After years of hosting my blog and other web sites on rented server space, I now have my very own web server.  For the geeks out there who care to know, it is a Ubuntu 7.10 server running in a VMWare virtual machine, which is running on my Ubuntu 7.10 file server.  Why run Ubuntu 7.10 virtualized below Ubuntu 7.10?  The reason is simply because the of the time it takes to configure the web server and the associated software like apache, wordpress, mysql, egroupware, postgres, and others.  By running this on a virtual machine, I can easy make a complete backup of the web server VM.  Then, when server hardware fails, my web sites will be back online quickly, even before the server is repaired.  If needed, I can even place the VM on one of my Windows or Ubuntu workstations temporarily.

I compress the virtual machine backups with 7-zip, an open source product with a much higher compression ratio than .ZIP products.  This allows the virtual machine to be copied to a single CD, ready for quick restoration when trouble strikes.

Originally I planned to move my old blog posts to the new server.  However, because I’m lazy and computer information gets out-of-date quickly anyway, I’ve decided to start over  Therefore, this is post #1.