[TYPO3-english] Re: Recommendations for virtual hosting control panel

[Thomas Skierlo]

Hi Katja,

in the very beginning I was using Plesk (9) too, but I had more issues with Plesk than with the server itself during that times. Checked other admin solutions as well, just to find out that they often offer less than Plesk, and have similar issues.

After analysing what Plesk was doing (writing config files), I decided to try it without any admin interface. I decided for Ubuntu 12.04LTS and started to build up a virtual server on my local dev-system (using KVM virtualization, which is built into the kernel). The idea was, to create the very same environment I would find on a rented live server. In the end It took me about 3 month to learn linux server administration and to set-up two systems. One virtual one on my dev system, and a (mirror-like) live server I'm using since then. Documentation and support for Linux systems is of outstanding perfection (no Extbase involved :-). Typically I had no problems at all, but sometimes I had questions, which were answered within seconds by the community.

Doing this you must take care of 4 major tasks:

1) Access: You must ensure, that no one except authorized users can access the server. Using ssh with rsa keys is easy and secure. Disable other login and you can be pretty sure to be alone on this baby (possibly together with some rotten guy from NSA playing cards with another one from GCHQ sitting on the warm and cozy main memory modules).

This 1st part should be done as soon as possible, since a newly rented vserver is kind of "open" - for you as well as others

2) Webserver / php (whatever flavour you prefer, Nginx, Apache, mod_php or fcgid/suexec). The latter is perfect if you wanna host multiple domains and if you want domain/user centric control over php.ini (use as many as you like) and scripts.

3) Setup a mail server. This part is the only tricks and critical one. There are many excellent tutorials (read more than one to get the optimal and most secure result in the end). I've even created a mail server on my local (virtual) dev-server to deeply test email business.

4) Remove everything, which is not needed, but is installed by default. Get rid of FTP, since you can use SFTP over ssh. The result is an ultraslim, fast responding server, which outperforms any Plesk server.

Now that you are really knowing what's going on, it's very easy to add other stuff, like fail2ban, firewall, to torture the bad guys a little.

Besides that, it's kind of fun and your "market value" grows dramatically.

Regards,

Thomas