as a form of hybrid that offers many of the features of the new “cloud” operating systems coming forth, but without sacrificing the familiarity and extensibility of more traditional “desktop” operating systems.  Modern computer users, both at work and at play, are now using a combination of both local and web applications in order to get things done and we’re wanting to give the world a system that doesn’t punish the user for choosing one over the other.

Personally, I envision Peppermint being used in any situation where someone depends on a combination of local and web applications in order to be productive.  We’ve already received great praise for our integration of web applications using Mozilla Prism and in the future I see more people demanding this sort of functionality in their operating systems.

:: How long as the Peppermint Linux project been underway?

Kendall Weaver – Peppermint technically started back in January at the local pub after Shane and I got into a conversation about the future of desktop Linux, what has kept certain distributions from becoming more mainstream, and what we would do differently if we had the opportunity.  We thought up the name almost immediately and it came from us wanting to do something in a similar vein as Linux Mint, but a lot “spicier” if you will.  I fooled around with a number of different ideas and did a lot of research as to exactly how to go about building Peppermint.  I finally had a solid game plan in late March which led to our Private Beta a few weeks later.

:: Obviously you have some relationship to Linux Mint. How close is that?

Kendall Weaver – This past November I was perusing the Linux Mint forum and saw that their Fluxbox edition was without a maintainer at the time.  I kind of took it upon myself to just dive in and start working on it, and in December I was welcomed to the Linux Mint development team as the new maintainer for the Fluxbox edition.  Shortly after the release of Mint 8 Fluxbox I kind of took it upon myself to restart work on an LXDE edition that had originally been talked about for (I think) the Mint 7 release cycle.  I’m still actively involved in Linux Mint and I have no plans to stop at any point.  It’s been a little more difficult for the Mint 9 cycle as I have my day job and Peppermint taking up a large chunk of my time.  Due to the popularity of Peppermint thus far and the maintenance workload associated with it I feel that at some point I will have to step down as a Mint maintainer, simply because I don’t feel that I’ll be giving the Mint releases the attention they need, but when this happens I don’t want it to affect the good working relationship we have at this point.

:: July 19th you release Peppermint Ice … nervous at all?

Shane Remington – About a couple of weeks ago we started getting nervous due to the fact we were overloading our server space at MidPhase by massive amounts of downloads of Peppermint One !! But, now that we have migrated to VPS.net there is not one speck of nervousness at all. Now we have nothing but 100% pure excitement and adrenaline to get Peppermint Ice into the hands of all that are waiting for the release and those yet to discover our operating system.

Kendall has written a very sleek Cloud/Web Application Launcher called “Ice” that will integrate into the system. “Ice”  is an Site Specific Browser [SSB] application that will launch a cloud / web app or web site in its own window and act as if it is installed locally on the machine. In theory, you could have next to no locally running programs on Peppermint and deliver them all to yourself via your own customized menu system of “Ice” launchers, which is how I operate my own laptop. In Peppermint Ice, Chromium will be the default browser and we expect to integrate with Google Cloud Print once they have it ready to launch and alleviate the necessity for local print services on the OS.

:: You have a little bit of a unique story about how you reached out to VPS.NET. Care to share that at all?

Shane Remington – We had been a live project for a little over a month and already pushing 200K downloads of our operating system. As I said earlier, we needed to mirgate quickly so we could keep supporting this onslaught of direct downloads. As a young project, getting popular rapidly, and being open source, there is just little to no funding and we needed a hosting solution quickly. The awesome team at Midphase kindly turned their eyes away from us for a few days so we could attempt to raise the funds necessary to migrate and our dedicated users gave whatever they could muster to get us there. Unfortunately, it was not enough to meet the deadline.

So, over a couple of pints at the pub, the night before we needed to have a solution or pull all direct downloads, I decided that I needed to take a grassroots / guerrilla marketing approach and mobilize our user base. In the morning I set out to let Midphase and VPS.net know, through whatever channels necessary, that we are a great new product and that we needed their help to stay alive on their servers. I rallied a friendly Twitter mob, email spree, and Facebook flood within a couple of hours in hopes that someone would see our S.O.S. signal up the chain. Later that afternoon Ditlev, your CEO, contacted me via Twitter and told me that he and VPS.net would grant us sponsorship. We were floored and excited beyond belief all at the same time. Do not underestimate the power of Twitter and Social Media to get things done rapidly….

Our team knew that VPS.net and Peppermint OS were a match made in Heaven: Cloud server meets Cloud Hybrid OS. Its perfect.

:: What do you think about cloud computing? How do see Peppermint Linux being used with it?

Shane Remington – Cloud computing is the future. In fact, its the future right now, and there are a lot of people who remain unaware that they interacting with SaaS / PaaS / Web applications and the cloud structures that serve them today.

Read Write Web published an interesting article several months back with statistics showing that by 2014 there would be upward of 130 million enterprise employees working in the Mobile Cloud on a regular basis. When Kendall and I read that we knew that Peppermint OS was on the right track. We needed to deliver a Hybrid OS that was lightweight, extremely fast, cloud and web app ready, and would work out of the box with little to no tinkering. We would be different than the other “Cloudy” OS’s because we would refuse to toss out the familiar desktop environment, keep local storage, and yet make it simple enough for a child to operate the system when it boots up. 250,000 users and growing say we have hit the nail on the head…

Kendall Weaver – I believe that with the necessity of technological mobility becoming ever more present in our daily lives, the cloud is becoming a necessity along with it.  This isn’t limited to business either.  We’re finding more uses for the cloud and web based technologies all the time ranging from personal file storage to education and the ways we interact with each other in general.  I see Peppermint as helping to bridge the gap between the cloud and the desktop and I see it showing many of us what can happen when we start working to combine the best of both worlds.

                          

Once we’re logged in, we’ll see the home page for the VPS.NET control panel.

From here, we’ll need to go to the Create New VPS Link. In step 1 of the create new VPS link, we need to decide how many nodes we’re going to assign to the VPS. In my account, I have 4 nodes available; I’m going to assign all of them to this VPS.

In Step 2 and 3 we need to decide on a name and label for a web server. It’s probably the most difficult decision you’ll have to make, but don’t stress it; the importance of this is minimal, and really only necessary for organizational purposes. Additionally, we need to decide what kind of backups should be made. I’m going to choose both Snapshot and Rsync, as it provides me with redundant backups with the Rsync backups being hosted offsite.

Once we reach Step 4, we simply need to decide on any licenses you want. If you choose CPanel the options for Softaculous, RVSkin and Litespeed Webserver are made available.

Step 5 is the fun and easy part. You get to decide where you want your cloud VPS to be hosted, and then what operating system you want. You have 4 choices: 1.) UK – London, England, 2.) US Central – Chicago, Illinois, .3) US East – Atlanta, Georgia, 4.) US West – Salt Lake City, Utah. If the location has multiple zones (essentially multiple clouds) you can choose which one you want to use. This allows you to spread your VPS’s out, or if you want them all together, then you can do that as well. I’m going to be choosing Atlanta, with the Cloud Optimized Debian Linux Operating System.

Once we click submit, we’ll be taken to the details page for the VPS, which will show the root password and IP Address of the server. The server status will show it as running a task while the VPS is created. This typically only takes 2- 3 minutes. After your VPS is all setup, you’ll see a page that looks like this.