Hello,

You got the description spot-on. The dedicated servers are good for people who want to have complete control. If you aren't sure how to upgrade software and kernels, etc, you are better off with the managed hosting.

Managed hosting also includes monitoring of the server 24/7 and rebooting when needed. We can also help you out with any issues you have.

I will paste a little pre-written information that I have below, just to make sure I cover everything. If you have any questions about the dedicated plan, to get the quickest reply, the best place to ask is dedicated@lunarpages.com

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Lunarpages offers an all inclusive managed package to assist you with setting up, maintaining and monitoring your dedicated server.  For a low price of $9.99 per month, you can have the following:

- Free setup of APF Firewall and Root Check Kit on the server
- Up-to-date notifications of exploits on popular third party software
- Automatic upgrades of kernels, PHP, Apache and administration panels for security
- Monitoring of your server through Lunarpages’ internal monitoring tools
- Unlimited reboots of your server if it becomes unresponsive
- One free third party script installation per billing year*
- Free installation of upgraded control panel*
- Free installation of Resin if needed*
- Free setup of remote backups**

*Does not include any licensing of third party software if required.
**Does not include over 2GB storage space if needed.

Hi oxsley,


Well, it depends on how intensive your site(s) is/are for one.  I have a small dedicated server with Lunarpages.  Small servers can house several sites, especially mine that aren't too active.  I have a guy with 200gb bandwidth a month running on a server and the server runs fine with only 512MB but his site is mainly html-based with a few php scripts.  The more scripts you are running, the higher traffic the sites, the more RAM you are going to need.  I would highly encourage going with a small server initially if you aren't certain what you need, then getting additional RAM if you find you need it.  You can also upgrade to the medium or large at any point in time that you would like.  We do not charge a transfer or setup fee to do an upgrade.  You could also have us check the current usage for your site(s) on the shared server.  This woul help to see right off if you might need more CPU or RAM to handle the site(s).


It is a single hard drive, not a RAID.  If you needed raid or mirroring, you can purchase a second drive and you could have RAID setup.


The 3 IPs are used as the following:

1 IP = server
2 IPs = private nameservers

The server IP is what is used for all the sites you create to shared that IP.  If you get cPanel, and I highly recommend doing so if you do not know Linux and Apache at an expert level since Webmin is complicated to administer, then you can easily create accounts in WHM (Webhosting Manager) and we can help explain how to do that to you when the time comes.  All our admins extensively use WHM, so we can answer most questions you would have about using it, too.  Account creation in WHM only takes filling out a few fields, then cPanel handles creating the account, the Apache configuration of that account, the email and FTP configuration, the DNS zones configuration and so on.


Some people believe that non-sequential IPs help with Search Engine ranking and spidering (for SEO or search engine optimization).  This has never really been proven and is a bit of the "urban legend" of SEO.  If you wanted to pay the price for it, it may or may not be worthwhile to have the non-sequential IPs.


If you get clustering, you would purchase 2 or more servers and we would basically network them together at no extra cost.  Most people who do this do so for the purpose of putting part of a highly intensive site on 1 server (like the MySQL database portions) and the rest on the other server to load balance the  site.  Others use it for backups so they can have another server with a duplicate copy of their original server to switch over to in an emergency.


Webmin is very difficult to use administratively.  When you have a dedicated server, you use the administrative backend extensively to handle your account creations.  With Webmin, you will need to know Linux and Apache to configure options.  We provide a basic setup on it, but do not move your files over to it or create accounts for you.  You can see the options with Webmin at http://webmin.com/

cPanel has WHM which is one of the most feature-filled administrative backend in the webhosting industry.  It is very easy to use.  It also provides AWStats as one of the stats programs (this is disabled on our shared servers as it is also due to being an awesome stats program, very intensive to process stats as well).  We can configure it in cPanel's WHM for you to use on dedicated or we can provide instructions for you to enable it yourself so you learn how that would be done at the time.  When you pick cPanel, we will also move your account/accounts to the server for you and set them up as they were on the shared server as cPanel has an easy move script utility to do this.

Plesk is similar to cPanel in that it is easy to administer.  It does not have, however, as many options as cPanel.  I run my dedicated server on Plesk and the backup option can cause your site to freeze in a browser and take it down.  cPanel has far improved backups.  I ended up purchasing 4PSA's Plesk Backup Client to have a decent backup capability on it.  Also, parked domains in the past haven't been easy to create there.  It does have a very nice interface, though, and it is certainly better than Webmin.  We would not move your account to Plesk, but we can setup the account for you there and help with details on how to FTP the account to the server to get it going there quickly.


We setup PHP, MySQL, Apache, email capability, FTP and so on for you whichever control panel you choose.  It isn't required for managed hosting, it is just part of the server setup.  Managed hosting provides you with the peace of mind that we are monitoring your server and will reboot it should it become unstable.  It also provides you with a free script install and other components like control panel and Fantastico (if you choose Fantastico with cPanel) installed at no extra charge (script installs normally cost $75 per hour and control panel or Fantastico installs $10 each).  We also install APF firewall and rootkit on managed to help you with security features.


You would need to register your nameservers with your domain registrar, however, this is free to do with most registrars and we can help to explain doing this if you provide the registrar name.  We will setup the server itself to use those namservers and be ready once yours are registered to work properly.  We can also point your site's A record to the new server off our nameservers until you have the new private nameservers for your domain registered and propagated.


Really, each person has different questions and concerns.  I have no way of knowing what to say for this one.

Thanks.

I think someone should sticky this or move to dedicated forum... I spent alot of time search for this particular information when it was neatly packaged in one post by Danielle.

Hi Boc3,

In answer to your various questions:


This one I really am not sure about as it would be the dedicated billing department that makes this determination.  I'll ask one of the guys there today and then post or ask one of them post the reply to this one.


When you select cPanel for your dedicated, we will move the account for you.  Since you have multiple, we would move them as well as it is pretty simple to move cPanel to cPanel accounts due to cPanel having a utility that does this:

To package

Once it is done, we then scp the file

On the new server to unpackage

Due to this, it really becomes only waiting for the account to package (archive) and then waiting for the account to unpackage (extract) on cPanel servers.


Because you've already paid the setup fee for these SSLs, we would not charge another setup fee.  These SSLs would simply be moved from their current locations to the new server when you decide to move the plans.  It isn't the SSL install or move that will become the issue, but needing a dedicated IP for each SSL (domain) on the server.


Yes, the current dedicated IP will need to be removed, the dedicated IP fee stopped for that one, and the account moved to the dedicated with a new IP provided for it, then the SSL re-installed.  The new IP will have a charge for it, but unlike the shared plans where each account can only have 1 dedicated IP, you can purchase IPs for the server at discounts depending on how many you buy:

1 - 3 IPs = $2.50/month per IP
4 - 7 IPs = $2.00/month per IP
8 or more = $1.75/month per IP

For the SSL itself, however, this doesn't need to be re-purchased or changed.  The SSL isn't generated using the IP for the purchase portion, it is only setup when installed on the server using the IP at that point.  This means that once we move it after your account has a dedicated IP assigned, we would simply re-install the SSL on the new location and new IP.


Yes, you do as I noted above.


Well, each site can have it's own nameservers, although that's not how people commonly do it.  Most registrars will let you privately register nameservers for all your domains and yet use the same IPs for each of them.

Let me provide an example.  Let's say I have ns1.ratingbar.com with IP 216.227.210.230 and ns2.ratingbar.com with IP 216.227.210.231 for my domain ratingbar.com.  Then let's say I have another domain screeningblock.com and I want this domain to have private nameservers for it without using the ratingbar.com one's, so I register the nameservers ns1.screeningblock.com with IP 216.227.210.230 for the first one and ns2.screeningblock.com with IP 216.227.210.231 for the second one.  These are different registered nameservers with the same IPs.  Most registrars should let you do this--registering new private nameservers with the same IPs your initial nameservers have.  If you don't want the IPs to be shared like this, you will need to buy IPs for each domain's nameservers.


Yes, this can be setup.  Just note this when you upgrade.  It is easy to setup using cPanel as it's just in their /scripts/easyapache setup where Apache and PHP modules are setup.  If you have any other PHP modules you'd like to have like pspell, just mention it in the ticket.  We usually setup the dedicated modules like our current servers are setup. 

I do want to note one important difference, though.  PHP on dedicated is by default PHP as an Apache module, while PHP on the shared is suPHP.  This makes a big difference for permission settings (777 and 666 for files and folders needing to write and execute on PHP as an Apache module; 755 and 644 for files and folders needing to write and execute on suPHP).  As such, if you require suPHP for your sites to transition smoothly, please note this in the ticket so the dedicated admin will setup your new server with suPHP.


If you purchase the managed hosting (cost $9.99/month) addon, then you will have an APF Firewall and rootkit hunter installed for security purposes.  As for whether the firewall and rootkit hunter are enough, there's likely other security you could get, but the APF Firewall is a necessity for the first wave of any basic attacks.  Additionally, I would suggest disabling root login on the server for initial SSH.  You can read this post on how to do this:

http://www.lunarforums.com/forum/index.php?topic=26253.0

What happens with root is that you have constant attacks on the server trying to guess your root password.  By changing to a user only login (please do provide use the login you change it to, though, for us to be able to monitor it and take action when needed), you then make the job much tougher for anyone to gain access to it other than yourself.  Make sure both the username you pick and the password for it and for your root user are difficult to guess with upper and lowercase letters and numerals.


The transition is definitely more seemless if you pick cPanel for the dedicated.  I did want to provide a useful link for a FAQ I made back in February over shared versus dedicated plan differences:

http://desk.lunarpages.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=470

This should help to see the primary differences, although I need to update the FAQ to note one other.  On shared plans, the servers are backed up daily.  On dedicated plans, we instead provide a backup server with 2 gb backup space to each customer.  If you want more backup space, you can purchase more backup space with a $25.00 setup fee and $20.00 per 10 GB storage.  Because you would be getting cPanel and it has a utitlity in WHM (Webhosting Manager) to setup daily backups, we would setup the backup for you in cPanel to go to the 2gb backup space provided.  You can re-configure that area if you would like, though, and if you need assistance on understanding any facet of WHM to administer your dedicated server, you can always email us at dedicated@lunarpages.com or go into dedicated support at http://dedicated@lunarpages.com/ to talk to a dedicated administrator at any time of day (we have it staffed 24/7/365).

Have a Blessed Day

I'm having trouble with suddenly not being able to receive emails on one of the dedicated managed server accounts I have at Lunarpages.  I thought there was a phone number for 24 hour support for dedicated server accounts.  Does anyone know what it is?

Thanks!
 
Blake
www.pickyourown.org

Is that what is meant by

"Lunarpages. Dedicated Hosting Plan is aimed at enterprise level businesses and advanced users that need a dedicated server. All plans come with priority 24 hour support. "? 

Thanks!

Hi, Randy,

I just discovered that the live online chat is offline now, so I followed your suggestion and tried the dedicated 24 hours email support.  How long should I expect to wait for a reply.  It's been about a half hour now. 

Does "24 hour" mean they "respond within 24 hours" or that they are available live for near instant response 24 hours a day"?

Thanks!

JB