Operated, not sampled
These tools ran commercial hosting under my name — thousands of servers' worth of updates, incidents, and 3 am pages.
SYS::ABOUT
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15 YEARS IN PRODUCTION LINUX
15 years at the root level
I started in Linux server administration in 2010 — not from a course, but from having to keep production systems alive. Over time I founded two hosting brands, managed thousands of servers, and wrote the automation that keeps them running. The tools on this site exist because I kept needing them and they didn't exist the way I wanted.
"Production systems taught me everything. Every migration that had to complete before market open, every security incident at 3 am, every hosting customer who needed their site back — those are where the real knowledge lives. I didn't study this. I lived in it."
Broken and repaired
Knowing a tool means having fixed it at its worst: corrupted tables, failed RAID, panel upgrades gone sideways.
Automated together
The real value is the glue — panels talking to billing, monitoring paging before customers, backups proving themselves nightly.
ranjan@ranjan.info:~$ git log --oneline
The path so far
Milestones from shared hosting operations to multi-datacenter infrastructure.
Linux & Infrastructure Foundations
Started in hands-on Linux server administration — troubleshooting, hosting support, and production maintenance — building the foundational ops knowledge that still drives everything today.
Control Panels, Performance & Security
Went deep on WHMCS, cPanel, and DirectAdmin — handling migrations, security incidents, performance tuning, and multi-server environments for clients who needed dependable operations.
Founder-Led Hosting Platforms
Founded MeraHost and cPanelFree — built and operated two real hosting brands from the server level up, pairing product thinking with hands-on Linux administration at scale.
AI Integration & Cloud Automation
Expanding into AI-powered infrastructure tools — building intelligent automation layers, API gateways, and monitoring systems that bring modern AI capabilities to production hosting environments.
ranjan@ranjan.info:~$ cat ~/.stack --verbose
The production stack
Every technology below has run production workloads under my administration — not tutorial familiarity, but tools I've recovered, tuned, migrated, and been paged about.
Operating Systems & Virtualization
Linux (AlmaLinux · Ubuntu · Debian)KVMLXCProxmoxVMwareVirtualizor
Web Servers & Edge
NginxApacheLiteSpeedReverse ProxyLoad BalancingCloudflareCDN
Hosting Platforms & Panels
cPanel · WHMDirectAdminPleskWHMCSCloudLinuxJetBackup
Databases & Caching
MySQLMariaDBRedisSQLiteInnoDB tuningReplication
Languages & Automation
BashPythonPHPGitREST APIssystemd
Containers & Cloud
DockerKubernetesAWSDigitalOceanHetznerCloud-init
ranjan@ranjan.info:~$ tail -f ~/feedback.log
What clients say
Feedback from recoveries, migrations, security work, and ongoing administration. Attributed by role and industry.
Our production server died on a Friday night with no usable snapshot. By Saturday morning we were back online with nothing lost — plus a written report on exactly what failed and why it can't happen again.
Four hundred client accounts moved to new infrastructure overnight, and not a single ticket about downtime. I've been through migrations that cost us customers — this one, nobody even noticed.
Three cleanup services couldn't stop the reinfections. He found the entry point in the access logs, closed it, and got every site off Google's blacklist. It never came back.
He tuned the stack we already had instead of quoting us a bigger server. Page times halved, the load spikes disappeared, and the hardware budget went back in our pocket.
His hardening work surfaced and fixed issues our previous admin had missed for months. Every change was documented, and the next security audit passed clean.
Handing the fleet to someone who treats it like his own changed how we work. Patches happen on schedule, backups actually verify, and 3 am problems stopped being my problems.
ranjan@ranjan.info:~$ faq --list
Common questions
Straight answers on scope, engagement models, remote console access, and availability.
What kind of work does Ranjan Chatterjee handle?
Emergency Linux server recovery, website malware removal, zero-downtime migrations, security hardening, performance optimization, email migration, infrastructure audits, managed server administration, control panel expertise, and DevOps automation — ten focused consulting services built on 15+ years in production Linux.
What hosting platforms does Ranjan work with?
cPanel/WHM, DirectAdmin, Plesk, WHMCS, CloudLinux, and Linux VPS/dedicated/cloud environments across AWS, DigitalOcean, and Hetzner. He is also the founder of MeraHost and cPanelFree, so panel-based hosting is operated experience, not just administered.
Is Ranjan available for infrastructure consulting?
Yes — for one-off projects, emergency response, and ongoing managed administration retainers. The contact page has request types for consultations, emergencies, audits, migrations, and recoveries; enquiries get a straight answer, usually within a business day.
Does Ranjan work with clients remotely and internationally?
Yes — all work is done remotely over provider consoles, SSH, and IPMI, for clients worldwide. Infrastructure work is console work: with proper access, everything short of physically swapping hardware happens from anywhere, with data-center remote-hands coordinated when on-site hands are genuinely required.
How do engagements with Ranjan work?
Four steps on every engagement: scope (a short brief or call), plan (steps, risks, rollback agreed before production is touched), execute (hands-on work with checkpoints), and handoff (documentation, access cleanup, and a written trail). Emergencies compress the same discipline into hours instead of days.
How is Ranjan's work priced?
Fixed quotes for defined projects like migrations, cleanups, and audits; fixed emergency rates agreed before recovery work starts; flat month-to-month retainers for managed administration. No open-ended hourly meters on defined work, and honest advice when the cheaper path is the better one.
What makes his background different from an agency?
He founded and operated two hosting companies — MeraHost and cPanelFree — meaning thousands of servers, real uptime accountability, and 3 am incidents as lived experience. Clients work directly with the engineer who does the work: one accountable person, not a ticket queue.
ranjan@ranjan.info:~$ ssh [email protected]
Let's build something solid
Clear scope, honest timelines, clean handoff — and infrastructure you stop having to think about.