How to install VestaCP – Free Linux control panel

VestaCP is a very simple, yet powerful and effective Linux web hosting control panel. By default it will install nginX web server, PHP, Mysql, DNS server and other must need software to run a complete web server.

This control panel can be installed on RHEL 5 & 6, CentOS 5 & 6, Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 and Debian 7.

Due to the vast range of supported operating systems, this panel is very popular among startup web developers and system admins also.

Get to know about VestaCP

VestaCP is a complete solution for a client who seeks a bundled free solution to be installed on their VPS or Dedicated server. Most of the free panels such as Z-Panel aren’t up to date and most of the known security holes are still open while VestaCP runs a active development on their product.

Also you can order a support package from them if you’re not familiar with server maintenance. Their interface is really unique to them. VestaCP uses modern Material adaptation on their control panel skin and users also can use themes to update their own branding to the VestaCP.

Before installing

You can install VestaCP on a server with a minimum of 1GB RAM (recommended) but it will run smoothly on a 512MB RAM server also. But to install virus scan facility, the panel requires a minimum of 3GB RAM on default settings. But user can override these settings and install virus scan and other limited features on any server.

Following software’s will be available out of the box,

  • Apache
  • PHP
  • NginX
  • Named
  • Exim
  • Dovcot
  • ClamAV (depending on your configuration)
  • SpamAssassin
  • MySQL & PHPMyAdmin
  • PostgreSQL
  • Vsftpd

Installing VestaCP

Installing VestaCP is fairly simple, first of all make sure you’re not running any of the default software on your server. If so remove those using proper commands. We suggest and recommend you to use a clean install of your operating system as it frees you from many conflicts that may occur while installing if you’ve installed another panel or such.

Example code to uninstall LAMP stack on CentOS
  1. Remove mySQL server at first. Run following code to remove mysql on a CentOS server.
     `# yum remove mysql-client mysql-server mysql-common mysql-devel`
    
  2. Then Remove mySQL libraries
     `# yum remove mysql-libs`
    
  3. Remove exsisting PHP installation
     `# yum remove php php-common php-devel`
    
  4. Finally remove Apache server from your server
     `# yum remove httpd`
    
Example code to uninstall LAMP stack on Ubuntu

You can run this single line code to remove LAMP stack on ubuntu servers.

`# sudo apt-get remove --purge apache2 php5 mysql-server-5.0 phpmyadmin`

Above code will remove current installation of LAMP.

Lets install VestaCP

Connect to your server using your desired SSH software. We’ve used PuttySSH for the demonstration purpose.

  1. Download the VestaCP installer using following command.
     `curl -O http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh`
    

    1.downloading-vesta-installation-using-curl

  2. After successful download, run this command to start VestaCP installation.
     `bash vst-install.sh`
    
  3. Installer will ask to confirm installation. Enter ‘y’ to continue.2.start-installation-press-y
  4. Then it will ask you to enter a valid email to be entered. This required to send you updates about the current server. So enter a valid email and press return.
  5. If you’re planning to use a host name (required) please enter it at this stage. We’re going to use example.eezpal.com as our hostname. It is preferred to enter a FQDN to this hostname.
  6. Now installation will be started.Please wait a while installation to be completed.
  7. after a successful install, Vesta will display following screen.7.success-install
  8. Note down the login details and the given URL. After successful login. Now you can use VestaCP freely.vesta cp final screen

Login to VestaCP web interface.

After a successful installation, you can login to your VestaCP web interface by entering following format in your browser address box.

https://your.ip.goes.here:8083

Final words

First of all, VestaCP is a new player to the control panel industry. There are many large-scale control panel developing companies available today. But VestaCP did a great job and find its way to crawl up.

According to our view, VestaCP is a very good and easy to install control panel that built for everyone. We never hand any installation errors and last installation on our VPS only took about 4-7 Minutes in total to complete. It’s lot faster than the Vesta’s main competitor ISPConfig. Also they have developed a natural layout for their web server control panel. Not to forget they are very active at the development since they’ve updated their panel skin to match with latest user interface designing trends.

VestaCP is a barebones panel to keep things running at a minimal cost. Best thing is they’ve even included a reverse proxy based cache system in their control panel at no cost.

Even you can get statics about your web server and use Start/Stop & Restart service without login to SSH.

If you’re planning to sell web hosting using VestaCP you can use their reselling add-on.

Finally,

VestaCP is a very stable yet powerful and effective web hosting control panel. Also it took only 7 minutes to be installed on a very low-end VPS. We’ve tested it and stability is not an issue with the panel as it only asks around 200MB’s of total RAM for every process that Vesta use. They’ve an active development form but only issue was mainly it was using Russian. But that issue been solved and more and more English developers do take part and willing to help others who are trying out Vesta out there.

One thought

  1. VestaCP is a very simple, yet powerful and effective Linux web hosting control panel. By default if will install nginX web server, PHP, Mysql, DNS server and other must need software to run a complete web server.

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