Recently, two operating systems received an upgrade: Fedora is now available in version 24, replacing version 23. Also, CentOS 6.6 upgraded to 6.8. The latest versions are available at Contabo now!

Fedora 24 can be combined with Software RAID 1 and Webmin, the installation via VNC is possible!

You may combine CentOS 6.8 optionally with Software RAID 1, Webmin, LAMP, Webmin+LAMP, Plesk or cPanel - an installation via VNC is possible as well!

The basic panel of Fedora 24

Apart from Fedora 24 and CentOS 6.8, we do offer you a wide range of Linux distributions (as well as Windows Server 2008/2012). Just click on "Customize & Order" on our VPS and dedicated servers overview sites and opt for the operating system that fits your needs!

Further information can be found on our website!

We are happy to offer you further upgrades for our operating systems:

CentOS 7.2 is available now, replacing the version 7.1!
You may combine it with Software RAID 1, Webmin, LAMP, Webmin+LAMP, Plesk and cPanel. Plus, the installation via VNC is possible!

Also, Proxmox is available now in version 4.0, replacing 3.2. It is not an independent operating system but you may select it as a panel for Debian 8.

Proxmox 4

We offer you a wide range of Linux distributions (as well as Windows Server 2008/2012). Just click on "Customize & Order" on our VPS and dedicated servers overview sites and choose the operating system that fits your needs!

Further information can be found on our website!

Summer break? Not at Contabo! We have worked extremely hard and updated our entire VPS portfolio for you.
The result? Massive performance boosts combined with price reductions.

The VPS of our 100% SSD series especially benefit from this extensive overhaul. In the host systems of these VPS, we have built in only the latest and fastest Solid State Drives (SSDs) and completely abandoned traditional hard-disks. As a result, the I/O performance of your virtual server is enhanced multiple times. You get the maximum read-write rates – without compromise.
Each aspect of the 100% SSD series VPS has been improved. The new offers thus have more CPU cores, more RAM and more SSD space than before. On top of this, the monthly prices for these VPS have been reduced - really, what more could one ask for? Get your new 100% SSD VPS today!

An overview of the Contabo VPS series "100% SSD":

VPS M SSD
4 CPU Cores
12 GB RAM (guaranteed)
300 GB SSD disk space
100 Mbit/s switch port
Unlimited Traffic
1 Snapshot
No Setup fee
Rebate depending on the minimum contract period
Only 8.99 EUR / month!

VPS L SSD
6 CPU Cores
24 GB RAM (guaranteed)
600 GB SSD disk space
100 Mbit/s switch port
Unlimited Traffic
2 Snapshots
No Setup fee
Rebate depending on the minimum contract period
Only 14.99 EUR / month!

VPS XL SSD
10 CPU Cores
50 GB RAM (guaranteed)
1200 GB SSD disk space
1 Gbit/s switch port
Unlimited Traffic
4 Snapshots
No Setup fee
Rebate depending on the minimum contract period
Only 26.99 EUR / month!

Those of you who know us already will not be surprised: We did not stop at this point! The HDD + SSD boost offers have been improved as well: The price of all HDD + SSD boost VPS have been reduced significantly. With a VPS from this series, you will receive an incredibly attractive offer!

An overview of the Contabo VPS series "HDD + SSD-Boost":

VPS M
2 CPU Cores
6 GB RAM (guaranteed)
500 GB HDD
SSD boost
100 Mbit/s switch port
Unlimited Traffic
No Setup fee
Rebate depending on the minimum contract period
Only 6.99 EUR / month!

VPS L
4 CPU Cores
14 GB RAM (guaranteed)
1000 GB HDD
SSD boost
100 Mbit/s switch port
Unlimited Traffic
No Setup fee
Rebate depending on the minimum contract period
only 11.99 EUR / month!

VPS XL
6 CPU Cores
30 GB RAM (guaranteed)
2000 GB HDD
SSD boost
1000 Mbit/s switch port
Unlimited Traffic
No Setup fee
Rebate depending on the minimum contract period
Only 19.99 EUR / month!

 Highspeed-support, high-end systems, lowest prices:

The web hosting portal Webhostlist continuously examines hosting providers and honors the best in each quarterly period. In the second quarter of 2016, Contabo was awarded first place in the categories "Best Service" and "Best Price-Performance Ratio"!

The selection procedure is based on high requirements. Based on strict criteria the website reviews each provider and also includes the opinion of genuine customers in its decision.

Receiving this award is a huge honor for us. At the same time the award serves as an extra motivation to be listed among the best in the future as well as to improve all processes and services in the future. First-class customer service is one of our key goals, after all.

As always, we remain available via e-mail and by phone directly via landline number – at any time, without any hotline fees, queues and complex menu selection – on 365 days per year.

With the Full Monitoring upgrade Contabo offers a tool to monitor the status as well as the state of services.

Why should I monitor my server?

With a monitoring system you are able to detect offline servers or services immediately. With this tool you are able to minimize a service downtime.

A server administrator is not always online to monitor the server 24/7 (in the night or on vacation). In case of a defect the server administrator needs to be informed immediately.

How does the monitoring system look like?

It does not matter if your server is a VPS or a dedicated server, the construction is the same. The most important information is already described in the first line: Is the server online or offline.

Below you can find the state of the services you have chosen to monitor. You can decide for each service how you want to get informed if the service is down. We support notifications via e-mail and text messages (SMS).

With the menu item "Add Services" we added an easy option to add monitoring for a new service. You only have to choose the protocol type (TCP/UDP) and the port the service is listening to.

VPS

In the picture below you can see a simple monitoring system. We check if the services on port 80 (http) and 443 (https) are running. Additionally, we monitor a custom SSH port on 60500.

Dedicated Server

Similar to the VPS you can check, add and delete the monitored services. The only difference is that you can directly see the data traffic of your server.

As of today, we offer you the latest version of the administration panel Plesk Onyx for your VPS and Dedicated Servers. Just released by Parallels, you can get this brand-new version from us already  – after all, we always want to offer you the latest version of every software and we do not want to withhold the many new "Onyx" features from you!

So.. what are these new features? Among others, you will get a Git support for an easy deployment of your website, the support of docker containers and Windows Server 2016. Please find an overview of the new features here.

Contabo is a Gold Partner of the Plesk developer Parallels. Thus it is possible for us to offer you an excellent support for your Dedicated Servers and VPS equipped with Plesk. In addition, we receive favorable purchasing conditions for all Plesk versions from Parallels. This means that we are able to pass on savings to you, our valued customers and offer you Plesk at an extremely attractive price.

We are happy to provide you the new Plesk Onyx in three different editions at a great price. Now it is up to you to select the version that fits your requirements best:

Plesk Onyx for Dedicated Servers:
Plesk Onyx Web Admin Edition: 2.99 € / month
Plesk Onyx Web Pro Edition: 4.99 € / month
Plesk Onyx Web Host Edition: 24.99 € / month

Plesk Onyx for virtual private servers (VPS):
Plesk Onyx Web Admin Edition: 2.99 € / month
Plesk Onyx Web Pro Edition: 4.99 € / month
Plesk Onyx Web Host Edition: 8.99 € / month

With this short tutorial we will show you how to upgrade your Plesk 12.5 version to Plesk Onyx.

Before proceeding you should perform a backup of all important data. An upgrade always bears the risk of data loss.

On an SSD VPS you will have the ability to create a snapshot, creating a snapshot will give you the possibility to perform easily a rollback to the state "before upgrading".

On any other VPS or dedicated server we recommend downloading all backup files to your local PC or to our FTP backupspace.

After you have saved all important data you will be able to continue upgrading:

Linux:

1. Login via SSH and use sudo -i to start a shell with "root" privileges
2. Type in the following command:

plesk installer

If this command is not working, you can download and execute the installer using the following commands:

wget http://autoinstall.plesk.com/plesk-installer
chmod +x plesk-installer
./plesk-installer

Windows:

1. Login via RDP and open the CMD.exe with Administrator rights (Windows-Key + R)
2. Type in the following command:

"%plesk_bin%"\ai.exe --console

Once you have opened the Plesk Installer you will probably see a warning telling you to backup all your important files.

After you have agreed you should see something like the image below, there should be displayed your current version of Plesk; if you want to perform the upgrade you will have to select the right version by typing the correct number, in this case number 2.

After typing in the number of your desired Plesk installation you will accept the download of those new packages. Please note that this step can take up to 30 minutes, it really depends on the Plesk extensions you have installed.

After the upgrade was completed you should verify that everything is working properly.

If you plan to install additional software or change some software you can of course run the Plesk Installer again and select the packages which should be installed.

We kindly ask for your understanding that analyzing problems can be very difficult for us, in case you encounter issues after having added or removed some software through the Plesk Installer. In any case we recommend backing up all your files before making any changes to your Plesk installation.

By the way: Plesk offers tutorials about the upgrade process as well, just click here to access the Plesk University!

There is also the option to start a clean reinstallation of your server with the latest version of Plesk within your customer control panel, in this case creating a backup of your important data prior to the installation is vital, because all data stored on your server will be lost.

We offer you the latest Linux distribution Ubuntu 16.10 for free for all your VPS and Dedicated Servers! You can combine it with Software RAID 1, Webmin, LAMP and Webmin+LAMP. Important to know: In contrast to Ubuntu 16.04, there is no long term support (LTS) for Ubuntu 16.10.

New features include, among others, a revised low graphics mode which requires less hardware resources and new editions of Firefox and LibreOffice. In addition, Ubuntu 16.10 supports Kernel 4.8.

You can select Ubuntu 16.10 among several other Linux distributions (and Windows Server 2008 / 2012) when you define your individual configuration by clicking on "Customize & Order" on our VPS and dedicated servers overview sites!

As an existing customer, you can upgrade through our Control Panel easily!

Further information can be found on our website!

A typical situation: You have been on vacation and have made a lot of great photos which you want to upload to your server in order to share them with your friends and your family. Especially the photo where you were diving with the great white shark. So you uploaded them to your server and after that the photos were deleted from the SD card because you need free space for the next travel. Just working on an update to your website in a hurry, a quick "rm -rf" in the wrong directory and the photo gallery is gone. Annoying!

This is a situation that can occur but the data does not have to be lost. In general, the customer is responsible for a backup and we want to show you how to approach the perfect backup system.

But what is a backup?

With a backup you are creating a copy of your data to be stored on an external storage device. This storage device should be independent of your server, so it could be a hard disk on your local computer, a USB stick or our FTP backup storage.

Different backup types

1. Full Backup: As the name already indicates the full backup is a complete copy of your data. The advantage here is that all data is complete, but you need a lot of disk space to store your data. If you only perform full backups the available space at your data storage medium will shrink very fast.
2. Differential Backup: Before performing a differential backup you need a full backup as a differential backup contains only data which has changed or is newly created in comparison to the full backup. Therefore, it is faster but you are also saving data which is already saved in previous differential backups because you save all data that differs from the last full backup.
3. Incremental Backup: Similar to the differential backup you have to perform a full backup. But instead of always saving all changes that differ from the latest full backup, only the data being changed after the previous incremental backup gets backed up. The only disadvantage is, that if you want to restore that data you need the last full backup and all incremental backups in order to restore to the latest data.

Where to save the backup files

We offer an FTP backup storage, available with various storage space options. If you are interested in this offer, please contact us: support@contabo.com
You can access the backup storage via FTP and FTPS. With support for these protocols it is perfect for file storage. The way to access our backup space is already described here: https://contabo.com/?show=tutorials&tutorial=backup-space.

"I do not need a backup, my server is secured by a RAID system."

CAUTION! A RAID does not replace the creation of backups! A RAID should indeed provide redundancy. If more than one drive fails at the same time or your data is deleted because of an attack from outside or a similar event, a RAID will not help saving the situation. We have read this sentence above numerous times and with our experience we can say, that customers who think that their data is secure because they have a RAID system are very disappointed, if a situation as described occurs. A RAID is very effective to avoid downtime because of a defective HDD and to prevent the need for laborious data restoration.

Nevertheless the mentioned redundancy is not the same as a backup.

"I have an SSD VPS. Because of the snapshot feature I do not have to worry about backups."

Since we have been offering our VPS SSD products with the snapshot feature we have heard this sentence very often. But it is the same as with a RAID. Snapshots are not backups!

What are snapshots good for?

A snapshot freezes the current state of the file system which still points to the same "physical" storage. Snapshots are perfect for "Let's do it and see what happens..." type of situations. If the change does not work you can go back to the state before you have started your work.
So is it a backup? No! Snapshots depend on the VPS and on the host server system the VPS is located on. As already described before, the backup has to be saved to an external location, e.g. our FTP backup storage.

How to create a backup?

All important data has to be saved. Normally you know where this data is located. To store all necessary data an automatic backup routine is the perfect choice.

Using a Linux based OS we recommend to create script which creates a tar.gz file of the data that should be saved and after that, automatically transfers it to the backup storage and also deletes older backups. As this should be done periodically you can use a cron job. If you use a Windows OS you can create a powershell script to do the same steps likewise.

Please note that it does not matter if you use Linux or Windows. You have to know what you are doing as the backup is the only way to restore your data if you are facing an issue with your server.

Of course we always try to support you if you have any questions regarding your backup solution: support@contabo.com.

The last step: Securing your backup

Security of private data gets more and more important. Encryption of the backup files is therefore recommended.

Using a Linux OS you can use tools like gpg to do so. Please find a very good tutorial below:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-how-to-encrypt-and-decrypt-files-with-a-password.html

If you are a windows user we recommend using Veracrypt:
https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Beginner%27s%20Tutorial

Some of you have probably clicked on the link “Server Status” on our website contabo.com already and were forwarded to our status website. In the very rare case of irregular issues occurring in one of our data centers, we inform you about it on this website.

Recently we have revised our status site and added more features. By now, we provide information about all scheduled, ongoing and recently completed maintenances of server systems in our datacenter. Not worth mentioning that customers affected by such a maintenance are also informed by us via e-mail prior to this. These maintenances cannot be avoided altogether – after all, some hardware components are subject to attrition and have to be replaced at the appropriate time. Thanks to our transparent status website, you always know about the server systems which are currently being maintained by our technicians.

A click is worthwhile: http://contabo-status.com/

Not long ago, Microsoft officially launched its latest operating system for server systems, Windows Server 2016. We immediately went to work and performed numerous functionality tests and thus ensured a smooth integration in our systems. Today we can finally say:

Windows Server 2016 is available as an upgrade for all our root servers and VPS with 100% SSD!

As you already know from Windows Server 2012, you can once again choose between the Standard Edition and the Datacenter Edition when ordering Windows Server 2016.

If you are a new customer or place an additional order, you can select Windows Server 2016 as your operating system during the order process on our homepage. We kindly ask existing customers to send a short e-mail to our support department, then we will process the upgrade manually.

So what are the costs of Windows Server 2016 at Contabo?

The most important thing first: As a special service for our customers, we offer Windows Server 2016 free of charge for the first two months - for every root server customer. In other words:
No costs apply for the use of Windows Server 2016 on a root server within the first two months.

If you opt for a root server at Contabo, you are free to choose between the two new versions as well as the previous versions of Windows Server 2012 – in addition to a broad selection of Linux distributions. For most of our Dedicated Servers, Windows Server 2016 Standard Edition is available for 39.99€ per month (from the 3rd month onwards, free of charge before). The Datacenter Edition is a bit more expensive with a monthly fee of 279.99€ (from the 3rd month onwards, free of charge before); however, it offers the ambitious user additional possibilities, as for example in the field of virtualization.

If you decide to order one of our VPS with 100% SSD disk space and add Windows Server 2016 as your operating system of choice, you automatically receive the premium Datacenter Edition. It is available from 5.99€ per month for our VPS – the eventual monthly fee depends on the chosen VPS model. Of course, all available Linux distributions can be selected as the operating system for your VPS as well.

Order your new Contabo VPS or root server with Windows Server 2016 today!

From now on, we offer you Fedora in its latest version 25, it replaces the previous version 24. Likewise, Suse Leap received an update and the new version 42.2 is available now at Contabo!

Both operating systems can be combined with the Software RAID 1 and Webmin. In addition, Fedora 25 can be installed via VNC as well.

Existing customers can upgrade to the latest versions easily through the customer control panel.

We offer you a wide range of the latest Linux distributions (as well as Windows Server 2012 and 2016!). Simply click on "Customize & Order" below your desired (virtual) server model to get a detailed overview and select your OS of choice!

Further information and a product overview is available on our website!

Great news: From now on we offer you a completely new operating system, namely Arch Linux! It is available for all your VPS and Dedicated Servers! What's even better: Arch Linux will always be up to date, which means you will always get the latest version!

You can combine it with the Software RAID 1 and an installation with a manual configuration is possible as well - for further details, kindly contact our customer support!

Our existing customers know it already:

We always offer you a wide range of the latest Linux distributions (as well as Windows Server 2012 and 2016!). Simply click on "Customize & Order" below your desired (virtual) server model to get a detailed overview. Then scroll down a bit and select your OS of choice!

Further information and a product overview is available on our website!

In Windows Server 2016, the administration of the (automatic) Windows Updates has changed slightly. The following tutorial will show you how to check and manage the Windows updates for your Windows Server 2016 system.

1. Please connect to your server using RDP and open the Settings App via the Start menu.

Afterwards you can click on "Update & Security" which will forward you to the following screen.

Everything regarding updates can be done via this screen.

You have the option to "Check for updates", which will check for the latest updates and automatically download and install them. If some updates require a reboot, Windows will schedule it accordingly.  It is possible to set "active hours" from the link "Change active hours" where a time frame can be given in which Windows shall not reboot the device automatically.

It is further possible to set a custom day and time for the reboot via the link "Restart options".

The link "Update history" provides an overview about recent updates where it is possible to uninstall recent updates and to check further recovery options.

The link "Advanced options" provides you with the option to also update other Microsoft products through Windows updates and to "Defer feature updates", which is described by Microsoft as follows:  "When you defer upgrades, new Windows features won't be downloaded or installed for several months. Deferring upgrades doesn't effect security updates. Note that deferring upgrades will prevent you from getting the latest Windows features as soon as they're available".

The link "Privacy settings" will forward you to the general privacy settings of Windows.

ZFS as a rather new filesystem offers various advantages in comparison to regular filesystems like ext3, ext4 and NTFS. We have summarized the most noticeable ones as follows:

The main benefit of using a ZFS filesystem is guaranteed data integrity

ZFS protects your data by enabling volume management on filesystem level. This feature makes “Copy on Write” (CoW) technology possible. When a block of data is altered, it will change its current location on the disk before the new write is finished. If your system crashes or loses power in the process, that data would be lost or damaged. ZFS does not change the location of the data until the write is completed and verified, thus keeping your data safe in case of a system crash. To verify data integrity, ZFS uses checksums to ensure that the data remains original from write to write. This means that every write is tested, which in turn eliminates bit rot. ZFS not only protects your data with the CoW feature, but offers additional RAID protection in comparison to standard RAID levels. RAID-Z3 allows for a maximum of three disk failures in a ZFS pool. Regular RAID only allows for two disk failures per volume. ZFS offers the ability to set up a multi-disk mirror (nRAID). Usually the RAID mirrors are composed of a single disk and its copy. With a multi-disk mirror you can have multiple copies, which adds levels of data integrity not found in typical RAID setups and is great for read speeds.

Highly Scalable

The storage capacity of ZFS is years ahead of what might become a problem soon for regular filesystems. The possible maximum of a ZFS storage pool is 6 EiB = 16 * 2^60 Byte, which is as much as 3,000,000 6TB HDDs. A configured ZFS pool can easily be changed in its size to accommodate a growing need for more storage. The pool can be upgraded step by step with larger disks, without compromising the filesystem or complicated procedures. Harddisks can even be added on different physical ports or in a changed order in a new computer system, as long as the ZFS version on the target system is the same or higher. You will be able to use your migrated data as soon as the import is completed.

Improved Performance

ZFS also allows to send writes to individual physical disks, instead of just the RAID volume. Because of this, ZFS can stripe writes across RAID volumes, which is speeding up write performance. In the case you need to sync mirrors with only a little bit of information, you do not have to wait for it to sync any of the empty disk space, which can take a good amount of time. ZFS incorporates algorithms to ensure that your most recently used and most frequently used data are kept in the fastest system storage media. Spinning disks are known to be slow and SSD drives come at a very high price compared to regular disks. By using these algorithms in combination with flash-based ZFS write cache and L2ARC read cache devices, you can speed up your performance by up to 20% at low cost. Other great feature of ZFS are the intelligently designed snapshot, clone, and replication functions. ZFS snapshots only update based on what has changed since the last snapshot. This means that clone and replication tasks are less time consuming compared to traditional replication technology.

Easy to administer

Creating a new ZFS-Pool is fairly simple. The available storage devices can be listed with “rmformat” and can be created with the “zpool create -m /mountpunkt Contabo1 DEVICE” command. The new filesystem is automatically mounted and immediately accessible. There is no need to format the new ZFS-Pool. If additional storage space is needed, you can easily add a new device with the “zpool add Contabo1 DEVICE” command. This compares to the classical RAID 0 in which the data is distributed on all available devices.
In general a setup for data integrity is much more adviseable. With the “zpool create Contabo1 mirror DEVICE DEVICE” command you can easily create a ZFS-Pool with mirrored disks as in comparison to a classical RAID 1. You can also add several mirror disks to enhance data integrity even more with the “zpool create Contabo1 raidz DEVICE DEVICE DEVICE DEVICE” command for example. This will create a ZFS-Pool with four disks, in which one is allowed to fail without issues. When using the raidz2 option instead of raidz, two disks can fail at a time.

There is also the option to add Hot-Spares to a ZFS-Pool in order to have a replacement disk ready at all times. If a live disk fails the Hot-Spare will be used automatically to start a rebuild and take the place of the failed disk. This can be done with the “zpool add Contabo1 spare DEVICE” command, which will add the last disk in our example to the pool as Hot-Spare.
With "zpool list" you can review all existing ZFS-Pools with size, usage and health status.
With “man zfs” and “man zpool” you can review the commands that will give you full control over your ZFS-Pools.

A short overview of the mostly used commands:

- Creating a RAID-Z pool
zpool create NAME raidz DEVICE DEVICE DEVICE
- Creating a mirrored pool
zpool create NAME mirror DEVICE DEVICE
- Listing of available pools
zpool list
- Show I/O for all pools
zpool iostat 1
- Show attributes of pool devices
zpool vdevs
- Add disk to a pool
zpool add NAME DEVICE
- Delete a pool
zpool destroy NAME
- Creating and mounting a ZFS-Pool
zfs create POOL/NAME
- List pool filesystems
zfs list
- Creating and mounting a ZFS-Pool on a non-default mountpoint
zfs create POOL/NAME /MOUNTPOINT
- Create a snapshot of a filesystem
zfs snapshot POOL/FILESYSTEM@SNAPSHOTNAME
- Mount a ZFS-Pool
zfs mount POOL/FILESYSTEM /MOUNTPOINT
- Delete a ZFS-Pool
zfs destroy POOL/NAME

Which operating systems are compatible with ZFS?

ZFS was initially designed for Solaris, but can be used today on FreeBSD, FreeNAS, Proxmox and most linux distributions.

Today we are going to show you how to change your Windows Administrator password the easy way.
This tutorial works with almost all Windows versions starting from Windows XP/NT (Windows Server 2003).
On Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 you should make sure that you are using local user accounts - not any online accounts.

Start the CMD.exe with administrator privileges, e.g. "Windowsbutton +R" and type in CMD.exe

The CMD.exe application should now pop up soon, the syntax for changing the password is very simple:

net user <username of the account you want to change the password> <new password>

Example :

net user administrator SomesecurePW2016

Of course you should never use this as a password, nor should you ever use it only for "testing" purpose.

Another option would be to use "*", this will prompt you to enter a password. On a desktop Windows operating system like Windows 10, you could remove the password by just entering an empty value.

The operating system is the centrepiece of a server. You can imagine how important it is to choose a fitting operating system. For servers, two operating systems have established themselves: Windows and Linux. In this short overview, I'd like to present you the main differences between those two operating systems.

You might have heard that Windows is less stable compared to Linux. This actually was the case 15 years ago. Older Windows Server operating systems tended to operate rather unstable at times. However, Windows Server developed into an utterly robust operating system during the past years. Nowadays, you won't find much of a difference between both operating systems regarding stability.

Let's come down to the first real difference: Interface and Remote Access, which certainly are the most obvious differences between Windows and Linux.
With Windows Server, you access your server remotely with a protocol developed by Microsoft called RDP. The software used to connect to your server remotely, Remote Desktop Connection, is installed on every Windows machine by default, regardless of whether it's a Desktop or a Server version.

Once connected to the server, you'll find a familiar Windows interface you already know from your Windows PC you use at home.

And that is probably the biggest advantage of Windows Server. Web server, DNS server, or other services, everything can be managed with a graphical user interface.

On Linux, this is totally different. While desktop versions come with a graphical interface as well, in server versions, you won't find one there for the benefit of performance. Also, you cannot access it using RDP, but via SSH.
Windows operating systems do not have an SSH client installed by default, therefore you have to install such a client on your own. There are plenty of them on the market, a well known and established client is PuTTY.

Unlike on Windows Servers, there won't open a Desktop environment, but only a command line.

Administering the server is done exclusively via commands you type into the command line. While the experienced Linux user knows the most important commands, users who are new to Linux will probably have some trouble here, which could cause problems regarding server security and stability.

You might already know that Windows Server, unlike most Linux operating systems, is not for free. Microsoft fees a monthly amount for licensing their products. The amount of this fee differs, it depends on the hardware of the server running the operating system and the version of Windows Server.

Basically, every service can be realised on both Linux or Windows Server. The choice is mostly a matter of taste.

As of today, you can order the new operating systems Ubuntu 17.04 (replaces Ubuntu 16.10) and CentOS 6.9 (replaces CentOS 6.8) from us. Existing customers can upgrade within their customer control panel as well!

Ubuntu 17.04 can be combined with Webmin, LAMP, Webmin+LAMP as well as the Software Raid 1.

Apart from Webmin, LAMP, Webmin+LAMP and Software Raid 1, you can also combine CentOS 6.9 with cPanel and Plesk.

In addition to Ubuntu and CentOS, we offer you a wide range of Linux distributions (as well as Windows Server 2012/2016). Just click on "Customize & Order" on our VPS and dedicated servers overview sites and opt for the operating system that fits your needs - further details can be found on our website!

We are happy to inform you that we, in cooperation with our partner Plesk, are now offering you the popular administration panel Plesk Onyx one month for free. This offer is available for all our VPS - exclusively at Contabo - and applies for new orders.

You are free to choose which one of the three Plesk Onyx editions on offer you would like to try for free with one of our VPS:

Plesk Onyx Web Admin Edition (Price after the free month: 2.99 € / month)
Plesk Onyx Web Pro Edition: (Price after the free month: 4.99 € / month)
Plesk Onyx Web Host Edition: (Price after the free month: 8.99 € / month)

If you are convinced of Plesk after the free month, you do not have to do anything: The license renews automatically, if you haven't cancelled the Plesk license with us during the free month; however, the regular monthly price applies then, which you can find in the overview above.

Being a Gold-Partner of Plesk we have worked hard in order to present you with this exceptional offer, which is only available at Contabo.com. In addition to that, we provide you with an excellent support for Plesk Onyx, just get in touch with us in case you have any detailed inquiries.

Please note that this offer is valid for a limited period of time only. So what are you waiting for? Just give it a try and opt for the edition which suits your needs and order it in combination with one of our VPS.

We have great news for you, once again 🙂 We have enhanced our data center connectivity with two additional high-quality uplinks.

The two carriers Level 3 and Telia have been connected with additional 2 x 10 Gbit/s to our backbone.

With regard to the internet connection of our data centers, we don't accept any compromises at all. Quite the contrary, we continue to focus on highest quality and best availability possible for you, our customers. It deserves to be mentioned: With Telia Carrier and Level 3 we chose the number 1 and number 2 of the world's biggest internet carriers for the upgrade of our upstreams - there is no other carrier who operates such huge networks worldwide.

The result? Quite some advantages for you: Now you receive an even better redundancy in case of a malfunction of any data center uplink. Besides, the additional upstreams increase the available bandwidth and provide you with an even better global routing and with a better price of traffic.

The Contabo data centers now are connected to the internet with 100 Gbit/s:

• Telia Carrier: 30 Gbit/s
• Level 3: 30 Gbit/s
• DE-CIX: 20 Gbit/s
• Versatel: 10 Gbit/s
• M-Net: 10 Gbit/s