How to Install CloudLinux on CentOS 7

If you offer hosting to clients, or need a turnkey system to host services within your organization, then you may want to check out CloudLinux. Specialized for shared hosting environments, CloudLinux bills itself as Linux for data centers and hosting providers. Features include rebootless upgrades, a more secure kernel, and PaaS features for hosting Dockerized applications. It is also well supported. If you’d like all the benefits that Linux has to offer but would rather not pour through documentation and third party support, CloudLinux may be just what you’re looking for. Not only is the support top-notch, but it is also unlimited, eliminating the need to worry about per-incident pricing or tiered availability.

Getting Started

CloudLinux is a commercial addon for popular Linux distributions. While it modifies many fundamental aspects of the operating system, it expects that you’ve already got a Linux installation up and running.

To complete this guide, you will need the following:
• 1 Node (Cloud Server or Dedicated Server) running a clean CentOS 7.
• All commands should be run as the root user

Since CloudLinux will make many modifications to your system, it is best to not run any other, non-CloudLinux services on any nodes. At its conclusion, CloudLinux will be installed and ready to host production apps and services.

Tutorial

We’ll start, as usual, by pulling in all available CentOS updates. This critical step should be performed regularly, as CentOS ships security and other fixes as part of its software upgrades.

yum -y update && shutdown -r now

Now we need to register a CloudLinux user key. Since this is a commercial product, you’ll need to purchase the correct number of keys for your needs. They can be acquired here.

The installer is shipped as a runnable script. We need to fetch the script before it can be executed.

wget https://repo.cloudlinux.com/cloudlinux/sources/cln/cldeploy

Next we run the script we’ve just retrieved.

sh cldeploy -k # if you have activation key

You can also run it as follows:

sh cldeploy -i # if you have IP based license

Once complete, reboot your server. At this point, the various CloudLinux services will be running, and its kernel modules and modifications will all be active.

reboot

Conclusion

In just a few minutes, you’ve transformed a clean CentOS 7 installation into a production-ready hosting environment for your organization or clients. CloudLinux is a great way to take your hosting to the next level. If this guide was helpful to you, kindly share it with others who may also be interested.