MaybeItsJeremy
asked on
Hosting a ton of sites on Linux
I'm in the deployement stage of launching a hosted content management solution, most of the customers will be hosting their site with us to make things easier on them, I've never done large scale hosting outside of IIS on Win 2003. For this project, I'm actually using Linux: Red Hat Fedora Core 4 with Apache 2.
Each account will get 500MB - 1000MB of space, most will be using only 500MB, so to play it safe, we're going to limit the number of hosting clients to 400 per server (2x 200 gig drives each).
Are 400 virtual hosts in the Apache config file the way to go, even with 400 entires? Is there an alternative?
Also, the format I've been using for virtual hosts is as follows:
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName site.com
</VirtualHost>
But how do I get it to work with WWW as well, do I have to add the domain twice?
<VirtualHost www.site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName www.site.com
</VirtualHost>
If there is an alternative to this, I'll glady pay for it if I have to. If there are no alternative, would 400 domains in the virtual host config be any sort of memory hog? The sites themself are pure HTML files after they are saved from the CMS, so processing them isn't much of an issue.
Thanks!
Each account will get 500MB - 1000MB of space, most will be using only 500MB, so to play it safe, we're going to limit the number of hosting clients to 400 per server (2x 200 gig drives each).
Are 400 virtual hosts in the Apache config file the way to go, even with 400 entires? Is there an alternative?
Also, the format I've been using for virtual hosts is as follows:
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName site.com
</VirtualHost>
But how do I get it to work with WWW as well, do I have to add the domain twice?
<VirtualHost www.site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName www.site.com
</VirtualHost>
If there is an alternative to this, I'll glady pay for it if I have to. If there are no alternative, would 400 domains in the virtual host config be any sort of memory hog? The sites themself are pure HTML files after they are saved from the CMS, so processing them isn't much of an issue.
Thanks!
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One correction to the above -
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName site.com
Redirect Permanent / http://www.site.com/
</VirtualHost>
(I forgot the trailing slash on the redirect.)
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName site.com
Redirect Permanent / http://www.site.com/
</VirtualHost>
(I forgot the trailing slash on the redirect.)
periwinkle, I must have had way too much to drink last night, or not enough. I completely forgot about ServerAlias, but never knew about Redirect Permanent.
ASKER
Ok, I really like the rewrite method as it will make individual updates much faster... What can I do to dynamically have it work work with www as well? This is what I am using now:
# get the server name from the Host: header
UseCanonicalName Off
# splittable logs
LogFormat "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon
<Directory C:/AppServ/www/>
# ExecCGI is needed here because we can't force
# CGI execution in the way that ScriptAlias does
Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
</Directory>
# now for the hard bit
RewriteEngine On
# a ServerName derived from a Host: header may be any case at all
RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower
## deal with normal documents first:
# allow Alias /icons/ to work - repeat for other aliases
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/icons/
# allow CGIs to work
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/cgi-bin/
# do the magic
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ www/${lowercase:%{SERVER_N
## and now deal with CGIs - we have to force a MIME type
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cgi-bin/
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ www/${lowercase:%{SERVER_N
# that's it!
# get the server name from the Host: header
UseCanonicalName Off
# splittable logs
LogFormat "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon
<Directory C:/AppServ/www/>
# ExecCGI is needed here because we can't force
# CGI execution in the way that ScriptAlias does
Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
</Directory>
# now for the hard bit
RewriteEngine On
# a ServerName derived from a Host: header may be any case at all
RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower
## deal with normal documents first:
# allow Alias /icons/ to work - repeat for other aliases
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/icons/
# allow CGIs to work
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/cgi-bin/
# do the magic
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ www/${lowercase:%{SERVER_N
## and now deal with CGIs - we have to force a MIME type
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cgi-bin/
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ www/${lowercase:%{SERVER_N
# that's it!
ASKER
Ok, got it working with and without www. (if this can be improved in any way, let me know:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} ^www\.(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+) %{SERVER_NAME}$1 [C]
RewriteRule ^www\.(.*) www/$1
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} !^www\.(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+) %{SERVER_NAME}$1 [C]
RewriteRule ^(.*) www/$1
RewriteEngine On
RewriteMap lowercase int:tolower
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} ^www\.(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+) %{SERVER_NAME}$1 [C]
RewriteRule ^www\.(.*) www/$1
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} !^www\.(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.+) %{SERVER_NAME}$1 [C]
RewriteRule ^(.*) www/$1
I believe you can issue the 301 status, too with mod_rewrite - that's the way that the search engines prefer.
ASKER
How would I go about doing that? Can it be placed into the code I submitted earlier?
SOLUTION
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ASKER
Thanks, I'm at work now.... So I'll try that when I get home. :)
ASKER
Thanks to both of you. I have everything working correctly.
Traditionally, you would use the built in function in Apache for a ServerAlias:
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName site.com
ServerAlias www.site.com
</VirtualHost>
Unfortunately, this lead to great abuse of the search engines, as some people would register 100's of domains, and point them all to the same site.
Therefore, for search engine optimization purposes, it makes more sense to set up a second entry, and do a permanent redirect like this:
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName www.site.com
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost site.com:80>
DocumentRoot PATH_TO_DOCS
ServerName site.com
Redirect Permanent / http://www.site.com
</VirtualHost>