You should now have access to your dedicated or VPS server. Depending on the policies of the company you obtain your server from, it may already have cPanel and WHM installed. However, even if that is the case, you should review the items that we will cover in this chapter to make sure nothing was missed. We will discuss how to install cPanel and WHM on your server, and also how to finish initial configuration in WHM.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks are a significant threat to the availability of any company's networks and systems. In the last 18 months, the press has reported many high profile DDOS attacks costing the victims many hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Managed hosting is a dedicated server that is accompanied by a full suite of
technical support, maintenance and monitoring services. This differs from
dedicated Web hosting, where customers are provided with their own servers but
are still responsible for virtually all administrative and maintenance duties.

A dedicated server is a single computer on a web-hosting network that is leased or rented, and dedicated to just one customer. A service provider monitors the computer’s hardware, network connectivity, and routing equipment, while the customer generally controls and maintains the server software. Dedicated servers are most often used by those who’ve outgrown typical hosting accounts and now require massive amounts of data space and bandwidth, those with mission critical web sites, web hosting companies, or those who have special needs. Dedicated servers are housed in data centers, where service providers can monitor them close-up and have hands-on access to them.

The private server concept has finally come of age, and has the potential to
fill the gap between economy shared hosting and big budget dedicated hosting.
The concept is not a new one. The notion of dividing the resources of a physical
server has been around for many years. Mainframes were once divided to allow
more people affordable access to these large and very expensive devices.