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Congratulations and thank you for purchasing an unmanaged VPS package from hosting.com! This Quick Start Guide provides the information you need to get started.
ImportantFor the Managed VPS Quick Start Guide, please see this article.

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Using the hosting.com Hosting Panel

After you purchase an unmanaged VPS package from hosting.com, you receive a Welcome e-mail message that provides information about how to access your account on the hosting.com Hosting Panel. Your hosting.com Hosting Panel enables you to view your account’s product information. To do this, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to the hosting.com Hosting Panel at https://my.hosting.com/.
  2. In the left sidebar, under Products & Services, click Hosting & Servers:
  3. On the Hosting & Servers page, locate your VPS, and then click Manage.
  4. On the Overview tab, details appear for your account, including:
    • Server name.
    • Server status.
    • Server hostname.
    • Server IP address.
  5. Additional options enable you to do the following:
    • To log in to the Virtualizor panel, click Login. In this panel you can view resource usage statistics for your server, control the power state, and much more.
    • To start, stop, or reboot the VPS, click Power On, Shut Down, or Reboot.
    ❗️ Warning For security reasons, we recommend changing all initial passwords. Please see this article for information about how to create a strong password to protect your account.

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SSH

Our Using SSH (Secure Shell) to access your account article covers the basics of how to get started with using SSH, and our Accessing your account using SSH keys article covers how you can deploy a variety of automated processes, such as two-factor authentication and allowing multiple users to transfer files securely using SFTP.

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Pre-installed applications

When you order an unmanaged VPS plan, you have the option to select a pre-installed control panel.

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cPanel

cPanel is a fully-featured web-based control panel that enables you to manage your domain through an easy-to-use web interface. Using cPanel, you can manage all aspects of your site, including e-mail, files, backups, FTP, CGI scripts, website statistics, and much more. For information about how to log in to cPanel, please see Logging in and out of cPanel.

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Webuzo

If you have an unmanaged VPS, you can use Webuzo to install a wide range of applications and frameworks quickly and easily. For more information about Webuzo, please see Accessing and using Webuzo on an unmanaged server.

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Domains and DNS

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Domain configuration

You can update your domain’s A record to point to your VPS IP address. For information about how to determine your server’s IP address, see Using the hosting.com Hosting Panel above.

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DNS propagation

After you’ve updated your domain settings, DNS propagation usually takes 24 hours to complete. You may not be able to access your site using your domain during this time. However, this article shows you how to access your web site using a hosts file.

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FTP and SFTP

Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is available on all unmanaged VPS hosting accounts. This method is more secure than traditional FTP, as it uses the SSH protocol to encrypt file transfers. Most FTP clients support SFTP. Our article Using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) covers FTP basics, while our article How to use FTP with Linux hosting accounts demonstrates how to use an FTP client and connect to your account.

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Unmanaged VPS FAQ

Here are some common questions and answers about our unmanaged VPS packages.
Our 24/7/365 support team, staffed by expert system administrators, works tirelessly to ensure your server environment operates at peak performance. Powered by high-end KVM hypervisors featuring NVMe storage, AMD EPYC CPUs, and redundant networking, we deliver exceptional reliability and top-tier performance. However, please remember that with unmanaged VPS packages, you are responsible for much of the server’s configuration and maintenance. We provide the hardware and network, but much of the rest is left to you.
Do you include backups? We currently do not provide backups on unmanaged VPS. You can configure your own backups, however. Do you support IPv6? IPv6 is not currently supported, and extra IPv4 addresses are not currently available. What DDoS protections are in place? We have DDoS protection implemented at a network level to help protect customers overall, but we don’t guarantee any particular individual level of protection. If you want additional protection, Cloudflare is a good option. Can I create a VLAN or private subnets between VPS instances? No, we currently do not support this. Do you offer any intrusion detection or prevention services? No, we currently do not offer these services. Are there rescue or recovery options? Yes, VNC and reinstallation is possible. Do you have a public API for automating server provisioning, snapshot management, etc.? No, we currently do not support this. Is there any built-in server monitoring or alerts? No, but you can install your own monitoring and notification solutions. What is the underlying hypervisor? What hardware do you use? We use the KVM hypervisor. For storage, we use NVMe drives. Our servers run on Dell hardware. Are there free or assisted migrations from another host? No, but we will always try to help if you get stuck with anything. As a rule however, we do not log in to unmanaged servers. Are there any I/O performance or throttling limits? No, except in cases of cryptomining or other obvious abuse. Our unmanaged VPSs are designed for typical hosting workloads. What is “virtual memory”? What exactly counts towards RAM allocation? Virtual memory is the RAM allocated to your KVM guest. You can enable swap usage, although we do not recommend it. Are CPU cores fully-dedicated physical CPUs or hyperthreads? Are there any CPU steal considerations? They are hyperthreaded core allocations, but we don’t generally load our hypervisors to more than 30% overall CPU usage. Unlike some providers, you will not see any CPU steal. Do you have any scaling recommendations for running a large number of sites (for example, 100 WordPress sites)? LiteSpeed PHP with a good caching plugin usually works very well. The overall load depends on the site type, traffic levels, etc. Generally speaking, you should have enough CPUs available to process the concurrent number of uncached page views you need to handle.

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Need any help?

If you have any questions about your account, we are here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help. You can search the hosting.com Knowledge Base, open a Support ticket at https://my.hosting.com, or chat live with one of our support team members.