I like to have my domains registered via the same company so when I'm looking for a web host I have a very specific requirement -- that I just need space to upload stuff that I can direct to via my registar's DNS/CNAME settings. I don't need a 'free' domain name, or email, or to transer my existing registrations. Just space and the config info to send traffic to it.
So I'm shopping around for a new host at the moment and was wondering if there's a shorthand term for what I'm after, because it seems like it would be a fairly regular requirement and there'd be a term for it.
So that's my question, really. What's the most succunct way to articulate the kind of hosting I require to prospective hosts? (All suggestions for good, affordable hosts who do this sort of thing gratefully received of course!)
Most hosting companies do this for you. I believe what you are asking for is the term VirtualHost
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I want to determine where a bunch of websites are hosted: ViaWest, GoDaddy, Amazon Web Services, etc..
There's are free tools online that do this, but this will be slow to use for the number of sites I want to check (hundreds).
I want to script this. I've tried the following bash commands with no luck:
whois
finger
nmap
dig
None of them return the website's host, although they are helpful for things like IP addresses and nameservers. Any ideas?
I also looked into a script that would query the webhostinghero site, but it seemed like there should be an easier way. I have a list of urls and corresponding IPs, if that helps. Thanks in advance.
If you want to obtain bulk whois data, you must go through a company that has access to it, such as ARIN.
However, ARIN has this disclaimer:
ARIN provides access to a bulk copy of all objects in the ARIN Whois directory service to support the work of bona fide academic researchers, and to operators and researchers who are using the data to provide a clear benefit to the broader networking community. ARIN does not provide bulk copies of Whois data to operators who wish to incorporate this data into products, services, or internal systems with no clear benefit to the broader community.
Keep in mind that there is apparently no single, complete copy provided by any other company.
You can also look up the name servers using this C# project, and map values accordingly. Try turning that project into something using netcat. More on that here.
My need to host a few very simple static sites on DropBox has led me to this 'exercise'.
It is probably right between serverfault and stackoverflow, but I'd say it's more programmatically.
I would like to set up a service (similar in look and feel to wasitup.com) that forwards and masks domain for anyone. This will be free, so I am looking for a quick and cheap way to do this.
In the end, my domain cute.domain.com is pointing to my server; the server is delivering a very simple frame with the link to the real content in it, something like http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2818368/test.com/index.html
This alone would be easy, just use .htaccess, nginx or Apache modules. But I would like to be able to that dynamically so that everyone can simple fill a few form fields and - presto - has it's own masquerading going.
I dream of something like a bare ruby/rack or sinatra solution that answers all the requests, checks if the hostname in the request is in a file or even in memory hash table/sqlite db and then replies with the small frame code that includes the link to the destination.
Why not just install Webmin or some other control panel that already does this?
I've been using DreamHost for a long time - mostly for blogs and such.
But now that I'm developing web apps, I think it's time to switch. One reason is that DreamHost limits the number of emails I can send per hour/day. But I also don't see any startups using DreamHost, which is another sign.
What should I switch to? I haven no server experience at all besides my time with dreamhost.
I'd recommend you get a VPS with a decent hosting company.
Pay the extra for a control panel (CPanel or Plesk are the main ones usually) so you have an easy way to add services, create virtual hosts and configure dns.. will save you some time.
You'll also get root access to it so you can do anything you want after that - including breaking it.
EC2 is a good option, depending on your budget. You can get the equivalent of a dreamhost shared account, but with root, the price depending on the services you select. You can also go much, much better if you have the money. A lot of startups are starting to use it, it does make many things much easier.
There is some server work though. There are "point and click" server AMI's out there, but you will have to learn some server tasks a little beyond FTP (or SSH if you used it on dreamhost).
Good luck! I am in the process of switching from dreamhost to EC2 for most of my development. I'll still use dreamhost for a couple of things here and there, just no actual applications.
After researching various hosts, I still get the feeling that it is somewhat impossible to get a host that would never go down.
Maybe these hosts employ redundancy, maybe they do not. Either case, how would one display a friendly message to the user along the lines of "BRB". What if your host goes down completely for an hour? You would need a way to tell users you would be back. How do you accomplish that?
I doubt any ISP or hosting provider would do that for you. To archieve that you need very expensive and complicated infrastructure like redundant fail-safe routers and backbones in addition to servers of course - and you need multiple. The concepts like Simple Failover requires DNS updates which take minutes to hours to propagate normally, so it's not a 100% solution either. See a good Joel's article for a related discussion.
If the host is down and you're on a single server, then you are definitely down. This is a limitation of shared hosting... there's not much you can do about it. You can ask your host if you are hosted on multiple servers for redundancy... if so, then you wouldn't have to worry about it.
If you host your own server, then you could maybe get your hands on Simple Failover and maybe have a cheap Virtual Dedicated server that goes UP when your primary goes down.
Ok, every host will have downtime at some point. Your best bet would be to go with someone who has the great customer service that can help get your box back up. 99% of the time when your box goes down its your fault (if you have access to the OS/Apache etc).
The people at Rackspace are awesome for hosting + customer service. The rackspace cloud is great allowing you to create and take down servers instantly. (slicehost is good for persistent boxes charged by month, also owned by rackspace)
As for a way to communicate to your users, i would employ twitter, tumblr, or a hosted blog service. This way if your box goes down you can communicate your message via these services which are most likely on a different host/network.
I'm considering moving a number of small client sites to an unmanaged VPS hosting provider. I haven't decided which one yet, but my understanding is that they'll give me a base OS install (I'd prefer Debian or Ubuntu), an IP address, a root account, SSH, and that's about it.
Ideally, I would like to create a complete VM image of my configured setup and just ship those bits to the provider. Has anyone had any experience with this? I've seen Jeff talk about something like this in Coding Horror. But I'm not sure if his experience is typical. I suppose it also depends on the type of VM server used by the host.
Also, do such hosts provide reverse-DNS? That's kinda useful for sites that send out e-mails. I know GMail tends to bounce anything originating from a server without it.
Finally, I'd probably need multiple IP addresses as at least a couple of the sites have SSL protection which doesn't work with name-based virtual hosts. Has anyone run into trouble with multiple IPs through VPS? I wouldn't think so, but I've heard whisperings to the contrary.
Slicehost (referral link, if you so choose) offers reverse DNS, multiple IPs ($2/month/IP), Ubuntu/Debian (along with others). The only criteria it doesn't support is the ship-a-VM one, but it does let you clone VMs you've set up in their system via snapshots. You could thus set it up once, then copy that VM as many times as you like.
If that's a sacrifice you're willing to make, I highly recommend them - they've had great customer service the few times I've needed to contact them, decent rates, and a great admin backend.
I like XenPlanet, their prices seem to be comparable, but they also allow you to purchase extras like added disk space. Not sure if they let you buy additional bandwidth.
I have used them for a number of different machines and found their service to be very good.