General Server Management - $60 per hour

We can offer help and advice on a wide range of subjects and issues:

• Are you having problems configuring an application on your server?
• Do you need help understanding how a component of your server works?
• Is something in cPanel broken that should work?
• Need help with the initial server configuration?
• Require a security and settings check?

If there is anything that we can help with, please feel free to contact us for a quote. Most problems can be addressed within a single hour.

Please read the Server Services Terms and Conditions for this service as placing an order indicates your acceptance.

Case Studies

The following real case studies should illustrate the type of service that we can provide. We continue to answer questions to all of our clients and offer advice long after our work is complete. As we have said, we will not leave you alone with a problem and will always do our best to resolve any issues or questions that you may have.

Compromised Server

An example of the type of work that we can carry out is one of a recent case of someone being referred to us via the cPanel Support Forums.

The client had had their server compromised by hackers sending out bulk spam email from one of their accounts. They had some partial evidence from a bounce message, but that was all there was to go on.

What we did:

• We tracked down the source of the problem through the Apache error logs
• We traced back to the point of origin for the initial hack
• We produced a Security Audit of the server with recommendations
• We implemented those recommendations to secure the server from further attack
• We were able to save the client from having their server disconnected by their provider, because we could demonstrate where the problem initiated and that it was now closed

Apache DOS

A client who thought they had an apache configuration problem. This person came directly to us from the cPanel Support Forums. Their server was exhibiting hung web connections and very high resource loads. After investigating the problem further for them, we determined:

• The server was under a web DOS attack
• We identified the initiating IP address
• We installed an iptables firewall and blocked the IP address
• We produced a Security and Server performance report with recommendations
• We implemented those recommendations to both secure the server and to reduce the load to reasonable levels
• The client was very happy and retained our services for another server where we performed the same audit and work

Original OS Disk Unbootable

A client who had suffered system disk corruption, which rendered the server unbootable, approached us to restore their server to its previous state - they also had not cPanel backups. After advising the client to have their datacenter install a new OS disk with cPanel installed but unconfigured, we did the following:

• Updated the new OS disk so that it was running the latest version of the operating system and kernel
• Migrated all of the cPanel data from their old OS disk to the new one including all configuration data and all user data
• Upgraded cPanel to the latest OS
• Fixed any problems arising from the migration of data
• Returned the server to the client within 2 hours as if nothing had gone wrong with all data intact

SSHD upgrade failed and could no longer access server

We were approached by a user on the cPanel forums who had attempted to manually upgrade openSSH which failed and SSH was no longer available and could not be force upgraded through WHM. The customer was looking at a long wait for their datacenter to help them. We:

• Installed our File Manager/Console for WHM using EXPECT scripts through a cPanel account in the wheel group
• Re-installed the correct rpm from the OS vendor using the File Manager/Console for WHM
• Reconfigured the clients firewall
• Returned the server to the client within the hour

Upgrade server from obsolete OS to RedHat Enterprise

An existing client with two servers, one with RH9 and one with RH7.3 approached us to have both servers upgraded to a supported OS. They didn't want to risk their current OS disk becoming unusable by upgrading the OS directly and decided to have new OS disks installed into their servers with cPanel installed and the old OS drive mounted as a slave. We performed similar work to the OS unbootable disk above:

• Updated the new OS disk so that it was running the latest version of the operating system and kernel
• Migrated all of the cPanel data from their old OS disk to the new one including all configuration data and all user data
• Upgraded cPanel to the latest OS
• Fixed any problems arising from the migration of data
• The customer was very happy and retained our services to perform cPanel Package installations on those and other of their servers