Blog.Project13.pl

This will be an short explaination about how OVH treats domains/servers (virtual servers) as @pwesolek asked me on twitter to expand about this a little.

What I don’t “like” there is that an server is bound to one special domain that they call the server’s “main domain“. Fair enough, he ought to have some “main” thing right? Basically, the domain is identified 1 to 1 with the server, and this one, has some special stuff it can do. It’s like “I’ll call this server example.com” and then you work with example.com, kinda not caring wtah server it is. And that’s not harmful at all but:

The problem comes up if you host multiple domains – each of which would like to be “mainish” – be able to setup email accounts easily etc.

The part with multiple websites is simple: you set it up using what they call “multidomains” (weird name…) – it’s basically like httpd’s VirtualHost stuff. “Ok, nice.”  – you think and then want to setup mail adresses for those domains you’ve hooked up to this server. Should be easy – right? You could just enter some [login]@[domain] and be done with it. But it’s not that simple since all you can do is add emails inside the servers “main domain” (if you’d try to youd get into relay domain denial stuff). You’re forced to buy some sucky (25MB POP accounts) extra “MX pack”… I’ve encountered this while using an domain not registered in OVH, so it’s possible that this is easier with domains bought “from them”, but I doubt it (nothing suggesting this in sight on their website).

To sum it up: You can only easily set up email accounts for an domain that is the servers “main domain” – it’s 2 clicks. Setting the same stuff up for an “not main domain” – will cost you a little extra.

Another weirdity is that if you want to change an servers main domain – it’ll cost you a little (not much).

That said – ovh is an reiable hosting company and does not try to “rob” the user from every penny he’s got like nazwa.pl does on their “WOWOWO FREEEE* domains” – you can guess what for the * there is… ;-) I’ve seen lot’s of hosting operators and ovh is certainly one of the best when it comes to “techy stuff”. I also often recommend (and have used) linuxpl.com it’s also very nice for virtual hosting – I’ve seen an VPS there and it was horrible – many “magical” things were happening there (it was openvz based if I recall propperly) but Virtual Hosting is top class there (svn, python, rails, ssh, synfony, all preinstalled :-))