Of course, in the article we will give examples from our practice, while talking about RUVDS services. But the main goal of the post is to give you an exhaustive checklist for choosing a hosting provider and configuring the virtual dedicated VPS or VDS server you rent.
Choosing a hosting provider
▍ Reputation and reviews
When reading reviews on various sites (we won’t list them here - the usual search “[provider name] reviews” will give you a lot of options), pay attention to the answers of the hosting provider itself, and not just the red cases of dissatisfied users. Remember that competitors are not asleep.
Your future neighbors eloquently speak about the reputation of the provider: see which company is already a client of this hoster and draw conclusions. Plus, read the results of independent server tests that periodically conduct well-known sites in the IT sphere: weblogs for geeks (for example, xakep.ru), analytical centers (for example, acexpert.ru)
This information will be more objective than the opinion of private “experts” on the pages of their blogs, which, as you know, are a source of income for these bloggers.
▍ Distributed network
Pay attention to the number of data centers with which the hoster cooperates. And also at the level of data centers, which speaks about the quality of the servers hosted in them, its stability and security.
There are two reasons for this.
- The smaller the distance to the server, the higher the speed of your projects. Therefore, it makes sense to rent capacities that are not too far from the target audience of your conditional site (for example, it is designed for Russian-speaking users, which means that its main target audience is residents of Russia) or from your place of work.
- The sites of computer complexes for large and fast-growing projects should be far enough apart from each other to ensure continuous operation in any circumstances: from natural and economic disasters to technological disasters. A specific resource allocation scheme allows the hosting provider to guarantee its client disaster recovery of their projects (Disaster Recovery), timely and efficiently perform backup, data replication, automatic transfer of services and sites and other actions according to the disaster recovery plan.
For example, RUVDS clients have their own data center in Moscow at the TIER-III level - RUCLOUD (Russia, Korolev) and 7 pressure zones in other data centers around the world (for links - posts about these data centers on Habré or information from our website):
- M9 (Russia, Moscow),
- Linxdatacenter (Russia, St. Petersburg),
- Interxion ZUR1 (Switzerland, Zurich),
- Telehouse Frankfurt (Germany, Frankfurt),
- Equinix LD8 (UK, London),
- IT Park (Russia, Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan),
- Data Center Yekaterinburg (Russia, Yekaterinburg).
Read our post Something about distributed data centers for business . And here you can read about how the server abroad is profitable .
▍Support
The speed and quality of answers of technical support hosters can be decisive in situations where, for example, the online store site “lies” on Black Friday or there are interruptions in access to a highly visited site. The average response time for tickets in the normal mode should not exceed - 15-20 minutes. Of course, there are different situations for providers, but in case of a delay with answers, I would like to get an adequate explanation of the reason for this delay, and not just a "sorry". This also determines the level of service of the hoster.
▍Ability to pay for resources
The tariff “for resources” takes into account the actual load that the server provided during the day. The option is suitable for those projects and companies that may need large server capacities at peak times, rather than constantly. In this case, computing resources are always in stock and are connected automatically, and rent is deducted only as they are used, and not for reservation. Read more here .
However, monthly billing - a server’s monthly fixed-rate plan — also has its advantages, as it allows you to 100% control your monthly expenses, while receiving a guaranteed virtual server with the resources of your choice. Moreover, a free trial period is usually provided at this rate.
By the way, now in RUVDS you can rent the cheapest virtual VPS server for 30 rubles per month! 10 GB for storage on fast SSD disks, unlimited traffic, one dedicated IPv4 address, per-second tariffication and money back guarantee, which you can read about further (tariff details here ).
▍ Money back guarantee
Firstly, it’s good if there is a free trial period. Perhaps it will not be provided in all configurations, but it will be possible to understand whether the hoster is suitable for you and on limited options. Secondly, the actual refund to the client, if you did not like the hosting, but already "paid". This is called a money back guarantee.
▍Change tariff
The process of improving server performance nowadays should be easy, fast and "seamless" (without stopping its operation). There is nothing to add here.
▍ Communication speed on servers
Ask the hoster about the bandwidth of the channels involved in the data exchange. It should be at least 10 Mbps.
▍Used operating systems
Renting a VPS / VDS involves using the client with dedicated server hardware resources with maximum privileges, including installing the operating system and software. However, not every OS can be supported by the host's servers, and it depends on it which applications can be installed on the server.
▍Preset Programs
In addition to the basic hosting service, providers offer customers additional “products” that allow even non-professionals and those who do not have time and desire to understand all these intricacies of web hosting to work with the server. Such additions are content management systems (CMS) or web consoles for convenient server management through a single interface (for example, Plesk, ISPmanager).
▍Ability to manage the server from a smartphone
Moreover, convenient controls. That is, we are talking about a mobile application in which you can at least quickly find out the balance of your personal account, see the history of deposits and charges, check the status of servers and manage their work. You can read about our mobile client here , and download here .
▍ Server host resource limits
If you have several projects with different current and planned requirements, it is important to be sure that the hosting provider that you select was able to satisfy these requirements throughout the life cycle of these projects. Server resources that affect its performance are the amount of processor power (CPU), disk space and RAM. The maximum possible number of sites that can be hosted on the server, FTP accounts, databases and mailboxes depends on this. These indicators should lie in a wide range. Simply put, you should have many options for choosing the configuration of a dedicated virtual server, which you will read about setting up further.
Configuring the VPS / VDS server
▍ OS selection
Depends on which operating systems support the programs that you plan to install: databases, scripts, control panels, applications, etc. Read the requirements for them.
CPU CPU selection
Here we select the type of processor. It is characterized by the number of cores and the clock frequency, which is responsible for the number of processed processes per second. The higher the numbers, the more powerful the processor (for example, a frequency of 3.4 GHz means that the processor is capable of processing 3 billion 400 million operations per second).
RAM RAM selection
This is the amount of RAM guaranteed by the provider. Well, if the range is between 1GB and 16GB, then the scalability of your projects will increase.
▍Video RAM
For sites with games, it is important to have a video card connection service with a choice of the amount of memory on it. For example, RUVDS has recently had such a service, costing 125 rubles / month for 64 Mb (maximum size 1024 Mb). Attention! A server with a video card is available for order in the RUCLOUD data center with a processor frequency of 3.4 GHz.
In addition, the resources of video cards are actively used by developers of popular software: any modern browser will render pages of sites much faster if it can use a graphics accelerator, not to mention the fact that for these same browsers there are 3D applications and games that run on WebGL.
▍ Select disc type
The type and size of the hard disk on which the virtual server is located affects the amount of information that can be stored on it, the withstand load, and how well the server can "service" the corresponding application. Typically, these are HDD or SSD drives with a choice of volume from 20 to 600 TB.
RUVDS provides the “large disk” service (Huge Disk) - this is an opportunity to connect an additional large-capacity virtual disk located on HDD RAID, cost 500 r / month for 1 TB, maximum capacity 18 TB.
▍ Number of allocated IP addresses
The domain name of the site corresponds to the IP address of the server on which this site is located. After typing the site URL in the address bar of the browser, a call is made to the DNS server, which by the domain name determines the IP of the desired web server and redirects the request to it. One IP address can correspond to one, several, or all web sites hosted on the server. In recent versions, a large number of requests to a neighbor’s resource increases the loading time of other sites hosted on the server. Plus, mail servers can put an IP address in a black list if spam is sent from one of the sites located on this IP address. And then the incoming and outgoing mail of all sites will be blocked. Therefore, it should be possible to acquire several dedicated IP addresses. We have their maximum number of 16 pieces.
▍Panel for managing web hosting and server
We have already said that server management can be both a dark forest for an inexperienced site owner and easy creative work. It depends on which interface this control takes place. There are web consoles (control panels) that allow users to manage various server services in a comfortable web browser environment. You can read about what they can be in our review article “ What's New in Web Consoles 2019 ”. In RUVDS, we offer ISPmanager web consoles (available for free by the end of the year), Cpanel, Plesk and its new version Plesk Obsidian (when ordering VPS, it is also free until December 31, 2019). Attention! Control panels in RUVDS are available only for Linux-based OS.
▍ Security
It is difficult to argue that it is important to protect your data on the server and prevent the possibility of stopping its operation. For these purposes, hosters offer different solutions from a minimum level of security to enhanced protection: SSL certificates, firewalls, server monitoring for unusual activity, malware detection tools (antiviruses), IP Deny tool that allows you to restrict access to your site from specific IP, server protection against DDoS attacks, insurance protection, etc.
RUVDS offers its customers:
- Insurance coverage under the CyberEdgeSM program against losses: as a result of modification or deletion of information, as a result of data breach, as a result of a breach of computer system security and as a result of breach of corporate information.
- Anti-virus protection Kaspersky Security for Virtualization Light Agent is a lightweight agent for virtual environments that does not require additional resources and does not degrade the server. With it, you can provide complete protection of your data in one click without downloading additional software and updating anti-virus databases.
- DDoS protection with analysis of network traffic in 24/7 mode and the ability to select a band of purified incoming traffic from 0.5 to 20 Mbit / s. Connecting DDoS protection provides an opportunity not only to ensure the stable operation of all your projects hosted on the server, but also to pay only for the traffic you need. The cost in RUVDS is from 400 rubles / month, now the first month for the promotion is free 0.5 Mbps.
- Change the firewall configuration. You can configure a firewall, a network filter, a firewall for the selected server. Settings do not affect the configuration of the firewall (s) of the server itself, but only establish the rules for filtering incoming and outgoing traffic. For example, the standard configuration of the newly created server prohibits all incoming connections except those necessary for managing the server and checking its availability.
- Configuring backups (backup). Allows you to select the backup interval, and the number of stored copies. The backup will be done automatically at night in the interval from 03:00 to 05:00 Moscow time on the days you set.
Conclusion
The choice of hosting options depends on the types of your sites, their load and the expected scalability. A site can be static (an HTML site with several pages containing a description of the company's services and general information about it), for publishing content (texts, pictures, videos), for blogging or for selling goods (online store). Each of them has its own requirements for hosting: the programming language on which the site is written, the application language for it, the type of database, the number and volume of stored files (for example, a site with an abundance of video or with estimated high traffic requires high network bandwidth and large storage capacity) and so on. To choose the right hosting, you need to know these requirements and understand the goals of projects (sites).
In any case, applying for the hosting service in RUVDS, you will not have to doubt the chosen configuration of the virtual server, because you can always easily change it using the convenient parameter configurator . If the configuration of VPS / VDS does not bother you at all, use ready-made tariff plans with an optimal price / quality ratio.
Separately, we note that before the end of the year you have a great promotional opportunity to work for free in web consoles for managing sites and hosting: ISPmanager ( free for new customers until December 31, 2019); Plesk and its new version of Plesk Obsidian (free when ordering VPS until December 31, 2019).