If you came to yesterday’s webinar, we hope you found it useful and interesting. We got a lot of questions at the end and unfortunately we ran out of time before we could answer them all. We took a record of all the questions and we have answered them below.  The video and the slides will be uploaded to the blog shortly.

Q: What is the maximum number of IP addresses available for a single VPS?

A: We have not assigned an upper limit.

Q: How many concurrent users can we have log into a windows standard 2008 VPS.  Is there a licensing issue?

A: Two. If you require additional users, you can purchase licenses from Microsoft.

Q: Some of your slides explaining the position of vps in the market – are these available to resellers as part of their marketing?

A: They are not currently available, but we will add them to the marketing support (most likely the product marketing section) ASAP.

Q: Did you say that it’s easy to migrate a site from shared hosting to a vps?

A: Yes, if you purchase a hosting control panel. All you need to do is set up the package, FTP across the site data and upload your database, then repoint DNS. We are looking at automating the procedure in the future.

Q: Is it possible do buy extra VPS’s NOT to be spread but to be hosted on the same hostmachine, view a view to not sharing the host

A: We can force this for you if required. Please contact support.

Q: Would you still need a reseller account if you decide to buy your own VPS to use for your current shared hosting clients?

A: Not at all, but a reseller account does provide you with a 25% discount.

Q: For those customers who prefer to host with a large hosting organisation, like Heart, and not a small web design company. Do you offer a referral scheme, where I can refer business to Heart and receive a commission?

A: Yes, our affiliate scheme on Commission Junction offers 30% of the initial purchase price of a VPS.

Q: Any idea of the timescale for the LAMP install feature? It took me ages to do one my first VPS as I’m a bit rusty!!

A: We have this up and working already, we just need to do some extra work to get it working in a memory-optimised environment.

Q: Just to confirm, we will be able to instantly activate a VPS order via the API

A: This is something we’re looking at the feasibility of. Instant activation offers a risk of customer error, with them purchasing an incorrect specification VPS, or too many. It’s something we would like to do, but we have to weigh it against this. We will of course, allow the API to push VPS instantly to the basket, it’s just a decision whether we allow it to go further than that or not.

Q: With no experience of VPS, would this be an appropriate environment for learning and development, or would it be something that would be better left alone? How much of a learning curve would it be? Mount Everest or Ben Nevis?

A: Absolutely. VPS start very cheap, and can be rebuilt with a fresh OS whenever you require, they are ideal for getting your feet wet in a dedicated environment.

Q: When will the 1 click installs become available for magento on VPS?

A: We’re looking to launch this in the next couple of weeks.

Q: Are the servers for VPS UK based?

A: Yes they are, they are located in our datacentre in Leeds.

Q: is the vps demo control panel link available to give to potential customers?

A: We will be making a white label version of the demo control panel available very soon.

Q: As an example what sort of spec vps would I need to run say 50 WordPress sites – general brochure sites?

A: Depending upon popularity, I would recommend 2-4 cores, maybe 3-6GB of memory, disk of course depends upon the size of the sites.

Q: How many customers can I run on one VPS?

A: As many as you like, but as you increase customers, you will need to upgrade your spec.

Q: What performance difference is there between the Linux VPS and Windows VPS?

A: There should be very little difference in performance between the two OS, Windows functions very well under KVM. We also separate our Windows and Linux VPS on a per-host basis, to take advantage of resource sharing.

Q: How much are extra IPs and is it a per monthly charge?

A: £1 per month, you can pay yearly or monthly.

Q: Where can a novice get more information on making the most of a VPS system… i.e. examples of things that can be done with it and practical implementations for a small business

A: This is something that I think would be really useful to all our resellers, so we’ll look at putting something together for you.

Q: Do you offer trials for partners?

A: I would speak to sales directly on this. We may be able to arrange something for you.

Q – Who is responsible for upgrading things like PHP, MySQL, OS (windows or Linux patches etc.) and products available for installation from the control panels (like eXtend)?

A: As it’s a dedicated environment, this is entirely up to you.

Q: Did you build your control panel entirely in house using open source tools? If so what is it based on? I ask in terms of scripting and API access

A: We did indeed. The front-end interface is mostly JQuery, and the underlying code is written in Perl. Our API is EPP based.

Q: How many VPS servers do you deploy on each physical server and what specification are the physical servers?

A: This depends upon the specs of the individual VPS – as a server can hold many more low spec VPS than larger ones. We absolutely want to ensure that our kvmhosts never run out of RAM (and begin swapping), so we like to ensure that servers always have available capacity.

The physical servers are R710s, with 2 x 6core Xeons, with 8x10k rpm  600GB SAS disks in RAID 10 formation. The host OS is installed on SD,

Q: Is there a facility to alert you if your VPS goes down?

A: Not at present, but it’s something we’re looking into. As we’d like to offer the service, rather than force you to go to an external provider.

Q: Can I change os of a vps?

A: Yes, from the dashboard.

Q: Is there a simple way to have a mixed domain say email functions from shared and web & database on vps?

A: Absolutely, it simply comes down to DNS. You could keep your mail DNS records pointing at shared, and repoint your www, @, and ftp records at your VPS.

Q: If I switch a site/domain from a Reseller to a VPS account will all customer emails remain in place?

A: No, there isn’t a simple way to transfer existing mailboxes over to a VPS platform, they would need to be recreated afresh.

Q: you mentioned the visual interface for root access to the vps, do you supply the software as a download for the visual root connection?

A: All you need is a VNC client, there are lots of free ones available.

Q: Would the VPS being blocklisted due to spam email effect others on the same physical server?

A: No, your VPS does not share its IP with other VPS.

Q: can you load several VPS using say 24 cores in total onto a physical server with 12 cores? What performance loading guarantees do you offer?

A: A vCPU allows you to operate on a physical CPU on the server – this is shared with other users. By adding additional vCPUs, you can run processes in parallel on multiple physical cores. You do share the cores with other users. We do not overload our kvmhosts, disk swapping is your worst nightmare in this sort of environment, and we work to ensure that this never happens, and we can migrate VPS between hosts to ensure that this is never the case.

Q: Can we install our own operating systems into VPS’s?

A:  Not just yet, but KVM does support it – so it’s something we are definitely interested in looking at.

Q: Can we use rDNS on the VPS IP?

A: Yes, we set this up automatically, and you will be able to set it manually within the dashboard very soon.

Q: Is the VNC control panel accessible from the control panel, and does VNC let you see the server at “keyboard video mouse” level?

A: The details are in the control panel, but you will need a VNC client. We recommend TigerVNC, it’s fully featured and cross-platform. You can pick it up here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/tigervnc/

It does work at that level – you could connect via VNC in whilst your VPS is rebooting for instance, and you would be able to see that progress.