Infrastructure – Reclaim Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com Take Control of your Digital Identity Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:34:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.4 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RHprofilelogo-100x100.png Infrastructure – Reclaim Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com 32 32 bava on the Edge https://bavatuesdays.com/bava-on-the-edge/ Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:34:02 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=29647 Continue reading ]]>

On the edge, I’ve been there
And it’s just as crowded as back home.

Dag Nasty, “La Peñita”

Yesterday I did a little experimenting on the good old bava.blog to test the notion of application delivery networks (ADNs). You probably have heard of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) wherein static content is delivered via caches all over a service’s global network (most popular being Cloudflare). Well, in this new acronym, beyond the content the whole application itself is cached across the network, so when one (or in my case both) servers driving the bava go down, the site is unaffected, it begins to deliver the application itself through the network. Which means not only high availability, but virtually guaranteed 100% uptime.* I found it hard to believe, and I have been looking into edge computing thanks to Phil Windley’s recent post, but this was my first exploration of the concept.

Our cloud hosting at Reclaim Cloud is driven by the software developed for Jelastic, which was bought by Virtuozzo. It has been something we’ve been pushing pretty hard on with not only apps well beyond the LAMP stack, but also containers and the wonderful work of Docker, which in turn led us to start building a dedicated WordPress service on top of performant, affordable containerized WordPress hosting: ReclaimPress. As I’ve been working through ReclaimPress, I was shown the tool/service Edgeport. Very much positioned as a simplified, easy-to-use Cloudflare competitor, EdgePort was designed as a security-first, cloud-native Web Application Firewall with a global network that delivers applications dynamically, even when the origin servers are off. Their DNS options are an affordable alternative to Cloudflare for similar plans, which has been a key factor for me. To get in the door for enterprise at Cloudflare is somewhere in the ballpark of $3,000 a month (which the condescending Cloudflare sales agent was sure to remind me), whereas all the features we need–many of which are Cloudflare enterprise only—are part of a $199 a month plan at Edgeport. What’s more, I have not seen anything like ADN delivery networks at Cloudflare, so we now have a viable, affordable alternative to Cloudflare which can do even more. That makes me very happy.

I can harness a globally cached network, as well as load balancing fail-over, and the emergency backup of applications being cached and delivered in their entirety from the network (whether or not my servers load), and that is not even including the vast security tools that I have to dig into with Noah in more detail. It seemed like magic, so I spent much of yesterday testing it on this old blog.

I turned off both servers in the failover setup at 10:59 UTC and then powered them back on at 19:48, so just under 9 hours of downtime that did not stope a single page or post from working cleanly on my site.

Image of Log for when the servers were turned off and then back on

Log for when the servers were turned off and then back on

I had Antonella try and comment and that was not successful, and never thought to try logging into /wp-admin area, given it would seem impossible, but maybe not?  Will return to that, but perhaps comments and posting do work in an ADN?†

Regardless, it was fun to occasionally search for blog posts that I hadn’t read in years, and see them load without issue, even though both servers were down.

This comes at an amazing time at Reclaim when we’re going into our second year of stable, solid .edu hosting for a number of schools, and adding this possibility for not only guaranteed uptime, but increased vigilance and next-level cloud-based security is pretty thrilling. I really want to get out on the presentation trail again and talk this through because more and more these leaps in infrastructure are something we have been just able to almost keep up with, but this one almost feels like we are not only well-positioned to offer it, but maybe even early to the party.

Reclaim4life, small and limber is beautiful!

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*With the caveat that is an imagined Shangra-la if you push hard enough on the idea.

†Turns out they cannot make the database writable in the ADN, so it is read only. They mentioned it is technically possible, but not legally—which makes sense when you think about it in terms of security and spoofing, and then there is the whole issue of syncing back changes. It might make sense, if only for practical purposes, to keep everything write-only during any extended downtime.

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Remember to Reclaim September https://bavatuesdays.com/remember-to-reclaim-september/ Mon, 25 Sep 2023 12:49:55 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=29343 Continue reading ]]> It’s been a month, the new semester is in full force and I am just coming up for some air. I’ve a bunch to share in more detail, but this post will be a bit of a summary of highlights to help me get get back in the groove (and doubling as a blog to-do list). So anyway, time to blog!

Thank you, Reclaim

Lauren Hanks has left the Reclaim building! After eight amazing years, Lauren is moving on and we’re thrilled for her and the new adventures that await. That said, anyone who knows Lauren understands how big a loss this is for Reclaim. She was old gold Reclaim through-and-through and her presence will be missed terribly. There’s more to say on this, but all I can say for now is thank you, Lauren, for showing up every day and ruling all.

ReclaimPress Logo

I think I’ve been using the development of a forthcoming product, ReclaimPress, as a way to avoid dealing with Lauren’s departure. Intense work cures many a woe, and ReclaimPress has been a lot of fun to play with.  In short, ReclaimPress is just WordPress. If you want to get up and running with a just WordPress without the overhead of cPanel, this is a great solution, and I think we can price it so that the costs are comparable with shared hosting. What’s more, from this space you can scale from hobby project to enterprise grade without ever moving your instance. Containerized WordPress hosting with a slick user interface is coming to Reclaim, and that is a beautiful thing.

Bryan Mathers Art for the Win!

And as always, we have Bryan Mathers doing his magic with the art. That needs to be its own post given it will help me flesh out ReclaimPress a bit better—as his art always does—so stay tuned for more.

ReclaimPress Dashboard

Part of how I play with any new platform we stand-up is moving as many of my own sites to the new space as possible. This helps me work out any kinks and generally get a sense of the experience we’re providing our community. So, as you might have guessed, this blog is now hosted on ReclaimPress, as is both ds106.us and daily.ds106.us. You can see from the image above I not only have this blog running in two regions (bavamulti-1 on the West Coast of the US and bavamulti-2 in Canada), but now ds106.us is also running as a multi-region—progress!

bryanmmathers.com was the first of the three to come over

After getting comfortable with my own sites in ReclaimPress, I started working with some select folks to help me test the new space. In particular, Bryan Mathers was intrigued while creating the art work, and he has a few sites running on our shared hosting that could use a performance boost. So, we moved them over to ReclaimPress and it seems to be a very good fit thus far, plus his sites are so beautiful!

The great Visual Thinkery site now hosted on ReclaimPress

One of his sites (ulster.visualthinkery.com) was using WooCommerce, and ReclaimPress has a special hosting package just for that plugin, so we tried that out as well, and by all reports it is doing the trick for his Ulster zine project, which is just another stroke of Mathers genius.

Bryan Mathers’s Zine project to focused art on Ulster

After figuring out those sites, we have started the process of moving larger managed WordPress instances from Reclaim Cloud to ReclaimPress, so things are in motion for sure.

National Geographic GIF featuring penguins migrating

In fact, a big focus for Reclaim Hosting this month has not only been on managing the September rush, but also getting a plan together for a bigger migration project of all of our servers off CentOS 7 to Ubuntu. A huge project for sure, but this month we’ve started to dig in our broader plan into action so we can start chipping away at the migrations each day, week, month for the next 11 months. When it’s done our entire infrastructure will be not only have been migrated, but also upgraded in the process. Many of which are security enhancements that will go a long way towards future-proofing our fleet.

There is a lot more on the Reclaim Hosting front for sure, but the above underscores how much of the  focus has been on ReclaimPress and our server migration project, not to mention beginning of the semester!

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March 2023: JetBackup2 RAID array failure https://www.reclaimhosting.com/march-2023-jetbackup2-raid-array-failure/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/march-2023-jetbackup2-raid-array-failure/#respond Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:42:04 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=39621 Continue reading "March 2023: JetBackup2 RAID array failure"

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During our regular audits of backup servers, our infrastructure team identified an issue with two hard drives being used in a RAID array on one of our backup servers, jetbackup2.reclaimhosting.com. Our server provider (OVH) replaced the hard drives, but after replacement the RAID array failed to rebuild itself. Attempts were made to recover data, however those have been unsuccessful. Our infrastructure team has since moved all impacted servers over to new backup locations and those are once again running successfully.

Extent of Incident

Data recovery from 01 February to 16 March has been unsuccessful. Data includes standard cPanel account-level backups on impacted servers only. Reclaim Hosting does have multiple backup methods in place for redundancy, including Installatron application-level backups, JetBackup cPanel account-level backups, cPanel Backups manually generated by end users, and bare metal server-level backups. Relevant support guides can be referenced below:

JetBackup backups running from 17 March and onwards are in tact. Reclaim Hosting is notifying the administrators of impacted servers directly for any other questions or concerns.

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Friendly Reminder about Custom Installers https://www.reclaimhosting.com/friendly-reminder-about-custom-installers/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/friendly-reminder-about-custom-installers/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2022 18:37:21 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=38557 Continue reading "Friendly Reminder about Custom Installers"

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We wanted to send out a friendly reminder that Reclaim Hosting is continuing to move towards this updated process for maintaining custom application installers in cPanel environments (announced at the beginning of 2022). As part of this work, most custom installers will either be removed or managed entirely by application web developers by the beginning of 2023.

Please note that cPanel users will still have the option to manually install any open source application compatible in a LAMP environment, however the 1-click installer option for the following applications will be removed:

  • FreshRSS
  • Lychee
  • Big Picture Calling Card*
  • Dimension Calling Card*
  • Highlights Calling Card*
  • TRU Collector*
  • TRU Writer*

Common Questions

Will I still be able to install these applications after January 1?
Yes, these applications will still work in cPanel, but the process for installing them will be a little more manual. You can read about how to do that by following these resources:

I’ve got one of these applications already installed in my account. What will happen to it?
In short, nothing. Any sites using one of these installers will not be removed due to this change. Keep in mind, however, that these installers will be a legacy feature and they will not receive maintenance going forward.

For Administrators

What about Installatron Site Templates?
Reclaim Hosting has no plans to remove or change workflows to Installatron Site Templating options, meaning that Admins of Domain of One’s Own or Managed Hosting cPanel schools can still create site templates as expected.

Can I save these installers as Installatron Site Templates?
If you wish to copy a SPLOT installer as a Template to keep them around longer term, you will be able to do so between now and January 1 when installers are removed. Simply follow this workflow to template any sites as you wish. After January 1, you would need to install the SPLOTs manually, and then save the site as a template.


*A massive thanks to Alan Levine for allowing Reclaim Hosting to adopt his SPLOTs through the years and build them into custom installers for our community. If you wish to stay updated about the latest happenings with SPLOTs, or custom WordPress installers with preconfigured demo content, please visit splot.ca.

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Regular, scheduled updates to DoOO Homepages to begin on 11/20 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/regular-scheduled-updates-to-dooo-homepages-to-begin-on-11-20/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/regular-scheduled-updates-to-dooo-homepages-to-begin-on-11-20/#respond Thu, 03 Nov 2022 12:57:13 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=38439 Continue reading "Regular, scheduled updates to DoOO Homepages to begin on 11/20"

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Hey there, Domain of One’s Own Admins!

In case you missed the announcement in the October Roundup Newsletter, our infrastructure team is excited to begin regular, scheduled updates to core files, themes, and plugins for the main WordPress Homepage portal of Domain of One’s Own schools. Prior to this change, Reclaim Hosting has worked directly with DoOO admins to help oversee updates at their convenience and request. While this process has worked well enough in the past, it historically has led to delayed updates to WP DoOO Homepages, which ultimately becomes a security risk in the long run. We look forward to minimizing this risk by pushing out updates on a monthly schedule that folks can come to rely on. In addition, we hope this change will provide some relief to folks that were previously responsible for overseeing this work.

Our infrastructure team will use InfiniteWP to manage these updates, and our first scheduled maintenance is slated for Sunday, November 20, 2022. Going forward, updates will be scheduled on the third weekend of each month.

No additional steps are required of DoOO admins to be included in this scheduled work. If you would like to opt-out, however, please contact us to let us know.

Other details:

  • This work includes updates to core WP files, as well as installed themes and plugins; it does not include updates to PHP Versions or anything else
  • This work only applies to the main WP DoOO Homepage; it will not impact other WordPress sites living on your DoOO server
  • As always, we keep backups on hand and will make sure those are captured before any work begins.
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[RESOLVED] Temporarily Disabling New Scalar Installs https://www.reclaimhosting.com/temporarily-disabling-new-scalar-installs/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/temporarily-disabling-new-scalar-installs/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2022 19:53:25 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=37974 Continue reading "[RESOLVED] Temporarily Disabling New Scalar Installs"

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UPDATE:

December 14, 2022: This work has been completed and Scalar application installers are now available once again across all Reclaim Hosting cPanel servers.


As of September 22, 2022, Reclaim Hosting is temporarily disabling the ability to install new Scalar sites in cPanel via Installatron.  Our team was recently made aware of a possible vulnerability in the Scalar application, and we are actively working with application developers to investigate further.

In the interim, this change should not impact existing application installs. However, if you are running Scalar, we do recommend that you change the Registration Keys for Scalar accounts. Additionally, please check over your installation for any books or users you did not add and remove them, as well as reset any and all user passwords for your site.

Relevant Support Documentation: Registration Keys in Scalar

Please continue to check back here for further updates, or reach out to us at support@reclaimhosting.com with any questions or concerns.

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Exploring the new Ghost Installer for Reclaim Cloud! https://jadin.me/new-ghost-installer/ Sat, 13 Aug 2022 01:05:11 +0000 https://jadin.me/new-ghost-installer/ Today Jim and I did a stream showcasing a new Ghost installer for Reclaim Cloud that should automate a lot of common setup tasks that people run into when using Ghost. I’m really proud of this installer because I’ve put a bunch of time into making this thing really simple to use for folks who don’t have experience with Docker or Reclaim Cloud, but just want to get Ghost up and running quickly.

You can check out the video above, or jump to individual sections of the video via the chapter links below:

Chapters:

  • 0:00 - Intro and starting the install
  • 3:12 - What is Ghost? Why are we making a new installer?
  • 10:42 - On Ghost as a blogging platform
  • 11:55 - Disqus and Ghost’s lack of built-in comments
  • 17:08 - Setting up Ghost and the Ghost dashboard
  • 23:36 - Configuring Ghost via Reclaim Cloud Add-ons
  • 25:32 - Updating your Ghost install
  • 28:19 - Mapping a custom domain
  • 33:09 - Setting up Mailgun for Newsletters
  • 38:30 - Looking under the hood / Technical details
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Infrastructure Announcements through 2022 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/infrastructure-announcements-through-2022/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/infrastructure-announcements-through-2022/#respond Wed, 29 Jun 2022 15:56:33 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=37661 Continue reading "Infrastructure Announcements through 2022"

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In response to security improvements, roadmap projects, and software announcements, the Reclaim Hosting infrastructure team would like to communicate the following timelines and coming changes through 2022:

Updates to PHP Versions

On August 1, 2022, PHP 8.1 will be made available across all servers. On October 1, 2022, we will set the default PHP version on all servers to PHP 8.0. This means that any account or application set to use the server default version will be using PHP 8.0 from this point on. PHP 7.3 and PHP 7.4 will still be available for the time being after this change, so if an application or user is inheriting the server default and there are concerns about application compatibility, users will need to manually set which version to use.

On January 1, 2023, we will remove PHP 7.2 from all servers; this means the lowest version available on our servers will be PHP 7.3 from this point on. Any installation or account still using PHP 7.2 at this point will be brought up to PHP 7.3. Users will need to address incompatibility of individual applications.

You can learn more about supported PHP versions at php.net. You can also learn how to change your PHP Version in cPanel by referencing our documentation.

Updates to Root Access

Beginning summer 2022, we are implementing security improvements across Reclaim Hosting infrastructure. In an effort to prevent malicious activity on servers, we will be locking down potential pathways for this activity to occur. These changes will impact how project admins access the root account of all servers.

The first of these changes, beginning July 15, 2022, will be blocking SSH logins to root except from specific IP addresses. We are looking into login alternatives for admins (such as setting up a separate admin account for SSH access), but if an admin is in need of root access while we are in this transition, you will need to be provide Reclaim Hosting with one or more fixed IP addresses from which to allow root logins via SSH.

We will continue to allow root logins via WHM, but this will be subject to change as we investigate alternatives; the root terminal in WHM has already been disabled. In the interim, we also encourage you to be very protective over who is given WHM/root access.

cPanel LTS and Ubuntu

cPanel has begun the process of deprecating the Basic style and Paper Lantern theme in favor of their Glass style and Jupiter theme. This change has been very disruptive, not only for Reclaim Hosting users, but for many other cPanel users. Paper Lantern will still be included in the most recent LTS (long term support) version of cPanel (v102) until it is no longer supported (Summer 2023). We are currently looking for alternatives, but to both preserve Paper Lantern and ensure long term stability, we have switched all servers to use cPanel’s LTS tier and will set up all future servers with cPanel LTS.

Due to CentOS 8x’s premature EOL (and the coming EOL of CentOS 7x), pending further testing, future servers will have Ubuntu Linux installed rather than a RHEL-based Linux distribution. The current LTS version of cPanel (v102) offers full support for Ubuntu Linux.

Security Patches

We are pushing out two patches to prevent future server compromises.

The first is a set of additional rules for the all-users .htaccess file (/home/.htaccess). These rules will prevent anyone from directly accessing any WordPress installation’s configuration file (wp-config.php). While WordPress provides no useful information by default on accessing this file, misconfiguration on the part of a user can expose the site’s database credentials when this file is accessed. These rules will mitigate by outright denying access to this file.

The second is a script that will search for WordPress (and WHMCS) configuration files and set their permissions so that only the user to whom the site belongs can access the file. The script is set to run on each hour and will re-set the permissions on each run. This, in addition to rules we’ve added to mitigate a separate symlink vulnerability, should further prevent attackers from using a compromised site to “hop” over to other sites on the server.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

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Removing Advanced CloudLinux Apps in cPanel https://www.reclaimhosting.com/removing-advanced-cloudlinux-apps-in-cpanel/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/removing-advanced-cloudlinux-apps-in-cpanel/#respond Tue, 07 Dec 2021 18:35:50 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=36112 Continue reading "Removing Advanced CloudLinux Apps in cPanel"

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Starting in January 2022, Reclaim Hosting is removing support for advanced CloudLinux applications in cPanel dashboards, as well as removing the ability to install these applications. Going forward, all advanced applications like Ruby, Python and Node.js should be managed in Reclaim Cloud.

You might be impacted by this change if you are currently using one of these advanced applications under the Software Section of your cPanel account. If you are interested in keeping these advanced applications, we strongly recommend they be moved to Reclaim Cloud. For those who aren’t familiar with Reclaim Cloud and would like a chance to look around prior to migrating, you can sign up for a free trial account with your .edu email address. (If you don’t have a .edu email, no problem, just let us know!) We also have a collection of Reclaim Cloud guides, including a Getting Started in Reclaim Cloud article that covers the basics.

Our team is in the process of reaching out directly to folks that are using Python, Ruby, and Node.js, both in Shared Hosting and Domain of One’s Own. If you are not inclined to move to a Reclaim Cloud environment, please note that your existing applications will no longer be compatible in Shared Hosting cPanels starting January 17, 2022. If you are a Domain of One’s Own school and would like keep CloudLinux installed on your server, please let us know so it is not automatically removed on 1/17/22.

Moving these advanced tools to Reclaim Cloud will let us focus our support and resources on environments where they are better suited to live. Please reach out to Reclaim Hosting Support if you have any questions, and do let us know how we can best support you and your work when this transition begins in January.

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Retiring Rockaway Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com/retiring-rockaway-hosting/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/retiring-rockaway-hosting/#respond Fri, 03 Dec 2021 12:22:12 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=36048 Continue reading "Retiring Rockaway Hosting"

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Since we started Rockaway Hosting in 2017, it has served as a sister hosting company to Reclaim. It was aimed at non-education folks that wanted more robust hosting and support options beyond what we offer in Reclaim’s Standard Shared Hosting. We have since introduced Professional Services at Reclaim Hosting to do just that for our customers, and as a result the need for Rockaway Hosting has waned. That said, there are still a small number of folks using Rockaway.

So, we wanted to let you know that as of February 1st, 2022 we intend to merge all existing Rockaway Hosting clients into the Reclaim Hosting fold. This will happen seamlessly and all subsequent bills will be delivered via Reclaim Hosting as annual invoices. The upside of this move is pricing for hosting will decrease significantly given it will be based on disk space usage. In other words, if you have 2 GB or less on your account you will pay $30 annually; an account with up to 10 GB will pay $50 annually; and an account with up to 100 GB of storage will pay $100 per year.

This new pricing will take effect on February 1st if you pay monthly or upon the renewal of your next annual invoice. Keep in mind domain costs will remain the same, so no changes on that front. The Professional Services option is purely opt-in, so if you need your site(s) to remain on a low-tenant server or require a more robust level of support you can add that option at any time.

If you would like to move your account to another hosting company, we thank you for your business over the years. We would encourage you to take a full account backup through cPanel to make sure the move away is as easy as possible.

Thanks again for understanding and have a wonderful holiday season!

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