How to Use a Remote Desktop

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web
Category: Getting Started, Technical Support | Tags: , , ,

Remote Desktop Protocol or RDP provides access to your Windows Server’s operating system from your desktop, workstation machine, mobile device or laptop. The connection to your server will be encrypted and it offers some enhancements that allow you to attach local drives and devices.

Most modern Operating Systems have support for Remote Desktop. A Remote Desktop Client made by Microsoft is available in the Apple Appstore, the MacOS store, Google Play, the Chrome Web Store for ChromeOS and of course in the Windows Store. On Linux you may need to download a 3rd party option such as RDesktop or FreeRDP which you can get through a repository or it will be pre-installed on some distro’s.

Continue reading “How to Use a Remote Desktop” →

Configuring and Troubleshooting WHMCS Crons

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web
Category: Technical Support | Tags: , , ,

Over the years WHMCS has made some changes to where it stores certain directories, specifically directories outside of public_html. The goal of this is to increase overall security by moving sensitive files to a more protected location. While this change does help to improve WHMCS security, it also adds a few steps of complexity.

This article is meant to help simplify this complexity, or at least provide a reference configuration that you can use to troubleshoot cron issues, or gain a better understanding of WHMCS crons in general. I used WHMCS 7.3 for this article, but the general concept and instructions should apply for any 7.0 version of WHMCS.
Continue reading “Configuring and Troubleshooting WHMCS Crons” →

Configure VSFTPD with an SSL

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web | Updated:
Category: Technical Support, Tutorials | Tags: ,

How can I configure VSFTPD to support SSL encrypted connections?

In this article we will be discussing how to configure vsftpd to work with SSL encryption. If you do not have vsftpd installed yet you may wish to visit one of the these articles before proceeding.

How to install VSFTPD on CentOS 7

How to install VSFTPD on CentOS 6

How to install VSFTPD on Fedora 23

How to install VSFTPD on Ubuntu 15.04

Ready? Awesome, let’s get started.

Continue reading “Configure VSFTPD with an SSL” →

IPMI Dedicated VPN

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web | Updated:
Category: Technical Support | Tags: ,

IPMI stands for Intelligent Platform Management Interface. It is a set of computer interface specifications for an autonomous computer subsystem that provides management and monitoring capabilities on the host systems CPU, firmware, and operating system. It defines a set of interfaces used by system administrators for out-of-band management of computer systems.

As an example, IPMI provides a way to manage a server that is powered off or unresponsive by using a network connection to the hardware rather than to the operating system or login shell. This means you can bypass the operating system and log in via console to troubleshoot and get your server back up and running if it goes unresponsive for any reason.

Continue reading “IPMI Dedicated VPN” →

Using Conda for Alternate Python Installations

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web
Category: Technical Support | Tags: ,

Let’s be honest: Most of the time, the Python version included with a Linux distro isn’t the newest. For example, at the time of this writing, the version of Python 2 included with our CentOS 7 Storm images is 2.7.5, and Python 3 isn’t even available out of the box. For reference (again, at the time of this writing), the latest versions are 2.7.14 and 3.6.4 respectively.

Chances are that if you’re reading this article, you already have a reason to run a different version than what’s included (especially if 3.x is needed). However, if you stumbled on this article by chance, various reasons might include new features, a software package or library that only works up to a certain version, etc.

Continue reading “Using Conda for Alternate Python Installations” →

What is IPMI?

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web
Category: Technical Support | Tags: ,

Customer Access with IPMI

Remote Desktop Protocol or SSH shell are great for managing your server remotely. But what if you need to do something outside the operating system, like changing network settings or adjusting the BIOS? Those tools cannot help you because they depend on the server’s operating system to function. Wouldn’t it be great to have KVM-like console access to your remote server? With IPMI, you can get browser based access independent of the operating system.

Continue reading “What is IPMI?” →

What is RAID?

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web
Category: Technical Support | Tags:

The Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or RAID, is a robust method of storing data efficiently. It uses techniques like striping, mirroring, and parity to utilize multiple hard drives combined into larger volumes.

RAID serves two main purposes, it can be configured to mirror your data, giving you the potential opportunity to survive a catastrophic disk crash (depending on the configurations) and the other purpose is to make data reading and writing faster. Some RAID configurations do both.

Continue reading “What is RAID?” →

Using Object Storage for cPanel Backups

Posted on by Helpful Humans of Liquid Web | Updated:
Category: Technical Support | Tags: , ,

Object Storage is simply the easiest, most cost effective and secure backup solution for your data!

What are backups?

A backup is simply the procedure of making extra copies of your data in case the original data is lost or damaged. Liquid Web understands that your data is invaluable and so, we have provided a stable, secure and cost effective product called Object Storage which makes managing your cPanel backups much easier.

Continue reading “Using Object Storage for cPanel Backups” →

An Introduction to Firewalls

Posted on by Jennifer Walsh | Updated:
Category: Technical Support | Tags:

In network security, the first line of defense that should be used is a firewall. What is a firewall? It is a protective layer for your server that monitors and limits the incoming and outgoing network traffic. It uses a set of rules to determine to allow or block specific network traffic. Firewalls can prevent unauthorized use before reaching your servers. Firewalls can be hardware or software based.

Continue reading “An Introduction to Firewalls” →