Additional Details and Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Signing up

Please contact us to sign up. To prevent fraud and misuse, we do not accept automated orders.

To get in touch with a VPS expert please send an email to sales@cymru1.net and we will respond as quickly as we can. You are also welcome to contact us by telephone on 08000 11 22 44 (lines are normally open between 9:30am and 5:30pm Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays).

Setup time

Once your payment has been processed and cleared your VPS will normally be ready to use within 24 hours. We will email you with the necessary details, such as the root password and IP address.

All transactions are carefully analysed and a credit check will be made on your company (or on you if you are signing up as an individual), however. If the results of any of these checks are unclear, or if we need to make further enquiries, there may be an additional delay in setting up your VPS. These checks are necessary to ensure spammers and fraudsters are not allowed access to a VPS. Cymru 1 operates a zero-tolerence attitude to fraud and anti-social behaviour.

In some circumstances, not all of the options you may have selected when you placed your order will be available at the same time as your VPS. For example,modifications to rDNS addresses can also take longer than 24 hours to process.

 

Terms and Conditions

Remember to read the VPS Terms and Conditions carefully and in full before signing up. It contains important information on your obligations as a customer, and our obligations as a supplier.

 

What is a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a self-contained subdivision of a physical (real) server that to all important intents and purposes appears to its administrator and users to be a physical server.

It can be rebooted independently of the physical server and runs its operating system and applications independently of the physical server.

Another term sometimes used to describe a VPS is Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS).

Cymru 1 VPS options are powered by Parallels Virtuozzo software and run on Dell servers.

 

What is a Container?

A Container is another term to describe a VPS. Parallels (who make the Virtuozzo virtualisation software we use on our servers) uses the term Container throughout its documentation to describe a VPS. However, since this term "Container" is relatively new compared to "VPS", for the most part we will stick to using VPS on our website, especially since it is more descriptive than Container.

 

What can I do with a VPS?

Almost anything that can be done with a physical (real) server can be done on a virtual server. You can host website, run email servers, DNS servers, anti-spam and anti-virus gateways, storage nodes and more.

However, please be aware that our Terms and Conditions include a ban on the use of our VPS products for any anti-social, immoral or illegal activity.

There are also certain unavoidable technical differences between a VPS and a dedicated server, which are covered in the section below..

 

How does a VPS differ from a conventional Dedicated Server?

With a Dedicated (real, physical) server, you own or rent a physical box of hardware and have exclusive use of it. Nobody else shares any of the physical resources it provides.

With a Virtual Private Server (VPS) you rent what is in effect a self-contained subdivision of a physical server, with one or more other customers also renting similar subdivisions and all making use of the same physical memory, physical disks, physical network interfaces etc.

These subdivisions or virtual private servers act almost exactly like a normal dedicated physical server, however, with a particular allocation of private disk space, a minimum amount of RAM and so on. They also run their own operating systems, can be rebooted, backed up and restored individually, and allow full root access.

Viruozzo-based VPSes (Containers) share a common Linux Kernel. This means you cannot load your own kernel, and cannot load your own kernal modules.

Please click here for a comprehensive comparison of Virtual Private Servers compared to Dedicated Servers.

 

Is a VPS the right option for me?

This is a difficult question to answer. In the grand scheme of things, a VPS is a midway point between using a shared (individual or reseller) hosting account and renting or buying a full Dedicated Server. A VPS offers almost all the advantages of a Dedicated Server but at a fraction of the cost.

Essentially, if you want to host a number of websites, and have full control of how they are hosted, the package specifications and the operating system and software used, and you want to be able to properly trouble-shoot problems that your customers might encounter yourself rather than having to rely on a third party hosting provider, then a VPS is likely to be a very good choice.

Keep in mind, however, that a VPS makes you responsible for the smooth running of just about everything, and if something goes wrong you must fix it (or ask us or someone else to do so on your behalf, which might involve additional costs).

For example if you do something that causes your VPS or the software running in it to stop working properly, it is your responsibility to get it fixed. If a hacker gains access to your VPS, it is your responsibility to resolve the situation - if necessary by re-imaging your VPS (wiping and starting from scratch). If a script running on a website in your VPS gets compromised and used to send spam etc, it is your responsibility to resolve the problem.

If you are a technical expert, you should also keep in mind that due to way in which the Virtuozzo virtualisation software we use works, you will not be able to build or use your own Linux Kernel or modules -- all VPSes run on a single, shared kernel and kernal modules - and certain hardware registers, such as the hardware clock, are read-only. In addition, extremely timing-sensitive applications, such as Digium's Asterisk, may not function correctly. And for those linux flavours that support it on a physical server, please note that selinux is not supported in a Virtuozzo VPS.

 

What does Guaranteed Uptime mean?

We guarantee that your VPS will be up at least 99.9% of the time over the course of each calendar month. If your VPS uptime falls below this threshold we will refund you 100% of your monthly service fee for that month.

This guarantee refers purely to the availability of your VPS, with refunds only being given when downtime is directly caused by a hardware, software or internet connectivity failure on our physical servers, stopping you from being able to use your VPS.

In other words the guarantee does not apply to downtime caused by your own acts or omissions, or acts or omissions or people using or accessing your VPS. For example if a software configuration issue, database error or similar problem within your VPS stops it booting or prevents a particular software package from running or working correctly, or if you have allowed a hacker to compromise your machine and we have been forced to temporarily shut it down, or if your VPS is subject to a remote DoS (Denial of Service) attack, we will not refund you.

Unfortunately, guarantees of this nature can lead to situations where you may disagree with us on the cause of a problem, with you being certain you have not done anything wrong or made any changes at all, and us being sure nothing is wrong on our servers or software.

To avoid this situation we have made it clear in the Terms and Conditions that you must accept our decision on the matter. Keep in mind that a fault with an individual VPS is highly unlikely - when something goes wrong on our side, all the VPSes running on a particular physical server are likely to be affected.

For full details on the Uptime Guarantee, please read through the Terms and Conditions that apply to our VPS products.

 

What is CPU Weight?

CPU weight is a unitless representation of the amount of CPU power available to your VPS in comparison to other VPSes running on the same physical server. The higher the figure, the better.

For example, on a physical server running two VPSes, one with a CPU weight of 1000 and one with a CPU weight of 2000, if both VPSes attempt to use 100% of the CPU power available to them, the VPS with the CPU weight of 2000 will be given twice the CPU power of the one with a weight of 1000.

Few (if any) VPSes running on a particular physical server will ever require 100% CPU power all the time, however. So if at any given moment a particular VPS requires as much CPU power as possible while other VPSes running on the same physical server require a minimal amount of CPU power, the VPS that needs all the power will be allocated as much CPU power as possible, almost up to the maximum CPU power of the physical server.

Thus the actual amount of CPU power available to a VPS at any given moment will depend on the CPU needs of any other VPSes running on the same physical server at that same moment, and will also depend on the CPU weight allocated to each VPS.

The use of CPU weight means that no single VPS can ever consume 100% of the CPU resources of the physical server at the complete expense of other VPSes that also need plenty of CPU power at the same time.

All our VPS products run on Dell PowerEdge physical servers with either two Dual-Core or one Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, and due to the efficient way in which the Virtuozzo allocates resources, VPS performance should be more than adequate for most hosting needs.

 

What is Guaranteed RAM?

Guaranteed RAM is the minimum amount of RAM that will normally be available to your VPS.

 

 

What is Virtuozzo?

Virtuozzo, or Parallels Virtuozzo Containers to give it its full name, is the virtualisation software we use on our physical servers.

According to Parallels, Virtuozzo is the world's leading OS virtualisation solution. We don't know if this is marketing speak or if it is based on actual figures, but we think it is the bees knees and compared to other virtualisation technologies we've looked at it offers particularly high levels of density, performance and manageability.

If you'd like to know more, visit the Parallels Virtuozzo webs pages at www.virtuozzo.com

What is the Virtuozzo Power Panel (VZPP) / Parallels Power Panel (PPP)?

Note: Parallels Power Panels (PPP) is the new name for Virtuozzo Power Panel (VZPP). You may find both terms used on our website as we are still in the process of removing references to VZPP.

Parallels Power Panels is a powerful and easy-to-use web-based control panel which you can use to administer, backup, restore and re-image your VPS:

• Start, Stop, Fast Stop and Restart (reboot) your VPS
• Manage services and processes running in your VPS (useful for stopping an unresponsive task or restarting a service)
• Monitor VPS resource utilization for CPU, system, disk space and disk inodes
• Back up and restore your VPS including all system and user files
• VPS Repair - start the VPS in a special repair mode which is useful when a VPS is broken and does not boot.
• VPS Re-Image - allows you to restart from scratch, either saving or discarding existing files when doing so.
• View the VPS actions log to monitor resource shortage alerts and various VPS events
• Embedded SSH client for easy root access

 

What is the difference between Centos and Red Hat Linux?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of many different "flavours" of the Linux operating system. It is one of the most widely used in commercial environments due to its stability and security.

Unlike many other flavours of Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is commercial - you must pay an annual fee in order to obtain a fully working copy, though this fee includes various software support options.

The source code (raw programming language instructions) of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is freely available, however.

CentOS is the name of a flavour of Linux that is based on the Red Hat Enterprise source code, but provided in fully working form without the need to pay any fees (subject to certain licensing requirements). It does not contain any Red Hat banding (logos etc), however, such things being replaced with CentOS branding.

The bottom line is that, in effect, CentOS is basically a "free" version of Red Hat Linux. Legally speaking this is not strictly true, but that topic is beyond the scope of this FAQ. For more information on CentOS please visit www.centos.org

 

What is the difference between Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat and Centos?

These are all different "flavours" of the Linux operating system - they use basically the same methods and much of the same basic code as each other, but may also have significant differences of one kind or another. Choosing between them is really a matter of personal preference and, in the case of commercial flavours such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, down to cost.

 

Which Operating System should I choose?

If you have no experience of Linux and no preferences, CentOS would be our suggestion. Version 6 (64-bit) is the latest and greatest version of CentOS.

Please note that our Atomic Security option is only available if you choose to install Centos (5 or 6) on your VPS, and the Server Management option is not available if you Debian. Except on special request, Plesk will not be installed as standard on Debian operating systems.

All in all, unless you are a Linux expert or have particular familiarity with a different operating system flavour, we strongly suggest that you stick to Centos for your VPS, as this is the flavours of Linux we have most experience with and will be able to provide most help with.

 

How do I remotely reboot my VPS?

This is done via the Virtuozzo Power Panel/Parallels Power Panel. Please refer to the Power Panel Manual for more details.

 

How do I re-image my VPS?

This is done via the Virtuozzo Power Panel/Parallels Power Panel. Please refer to the Power Panel Manual for more details.

WARNING: If you use the Virtuozzo Power Panel / Parallels Power Panel to re-image your VPS, it will be wiped clean and restored to its "out of the box" configuration.

If you subscribe to the Server Management option or Atomic Security option, all the modifications we have made to enable these options, along with any updates we have implemented, will also be lost. If you want to restore these options a one-off fee of £50 + VAT will be charged.

 

How do I backup my VPS?

This is done via the Virtuozzo Power Panel/Parallels Power Panel. Please refer to the Power Panel Manual for more details.

 

What is Plesk? What can it do?

Parallels Plesk is a powerful but easy to use control panel that allows you to quickly and easily set up hosting accounts for you and your customers.

Plesk allows you to easily control things such as the amount of disk space to allocate to an account, whether or not to allow PHP, Perl and MySQL to be used and how many email addresses can be configured.

You can also use it to create and modify email addresses, view statistics, stop, start and restart services and much more.

In effect Plesk provides a way for you to do everything you need to do to setup, configure and control a website and its email accounts.

Plesk also allows your hosting customers to use it to login to control those settings that are relevant to them, such as creating and setting up email accounts.

Because Plesk does so much for you it may take a while for you to become familiar with it.

Click here to download a full Administrator's user manual

For an overview and more details on Plesk, please visit the Plesk website at www.plesk.com

Please note that certain options within Plesk and which are mentioned in the manual and on the website are extra-cost options. This topic is covered in detail a little later on in this page, under the heading Which Plesk options are included?

Please also note that, other than by special arrangement, Plesk is not installed on Debian operating systems.

How many domains can I host with Plesk?

The maximum number of domains you can host depends on the Plesk License installed in your VPS, either 10, 30, 100 or Unlimited*.

Each domain can, however, have an unlimited number of email addresses, email aliases, databases, and domain aliases.

Domain aliases are "other names" for a domain. For example, if a customer has a domain name of domain.com and has also registered domain.co.uk and wants people who type in either address in their browser's address bar to arrive at the same website, you can set up domain.com as the main domain in Plesk then add a domain alias of domain.co.uk to it. Despite having two domains, from the point of view of the Plesk License, this counts as only one domain.

* Please note that to host more than around 300 domains, even if you have an Unlimited Plesk License, you may need to customise and recompile certain applications on your VPS. This is not a trivial task unless you are a Linux expert. It is important to understand that this 300 domain figure is only an estimate, however, and you may be able to host far more domains without recompiling, depending on how busy or complex each site hosted on your VPS might be.

Which version of Plesk do you offer?

Unless there is a good reason not to, we normally install the most recent stable version of Plesk when we create a VPS. At the time of writing, this was version 12.

Like any powerful software package, however, initial releases of Plesk sometimes contain bugs. Usually this are quite minor and although they might occasionally be annoying they will not stop you using the control panel. Occasionally, however, serious bugs are discovered in a new release. We therefore usually wait a few months after a particular version of Plesk has been released, to try to make sure there are no serious problems, before we start offering it as the default version installed on new VPSes.

 

Which Plesk options are included?

A number of features in Plesk are considered optional extras and are not included in the version of Plesk we install in VPSes.

Optional extras which are not installed include:

• Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam
• PostgreSQL Databases
• All Gameserver modules
• Event Manager
• Tomcat/ColdFusion
• Application Vault
• Mambo CMS
• Integrated Help Desk
• Slave servers
• Language Packs
• Plesk VPN
• Plesk Billing
• SiteBuilder

With the exception of the Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam facilities you are unlikely to need or use any of the features listed. Please contact us for a custom quotation if you do need any of these features.

A number of free anti-virus and anti-spam solutions are available that work very well with Plesk, such as SpamAssassin and ClamAV. Indeed we install both these packages, along with a helper application called qmail-scanner, when customers select our Server Management option.

Very good third-party commercial anti-virus and anti-spam products are also available which directly integrate with Plesk and allow your customers to adjust their own settings rather than having to make use of fixed settings decided by you.

Additional information third-party commercial tools is given in the next section....

 

Can I add to Plesk's features/options?

A number of commercial third party tools for Plesk are available.

The best of these tools are by Racksoft, whose "4PSA" range includes Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam applications, advanced DNS management tools, and much more. Visit www.4psa.com and select the "4PSA Software for Plesk" section for more details and prices.

We highly recommend the 4PSA product range and use almost all of them on the majority of the servers and VPSes we use to host our own customer's websites. They are easily installed in your VPS -- all that is usually required is to login as root, download a file archive, unpack it, then run an automated install script. The 4PSA support department is also able to install the products for you for a small fee.

WARNING: Optional extras for Plesk that are offered by Parallels (the publishers of Plesk) cannot be purchased by you and installed in your VPS. This is because in order to activate these functions you must own your own Plesk license and in the case of the version installed in your VPS we own the license rather than you. If you are interested in any of the optional extras offered by Parallels please contact the Cymru 1 Sales department.

 

Do I need the Automated Secondary DNS service?

In order to be able to answer this question fully, you need to know about DNS and nameservers. You'll find more information on our Hints and Tips page which covers these topics.

Essentially, however, each domain name needs to have a minimum of two "nameservers" associated with it (a primary and a secondary). Each of these nameservers have host records that point to the IP address of a DNS server which is responsible for converting human-readable addresses, such as www.cymru1.net to computer readable addresses, such as 123.121.121.123. Each nameserver should point to a different IP address, and each IP address should have an independent DNS server running on it - this is for redundancy.

Your VPS will already have a DNS server running on it, which will be automatically controlled and configured by Plesk. This will normally be your primary nameserver.

If you have more than one IP address for your VPS, it is possible to use the Plesk-controlled DNS server as both a primary and a secondary nameserver by simply configuring your two nameserver host records to point to those two IP addresses. (If you only have one IP address it is sometimes possible to point both nameserver host records to the same single IP address, though this is not a good idea at all - we don't recommend it).

If you do things this way (Use two IPs on your VPS and have nameserver host records pointing to them), you will lose some DNS redundancy - if the DNS server running on your VPS fails for any reason, or even if it is temporarily unavailable, you can run into problems.

With our Automated Secondary DNS service you would configure one of the nameservers associated with a domain you wanted to host to one of our dedicated secondary DNS servers. This DNS server will automatically detect changes made by Plesk to the DNS records on your VPS and load them into its DNS records. This means you don't have to do anything in order to have redundant DNS - everything happens automatically for you.

(For the technically minded, please note that our Secondary DNS server will be on the same Class C subnet as your VPS - for full redundancy a separate Class C is recommended).

An alternative method of achieving redundant DNS services is not to use your VPS for DNS at all, and instead to use the manual DNS configuration option that many domain name registrars, including our own www.c1-domains.com offer. This particular way of doing things will require you to manually make changes and add DNS records etc for a domain via your domain name registrar (or that of your customer if they already have a domain name and you do not require them to transfer their domain to your own registrar) each time you want to add a new domain to Plesk or made changes to it that require DNS records to be updated.

The Automated Secondary DNS option costs £2 + VAT per month.

 

How many IP addresses do I really need?

You can theoretically host an unlimited number of domain names on a VPS using only one IP address (subject to your Plesk License and your software's capabilities etc).

However, you will normally need two IP addresses if you intend having both your primary and secondary DNS handled on your VPS (see the section above on Secondary DNS for more information)

You will also need one IP address for each SSL Certificate you intend to install in Plesk. SSL Certificates are the mechanism through which you can create a secure connection between a visitor's web browser and a website hosted on your server. They are required when collecting things such as credit card data and other sensitive data.

Please note that the IP addresses used for SSL Certificates do not have to be different to the IP addresses used by your nameservers. A VPS with a total of two IP addresses can handle two different SSL certificates and provide primary and secondary DNS, and host an unlimited number of domain names (subject to your Plesk license and software etc) that don't require SSL certificates all at the same time.

For example - on a VPS with two IPs:

1x IP configured by Plesk for use for "shared" hosting and used by the majority of the domains you host in Plesk. This same IP can be the primary nameserver (DNS server) IP address. Either have no SSL certificate on this IP address or install your own SSL IP address for use on your own website. (You could, theoretically, use that IP for an SSL certificate for one of your customers instead of for your own use, but we dot not recommend this)

1x IP as the secondary DNS server address and potentially also allocated as a dedicated IP address for a customer who requires an SSL certificate.

If more customers need SSL certificates, you would need to add additional IP addresses

All of the above will make slightly more sense if you read through the Plesk Administrator's manual, where you will see how an IP address can be set to "shared" or "exclusive". When set to shared, more than one customer and website can be hosted on the IP address in question. You would normally have the majority of your customers and their websites on a single shared IP address. When set to exclusive, only one customer can use that IP address - though that customer can have as many websites as they want on that IP address (but only one SSL Certificate). But whether they are set to shared or exclusive for hosting, an IP address can still be used for global DNS, email and so on.

Additional IP addresses cost £2.50 + VAT per IP per month.

 

What is Atomic Security?

The Atomic Security option provides multiple layers of security along with essential service monitoring and file integrity checking. The end result is an option that helps to protect your VPS and the websites you host in it from being compromised by hackers as well as helping to keep it running smoothly.

The Atomic Security option consists of four basic elements:

Mod_security: This is an add-in for the Apache web server that employs rules-based protection to your web pages which protect against comment spam, remote file inclusions, XSS attempts, and general attempts by hackers and script kiddies to find and use vulnerabilities in PHP and Perl scripts to compromise your VPS. We use a special set of rules provided by the Prometheus Group, a company that specialises in server security. The rules are regularly updated to keep up with the latest threats. You can think of mod_security as being a bit like a firewall for applications (scripts). More information can be found at the mod_security website at www.modsecurity.org

rkhunter: This is an application that scans your VPS to check file integrity and for any signs of root kits (hacker tools) that might have been installed. Its purpose is to look for and detect any signs that a hacker might have compromised your system, allowing you to take action sooner rather than later in the event of a problem.

psmon: This is a process monitor that checks vital services such as the email server, web server, MySQL server and DNS server running on your VPS. If it finds that any of these essential services have stopped running it will attempt to restart them and will email you to notify you that there was a problem and what action was taken.

mod_evasive: This is an add-in module for Apache that helps protect your VPS from a DoS (Denial of Service) attack.

In addition to all of the above, the Atomic Security option includes a module that will temporarily block access to an IP address that triggers certain mod_security rules (helping to prevent repeat attacks) and scans for PHP scripts with known vulnerabilities. This latter feature is particularly useful for hosting companies as it can help you detect if a customer has installed an older version of a script with known problems and that is likely to attract hackers.

Cymru 1 uses a form of Atomic Security on its own hosting servers and the results speak for themselves -- the security logs show attempts to compromise one website or another, or the entire server, being blocked by one Atomic Security element or another almost every minute of every day.

It is important to understand that Atomic Security does not make your VPS hacker-proof, however - it simply provides a very high level of protection against some of the most common forms of hacker attack.

And as with any form of security, Atomic Security can cause problems as well as solving them. For example a legitimate script running on your VPS might trigger a mod_security rule which will prevent it from running correctly or from being installed. It may therefore be occasionally necessary to make adjustments to the mod_security rules in order to allow the script to run correctly or be installed. We will help you to do this if need be, liasing with the rule authors for advice where necessary. Keep in mind, however, that in some situations modifying the rules may reduce the level of security mod_security provides.

You must decide for yourself whether such occasional inconveniences outweigh the advantages that Atomic Security provides, but we strongly suggest that do go for this option in order to better protect yourself and your customers from hackers and script kiddies. Remember, if your VPS is compromised it may be necessary to re-image it, and this can cause a great deal of inconvenience to you and your customers, especially since restoring your original data may prove to be problematic or, at the very least, time consuming.

The Atomic Security option costs £10 + VAT per month. It is only compatible with Centos operating systems.

WARNING: The Atomic Security option requires a significant amount of CPU and memory resources for processing the mod_security rules, of which there is a very large number. Choosing the Atomic Security option will therefore have an impact on the performance of your VPS and we do not recommend its use with our VPS-256 and VPS-384 products unless you are happy to use a subset of the rules (which would be your responsibility to arrange, by editing certain configuration files).

 

Should I choose the Server Management option?

If you are new to Linux and VPSes, we strongly encourage you to select this option: we will regularly update your VPS operating system to keep it up to date with any major bug fixes and security updates released for it. We will also better harden your VPS against attacks by hackers, and install anti-virus and anti-spam facilities that will automatically protect any mailboxes you or your customers create in Plesk. We will also install a more robust firewall for you than is installed as standard.

The Server Management option does NOT routinely include upgrades to Plesk unless they relate to important security updates. This is because upgrading Plesk from one version to another can result in lost data, configuration problems and even total loss of functionality. We are still happy to do it on request and at no extra charge, but it would be at your own risk. If something goes wrong you will need to restore your VPS to the last backup, or employ someone to resolve the issue for you.

Commercial upgrades to Plesk are also available, where for a small fee your version of Plesk can be upgraded to a later version, with any problems that might occur during the upgrade normally being resolved for you.

In contrast, if you are happy to login to your VPS as the root user and understand how to update your applications via a command prompt then you are very unlikely to need the Server Management option. You should still consider opting for a commercial Plesk update, however, as when things go wrong with Plesk it can be difficult to trace and resolve the problem unless you are extremely familiar with Plesk.

The Server Management option costs £10 + VAT per month. It is only available with Centos and Fedora operating systems.

WARNING: If you use the Virtuozzo Power Panel / Parallels Power Panel to re-image your VPS, all the modifications we have made, along with the updates we have implemented will be lost. A one-off charge of £50 + VAT will be made to bring your VPS back up to date.

Please note that Plesk's built-in Firewall functionality will be disabled when you choose the Server Management option.

 

What Automatic weekly off-server backup?

With our Automated weekly off-server backup option we will automatically backup your VPS at weekly intervals and transfer a copy of that backup to a server other than the one hosing your VPS.

This provides you with an automatic off-server backup of your VPS which can be restored in the event of a hardware failure that causes your on-server backups to be lost.

This option is highly recommended for mission-critical VPSes and data.

Off-site as well as off-server backups are also available, as are backups that are performed more frequently than every 7 days. Please contact us for details.

 

What is rDNS?

rDNS stands for Reverse DNS. It is the mechanism for converting an IP address to a name address (for example 123.121.121.123 to xyz.yourco.com).

rDNS is most important when it comes to email -- emails sent from an IP address with no matching rDNS record are commonly rejected by a receiving mailserver since they are likely to be spam.

All IP addresses allocated to our VPSes have an rDNS record to prevent this from happening. This record will normally match the default hostname allocated to your VPS.

 

Do I need custom rDNS Addresses?

By default, all IP addresses allocated to your VPS will have a generic rDNS record on the cymru1.org domain (e.g. xyz.cymru1.org). There is nothing wrong with this, even if does not match your VPS hostname should you change it. It does, however, reveal Cymru 1's involvement in your VPS - at least to someone with some technical knowledge.

By requesting customised rDNS you can better conceal Cymru 1's involvement with your VPS and, if necessary, also allows you to match the rDNS with your VPS hostname (if you have changed it from the default, which would normally match the rDNS).

There is a one-off fee of £50 for customising the rDNS addresses of the IPs allocated to your VPS.

 

What are Professional Services?

If you need us to, we are usually willing to do work for you within your VPS that falls outside the normal scope of technical support (please see the Technical Support section for more information).

For example, instead of doing so yourself you may want us to install or upgrade a particular application, or PHP script, or to adjust certain settings for you. This type of work comes under our Professional Services option.

There is a charge of £50 + VAT per hour (or part hour) for our Professional Services..

You will be required to complete a Professional Services authorisation form before work can be started. This will include an estimate of the time required to complete the work.

Where the work you request is beyond our knowledge or experience we will inform you, and will usually be able to suggest a third-party company as an alternative provider of Professional Services.

Our Professional Services are only available for Centos and Fedora-based VPSes.

 

What is the scope of Technical Support?

You may have read elsewhere on our website that another term used to describe a VPS, especially when implemented on the Virtuozzo virtualisation software that we use, is a "Container". To more easily understand the scope of the technical support we provide, you can think of yourself as being totally responsible for the contents of the Container and what goes in and out of it, while we are only responsible for providing you with the Container itself and for providing that container with access to the Internet.

This means that absolutely any problem that is not caused by a network failure, a hardware failure on the physical server on which your VPS runs, or a serious failure of the Virtuozzo virtualisation software that we run on it that prevents your VPS from running, is your responsibility to resolve. Any problems you encounter with the Plesk software is also your responsibility - it is treated just like any other applications installed by default in your VPS.

In other words, anything that goes wrong within your VPS is outside the scope of technical support. This does not mean we won't help you if you do experience a problem, however. Where time allows, and if the issue is simple to resolve, we will do our best to help you free of charge - but we can't guarantee to do so. Where time allows we are also happy to give you whatever advice we can regarding how to perform a particular task in Plesk or the Virtuozzo Power Panel/Parallels Power Panels, suggest the best software or utility to use for a particular purpose, and generally help you make the most of your VPS.

Any other work you ask us to do within your VPS (that is not covered by any optional extra that you subscribe to) will normally carry a Professional Services charge of £50 + VAT per hour.

You are, of course, free to employ the services of a third party to perform any work that might need to be done, and indeed in some cases we may advise you to make use of such third parties rather than employing us if the task required is beyond our knowledge and experience. We highly recommend the professional services offered by www.4psa.com - they are Plesk and Linux experts and their fees are very reasonable.

In all situations, however, we do expect you to read the manuals that apply to your VPS -- the Plesk Administrator's Manual and the Virtuozzo Power Panel/Parallels Power Panels user manual in particular, in order to make yourself familiar with the facilities that they offer and how they work. You should also carefully read through the information you'll find in the Hints and Tips page. Additional information to help you resolve common problems that you or your customers might encounter will shortly be added to VPS section of the Support pages on our website.

You may also find the following resources helpful:

Plesk Plesk Documentation: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/
(Includes Administrator's Guide, Client's Guide, Firewall guide and much more)

Parallels Plesk for Linux Knowledge base: http://kb.parallels.com/en/products/pleskunix
(Includes solutions to an extremely wide range of problems)

Parallels Plesk for Linux Forums: http://forum.swsoft.com/forumdisplay.php?f=113
(A user to user discussion forum where you can find solutions to common problems, or post questions asking for help with a particular problem you are experiencing.

Before posting on the forum, always search the forum to see if your question has been answered before

When posting on the forum:

1) State that you are using a Virtuozzo VPS.
2) State which Operating system you have in your VPS
3) Clearly explain the problem you are having, giving extracts from a log file if they may be useful
4) Don't be too surprised if one of our own technical support reps answers your question! We are very active on the forum.
5) Remember that this is a User to User forum. Parallels staff will rarely comment on any question.

How do I contact Technical Support?

The primary method of contacting Technical Support if you need help should be by email.

As a VPS customer, you will be entitled to contact the Diamond Support department when you need help. The Diamond Support email address is support@cymru1.net

If the matter is a genuine emergency and you need help as quickly as possible you can contact the Diamond Support department by telephone on 08000 112244. Lines are normally open from 9:30am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays. Calls to this number are usually free when called from a normal BT line.

These details can also be found in the Contact Us and Support sections of our Website.