Virtual Private Server User Guide

The Apache Web Server

Virtual hosting works with either complete domain names, such as iexample.com,i 

or canonical domain names (also called cnames or subdomains) such as 

support.example.com. This means that you can provide virtual hosting not only for 

clients who have their own domain name, but those who want to ipiggybacki on 

one of your existing domains.

An important part of virtual hosting is having the domain names for the virtual 

hosts point to your IP address. Interland will do this work for you for a one time fee 

of $20.00. This does not include the domain name registration process, which is a 

separate process. Your VPS server includes a feature known as iwildcard DNS,i 

which means that any canonical name you can think of for your domain name 

already points to your IP address and no DNS work needs to be done by us for 

you to use it as a virtual host. 

Virtual Hosting Limitations

The number of virtual hosts that a VPS server is allowed to host varies depending 

on the type of VPS server that you have. If you need to host more virtual hosts on 

your server than your current product provides, you can either upgrade to a 

higher level product, or buy additional allotments of virtual hosts. If you attempt to 

run the Apache server with more virtual hosts than your VPS server allows, you 

will receive an error like the following, and your Apache server will not operate:

ERROR: You have surpassed the vhost limit for this product

.

Virtual hosting is provided to help you give customers a "foot in the door" Web 

hosting option. There are a few limitations to virtual hosting, however, that you 

should be aware of before offering this service to your clients:

   Only one SSL certificate can be used on a VPS server. This means that if you 

install a private SSL certificate for your own domain name, all of the virtual 

hosts on your server must use this certificate for SSL connections. Using an 

SSL certificate with a virtual host whose name does not match the one on the 

certificate results in a warning message being displayed on most Web 

browsers. 

   E mail aliases and account names are shared among all of the domains on a 

VPS account. Because of this it is important to understand the use of virtual 

user table as described in the e mail chapter of this guide. 

   Virtual hosting was made possible by the introduction of HTTP/1.1 in 1997. 

Anyone using an older browser that is not HTTP/1.1 compliant is unable to 

view virtually hosted sites. Generally speaking, most standard Web browsers 

support virtual hosts. Netscape Navigator 2.0+ and Microsoft's Internet 

Explorer 3.0+ will view your virtual hosts without problem. Any other browser 

that is HTTP/1.1 compliant should also be able to access your virtual hosts. 

The small number of non compliant Web browsers will display your primary 

Web site regardless of which domain is requested. However, considering that 

together Netscape and MSIE comprise about 95% of the market share, and 

that most of the remaining Web browsers are HTTP/1.1 compliant, this 

usually isn't a problem.

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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