Mail-In-A-Box How To On YouTube

#9

I do love a good snapshot. I’ve been using Mail-In-A-Box now for almost seven years now. Only had one disaster. Not Mail-In-A-Box at all. My own stupidity by choosing a horrible host. I was trying to be cheap and I was taught a very good lesson.

I did look at Wasabi. Also, DigitalOcean now has Spaces at a great price. They even have an awesome plugin for WordPress that works as a CDN. Which I have used and love.

But…when it comes down to it. It makes it so nice to have everyone in one place. I’m not having to switch between companies. If and when something goes down I’m not having to find out what company is at fault and what is happening.

Amazon AWS is definitely not the cheapest. That said, everything is in one place, great service, great around the world server centers, good and fast support. And again, might not be the cheapest but they’re well within my budget range for the service and ease of use. With a small business, time is my biggest concern. When I can save time that equals out to the little more I pay.

Again, please don’t think I’m trying to sell Amazon AWS. As I said, I use DigitalOcean too. I’m just saying what works for me and why I decided on AmazonAWS.

Thank you on your feedback on the video. If I get enough good feedback I’ll make a few more how-to videos like setting up Mail-In-A-Box with WordPress, Mailster Newsletter Plugin for WordPress, implementing Collabora, etc.

Thanks again for your comments puts a smile on my face :slight_smile:

#10

Without researching it I actually am not sure when it’s related to Lightsail. With EC2 it would be S3. I would imagine it would be the same for LightSail but I would have to look that up. Good question.

#11

I know a Lightsail instance can be $5 a month.

With it all in one place, I know pricing follows the pizza principle:

The more you get on it, the more it costs.

Can you give us an idea what the total costs are for a basic MiaB server in Lightsail/Route53/S3/Snapshots?

Thanks

Dennis

#12

I don’t think that’s actually possible. Because each business is completely different. Depends on how frequent back-ups are. How many domains you have.

It breaks down to this:
5.00 Lightsail Server (as long as you stick within it’s parameters it’s 5.00)
Route53 is included in Lightsail (make sure you do it in Lightsail) Excludng registering your domain and that depends on the TLD you choose.
S3 comes with a free tier. No way to estimate this. This is dependent on each individual user.
Snapshot again is on an individual base. Depends how often you do snapshots and how often you delete them. I don’t use snapshots for anything.

I have a server for WordPress that does a backup of WP and the database every 4 hours (The only reason I do 4 hours is our website has high traffic. When we started it was once a day) to S3. I have a lifecycle policy in place that deletes the back-up every 7 days. I have a lifecycle policy in place that moves one back-up every week to Glacier for a “just-in-case” scenario. Hidden malware, hacked, etc and have to go back to find where it came from.

MIAB that uses the MAIB backup feature to S3.

ALGO VPN Server

Asterisk PBX Server. I use the backup feature that comes with PBX In A Flash with the same scenario as WordPress server

And instance that is just a MySQL server.

I just have instances that have all the server software installed and turned off. If something fails. I just turn the old server off. Turn on the new. Run the restore feature. And I’m back online.

My bill last month was 46.36 however, my WordPress server is 20.00 a month server because we use Matomo for analytics, YOURLS instead of Bit.ly, and our CRM is built into WordPress and needs more power.

For Algo I use the 3.50 server. That’s all that is really needed for Algo.

Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.

Good luck :slight_smile:

#13

Do I have created an instance in Lightsail and used the console icon to login to it.

Haven’t installed MiaB yet.

I see you have to use sudo, so the question is what’s the name of the user I am logged in as?

I should be able to SSH into it from my Mac like I do with other Linux boxes. Did Lightsail assign me a user name? I may have missed that in your writeup.

Thanks

Dennis

#14

If you have AWS CLI tool installed on your computer you can spin one up that way. But, as in the video I just use the GUI to create an instance.

To SSH into your instance the default username is “ubuntu”
Ex.
ssh -i yourcert ubuntu@ipaddress

I create an ssh cert file for each instance and upload it when I create a new instance. That’s where -i comes into play. Or you can just use the SSH console window for the instance in your browser too if you choose default.

#15

Thanks for the quick reply.

I did

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Some packages were held back.

Installing MiaB now.

#16

I have tried to follow your PDF.

I have created and deleted several instances.

The problem I am having is getting my domain name that was bought in Route 53 hooked to the instance. Added static-ip to the instance. Created a DNS zone and tied to static-ip. Added an A record in the zone pointing to my domain name.

How long should it take for the domain to use by MiaB? When installing MiaB I keep getting can’t resolve box.sample.com.

I would think once the domain name purchase from the registrar is complete, things in AWS would go quickly.

Not sure what I am doing wrong.

Dennis

#17

Not to mince terms here but it is important … the A record is pointing to the subdomain, right? box (box.sample.com)

#18

Here is the procedure if you are going to use Lightsail DNS record

  1. Purchase a domain in Route 53
  2. Create a DNS record in Lightsail under the MAIN network section.
  3. Change the NameServers in Route 53 to reflect those in Lightsail. (they can be found at the very bottom of the DNS Record in LightSail.
    Wait a few hours to about a day.

Or, if you are going to use Route 53. Which will cost you $0.50 a month where Lightsail gives you three free DNS records a month.

Create an instance in Light Sail
Assign a static IP address
Purchase a Domain in Route 53
Create a DNS zone
Create an A record with subdomain “box” pointed it at the Lightsail instance

Wait for about thirty minutes. Ping the instance to see if it’s connecting :slight_smile:
Hope that helps

#19

Thanks. I was wondering about the difference and you explained it.

Don’t need to pay the extra $0.50. I sound like a tight wad. Grin

Dennis

#20

I guess there is no point in installing MiaB in the instance until you can ping the domain from another computer, even though you can ping the static-ip.

Dennis

#21

David thanks for your patience.

I see the four name servers in Lightsail, but I don’t see where/how to put them in Route 53.

Thanks.

Dennis

#22

The best way to describe it is how I already did. I’m sorry. I show how to do it in the video. It will show you how to change the Nameservers. Just head to the Route53 section :slight_smile:
Good luck

#23

Honestly, the video is 1hr43min in length.

Might I suggest that you index your guide to the time in the video? I think that would help some people out such as Dennis.

#24

It is about 17 minutes into the video.

Got things changed. Waiting for things to propagate through.

For some reason I can’t ping the static IP address. I can talk to the machine via the Lightsail web interface.

Dennis

#25

At the moment I’m in the middle of a huge project for a client. When I find some time I’ll be cutting those video’s up and adding segments to the Knowledgebase of BitsVital. But, it’s definitely not my first concern. I have a few other videos on the plate to make first. :confused:

#26

Check the firewall on your Lightsail instance.

#27

@pupsncats Thank you for all your help. Everything is working or will be. I have killed my instance and started over several times. (Developing muscle memory! Grin)
That last time I started over, I forgot to open all the ports, so I could not ping the instance.
The only issue now is reverse DNS. It has been fixed but is slow propagating thru all the systems. Got the OK email back from AWS.
The Status Check page complains about DNSSEC but I guess that is not a problem in the Lightsail environment since it is all in AWS.

Thanks again.

Now to migrate my other domain names over to AWS.

Dennis

#28

No problem. Ignore DNSSEC. Route53 doesn’t support DNSEC.
Glad I could help! :slight_smile: