Hi, I am planning to start shared hosting. After reviewing multiple solutions I have decided to use ISPConfig due to number of reasons like Open Source Software will allow to make customization, UI is descent, almost all facilities are available etc. So kudos to the developers and the community. Now coming to the question. Currently the project is in testing and planning phase. I have set up ISPConfig on CentOS and Debian. Now I need to make it live in production. Before that I need to take decision on having single server or multiple server set up. So is it possible to have a single server set up right now and after some time extend the set up to multiple servers? I read the manual multiple times but could not figure out how this can be achieved. Thank you. Regards, Sachin
It is possible to extend a single srvers etup to a multiserver setup by adding additional slave servers to the master server. But I would recommend something different. Install openvz on your first server (just the openvz kernel and tools), then create a virtual machine for webserver, mailserver and one or 2 dns servers on the shell. Thats quie easy and we have guides for that here at howtoforge. Now install a multiserver setup inside these virtual machines. So you have 1 physical server that runs 3-4 virtual machines. The benefits are: 1) Security: web and mailserver are separated. 2) Scalability and maintenance: If the load on your server gets too high or you run out of disk space, you can simply move the vm with the mail server to a different host. And you want to use new server(s) in a few yers, you dont have to reinstall the machines, just install openvz on the new server and then copy over the vm and start it there. 3) backup: With vzdump, you can easily create backups of the vm's
Thanks Till. This seems to be a very good approach to obtain scalability and availability and yes I am certainly looking for a more scalable solution. I will have a thought on it and will come back to seek suggestions if found any worries.
