Author: Patrick Hawkins

So you have come to the realization that you need an SSL Certificate. But there are different types. Which one do you really need?

If you are used to administering Apache on a cPanel server, administering the faster Litespeed webserver is not that much different. Litespeed transparently takes over for Apache; any configuration changes that you would normally make in an Apache configuration file or .htaccess files is still made in those files. In fact, once Litespeed is installed you can administer your cPanel server like you normally would. The few changes you would want to make to Litespeed directly can be done through your server’s Web Host Manager (WHM).

In the past, load balanced setups have required dedicated networking equipment, which takes time and expertise to set up correctly. Liquid Web’s Cloud Load Balancer makes setup and configuration of a load balancer as easy as filling out a web form.

If you process credit cards on a website, your site needs to be in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. (This is abbreviated as PCI DSS, and even more often referred to simply as PCI.) PCI compliance certifies that your organization takes all necessary steps to protect sensitive customer data and provides a set of standards for your infrastructure and server setup. While Liquid Web does not offer full PCI compliance certification, we do offer a separate service that scans your server to see that PCI DSS requirements are met, a great tool during the compliance process.

In a vast majority of cases, Linux does a fantastic job of automatically scheduling processes. The more urgent processes are given a higher priority, and the less urgent processes a lower priority. In rare circumstances, the scheduler might not prioritize processes as you would like. For example, backup processes could be taking up resources that you would rather be used serving web pages. If you would like to regain a bit control over process priorities, the nice and renice commands will give you some.

Servers can automatically perform tasks that you would otherwise have to perform yourself, such as running scripts. On Linux servers, the cron utility is the preferred way to automate the running of scripts.

There are two main ways to get cron to run a script. The first is to place a script into one of the following directories:

If you have ever set up a Cloud VPS server in the past, you have probably seen how much easier it is to get a new server up and running than a traditional server. Once the server itself is up, of course, there is still plenty of work to do, getting other pieces configured: installing an application, setting up specific database configurations, and so forth. Tools such as Puppet and Chef help you to automate this process… but you still have to log in to your manage account and order new servers to begin with.

Ruby on Rails has of this writing released patches for a critical security vulnerability affecting nearly all versions of Rails. It is critical that your Rails applications be updated to one of the following versions:

What is Cloud Block Storage?

Cloud Block Storage provides additional hard drive space for your Private Cloud Hosted Server with just a few clicks. The space is not pre-formatted but rather, it is a raw block device. The simplicity of providing a raw block device on the cloud means that you can mount and format the space on your server however you would like, with whatever filesystem is appropriate for your needs. This does entail a small amount of work getting the space into a usable state which we will address in this article.

Servers do a fantastic job of writing down in log files what is happening right that moment. While going back and reading logs later to determine what happened in the past is helpful, it is also useful to watch logs in real time. Linux provides a command line tool that lets us do just that: tail.