Download management for dedicated servers
Recently, we paid more attention to coverage of new services such as cloud servers and cloud storage, but at the same time did not stop working in other directions, in this article we will talk about our dedicated servers. In the near future we will provide functionality that ensures the automatic installation of operating systems on dedicated servers, which is currently undergoing the final testing stage. In the meantime, we would like to describe the current functionality, which can also add convenience when working with dedicated servers.
Dedicated server load management
After selecting a dedicated server from the list, you will be taken to a page containing basic information about the server, as well as power and load controls. Now on the server tab, in addition to the already familiar power management buttons (physically turn on / off and hard reboot the server) and access to the KVM console, a new menu “Manage server load” is available, which allows you to manage server load directly from the control panel.
Both standard server boot options (boot from the first or second hard drive) and special tools for installing, diagnosing and restoring the system are available for selection in the menu: “Boot to the Selectel Boot menu” and “Boot to Rescue”. After selecting a menu item, you must save the change and restart the server. Let's consider each item in more detail.
Selectel Boot Menu
The Selectel Boot menu makes it possible to run installers of the most common server operating systems or additional diagnostics and recovery software, which are constantly kept up to date. Select “Selectel Boot menu” in the menu, save the changes and reboot the server, use the KVM server console to work with the Boot menu.
In most cases, the installation of the OS on a dedicated server before its delivery to the client is performed by our engineers, but sometimes clients need to install themselves. Consider installing the OS using the “Selectel Boot Menu”.
It should be noted that all OS distributions presented in the menu are netinstall versions, that is, during installation only the kernel and initrd are loaded, the remaining necessary files are downloaded during installation from local or public repositories. In connection with this first thing, the installer will ask you to configure the network interface and specify the repository from which the installation will be performed. This inconvenience is compensated by the fact that you will immediately have the latest packages installed and you will not need to perform an update after installing the OS.
You can use our repository (http://mirror.selectel.ru/), which will significantly reduce the time to download and install OS components, for example:
- for Debian and Ubuntu, you can specify mirror.selectel.ru (or any other suggested by the installer);
- for CentOS, the installation URL will look like mirror.selectel.ru/centos/6.3/os/x86_64
After setting up the network and specifying the repository, OS installation will continue similarly to installing from disk. For convenience, you can use the "semi-automatic" installation mode (items marked as "SemiAUTO"). When you select them, the OS installer will ask you only really important questions like network settings, disk partitioning, and RAID / LVM settings, all other questions and confirmations are skipped. This option, compared to installing using the KVM console and connecting your ISO image via Virtual Media, does not require you to have a high-speed Internet channel necessary for transferring data from your computer.
Also in the Boot menu in the Tools & Utilties section there is a set of useful utilities for diagnostics and recovery: the popular Live GRML distributions and System Rescue CD; MemTest programs for checking memory, MHDD for checking hard drives, and others.
Rescue Recovery Console
“Boot into Rescue” allows you to boot through the network of a full-fledged Linux-system, which works in RAM without using local server disks. Rescue system contains many useful tools for diagnosing and restoring a faulty system. Using Rescue is especially important in case of loss of regular access to the server via the network or when it is impossible to diagnose the problem using OS tools.
Select the “Boot to Rescue (Recovery Console)” item (for this you need to have an IP address assigned to the server in the client panel, otherwise this item will be unavailable) and restart the server. After that, the server will be loaded into the Rescue system, and you will be able to connect to the server via SSH using the access data specified in the control panel.
Consider the main features and possibilities of using the Rescue system:
- immediately after loading, the server is available for network connection, which makes it possible to use standard access via ssh, which is much more convenient to work through the KVM console. You can also start the X-server with VNC access if you are more comfortable working in a graphical environment;
- rescue-system automatically tries to find and connect partitions available on the RAID and / or LVM hard disks, which allows checking and restoring the file system and / or saving or restoring data from backup, including using the supload utility for working with Selectel cloud storage ;
- Rescue includes our infiltrate-root utility, which simplifies chroot in the server file system for direct access to server data, resetting the root password, fixing other errors in configuration files, and the like.
We hope the described functionality will be useful to you, stay tuned for our news!
Link to a post on our blog