Build a Linux VPS Host in 24 Hours

By Philip C. Paradis
April 3, 2009

Web developers rely on a solid hosting environment to support their sites and web applications. Many developers already have separate development, testing, and production environments, but smaller shops (and one (wo)man operations) may not. This series of articles show how easy it is to run your own virtual private server (VPS) environment out of your home or office, facilitating easy provisioning of web development and testing environments.

A virtual private server can be viewed as a dedicated server in a box; you get all the major benefits of a physical machine, without the hardware costs, power consumption, and management issues typically associated with dedicated servers; multiple VPS nodes can be run on a single physical server. You also gain the ability to rapidly deploy and test different operating system configurations, as well as the ability to centrally administer a lot of virtual environments from any web browser. Many hosting companies offer VPS services; for production servers, my favorite provider continues to be Linode.com for their excellent support and high reliability. I'm not being paid to say that; they don't even have a referral program, choosing to rely on unbiased word of mouth testimonials to grow their business.

For this tutorial, we're going to be using Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS as the base operating sytem for our VPS host with VMware 2.0 as the software that controls our virtual machines. I've found this combination to be easy to use, stable, and flexible. Best of all, it's completely free.

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