VPS: Virtual Private Server

VPS hosting is a web hosting option that enables businesses to gain the flexibility and features of a dedicated server without the expense. VPS hosting uses the principles of shared hosting to reduce the cost of operation by placing several accounts on the same server. Each account is placed on a virtual partition of the server to give it the independence of a dedicated server, allowing businesses more control over their server environment in addition to a host of other benefits. VPS hosting is ideal for small to medium businesses who are in need of fast performance and security, but are not in a position to pay for the additional cost.

VPN: Virtual Private Network

A VPN is a networking option that uses the Internet to connect a central business location to regional or satellite offices, but securely keeps the information away from the public’s eye. It connects “privately” via a virtual connection to keep information secure and allow the exchange of data with quick efficiency, without having to invest in costly equipment to build an actual private network or company Intranet structure. It offers the ability to share information between distances much like a desktop sharing program.

Much like a VPS hosting plan offers small and medium businesses a bridge between the limits of shared hosting and the cost of dedicated hosting, a VPN offers the security of a private Intranet, without the high costs associated with them. It is truly a more cost effective option when compared to investing in the server equipment and the expertise to develop and setup the network.

Which One is Right for Me?

Unless you are sharing private information and data across the Internet with other offices and people who work with you, you probably will not need a private network. Most businesses can encrypt information to protect it from hackers and other prying eyes, without the use of a VPN. If your website needs more control than a shared hosting environment can offer, then you will need to invest in a VPS hosting plan.

The VPS will provide you with the tools to privately control your public website independently of others hosted there, while the VPN will control your private company transactions from employee to employee, or branch to branch. Depending on the business structure, size, and sensitivity of information, some businesses may find a need for both services.

VPS Hosting, or virtual private server hosting, is a hybrid between shared and dedicated hosting that offers several solid benefits to its users. It works by creating virtual partitions on the server, allowing each account to have its own server space without affecting the others hosted there. The benefits include: stability, increased performance, access to dedicated resources, flexibility, and affordability.

Stability

With a shared hosting account, the traffic and other activities from the other sites on the same server have the potential to adversely affect your website performance. With VPS, nothing any of the other accounts on the server do have the ability to affect your website. Stability, of course, is a vital element of any web hosting. Being accessible for customers, regardless of the time of day or night, is key.

Access to Dedicated Resources

Since you’ll have your “own” server with VPS hosting, you will have your own portion of resources, meaning you will have access to a faster CPU speed, more RAM, and more disk space for storage than you would have on a shared plan.

Increased Performance

Your website will experience increased performance as compared to shared hosting, because you will no longer have to share the server resources with hundreds or even thousands of other hosted accounts. Your website visitors will enjoy faster load times, which benefits your business.

If your website does not load quickly enough to keep your visitor on your site, your potential clients will likely go to your competitor. Once this happens, it’s difficult to recapture that audience. The general nature of web users is impatience, so the faster your site loads, the better.

Flexibility

Your “own” server means you will have the freedom to choose the operating system used to run it. You can choose to install Linux or Windows on your server. If you are not computer savvy, you can opt for a managed VPS solution which handles all the technical aspects for you. If you want full control over your virtual server environment, unmanaged VPS provides it.

Affordability

For small to medium businesses VPS provides a more cost effective solution to hosting. Too often, businesses need more than shared hosting can provide. Before VPS hosting came along, the only option was dedicated hosting, which is generally too expensive for them. Using VPS hosting allows businesses to enjoy the full benefits of a dedicated server, with a cost more comparable to shared hosting, therefore solving the limitations vs. cost issue that were previously faced.

With the increased popularity of this hosting option and a decrease in the cost of technology required to operate and maintain it, finding an affordable reliable VPS hosting provider is no longer the undertaking it used to be. While many companies provide the service, it is important to look beyond the price of the plan to ensure you are receiving a quality product. Our options offer the best features in a VPS plan at a price your business can afford, with top notch customer service, always available when you need us.

Now our customers can edit the reverse DNS entries for their IPs at any time.

We will continue to add features for our clients based on their feedback and requests.

Soon we will be able to offer IPv6 via tunnel broker and hopefully in two or three months native IPv6.

Minor distribution specific changes were made on the previous CentOS script to get it working under Debian and Ubuntu. We might create one single script which will install OpenVPN on most distributions and architectures in future.

To install issue the following commands logged in as root on your VPS (Refer to this post if you are facing any issues)

wget http://vpsnoc.com/scripts/debian-openvpn.sh

chmod +x debian-openvpn.sh

./debian-openvpn.sh

For any other issues and feedback please e-mail us at support@vpsnoc.com

You may use and modify this script however you see fit, provided that you do not edit the original copyright.

#!/bin/bash
# Quick and dirty OpenVPN install script
# Tested on debian 5.0 32bit, openvz minimal debian OS template
# and Ubuntu 9.04 32 bit minimal, should work on 64bit images as well
# Please submit feedback and questions at support@vpsnoc.com

# John Malkowski vpsnoc.com 01/18/2010

ip=`grep address /etc/network/interfaces | grep -v 127.0.0.1  | awk '{print $2}'`
apt-get update
apt-get install openvpn libssl-dev  openssl
cd /etc/openvpn/
cp -R /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/ /etc/openvpn/
cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/2.0/
chmod +rwx *
. ./vars
./clean-all
source ./vars

echo -e "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" | ./build-ca
clear
echo "####################################"
echo "Feel free to accept default values"
echo "Wouldn't recommend setting a password here"
echo "Then you'd have to type in the password each time openVPN starts/restarts"
echo "####################################"
./build-key-server server
./build-dh
cp keys/{ca.crt,ca.key,server.crt,server.key,dh1024.pem} /etc/openvpn/

clear
echo "####################################"
echo "Feel free to accept default values"
echo "This is your client key, you may set a password here but it's not required"
echo "####################################"
./build-key client1
cd keys/

client="
client
remote $ip 1194
dev tun
comp-lzo
ca ca.crt
cert client1.crt
key client1.key
route-delay 2
route-method exe
redirect-gateway def1
dhcp-option DNS 10.8.0.1
verb 3"

echo "$client" > $HOSTNAME.ovpn

tar czf keys.tgz ca.crt ca.key client1.crt client1.csr client1.key $HOSTNAME.ovpn
mv keys.tgz /root

opvpn='
dev tun
server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key
dh dh1024.pem
push "route 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0"
push "redirect-gateway"
comp-lzo
keepalive 10 60
ping-timer-rem
persist-tun
persist-key
group daemon
daemon'

echo "$opvpn" > /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.8.0.0/24 -o venet0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables-save > /etc/iptables.conf
echo "#!/bin/sh" > /etc/network/if-up.d/iptables
echo "iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.conf" >> /etc/network/if-up.d/iptables
chmod +x /etc/network/if-up.d/iptables
echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

/etc/init.d/openvpn start
clear

echo "OpenVPN has been installed
Download /root/keys.tgz using winscp or other sftp/scp client such as filezilla
Create a directory named vpn at C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\ and untar the content of keys.tgz there
Start openvpn-gui, right click the tray icon go to vpn and click connect
For support/bug reports email us at support@vpsnoc.com"

Requirements

1. CentOS 5 32bit minimal OS template

2. TUN/TAP device enabled on your VPS

3. iptables NAT support

You will have to open a ticket to request a TUN/TAP device to be enabled on your VPS. If you’re not a customer of ours and your host’s support staff doesn’t know how to do this, you may tell them to execute the following commands on the hardware node where your VPS is hosted.

vzctl stop YOUR_VEID
vzctl set YOUR_VEID --devices c:10:200:rw --save
vzctl set YOUR_VEID --capability net_admin:on --save
vzctl start YOUR_VEID
vzctl exec YOUR_VEID "mkdir -p /dev/net; mknod /dev/net/tun c 10 200; chmod 600 /dev/net/tun"
# iptables support
vzctl stop YOUR_VEID
vzctl set YOUR_VEID --iptables ipt_REJECT --iptables ipt_tos --iptables ipt_TOS --iptables ipt_LOG --iptables ip_conntrack --iptables ipt_limit --iptables ipt_multiport --iptables iptable_filter --iptables iptable_mangle --iptables ipt_TCPMSS --iptables ipt_tcpmss --iptables ipt_ttl --iptables ipt_length --iptables ipt_state --iptables iptable_nat --iptables ip_nat_ftp --save
vzctl start YOUR_VEID

Make sure they will replace ‘YOUR_VEID’ with your VPS’s VEID and you will be ready to roll

Login to your VPS as root and execute the following commands

wget http://vpsnoc.com/scripts/install-openvpn.sh
chmod +x install-openvpn.sh
./install-openvpn.sh

You will be prompted to enter values for your server and client certificate, feel free to accept (hit enter) the default values. Its not recommended to setup a password for your server certificate as you will have to type in the password each time you wish to start/restart the openvpn daemon.
You can however set a password for your client’s certificate since it offers extra level of protection in case your certificate and key files are compromised. You will be prompted for that password each time you connect on your VPS’s VPN.

After the script finished installing openvpn (should be very quick) the client keys and the openvpn client configuration file will be archived in /root/keys.tgz
You may use a sftp/scp client such as winscp or filezilla to download the archive on your computer.

If you already haven’t installed openvpn for windows you may do so now.
You may use winrar or 7zip to extract the content of keys.tgz in C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\VPN (create a folder named VPN there)
After you have extracted the files from keys.tgz in the above folder, you may start openvpn-gui from the start menu, right click the tray icon, go to VPN and click connect. After the icon turns green all your traffic will be forwarded through your VPS, no extra configuration on your browser/IM client/email client is required.

If you’re facing issues make sure that your computer clock is synchronized, if so make sure that your VPS’s clock is correct as well. If it’s not you will have to ask your host to sync it.

For any other issues and feedback please e-mail us at support@vpsnoc.com

You may use and modify this script however you see fit, provided that you do not edit the original copyright.

#!/bin/bash
# Quick and dirty OpenVPN install script
# Tested on Centos 5.x 32bit, openvz minimal CentOS OS templates
# Please submit feedback and questions at support@vpsnoc.com

# John Malkowski vpsnoc.com 01/04/2010

ip=`grep IPADDR /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-venet0:0 | awk -F= '{print $2}'`

wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
rpm -iv rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
rm -rf rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

yum -y install openvpn openssl openssl-devel
cd /etc/openvpn/
cp -R /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.9/easy-rsa/ /etc/openvpn/
cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/2.0/
chmod +rwx *
. ../vars
./clean-all
source ./vars

echo -e "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" | ./build-ca
clear
echo "####################################"
echo "Feel free to accept default values"
echo "Wouldn't recommend setting a password here"
echo "Then you'd have to type in the password each time openVPN starts/restarts"
echo "####################################"
./build-key-server server
./build-dh
cp keys/{ca.crt,ca.key,server.crt,server.key,dh1024.pem} /etc/openvpn/

clear
echo "####################################"
echo "Feel free to accept default values"
echo "This is your client key, you may set a password here but it's not required"
echo "####################################"
./build-key client1
cd keys/

client="
client
remote $ip 1194
dev tun
comp-lzo
ca ca.crt
cert client1.crt
key client1.key
route-delay 2
route-method exe
redirect-gateway def1
dhcp-option DNS 10.8.0.1
verb 3"

echo "$client" > $HOSTNAME.ovpn

tar czf keys.tgz ca.crt ca.key client1.crt client1.csr client1.key $HOSTNAME.ovpn
mv keys.tgz /root

opvpn='
dev tun
server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key
dh dh1024.pem
push "route 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0"
push "redirect-gateway"
comp-lzo
keepalive 10 60
ping-timer-rem
persist-tun
persist-key
group nobody
daemon'

echo "$opvpn" > /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.8.0.0/24 -o venet0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables
sed -i 's/eth0/venet0/g' /etc/sysconfig/iptables # dirty vz fix for iptables-save
echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

/etc/init.d/openvpn start
clear

echo "OpenVPN has been installed
Download /root/keys.tgz using winscp or other sftp/scp client such as filezilla
Create a directory named vpn at C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config\ and untar the content of keys.tgz there
Start openvpn-gui, right click the tray icon go to vpn and click connect
For support/bug reports email us at support@vpsnoc.com"

EF95ENQQ2SDR
Debian is a mature Linux operating system that dates back to 1993. The Debian OS is used popularly as both a server or VPS operating system and a computer desktop. Debian is open source software that is currently being developed by over 1,000 developers around the world. All Debian developers are vetted and they agree to a strict social contract to ensure their suitability to develop for the operating sytem. Debian is supported by donations made by donors worldwide.  

Debian has over 18,000 addon software packages, enabling users to perform a huge amount of customization quickly and with a great deal of ease. Each package is maintained by a developer who is held responsible for their package. New releases are tracked and undergo stringent checks for quality and security compliance.

Debian users benefit from access to a huge selection of tutorials available online, helping you to manage your Debian VPS while you learn.  With a Debian VPS installing packages is simple! VPS root access allows you to perform the apt-get install command, eliminating the need for lengthy installation processes.

Many other Linux distributions are based on the Debian operating system!  Just a few examples include: Ubuntu, MEPIS, Dreamlinux, Damn Small Linux, Xandros, Knoppix, Linspire, sidux, Kanotix, and LinEx.

Debian VPS solutions are extremely resource-effective! Debian can operate on as little as 64MB RAM and 200MB disk space.

FREE Debian VPS OS Template…

Here at VPSNOC we provide a basic Debian OS template that includes SSH and Syslog as standard, allowing you to tweak your system to meet your needs. No need to worry about bloated, unnecessary packages!

Why not try a Debian VPS today? Take a look at our Unmanaged, Fully Managed and VPS SPECIAL plans.  Load up Debian with the click of a button via our VPSNOC VPS control panel. It’s simple!

We’re delighted to be able to welcome you to VPSNOC – Your Number One Choice for VPS Hosting.

After many months of detailed planning, testing and tweaking we are delighted to finally open our doors to the general public. It has certainly been a long journey, but we have no doubt that it has been a worthwhile one.
We are immensely excited about our brand new VPS plans. We’ve finely tuned our Linux VPS solutions to offer you the best of Unmanaged and Fully Managed VPS Hosting. After researching our potential audience we discovered that many VPS users have particular requirements for high resources – so we are pioneering new “VPS SPECIAL” plans, designed to cater to these specific needs. And of course, our friendly US support and management teams are ready to assist you around the clock – that’s 24×7, 365 days a year.

Don’t forget to add us on Twitter! We think Twitter is great, so we’ll be tweeting regularly to keep our visitors and clients in the loop. You never know – you may even find some extra-special exclusive discounts lurking on the VPSNOC Twitter feed! We really are passionate about becoming Your Number One Choice for VPS Hosting.

To celebrate our official opening we’re offering all new customers 15% off any of our Unmanaged VPS, Fully Managed VPS or VPS SPECIAL plans. This is a recurring discount and it stands for as long as you keep your plan! Simply use coupon code: 15%OFF We look forward to hearing from you! If you have any questions or queries please feel free to contact us: sales@vpsnoc.com, support@vpsnoc.com or our contact form. That’s all from us for now. We’ll be updating the blog frequently with tips, advice and news. Don’t miss out – make sure you check back often!  

The VPSNOC Team