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Those of us that have been doing this for a while remember the RAQ servers – small servers designed to be webhosting ‘appliances’. They got he job done and were small and cheap. They were a good inbetween step from shared hosting to full-blown dedicated server. So basically they were the predecessor to the VPS basically.

Today we have the VPS, and if done right (hardware RAID-1,5, or even better 10, not overloaded/oversold, fast drives, sufficient memory) VPSes can be a great solution for those needing more than shared hosting but not so much as to need a dedicated. But you still need a control panel of some sort. If you’re thinking of reselling, cPanel or DirectAdmin are probably the way to go as that’s what your customers are going to expect. But both of those require either a 1 time cost for DA or either can be leased per month adding to what you need to bring in just to break even.

There’s an alternative if you aren’t reselling – say your a web designer, or host enough sites personally to warrant the move off of shared hosting, for example. This was a good place for the RAQ servers. You didn’t need the reselling and management features (and costs) of cPanel/WHM or DirectAdmin, but you need something. Sure hosting sites with just the components and hand editing each config file as you need CAN be done, but why? 

BlueOnyx came from the RAQ server days, and now with VPSes being so abundantly available and cheap, it’s a viable alternative again. So yes you can have your cake and eat it too. BlueOnyx provides a very nice looking web based administration and a long list of features:

It is what BlueQuartz could have been in 2007 had development not stagnated.

It is “BlueQuartz” on CentOS 5.5 and then some.

Has all BlueQuartz updates that accumulated between 2007 and 2009, which never got released or delayed for years.

Has previously commercial add ons pre-installed, including …

Brute Force Login detection and prevention mechanisms (pam_abl)

phpMyAdmin

Web based Email

GUI to automatically create and remove MySQL users and databases for sites.

Subdomain management

Better PHP security management on a per site basis.

New default skin for the GUI.

Working vacation messages.

Updated Dovecot and ProFTPd.

JSP support already built in with an improved GUI.

YUM updates are delivered through various mirrors right from the start.

Is still available free of charge and released under Sun modified BDS license.

Comes with PHP5 and MySQL5 preinstalled.

GUI to modify SSHd settings (root access, port, protocols)

GUI available in English, German, Danish and Japanese.

Z-Push for email for mobile devices

Lagniappe Internet (the sponsor for this site) is putting together a BlueOnyx VPS offer as this is being written… contact them for details.

About: Robert: Robert Porter holds Oracle Certified Professional-Java 6, MCSE, A+, Net+, Project+, Security+, and multiple CIW certifications. He has been in the hosting industry for more than a decade and is founder of Lagniappe Internet L.L.C., a privately owned, completely debt free, hosting company based out of New Orleans. Robert's background includes 25+ years in programming, databases, networking and systems administration.

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