Managed VPS Quick Start Guide

Congratulations and thank you for purchasing a VPS from Hostvento Hosting! This Quick Start Guide provides all the information you need to get your new managed VPS up and running.

For the unmanaged VPS Quick Start guide.

• Your Hostvento Hosting Customer Portal
• Virtualizor controls
• Overview
• VPS Graphs
• Managing your account with cPanel and WHM 
• WebHost Manager
• cPanel
• Billing interfaces
• Domains and DNS
• Domains
• Transferring domains
• Setting name servers
• Default name servers
• Custom name servers
• DNS propagation
• FTP/SFTP
• SSH
• E-mail
• Securing sites
• Free SSL certificates
• Migrating sites
• Need help getting off the ground?
• More Information

Your Hostvento Hosting Customer Portal

After you purchase a managed VPS from Hostvento Hosting, you receive a Welcome e-mail message that provides information about how to access your account on the Hostvento Hosting Customer Portal. The Customer Portal enables you to view your account’s product information, including:

• The domain name and IP address
• cPanel and WebHost manager URLs and login information
• FTP server and login information
• E-mail server and login information
• DNS name server information
• SSH account information
• If you requested root-level access, your WHM and SSH root login information can also be found here

To find this information, please first log in to the Hostvento Hosting Customer Portal. It can be found at:

Your new managed VPS space is located under the orange Your Active Products/Services section as shown in the screenshot below:

Click anywhere on your managed VPS package. This will take you to the Manage page. The Additional Information tab within the Manage page contains all the technical information you need for your account, like the FTP, SSH, and cPanel login information:

If you requested root-level access, your WHM and SSH root login information can also be found in your Customer Portal.

For security reasons, we always recommend changing all initial passwords. Our How To Create A Strong Password article covers everything you need to know about creating a strong password(s) to protect your account. 

Virtualizor controls

Managed VPS plans have several different areas within the Customer Portal that you can use to view information about your VPS.

Overview

The Overview tab displays statistics about your VPS such as disk usage, VPS bandwidth, CPU usage, and system alerts:

VPS Graphs

The Graphs tab displays the VPS bandwidth, monthly upload and download chart, and a network speed chart:

For more information about how to use the Customer Portal, please see these articles.

Dedicated IP addresses

Did you know that one of the benefits of having a managed VPS hosting account with Hostvento Hosting is that you can add additional dedicated IP addresses in addition to the two dedicated IP addresses that come with your account? If you would like to purchase an additional dedicated IP address, please follow our guide How to order a dedicated IP address. This page in the Customer Portal will take you right to the spot where you can order a dedicated IP address.

Managing your account with cPanel and WHM 

You can use cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) to manage your account and your customers’ accounts.

Please note that the Lift 4 and Mach 8 plans only allow for one cPanel account. If you need more than one cPanel account, please consider upgrading to the Lift 8, Lift 16, Mach 16, or Mach 32 plans. Visit our Support page now if you need assistance:

WebHost Manager

WebHost Manager allows you to run your business exactly as you see fit and offers unique customization to cater to the unique needs of your clients with the ability to create custom packages. With WHM, there are endless possibilities that you can use to deliver the best experience for your clients. WHM gives you control over the packages and features you’d like to sell and enables you to manage your customers’ accounts. The knowledgebase article How to manage WebHost Manager packages walks you through the process of creating packages so you can best serve your clients’ needs.

Once you have your customers set with packages that will best suit what their sites need, you will want to create accounts for your clients. Our How to manage web hosting accounts with WHM article walks you through creating, modifying, and deleting accounts within WHM. Delivering to clients a customized experience is one of the best WHM features. Our WHM branding guide walks you through how to deliver a personalized experience for your clients.

Hostvento Hosting provides a wide variety of knowledge base articles about WHM that cover everything from password management, how to view your account’s disk and bandwidth usage, and how to use skeleton files to provide default content for customer accounts. Our Guru crew is there to help you deliver the best possible service to your clients and support your business as it grows.

cPanel

cPanel is the primary administration interface for your individual client’s accounts. For more information about how to use cPanel, please see these articles.

Billing interfaces

The WHMCS and Blesta billing interfaces are comprehensive billing, support, and automation solutions that can help you streamline how you run your business from your managed VPS plan.
To order, install, and configure a WHMCS license, please consult these knowledgebase articles:

• How to order a WHMCS license
• How to install WHMCS using Softaculous

To order, install, and configure a Blesta license, please consult these knowledgebase articles:

How to order a Blesta license

How to install Blesta using Softaculous

Domains and DNS

Domains

Domains are crucial to a site’s success. If you’re just starting, our Introduction to Domains article will walk you through all of the basics when it comes to domains. If you would like to do an even deeper dive into the variety of domains offered, please refer to our article What are subdomains, addon domains and parked domains?

Transferring domains

You can move an existing name to Hostvento Hosting in its entirety if you bought it from a different registrar or hosting provider. Hostvento Hosting receives all domain-related information, including billing and domain administration, from the registrar. Please go to How to transfer a domain to Hostvento Hosting for instructions on how to accomplish this.

Setting name servers

If you already own a domain that you purchased from a different registrar or hosting company, you can change the domain’s name server (DNS) settings to point to Hostvento Hosting’s servers. Unlike a transferred domain, billing and domain administration remain with the domain’s current registrar. For information about how to do this, please see How to set the name servers for a domain to point to Hostvento Hosting.

Default name servers

Our article, “Basic domain management using the Customer Portal,” explains how to use the default name servers for your account. Numerous other issues are covered in this page as well, like checking domain details and activating a domain’s registrar lock.

Custom name servers

Custom name servers are yet another way that you can customize your experience with Hostvento Hosting’s managed VPS plan. For example, you can use name servers such as  ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com, where example.com represents your domain name.

Once the A records have been added (or that you’ve verified that you already have functioning name servers,) you must register the custom name servers with the domain’s registrar. After completing these steps, you will reach out to our Support Team, who will add the new custom name servers to the Hostvento Hosting DNS cluster. The process is detailed in our How to configure custom name servers article.

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, our article How to access your web site before DNS propagation is complete shows you several methods for being able to access your site while you wait for DNS propagation to be completed.

FTP/SFTP

Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is available on all managed VPS hosting accounts. This method is more secure than traditional FTP, as it utilizes 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.

SSH

You can access your Hostvento Hosting account securely via the command line thanks to the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. SSH is an effective tool that lets you and your clients automate a lot of tasks. SSH gives you the ability to remotely access your Hostvento Hosting account and execute commands as if you were physically present at the server. This enables you to carry out operations that are not possible with the hosting control panel that is included with your account. The fundamentals of utilizing SSH are covered in our article on how to use it, and how to deploy various automatic processes, such two-factor authentication and safe file transfers for numerous users, is covered in our post on how to access your account using SSH keys.

Please note that for added security, we use non-standard SSH port 7822 by default.

E-mail

E-mail is an important part of running a web site, and cPanel makes it easy to set up and manage accounts. For more information about how to set up e-mail accounts for your domain, please see our article Configuring and accessing your e-mail. The article How to manage e-mail accounts in cPanel shows you how to add, modify, and delete e-mail accounts. Furthermore, our article How to access webmail through cPanel walks you through accessing webmail directly through cPanel. These articles will help you and your clients get your sites up and running in no time.

Securing sites

Free SSL certificates

Free DV SSL certificates are provisioned automatically through a server-side program called AutoSSL.  SSL Certificates renew automatically to ensure continuous coverage. There are a few issues that might prevent AutoSSL from working as intended. Our KB Article How To Setup AutoSSL On Your Domain will help you troubleshoot any problems that arise. 

Migrating sites

If you’re coming from another hosting provider and need to have your accounts transferred over, our Migration Team will be happy to assist you. Our Requesting a Site Migration article explains how to request a migration. The Site Migration Request page can be found in the Customer Portal.

The majority of our migrations are completed within a few hours of the request being received. We take great pride in providing fast migrations. However, several factors, such as the current host’s network speed, the number of sites being migrated, and migration complexity can all influence the migration speed. Our Migrations team will keep you informed of your migration’s progress.

Need help getting off the ground?

Do you have any questions about your account? We are here 24/7 to help! We have a support page where you can search the Hostvento Hosting Knowledgebase, submit a Support ticket, give us a call or chat live with one of our Guru Crew team members. Visit our Support page now if you need assistance: