The Pitfalls of a Dedicated Server

Sep 8, 2008 Author: Zander | Filed under: Business Essentials, E-Commerce, Wordpress

We moved over to a dedicated server last month, and for the first time I’m handling the administration of the box. There’s a decent learning curve involved, and things really came to a head last week when dealing with a DDOS attack!

Lesson 1: Don’t rely on a host’s “security package” to keep you safe.
Lesson 2: Tech support won’t have all the answers, so get Googling.
Lesson 3: Install a firewall ASAP.

WHM has some security features available in their Security Center, but for whatever reason, it’s disabled by default. Had it been enabled, I probably wouldn’t have had an issue. But this incident caused me to start poking around the Apache config and opimizing it for better performance. At the same time, I installed a firewall to prevent any further issues from outside idiots! So in the long run, it actually helped. (Despite the ulcer it’s caused me over the past 3-4 days)

Hopefully the worst is behind us, and I can get back on track here..

2 Responses for "The Pitfalls of a Dedicated Server"

Jarret September 8th, 2008 at 3:43 pm 1

While I haven’t had to move up to a dedicated server (yet), I can imagine how much more work it takes to run one.

Especially when it comes to security issues and the like. I know that whenever I do find myself eventually needing a dedicated server I am going to spend a week or two reading up on all of the things that it needs.

Who are you purchasing your server from?
Zander September 8th, 2008 at 3:47 pm 2

We got our server from ThePlanet. (See the link in the sidebar) They have been absolute rockstars, but there’s only so much they can do within the scope of their job..

Security falls on the user, and it’s definitely been a crash-course in server administration. If I thought I could have gotten away with a VPS, I would have done it.. Unfortunately, our needs are so great that a dedicated box was the only option.