Cobalt RaQ: Name-Based Hosting Descriptions and Definitions: Shared web site hosting - the practice of making available and maintaining more than one web site on one machine, differentiated by their unique host or domain name. This is the major selling point of the Cobalt RaQ server line, i.e. simplifying the creation of functional shared web sites through their web administration interface. Unique-IP address hosting - the common practice of utilizing an IP address for each individual shared web site. This is the most common method for providing shared web hosting. Name-based shared hosting (or Shared-IP address hosting) - the new practice enabled by the Apache web server software that allows multiple shared web sites to use a single IP address and function normally. Using your RaQ 2 control panel, you can add a new shared site very easily (see the step-by-step instructions below). If you use an IP address that already has a domain name associated with it, name-based hosting will be used. Why should I use name-based shared hosting? With the available IP address space growing smaller, and the number of requested new domains increasing, utilizing a unique IP address per host is not the most economic solution. Since we, like other Internet providers, must obtain our IP address space through ARIN and other upstream providers, we have to acknowledge that IP addresses are a limited commodity and are not only in high demand, but the costs associated with adding and supporting a large number of growing unique IP addresses significantly increase over time. We have no choice but to pass these associated costs on to our end users. That is why we must charge for additional IP addresses. Name-based hosting is a new technology. Many providers are researching and implementing this advancement because it is less costly, more efficient, and less wasteful. Name-based hosting improves performance. Instead of a server dealing with multiple IP addresses, it only needs to handle requests for one. It is easier to manage one IP address. With name-based hosting there is no need to call support when you need to add a new site. The HTTP/1.1 protocol (which nearly all version 2.0 and up browsers adhere to) contains a method for the web server to identify what name it is being addressed as. Apache 1.1 and later support this approach as well as the traditional IP-address-per-hostname method. Additional benefits of name-based shared hosting include a practically unlimited number of shared hosts per web server, ease of configuration and use, and no additional hardware or software requirements. IP based shared hosting requires that the server listen on multiple shared interfaces (IP addresses). This uses more system resources per shared address. Name-based hosting requires only one such shared interface (the IP address), which doesn't require as many resources - apache receives all requests on that one interface. The basic idea is to replace the entire static <VirtualHost> configuration with a mechanism that works it out dynamically. This has a number of advantages: Your configuration file is smaller so Apache starts faster and uses less memory. Adding shared hosts is simply a matter of creating the appropriate directories in the file system and entries in the DNS - you don't need to reconfigure or restart Apache. How do I need to set up my server for name based hosting? The actual setup for name-based hosting is not very different from ip based hosting except with name based there is a simple way to allocate ip addresses to certain places. Below is the simple step by step procedure for setting up name based hosting. This documentation uses four  IP addresses. The range that this manual will reference is 209.235.55.114 through 209.235.55.117.   Log in to your Server Management page at http://domain.com. You should see a page like this: Figure 1-1 The main site (admin.somedomain.com) will act as the primary name server. You can now start adding the required sites to the interface. To do this you will need to click on the Add Virtual Site button. You will now see a new screen with options for adding a new site. This site will be created as the secondary name server. In this example we are going to use the second IP in the range (209.235.55.115). The host name will be ns2, dns2, or something to easily identify the secondary name server. The domain name will be somedomain.com. The other fields are not required but are other options for the site. The form should look like this: Figure 1-2 Now that the actual sites for the name servers are set up we can go ahead and add the shared sites for the server. Follow the same procedure that was used on step two except you will use the third IP address in the range of the four (209.235.55.116). All of the shared sites that the server will host will use the third IP address of the server. The primary and secondary sites are just placeholders for the name servers so www.somedomain.com will need to be put on the third IP address as well. Make sure that www.somedomain.com is accepting email when it is set up. Hosting multiple sites on one IP address requires that the domain be registered with a NIC authority. To be able to view a site before it is active with a NIC you will need to change the IP address to the fourth usable IP address and browse to the IP address. This is described in step 5. Once all the sites that you are going to add are completed you will see a screen similar to this: Figure 1-3 Now that all the sites are set up the only thing left to do is add all of the DNS entries. To do this you can go to Control Panel ŕ Domain Name Service (DNS) Server Parameters. Once inside the parameters you can add an A record and MX Record for each shared site including the primary and secondary name servers. The record would look like this: Figure 1-4 The Automatic Reverse Address Record Generation does not need to be checked for any sites since RaqShaq actually does the reverse records. Repeat this procedure for all the sites. Also create and MX record with the domain name pointing the mail to the domain name. Figure 1-5 When all of the DNS has been added for all the sites make sure that you Save Changes To DNS Server and Save Changes once again on the Service Settings page. Allow the normal 4 to 48 hours for propagation. The last step is being able to view pages that have not been registered with a NIC authority. The easiest thing to do is to change the IP address of the site that needs to be viewed. On the Server Management page (Figure 1-3) you can click on the green wrench for the site that you want to view. This will take you into the Site Management for the particular site. Once inside you will need to click on the Site Settings button on the left part of the screen in which you will see this: Figure 1-6 Change the IP Address to the fourth usable IP (209.235.55.117) and Save Changes and you should be able to view the site by the single IP address. NOTE: If there is more than one host on the fourth IP address then this cannot be done. There has to be one IP address allocated to test sites for this to work. Thats it !!! You have done it. There are multiple ways to do name-based hosting but this was the easiest for new RaQ owners to follow.