Frequently Asked Questions

Great question. Because we can't predict your usage, we can't predict your costs. But, we can provide some useful guidelines. The minimal monthly cost for running an OHI-vServer is $19.95. Our clients are currently paying on average approximately $22 a month. OHI-KVM, because of it's larger footprint, uses more disk and costs a few more dollars a month to operate. The approximate average operating cost for OHI-KVM is $26 a month.

Bottom line, OHI offers extremely competitive pricing. And, our Utility Pricing ensures you pay only for the resources you consume.

There’s a lot of confusion around this simple, elegant approach to marshaling computer resources. The marketing arms of many technology companies only make things worse with promises of world peace and perpetual motion.

Our CTO offers a concise definition: cloud computing is hardware as software. Our cloud computing platform allows you (and your programs, through our forthcoming API) to request and modify hardware resources as if they were software. Want more memory? Disk? Such physical resources can be adjusted on-demand without having to wait for a technician to power-down the server, open the server, install new RAM, and power-on. With cloud computing platform, hardware becomes flexible, like software.

There are many compromised hosts on the Internet these days, seeking out other hosts to compromise. Their process is mostly automated, but you can try to protect yourself with these tips.

* Don't use simple passwords like 'abc123,’ even temporarily.

* Disable password authentication and use ssh keys for authentication instead.

* Only allow logins from certain hosts.

* Install an application like DenyHosts or Fail2Ban to dynamically block hosts as they try, and fail, to authenticate.

* Disable any Internet-facing services that are not necessary.

* Try to use only encrypted services when possible. For example, use ssh instead of telnet, and scp/sftp instead of ftp.

First try changing the reverse DNS on the Control Panel. By default, reverse DNS for our IP addresses are generic, which AOL will block. Change it to match forward DNS already in use by your server.

If you prefer to run your own nameserver, we can be a secondary carrier for your domains, just drop us an email.

Reverse DNS can be updated on the Control Panel, after matching forward DNS is in place.

Domains can be added, managed and removed directly from the Control Panel.

Apache is capable of running multiple sites from the same IP address. This is called vhosting. However, it does not apply to sites utilizing SSL certs. Each SSL site will need its own IP address.

Every server we provision comes with a static IP address. You can purchase additional IP addresses for a small fee.

You can rebuild your server from scratch on the OpenVPS Control Panel. When going this route, make sure all your important data has been backed up off-site first.

In the event something goes wrong inside your server and your disk usage becomes far more than you intended, we hope to save you from a large bill. If you ever need more disk space than your server is currently provisioned with, just let us know and we can add more space transparently.

For OHI VServer, file snapshots of the last few days are available directly on the command line of your server. As the root user, you'll look in the /snapshot directory.

For OHI KVM, you can create rolling backups in the Control Panel by logging in, clicking OpenVPS Control, then clicking the Backups tab.

Even with these backup features, we strongly suggest keeping an additional, off-site backup for your files.

We do not provide any traffic shaping, just a raw Internet connection, with no filters or priorities of any kind.

For OHI VServer, you can access the firewall by logging into the OpenVPS control panel at http://www.openhosting.com/cp, clicking OpenVPS Control, logging in with your VPS name and password, then clicking the Firewall tab.

For OHI KVM, you can use an application like iptables to directly manage the firewall.

Managed hosting is something we provide as part of a larger OHI Hosting Solution; for more information, please contact solutions@openhosting.com

For our regular clients, we will happily provide you with some basic troubleshooting and support, but you’re otherwise on your own.

The servers we provide are normal, plain-vanilla Linux servers and you’ll have full root access.