Host multiple sites on same box?

[phpguy]

Hi all

New to web hosting here...Couple questions

1. What is the general school of thought on hosting different sites in the same box, versus putting them each on their own boxes (virtual or physical). Should we be putting each site on it's own vm? Or is it ok to combine two irrelevent sites on the same box?

2. Let's say I have a domain Company.com that links to my static IP. Now I have two subdomains for my company, but they are unreleated. For example: voip.company.com is my voip/phone server, and billing.company.com is my billing system. If I wanted to host these on the same box, how can I direct each to their own website? I'm assuming each would be a sub-directory in the /var/www folder (e.g. /var/www/voip and /var/www/billing). How to do this? Htaccess? OR should I be putting these on their own box or virtual machine?

Thanks!

[Lazydog]

You could host them all on the same box. Just setup virtual sites.

Apache Virtual Host documentation

[elija]

Have a look at this tutorial which gives a different view on setting such a thing up. It focuses on a development box but the same principles apply.

[stokes]

Yep, you can host multiple sites on one box with one IP address using host headers (name based virtual hosting).

If you have sites that are SSL enabled then you will need a separate IP for each SSL virtualhost if you want them to all use port 443 for https - just something to be aware of.

[Rubberman]

While you can run multiple sites from one box, it would generally be recommended to host each in its own virtual machine in such a case. It makes each more manageable, and secure. Each VM can have it's own IP address, data storage (physical or virtual), and access policies. In truth, it is applying the KISS principle, not to mention the separation of domains one as well.