When customers place an order for a dedicated server, there is one question that is very commonly asked- how many websites can I host on the server? Well, there is no single answer to that question. While a dedicated server can accommodate several websites at a time, the actual number would vary according to each customer’s requirements. Broadly, these are some of the factors that influence the number of websites a dedicated web server can accommodate:

The Design

A lot depends on the web designing software and platform used to design your website. Your website can be either a static HTML website or a dynamic website.

Static HTML sites typically have very simple web pages with little information. These websites are smaller in size due to the simplicity of design and usage of fewer elements to be processed.

Dynamic websites have more complex pages with ever changing content. These websites are usually created using a Content Management System (“CMS”). The CMS systems use PHP, MySQL databases and a WYSIWYG (“What You See is What You Get”) editor to manage the website content.

So, what does all this have to do with your server? Well, if you intend to host mainly static HTML websites you need a server with larger hard drives and faster spindle speeds. On such a server you can easily host 250 to 500 websites on the same server.

If a majority of the websites are CMS based, you will want to increase the CPU and RAM on the server to process the MySQL database requests quickly. A moderate dedicated server configuration should be able to run 150 to 250 websites.

Bandwidth

It refers to the volume of data that is transferred from your website over the internet through the web server. Bandwidth consumption is determined by the number of visitors to your website and the kind of content you wish to host on the website. Heavier files like streaming media and photos etc… require more bandwidth, if your websites are likely to be hosting high traffic websites, you should make sure that you have the proper disk space allocated. CPU and RAM also need to be more to cope with the high traffic and the occasional traffic spikes.

Additional elements

Your dedicated server is customized with applications and software’s to match your specific needs. Server add-ons, control panels and any third party applications you wish to install will also consume the server resources. For example, cPanel a minimum of 1 GB RAM to be available when hosting a larger number of accounts. You must know how many resources each application will consume from the server resources so that they run well. The more websites you host and the more applications you have running, the more resources you will need to support them.

Email Services

When you offer email services to customers, you need to take into account the growing volume of emails passing through the websites each day. On a basic web hosting package we recommend offering 25 GB of disk space and 100 email accounts, this should allow you to host approximately 250 sites on a dedicated server with moderate resources. Again, the number of sites you can host on a server will depend on the types of applications you are running on that server.

Business expansion

If you have a fast growing business with rapidly growing client base you would need to frequently upgrade drives, CPU, RAM, etc on your server. An overloaded server with inadequate resources to meet with the demands will result in slower websites and some websites not working at all. Thus, you need to anticipate the growing needs and make changes accordingly to make sure all sites hosted keep working perfectly.

Talk with your provider and find out what their procedures, timelines and policies are for performing server upgrades before it becomes an issue that is problematic for you.

Now that you know the factors affecting the number of websites that can be hosted on a dedicated server, you can ask your web hosting provider specific questions. Let them know of your needs in terms of what software’s and applications you need to host on your server, the way your websites are designed and the nature of your business. Consult with them extensively to get the best configuration for your dedicated server.

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A server root access or root server gives you the full power to your own server with the maximum flexibility in setting up and configuring the web server.

Comparison of the service provider and server root access rates in the following area:

Root-Server Comparison

Root access of the server to the client is always in question, but to offer maximum freedom to clients a lot of web hosting companies offer this privilege. This step is practical as well, because whenever client wants to install his own scripts and don’t have patience to wait then giving them the server access usually is the right choice for the web host. In addition, administrator of the hosting company is able to obtain rights on your server and can make all the settings which you should opt for a root server.

Root servers rent

As root server refers to a dedicated server, but one can fully configure itself. This is done via the so called root access, which is equipped with all the rights and allows complete configuration of the server. The host provides in its data center, only the necessary technical infrastructure and the actual server hardware. The user can administer the server via the Internet and secured SSH access.

Depending on the requirements, this is an advantage or disadvantage:

If you prefer to customize the server to the last detail and would have the needed knowledge, you can gain more benefits by using a root server access with the maximum flexibility in the adaptation of the server. Anyone who does not want to deal with the details of his own web server, but just wants to simply use a pre-configured server, they should refrain the root access and left leave the task to the hosting company’s administrator.

Conclusion:

Root server access generally offers more transparency where customers feel more independence.

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This service offers the advantages of dedicated server hosting and the flexibility of a virtualized environment: one or more machines are configured upon the same physical infrastructure. Each virtual machine has its own operating system on its own processing power, its own memory and its own dedicated storage.

The physical limits of a server are gone: This hosting type evolves according to physical resources (RAM, hard disk, CPU …).

Your benefits:

• No investment in hardware;
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• Many options available for hardware and software
• Flexible service to meet all requirements of hosting infrastructure
• Possibility to upgrade at will the hardware resources (RAM, hard drive …)
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• Instant Set UP
• Free Migration
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In this article, we’ll see how to secure your dedicated server by configuring three essential programs:

* Iptables: Firewall is the Linux systems, it is difficult to handle the first time but you can make very fine adjustments. In this tutorial I propose a set of standard rules for a web server.
* Fail2ban: it is a system that automatically ban all users who try to connect several times without success on our server. It helps prevent brute force attacks.
* Rkhunter: it is a software that warns of sensitive files that are changed. In other words, a good detector Backdoor and Rootkit.

And as a bonus, I would give you a tips to be prevented by email when someone’s logs into SSH on your server. At the end of the article you will have a secure Web server already, but not enough for my taste, hence the second article will gives you little more tips about how secure php scripts with Apache 2 modules.

I think this mini tutorial on iptables, with the arguments most commonly used and these basic principles will not hurt. I’ll do that in a list to make this easier, the goal is not to be exhaustive.

If you do a iptables-L, you will see the rules that define your firewall. Looking at the results more closely, we see three types of chains:

* INPUT: corresponds to the rules of the incoming traffic from the server
* OUTPUT: corresponds to the rules for outgoing traffic the server
* FORWARD: the rules to make redirects

We also note that we have the firewall’s policy on “acceptable” for all channels and it is not very good at security. Our approach will be of any block (DROP) and then slowly release the ports for the services we use.

Here is a list of arguments that are used frequently:

*-T: specify on which table you are working, it’s default filter that contains the input, output and forward
*-A: adds a rule at the end of string
*-P: specifies the protocol of the rule (usually TCP, UDP or ICMP for ping)
*-Dport: specifies the destination port
*-D: specifies the policy to apply (or accept drop most of the time)
* F-: clear all rules (F = Flush)
*-X: erase chain

Configuration rules

To set up a firewall on Linux, most of the time you create a bash file with all the iptables commands that you want to. In my case, I put iptables to 0, then I block everything, then I slowly unlocked the services I use. Therefore, the order is important! Here is the file used for the video, remember to change the port number for ssh or otherwise you will be blocked (a hardware reboot will do you unlock).

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          Firewall maison
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Default-Start:
# Default-Stop:
# X-Interactive:     false
# Short-Description: Firewall maison
### END INIT INFO

# Mise à 0
iptables -t filter -F
iptables -t filter -X
echo “Mise à 0″

# On bloque tout
iptables -t filter -P INPUT DROP
iptables -t filter -P FORWARD DROP
iptables -t filter -P OUTPUT DROP
echo “Interdiction”

# Ne pas casser les connexions établies
iptables -A INPUT -m state –state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -m state –state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

# Autorise le loopback (127.0.0.1)
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT
echo “Loopback”

# ICMP (le ping)
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
echo “Ping ok”

# SSH IN/OUT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 1337 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 1337 -j ACCEPT
echo “SSH ok”

# DNS In/Out
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 53 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p udp –dport 53 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 53 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p udp –dport 53 -j ACCEPT
echo “dns ok”

# NTP Out
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p udp –dport 123 -j ACCEPT
echo “ntp ok”

# HTTP + HTTPS Out
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 443 -j ACCEPT

# HTTP + HTTPS In
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 443 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 8443 -j ACCEPT
echo “http ok”

# FTP Out
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 21 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 20 -j ACCEPT

# FTP In
# imodprobe ip_conntrack_ftp # ligne facultative avec les serveurs OVH
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 20 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 21 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
echo “ftp ok”

# Mail SMTP:25
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 25 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 25 -j ACCEPT

# Mail POP3:110
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 110 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 110 -j ACCEPT

# Mail IMAP:143
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 143 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 143 -j ACCEPT

# Mail POP3S:995
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 995 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -p tcp –dport 995 -j ACCEPT
echo “mail ok”

# Monit
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 4598 -j ACCEPT

# Webmin
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 10000 -j ACCEPT
echo “monitoring ok”

The upper part  is optional but it avoids warnings in log files. At the level of difficulty, once you understand a line to the rest comes by itself. Remember to give execute permissions to this file  (chmod + x firewall) and place it in / etc / init.d / and activate it to start the  server with update-rc.d  firewall defaults (but make sure that the file is working properly before!)

I take this opportunity to pass to give you my script to the proper iptables back to 0 in case of trouble:

#!/bin/sh
echo “Flushing iptables rules…”
sleep 1
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t nat -X
iptables -t mangle -F
iptables -t mangle -X
iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

That’s all on the side of the Firewall. If  one day you install additional services and that  it does not work, remember to look to the Firewall, you tend to forget when the configuration is finished.

The choice of operating system is the second choice you have to do after choosing the dedicated hosting. It is not to be taken lightly because once your server up and running it is likely that you do not change OS for some time.

Most hosting companies offer a wide choice of operating system:

1. Windows
2. Linux
3. Bsd
4. Solaris etc

The choice of a Windows system could be your first idea, as it is a system that you may use every day and most probably that you like its environment. This solution is pretty useful, although here we are going talk about a free solution.

BSD or Solaris could also have been interesting solutions to choose . However, I have to admit that these solutions suffer from a certain lack of popularity. We therefore choose to use a reliable and beneficial extensive Linux…

You have take one more decision: unmanaged or managed hosting solution? Web host always suggest to opt complete management solution (fully managed servers), however, if you are well familiar with server administration, then you can go with unmanaged server hosting. And while choosing control panel you shouldn’t be got confused. For Linux distribution you have a good options such as cPanel, Plesk, or Webmin…

Also make sure you will not seek to weigh the pros and cons of each distribution, because it would not be possible. In addition, everything is well documented and available free of cost on the Internet. On the other side, widely spread Linux user community always show the free hand when someone want to know a specific information regarding to any Linux distribution…

Once you choose dedicated server and pick the operating system that meet your demands, you just have to complete order process to start server set up. After installation, you will receive an email with your server root access log in details.