Please find below the
answers to commonly asked questions we receive about Virtual
Subhosting. We hope this helps you better understand Virtual
Hosting, its benefits, and its limitations.
Please see ALSO: About Virtual SubHosting
Q: Is Virtual hosting supported on all of the Virtual
Server Systems?
Yes. Virtual Hosting will work on both the Basic Virtual
Server (AW25) as well as the Fully Functional Server Virtual
Servers (AW75 and AW200). Virtual Hosting will not work as
well on an AW25 Server because you won't be able to use "vadduser"
to add an FTP account for your Virtual Host. Thus you (as
the administrator) will have to upload all of the files for
your clients. However, you will still be able to allow for a
cgi-bin and e-mail aliasing for the Virtual Hosts on an AW25
Server. We only *recommend* that you use Virtual Hosting
only on Fully Functional Virtual Servers. There is no
technical limitation to doing Virtual Hosting on an AW25,
only inconvenience.
Q: To use the Virtual Host for www.myclient.com, am I
correct to assume that my client needs to register with
InterNIC? If that is the case, will BWSD provide the
registration service?
Yes... you will still need to register any additional
domains with InterNIC. They will charge you a $70
registration fee that is good for the first two years. BWSD
charges you $30/domain processing fee. If you need a new
domain name for a Virtual Server you adminstrate, then
simply email serviceNoSpamForUs@web-design.net.
(please check the domain name availability first using our
Domain Check
Form), or use the
InterNIC
whois form directly.
Q: If the Virtual Host package cannot offer telnet
access (a shell account), how can our Virtual Hosted Clients
upload their data to the server?
You will want to offer FTP access and POP accounts for your
Virtual Hosts by using the vadduser command or
by using the iManager
web-based vadduser utility. When prompted for the "home"
directory for the FTP account, you will want to specify the
same value that you use for the DocumentRoot
definition. This will allow your subhosted client to publish
web content to their Virtual Host. FTP and POP capability is
only available on the Fully Functional Virtual Server (AW75)
and Enhanced Fully Functional Virtual Server (AW200).
Multiple FTP/POP/IMAP accounts are not supported on the
AW25.
Q: Is there any way to restrict disk usage for the
Virtual Hosting subdirectories?
Yes. When you grant FTP privileges to your clients using
the vadduser command, give them FTP rights to a specific
directory and an FTP quota. Simply set their FTP directory
as the same directory as the Virtual Host directory and you
can limit the amount of space they can use.
Q: In a nutshell, how is Virtual Subhosting possible in
the Virtual Server environment?
Well, your virtual server includes your own individual Web
Service and a complete set of web server configuration files
so configuring multiple Virtual Hosts using your
configuration files is certainly possible. The real trick is
taking advantage of a Request Header that browsers use to
identify a specific host. The Request Header, HTTP_HOST, is
then used by Apache to match the request to a subhosted
domain name.
Q: I assume that non "HTTP_HOST" browsers can
still connect sucessfully to the main Server? If not what
errors do they get? One potential problem area is going to
be from the older AOL browsers.
If the browser does not support the HTTP_HOST variable
(i.e. it is not HTTP/1.1 compliant)... the client will
simply get the main home page of the Virtual Server. For
example, if the primary domain name of your Virtual Server
is "my-virtual-server.com" and the domain, "a-virtual-host.com",
is virtual subhosted on the Server. Any non-HTTP/1.1
requests for "a-virtual-host.com" will receive the
root server content, or in this example, the content for "my-virtual-server.com".
One way around this is to subhost all of the domains
associated with the Virtual Server. Then create a "directory",
or simply an index.html file in the main htdocs area. Then,
when HTTP/1.0 clients request a virtually hosted domain
name, they will see a directory of domain names and can then
jump to the appropriate content. That way the people with
older browsers will still be able to access the pages.
Q: If I have a customer that wants a Virtual Host but
doesn't want it's own domain name, can I create a Virtual
Host like "user.my-virtual-server.com"? I assume
that needs DNS setup too?
Yes. It is possible to add canonical names to your domain
name and have them configured to point to subdirectories of
your own Server. So for example, if your web presence
company is reselling servers and wanted to look real cool by
appearing to have all kinds of web servers. You could in
addition to your "http://www.my-virtual-server.com"
URL, configure "http://support.my-virtual-server.com",
"http://search.my-virtual-server.com", and "http://sales.my-virtual-server.com"
as subhosted canonical names on your Virtual Server. Each
canonical name would point to a different directory with
different content. If you need a new canonical name for a
Virtual Server you adminstrate, then simply email
serviceNoSpamForUs@web-design.net
with the canonical name you wish to add. There is a $20
processing fee for canonical names.
To configure the "http://support.my-virtual-server.com"
to point to a subdirectory, you would add something like the
following to your httpd.conf file:
# point
support.my-virtual-server.com to subdirectory support
<Host support.my-virtual-server.com>
ServerName support.my-virtual-server.com
ServerAdmin support@my-virtual-server.com
DocumentRoot /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/support
</Host> As
you can see, Virtual Hosting is a versatile tool, but it has
its place and comes with several
limitations. It is a very good solution for potential
clients that just want to "get their feet wet" on
the Internet and not spend too much money. Later, they may
want to expand to a Virtual Server as they recognize the
power of the Internet and their business grows.
For example, one example is the person who has a small one
man operation specialty record store. He started on the net
at a local ISP doing the Virtual Hosting for about $20/month
(5 MB of space) just to really test the water. Six months
later (now) he makes as much money from Internet sales as he
does from walk-ins. He still spends $20/month on his Hosted
site and $800/month on rent for the store. He is sold on the
Internet completely now.
Now he has been talking about getting a full blown Virtual
Server and e-commerce solution, including shopping carts,
database interface- the whole enchilada. There are probably
hundreds of small businesses around your town or
neighborhood that are in a similar situtation. A little
apprehensive about the Internet at first, want a low
start-up cost and see how it goes. Willing to pay a few
hundred in some HTML/CGI consulting.... you get the picture.
After you provide a small site and proof of concept, you can
then provide additional consulting services (web design,
e-commerce, etc) and make a greater profit. Virtual Hosting
allows you to get your foot in the door of many small
businesses.
Q: If a Virtual Host has their own CGI-BIN, are the CGI
scripts allowed to play with the directory system of the
Virtual Server or do they operate safely with their own "sandbox"?
Scripts executed in a Virtual Hosted cgi-bin will run as
your username with all its rights and permission. Therefore,
you will have to be a little careful about security issues.
In most cases however, it is likely that not only are you
providing your clients with hosting service, but you are
also designing their web content and writing their CGI
scripts as well. So this may be a non-issue. If you are
allowing your subhosted clients to upload their own CGI
scripts, then you will want to be very careful. Please see
our document, Virtual Subhosting
and Security Issues for more information.
Q: Are there limits to the amount of Virtual Hosts I can
place on a single Virtual Server System?
Yes. In order to maintain the highest performance standards
possible, each Virtual Server System has hard limits to the
amount of Virtual Hosts that can be configured. These limits
are as follows:
AW25 Server: 5 subhosts
AW75 Server: 25 subhosts
AW200 Server: 60 subhosts
We cannot guarantee the number of Virtual Hosts you will be
able to host since each Virtual Host uses a differen't
amount of resources. It may be that you can only host one
other Virtual Host before resources are exhausted on your
Virtual Server. It is up to you to monitor Virtual Hosts and
upgrade high load Virtual Hosts to their own Virtual Server.
Q: When will the limitations take effect?
The Virtual Host limitations will start on December 1,
1998.
Q: Why are you limiting the number of subhosts allowed
on each Virtual Server?
Since we announced subhosting as a feature of the Virtual
Server, we have left the number of subhosts unrestricted. We
have always stated the recommended number of subhosts on one
Virtual Server be kept around 25. Over the last year,
however, the number of subhosts per Virtual Server has sky
rocketed and has had a serious effect on the performance of
our servers. The new Apache we have developed will reduce
the load on our servers and give us the performance boost we
need in order to give you and your customers the highest
quality servers in the world. However, we can see that if we
leave subhosting unrestricted the performance boost will be
lost as endusers put more subhosts on their virtual servers.
Q: When will the limitations take effect?
You will have 90 days from July 1, 1998 before the limits
will take effect.
Q: What will happen if I exceed the number of subhosts
allowed?
As the new Apache is being deployed on all the Virtual
Servers you will receive a warning if the number of Virtual
Hosts on your Virtual Server exceeds the limits. This
warning will appear as an error in your log files notifying
you that you have exceeded the limit for your Virtual Server
type. This notification is intended to provide you with time
to clean up your configuration file(s). After the 90-day
period the web server will not serve files when the
subhosting limits are exceeded.
Q: How will you implement this limitation?
We will be converting all virtual servers to our modified
version of Apache. NCSA httpd will be removed.
Q: What effect will this have on my virtual servers and
what are the differences between Apache and NCSA?
We have programmed Apache to recognize NCSA parameters in
the configuration files. If you are using Microsoft
FrontPage 97 extensions you will need to upgrade to
Microsoft FrontPage 98 extensions. For some information on
Apache see:
http://www.apache.org/
For information on the Microsoft FrontPage server extensions
see:
http://www.web-design.net/servers/extensions/frontpage/
Q: How will the number of subhosts on my virtual server
be counted?
VirtualHosts (or "subhosts") will be counted by
the number of "<VirtualHost...>" directives
in the "httpd.conf" file.
With the new Apache version it is possible to put multiple
Virtual Host names in one directive. Therefore, if you place
multiple CNAMES or other domain/hostnames in one "<VirtualHost...>"
directive it will only count as one (1) with regards to the
set number you may have according to your Virtual Server
type.
As the new version of Apache allows you to make multiple
entries (domains, CNAMES) in the same VirtualHost directive
it may be advantageous to place both the www and non-www
entry in the same directive. This can be seen in Example 1
where both www.foobar.com and foobar.com are in the same
VirtualHost directive.
Consider the following example:
<VirtualHost
foobar.com www.foobar.com>
DocumentRoot /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/foobar
...
</VirtualHost>
The
above would count as 1 (one) Virtual Host (one VirtualHost
tag).
Example 2:
<VirtualHost
www.foobar.com>
DocumentRoot /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/foobar
...
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost foobar.com>
DocumentRoot /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/foobar
...
</VirtualHost>
The
above would count as 2 (two) Virtual Hosts (two Virtual Host
tags).
In short, if you want to know how many Virtual Hosts will
count on a Virtual Server you can simply count the number of
"<VirtualHost...>" directives (or tags) in
your configuration file(s).
Q: Will BWSD provide any tools for checking how many
subhosts are in the httpd.conf?
Yes. With the new Apache we will have modules compiled that
will allow you to check the status and configuration of the
virtual server's web server.
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