VPS control panels in a nutshell

Gosh, I didn’t know that there can be so many ‘control panels’ link to a single VPS account. This is made worse as each control panel has a different port and login credentials. Hence, I am summarizing all of them for future reference and maybe someone else might benefit from it.

Although the names below are reference to myhosting.com, it should be very similar to most VPS web-host.

manage.myhosting.com

This is the probably the first control panel that you will receive prior to the completion of your VPS account. It usually contains your particulars, the general information of your VPS server and status, the services/applications purchased, billing, latest news etc.  It will also contain the links, IDs and passwords to your other control panels. Once you have taken down all the relevant information, you probably won’t look at it again unless during renewal, upgrade or cancellation of your subscription.

VZPP - Virtuozzo Power Panel

VZPP is a powerful web-based VPS recovery and management tool. With VZPP you can easily do the following:

• VPS Start/Stop/Reboot
• VPS Services Management
• VPS Resource monitoring
• VPS Backup/Restore
• VPS Repair
• VPS Re-install
• VPS Actions Log audit

Source: http://support.lunarpages.com/knowledge_bases/article/408

Most VPS web host will offer this panel free of charge which I believe is due to licensing. Unless you are a geek, this panel will be sufficient for managing your VPS.

Root Access

For the more technical inclined, root access give you the ability to take full control of your server. This may be important for those who run special applications and tweaking is required. For Linux-based VPS host, SSH connection is required. I am using Windows 7 and installed a Putty (Link). I also have a similar program ConnectBot installed on my Android phone.

However, it seems that not all web-host will grant you full root access. Chances are if your login name is root, you will have full access to your VPS.

A quick way to check is to enter this command:

whoami

It will show you the user name that you are using.

For the geeks, you can type:

cat /etc/passwd

Look for the line with the word “root” at the front and verify that the third value is zero.

Example:

Root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bish

This is the UID and zero is reserved for root giving the account unrestricted/unlimited access.

For more details:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-etcpasswd-file-format/

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-more-on-user-id-password-and-group-management.html

cPanel and WHM

The cPanel is one that most website owners will be familiar with especially if you are on a shared hosting. Unfortunately this control panel is not free. Some VPS web-hosts offer this as free but they would have already factor this into their pricing. I believe a single license will give you both cPanel and WHM. There is no way to just take one or the either.

To give you a brief difference between the two : -

cPanel is used to administer one website where WHM is used to administer multiple websites and the hosting server itself. Users that register a domain will use cPanel to manage various aspects of their site. Resellers and web hosting companies will use WHM to administer multiple domains (create, modify, delete, etc.), but not to manage individual settings for each domain.

Source: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/what-is-the-difference-between-cpanel-and-whm.html

I opted to have cPanel and WHM installed since I familiar with it and would make my site migration easier. Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t think VZPP can be use to manage a website(s).

Others

There are several other panels available e.g. Fantastico, RVSkin, RVSiteBuilder, Plesk  and WHMCS. All of course have to be paid for. For windows VPS, Plesk would be the obvious choice as WHM is built for Linux platform.