Hello, dear readers of Habr. WITH of this material we are starting a series of publications on how to build VPS hosting from scratch based on the RUVDS White Label API.

In this introductory publication, we will tell you what you need to do first in order to start making your first profit from your own VPS hosting as soon as possible, how to do it relatively quickly and how feasible and profitable it is. If you decide to create your own VPS hosting from scratch, but you do not have your own infrastructure or do not have the funds and time to create it, welcome to cat.

Do you need a website

To organize your own VPS service, you will first need 2 things - a website on which you will offer VPS server rental services and a service provider that will provide you with favorable partner conditions for these purposes, its infrastructure and a reliable API with extensive capabilities. What is an API? This is an interface using which you can provide your clients with all the same server management capabilities that your service provider provides to its clients.

Integrating a website with your VPS provider via API will be much cheaper and faster than creating your own cloud infrastructure from scratch, since in this case it “takes care of” many issues: you don’t need to worry about the availability of a sufficient amount of resources from the provider, , how to organize a wide and fault-tolerant channel for accessing the Internet from virtual servers, how to collect and store data on the use of resources by servers, and so on.

Now about the site. There can be many options here, we will list the most common:

• you are the owner of a website that offers related services (domain checking/registration, DNS server rental, remote administration servers).
• you create your website from scratch using a popular CMS and plugins for it.
• you order a website from a web studio
• enter your option

First - best option, since in order to add new service renting VPS servers, you will need very few modifications: you won’t have to write many of the things listed below from scratch. When creating your website from scratch, launch dates may vary significantly the worst side. You will need to implement all the components from the list below yourself (or use third-party implementations, having previously tested and adapted them to your project). We recommend using the third option only if you lack the necessary knowledge on creating websites or if it is impossible to make your website the way you want.

Let's start

What should be implemented on this site?

Registration, user authentication/authorization, password recovery, feedback form.

All hosting providers without exception have this. Your future client must be able to register, recover the password if it is lost, have Personal Area on the website with up-to-date information about its balance, purchased servers, etc. Also, he must be given the opportunity to report the problem to technical support. In order to avoid mass registration of “fake” accounts, we recommend not neglecting additional security measures, such as captcha on forms, and also maintaining the maximum amount of available information about the user, which can help if any violations are detected on his part. In this case, there are many ready-made solutions that require minor modifications. If you plan to create your website based on a CMS, then the above-described functionality is either implemented to some extent or can be easily connected using plugins.

Client personal data management

It should be implemented to some extent, but you can do without it. This functionality does not block the launch of your service.

Client server management

What should be on a given page of your site depends on how much you want to use the available functionality of your service provider and how much control over the server you will give your client. For example, you can create a dedicated server for him after depositing the required amount into the balance and his written request to technical support, or you can provide him with a full-fledged configurator for fine tuning characteristics of the server, as well as interfaces for changing the configuration during operation, obtaining server load statistics, various possibilities like reinstalling the OS and so on. The launch speed of your VPS hosting will vary significantly depending on the option chosen. We will consider this issue in more detail in the following articles from this series.

Possibility of using a trial period

Obviously, for the initial promotion of your new VPS hosting service, you will need to implement the possibility of using a test period. This is necessary so that your client can decide for himself whether the price you advertise for VPS rental corresponds to the quality of the services you provide. What should you consider when implementing? First of all, you need to select the number of days. You shouldn’t make the test period too long - clients who just want to get their hands on your service will register free server for a certain period, and after the test period ends, they will register new account and try to use the trial period again. In order to protect you to some extent from such clients, you definitely need to learn how to identify them. This is especially important at the initial stage of development of your service, as for each such client you will receive less potential profit. You should also take into account that a long test period will not be very beneficial for you, since there is no test period on your affiliate account, to which all the servers you create are linked.

Billing

How will clients top up their balance and buy servers? Of course, we will need another very important component, this is billing. What do we include in the concept of “billing”? Of course, it includes creating/editing current tariffs, interfaces for accepting customer payments, internal payment processing mechanisms, creating promotions/discounts, and monitoring tools.

You should approach the implementation of your own or the integration of third-party billing into your project especially responsibly, because the ability to purchase a VPS server on your website (read your first money) directly depends on the performance of this component. To quickly start accepting money from the most popular payment systems, we recommend that you use payment aggregators. Why? Firstly, integrating with one aggregator is much faster and easier than integrating with each of the payment systems it provides. This is due to the fact that each payment system has its own interaction protocol, which must be correctly implemented and work with it unified within your system, which is extremely labor-intensive. Secondly, you have one interface that provides most of the necessary functionality for working with customer payments - this is the aggregator’s personal account. Of course, you will have to pay an additional commission for all this, but in our opinion, this solution is optimal when creating your own VPS service.

Of course, before integrating with a payment aggregator, your site must meet certain requirements. As an example, we can cite the requirements of the payment aggregator paymaster:

• the site must be completely filled with information and function;
• the site must consist of more than one page;
• the website must contain information about the goods and services sold, as well as the cost of these goods and services;
• the site should not be hosted on free hosting;
• goods and services offered on the site must not contradict the current legislation of the Russian Federation and international law;

Also, it is worth paying attention to the fact that the list of payment systems, as a rule, is much wider if you enter into an agreement as legal entity. In some cases, connecting certain payment systems may take quite a long time, since your site must meet the requirements of each payment system provided by the aggregator, and the verification procedure is carried out on the side of the payment system.

Financial aspect

We have come to one of the most important aspects (if not the most important) - financial. Working with your VPS service provider should be profitable. Let's consider why it is profitable to organize a VPS server rental service by choosing the RUVDS provider as a service provider.

Let's take the most popular VPS configurations based on the operating system Windows systems Server 2012 R2 and provide some data that we obtained when analyzing the VPS services market in Russia as of February 2016:

Configuration	1	2	3	4	5
Number of processors	1	2	4	6	8
Volume random access memory, GB	1	2	4	8	16
Disk capacity, GB, HDD	20	40	120	300	600
Number of IPv4 addresses	1	1	1	1	1
Current configuration price
When paying monthly	300 rub.	600 rub.	1400 rub.	2980 rub.	5720 rub.
When paying annually	2880 rub.	5760 rub.	13440 rub.	RUB 28,608	54912 rub.

In order to estimate your potential earnings, we present the gain in price of configurations compared to the average price of competitors:

Also, do not forget that we have expenses for paying commissions for transfers and withdrawals to payment systems.

The current discount for creating servers using the API is 10% .
How to estimate the potential earnings from one server of a given configuration, purchased for a month? You can use the following formula:
Earnings = Current. price RUVDS * 10% + Difference with the average configuration - Expenses for payment of commissions.

Calculation example for configuration 3:

Earnings = 1400 * 0.1 + 794 (rounded down) -240 = 694 rubles.

This is earnings from one server. When your clients purchase 25-30 servers of this configuration, you will earn an amount of earnings already in 20 thousand rubles per month.

In the following articles we will tell you in detail about the capabilities of the RUVDS White Label API, discuss how to choose the optimal tariffs for your VPS hosting and on what conditions you can earn money.

Creating a website on a virtual server. Server on local computer.

Before starting to create their own website, novice web developers are recommended to try their hand at a local machine ( personal computer), this requires the DENWER distribution, which can be found on the developers’ website www.denwer.ru

Gentleman's Web Developer's Kit (DeNVeR)

The software is emulation of a virtual server on a local computer, at home as a replacement for web hosting, without the need for an Internet connection. You can create a website on any CMS platform (or without a CMS) in a matter of minutes, fill it with content and debug the configuration. With subsequent transfer to hosting or to the server, respectively. The virtual server contains all the most necessary components : Apache, MySQL, phpmyAdmin, SMTP server + the ability to connect additional extensions. Distributed free of charge - in Russian.

Why is it needed? local server?

• Firstly, for the development of the site, the possibility of initially filling it with content and optimizing the site structure.
• Secondly, it’s a way to check the site for errors and debug the configuration.
• Thirdly, how backup site and subsequently saving site data and SQL databases to a local server.

DENWER includes:

• Installer (installation on a flash drive is also supported).
• Apache, SSL, SSI, mod_rewrite, mod_php.
• PHP5 with GD, MySQL, sqLite support.
• MySQL5 with transaction support.
• Template-based virtual host management system. To create a new host, you only need to add a directory to the /home directory
• Startup and shutdown control system for all Denver components.
• phpMyAdmin is a MySQL management system via a Web interface.
• Sendmail and SMTP server emulator ( incoming letters placed in /tmp in .eml format); Supports work in conjunction with PHP, Perl, Parser, etc.

The distribution does not leave entries in the registry and does not affect important system files, does not clog the system and has been tested in practice.

In the third article of the series about organizing a hosting business, we will tell you how to start selling VPS using ISPsystem products. The first material contained step by step instructions by , the second - by .

Virtual server hosting (VPS/VDS) is one of the types of business on the Internet that does not require capital investments in infrastructure. Compared to shared hosting, VPS gives clients greater stability and therefore costs more.

Important! We recommend starting not with technical implementation, but with the business model and legal side of the issue. Define target audience and ways to attract it, develop a pricing policy that is beneficial for yourself and your clients. Learn the legal and accounting framework. Only after this do you proceed to implement the plan.

What you need to get started

A virtual server (Virtual Private Server, VPS) works the same as a real physical server. In this case, several independent virtual servers can run on one physical server.

From a business point of view, VPS hosting differs from virtual hosting in terms of hardware requirements. From the user's point of view, VPS hosting has guaranteed resources (disk, memory, processor), dedicated IP addresses, flexible system configuration and the ability to optimize resources.

While shared hosting is suitable for small websites, VPS is usually used to host online stores and corporate portals.

VPS hosting can be started without your own hardware. For this you will need:

1. rented dedicated server with hardware virtualization support (one or more),
2. subnet of IPv4 addresses,
3. agreement with payment system,
4. software to create a VPS,
5. billing platform,
6. website for selling services.

Rent a dedicated server with support for hardware virtualization and a subnet of IPv4 addresses from one of . Enter into an agreement with the payment system and domain registrar.

equipment requirements

To start providing VPS services, you will need one dedicated server with hardware virtualization support. For example, on Intel processor Xeon E5. Server E5-2630v2\64GB RAM will allow you to run up to 55 VPS. You need as much RAM as will be allocated to the VPS.

Each VPS is allocated a certain number of IP addresses. Therefore, you will need your own subnet of IPv4 addresses or several different IPv4 addresses. Additional addresses can also be rented from your hosting provider.

Determine rates

When choosing a VPS provider, clients first of all pay attention to specifications and cost of services. The price and quality of services must meet their needs.

Tariff plans are created when you first set up the software, so think about their content now. When drawing up tariffs, determine your target audience, study competitors' offers and take into account your costs.

For example, a tariff grid might look like this:

Number of CPU cores (Piece)

Disk space (GB)

Incoming traffic (Mbit/s)

Outgoing traffic (Mbit/s)

BILLmanager allows you to flexibly customize interaction with the client. You can set the period for debiting funds, the minimum order period, and the late fee.

Required Software

To sell VPS you need to install three panels: VMmanager, BILLmanager, IPmanager.

Setting up BILLmanager

Creation of tariffs

Details of creating tariffs are given in the article Connecting to VMmanager. However, in its basic form the sequence is as follows:

1. In BILLmanager go to the section Products - Tariff plans.
2. Click Create and select Virtual server - VMmanager.
3. Fill in the fields in accordance with the previously defined tariffs. Click Complete.
4. Return to menu Tariff plans. Select the created tariff. Click on the button Handlers.
5. Enable the tariff for the server with VMmanager.

Checking the software operation

Try registering from the site, logging into your personal account, ordering and purchasing the service as a client. If you have any questions, please refer to the documentation or write to the ISPsystem customer service department.

Start selling

Advice: you can obtain materials for promotional campaigns from the registrar with whom you entered into an agreement. Typically, images and text describing services are placed in the section affiliate program. For example, Reg.ru has prepared such materials.

This document will help you create your first virtual server on the platform of the cloud hosting provider Clodo.ru

Creating a virtual server (Virtual Server)

Creating a virtual server on the Clodo.ru cloud hosting platform will take you a few minutes of your time. The procedure is simple and requires virtually no description. However, we have created this guide so that the process of creating a VPS does not raise any questions for you.

If you already have a virtual server, then in order to create a virtual server, you need to home page control panel, click on the “Create virtual server” button. If you do not have a single virtual server, then when you go to the “My Resources” section, you will be automatically redirected to the page for selecting a data center to install the server.

After clicking on the “Create a virtual server” button, you will be offered a list of data centers in which you can create a virtual server. After selecting the required DC, click on the “Go to next step” button.

On the page where you select the type of virtual server to create, you will see two options. For the purposes of this article, we are looking at installing a classic virtual server, so we must make the appropriate choice - Virtual Server.

The next step in creating a virtual server is to select operating system, which will be installed on the created VPS. Cloud hosting Clodo.ru provides its clients with a large selection of operating systems on Linux based. Each of our clients will find exactly the one with which it is most convenient for them to work. At the time of writing, cloud hosting Clodo.ru provides the ability to install the following operating systems:

• Debian
• Ubuntu
• CentOS
• OpenSuse
• Fedora
• Arch Linux
• Gentoo

You can also choose to install a system with an installed software package, called a Preset.

In step No. 4, you need to select server parameters, such as the amount of RAM and disk storage, and also enter the name of the server, which will be displayed in the list of servers in the future. Using the designer presented at this step, you can create a solution that is right for you. Don’t be afraid to specify the parameters incorrectly; in the future you can change them on a running virtual server.

If you want to configure the server more precisely, click on the “Advanced settings” button. In this article, advanced settings will not be considered.

In the next step you are asked to select Additional services, such as: installation of the ISP manager server control panel, additional IP addresses and plan technical support server. Please note that when the technical support plan changes, its description also changes. Carefully study the presented service levels and choose the most suitable one for you.

The next step is the final one. Check the parameters of the virtual server you are creating again.

After clicking on the “Create a virtual server” button, you will be taken to a page with a list of virtual servers.

Installing a virtual server takes no more than 5 minutes.

Congratulations! You have become the owner of a virtual server on Clodo!

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The material presented on this page can be used by you at your own discretion. Copying and distribution of the provided material is permitted without changing the content and without prior notification to the administration of Clodo.ru.

We will be grateful for your reports of errors in the provided documentation and for suggestions for improving the documentation. For these questions please contact: [email protected]. When contacting, be sure to include the URL of the publication.

Section Servers, and click the “Create Server” button.

In the window that opens, the server is created:

Kernel name and type tab

Server name

Custom name for the server being created

Be careful when choosing NOVA or STANDART core types. To change them after creating a virtual server, you will need to contact technical support and stop the server.

Source Tab

In this tab, select the basis for the server and set the disk size for the future server.

The drop-down list “Select a base object to create a server” offers options:

Image

Ready operating system image

Disk

Available disk (from remote server, For example)

Disk snapshot

Available server snapshot.

The simplest option is to create a server based on a ready-made image.

Image

Specify the desired size for the disk.
Select an image from the “Available” table and click the arrow button next to the selected image.

The image is moved to the Selected table and will be used to create the server.

You can use not only ready-made images, but also upload your own. To do this, use the instructions on how to download the image. The images you download will become available when you create a virtual server.

If you are making an image-based server, it will use an SSD drive by default. In the “Volume Size (GB)” column you can configure its size.

Disk

By default, the list of available drives will be empty:

If you have created a disk in advance, you can deploy a server on it. This is most often used:

• To restore a previously deleted virtual server if the disk from was saved. In this case, the disk can be selected in the “available” table
• To create a server with an HDD disk. By default, servers are created on an SSD drive.
  Use the instructions to create a HDD for a virtual machine.
• The disk is also used in some specific cases, such as restoring root access to Linux servers.

Select a drive from the Available table and click the arrow button next to the selected drive.

The disk is moved to the "selected" table and will be used to create the server.

Disk snapshot

If you have previously created disk snapshots, they will be in the "Available" list.

Select a photo from the “Available” table and click the arrow button next to the selected photo.

The snapshot is moved to the "selected" table and will be used to create the server.

How you can use disk snapshots:

For example, you created a snapshot and then made changes to the server. Then you needed another server in the state before the changes were made. Based on an existing image, you can create virtual machine.

Instance Type Tab

In the Instance Type tab, you need to select the amount of RAM and processor cores for the server.

For example, the “Node 1.11” template in the “Available” table includes 1 virtual core and 1 GB of RAM:

Select the desired configuration from the “Available” table and click the arrow button next to the selected configuration.

The configuration has been selected and a server will be created based on it.

If you do not find a suitable template in the list, please contact us - we will add a custom configuration.

Networks Tab

In the “Networks” tab, select the network interface to connect. In this case, the server will be assigned an IP address.
This is a mandatory item, but the network can be reconfigured after creating a virtual server.

Connection options are available in any combination:

Connecting networks (assigning an IP from the network range) is a simple method, we recommend using it by default. The IP address will be assigned to the server via DHCP.

Port connections (assign an IP address via port) - to assign the selected IP address.

Connecting networks

Network available by default external_network with white IP addresses. Use it for quick creation virtual server with Internet access.

In the screenshot, the external_network network is selected for the virtual server.

A server with an external_network network will have a dedicated white-label IP address and is available for incoming and outgoing connections over the Internet.

To view the list of ports and select the one you need, click the “Assign an IP address via port” button:

Select the desired port from the “Available” table and click the arrow button next to the selected IP address.

The port will now be assigned to the server.

Firewalls Tab

Selected in the default tab firewall"default". The "default" firewall allows you to quickly configure network connections when logging into the virtual machine for the first time - we recommend not deleting it when creating the server.