Dedicated Servers

A control Panel will make your life easier if you are thinking on starting a hosting project, or offering hosting as a new business. Here is some information about two of the most used Control Panels for hosting services.

Plesk

Plesk (Parallels Plesk Control Panel) is a commercial web hosting automation program that allows a server administrator to set up new websites, reseller accounts, e-mail accounts, and DNS entries through a web-based interface. According to the Parallels website:

Eliminate the complexities of managing servers. The Parallels Plesk Panel provides an easy to learn interface while maintaining a simple look and feel. Navigation through the control panel is simple and allows you to find and complete even the most cumbersome tasks quickly and efficiently.

Empower your customers around the clock. The Parallels Plesk Panel will reduce your operating costs since customers will be able support themselves. The key auto-update mechanism, auto-component updater, migration manager and a Web-based installation for quick deployment ensure you won’t spend hours on the phone providing support,

cPanel

On the other hand, we have cPanel. cPanel is a Unix based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. According to the cPanel website:

cPanel is the industry leader for turning standalone servers into a fully automated point-and-click hosting platform. Tedious tasks are replaced by web interfaces and API-based calls. cPanel is designed with multiple levels of administration including admin, reseller, end user, and email-based interfaces. These multiple levels provide security, ease of use, and flexibility for everyone from the server administrator to the email account user.

There are several differences between Plesk and cPanel, checking some of those differences will help you make the right decision of which panel you would like to use depending on your needs.

Differences Plesk vs. cPanel

Plesk: can be installed on Windows and Linux servers
cPanel: only for Linux (Beta version is for Windows is already on development)

Plesk: SSL-enabled web based GUI, using frames.
cPanel: In addition to the GUI interface cPanel also has command line and API based access.

Plesk: Parallels Plesk Panel installs custom versions of or manages versions of MySQL and PostgreSQL databases (Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine under Windows), Apache Tomcat, Java platform server, ColdFusion server.
cPanel: Application-based support includes Apache, PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Perl, and BIND (DNS).

Plesk: Front-end –> PHP
cPanel: Front-end –> Perl

Plesk: Back-end –> PHP/MySQL
cPanel: Back-end –> Perl

Plesk: email based support includes POP3, IMAP, SMTP services, Qmail email server.
cPanel: email based support includes POP3, IMAP, SMTP services, Exim email server.

Plesk: default port is 8443.
cPanel: is commonly accessed on port 2082.

Plesk: it is usually more expensive.
cPanel: cheaper

Plesk: in my opinion, Plesk is more intuitive, but handles less options than cPanel.
cPanel: less intuitive.

These are some of the main differences between cPanel and Plesk, of course, these two are not the only control panels available. There is a whole bunch of them, maybe soon I’ll add another entry about their features.

In the meantime, I hope this helps.

New to Windows Servers? You are not the only one.

The latest release of Windows Servers is Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows Server 2008 is built from the same code base as Windows Vista, that is why both share the same architecture and functionality (as well as the visual aspects, both look really pretty… well… both look cool!)

Beta 1 was released on 27 July 2005, Beta 2 was announced and released on 23 May 2006 and Beta 3 was released publicly on 25 April 2007. Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on 4 February 2008 and officially launched on 27 February 2008.

Features

• Server Core: Windows Server 2008 includes a variation of installation called Server Core. Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no Windows Explorer shell is installed. This means that everything is done through a command line interface.
• Active Directory Roles: Active Directory roles are expanded with identity, certificate, and rights management services. Identity and certificate services allow administrators to manage user accounts and the digital certificates that allow them to access certain services and systems.
• Failover Clustering: (this one is only available for Enterprise and DataCenter editions), this feature offers high avalability for services. Most server features and roles can be kept running with little to no downtime.
• Self-healing NTFS: with self-healing NTFS, an NTFS worker thread is spawned in the background which performs a localized fix-up of damaged data structures, with only the corrupted files/folders remaining unavailable without locking out the entire volume and needing the server to be taken down.
• Hyper-V: Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based virtualization system, it virtualizes servers on an operating system’s kernel layer.
• Windows System Resource Manager: it provides resource management and can be used to control the amount of resources a process or a user can use based on business priorities.
• Server Manager: It is a combination of Manage Your Server and Security Configuration Wizard from Windows Server 2003.

Windows Server Editions

• Windows Server 2008 Standard (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Server 2008 Datacenter (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows HPC Server 2008 (Codenamed “Socrates”) (replacing Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003)
• Windows Web Server 2008 (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Storage Server 2008 (Codenamed “Magni”) (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Small Business Server 2008 (Codenamed “Cougar”) (x86-64) for small businesses
• Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (Codenamed “Centro”) (x86-64) for medium-sized businesses
• Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems
• Windows Server 2008 Foundation (Codenamed “Lima”)

This might give you a general idea of what Windows Servers are.

For more information: Microsoft, Windows Server 2008

In computing, software that is copyrighted and licensed under a software license is done under a variety of licensing schemes. Not all software is licensed, or even copyrighted. Software may be published without an accompanying license, as License-Free Software, in which case it remains copyrighted, its distribution is subject to ordinary copyright law, and its sale is subject to ordinary sales law.

The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project.

The GPL is the first copyleft license for general use, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms. Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples.

The text of the GPL is not itself under the GPL. The license’s copyright disallows modification of the license. Copying and distributing the license is allowed since the GPL requires recipients get “a copy of this License along with the Program”.^[5] According to the GPL FAQ, anyone can modify the license as long as they use a different name for the license, don’t mention “GNU” and remove the preamble. The preamble can be used in a modified license with permission of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The GPL was written by Richard Stallman in 1989 for use with programs released as part of the GNU project. Stallman’s goal was to produce one license that could be used for any project, thus making it possible for many projects to share code. Prominent free software programs licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). Some other free software programs, (MySQL is a prominent example) are dual-licensed under multiple licenses, often with one of the licenses being the GPL.

The second version of the license, version 2, was released in 1991. Version 3 was officially released on June 29, 2007.

The GPL was designed as a license, rather than a contract. However, this distinction is not useful in the many jurisdictions where there are no differences between contracts and licenses, such as Civil Law systems. Those who do not agree to the GPL’s terms and conditions do not have permission, under copyright law, to copy or distribute GPL licensed software or derivative works. However, if they do not redistribute the GPL’d program, they may still use the software within their organization however they like, and products constructed by the use of the program are not covered by this license.

In general terms this is what the GNU General Public License is and stands for.

For more information go to: GNU General Public License, FSF

If your website is not really big, and only needs a portion of the resources of a single server, there is no need to get a Dedicated Server for it, you can do good with a hosting plan. The main difference between Cloud Hosting and typical Shared Hosting is that, while shared hosting only provide you a portion of a single server, Cloud Hosting gives you the benefit of several servers all working together as one.

Main Differences

Technology

• Hosting: tried and tested, there is plenty of knowledge about it. Bugs and main issues fixed, although, it can also be obsolete with some providers.
• Cloud Hosting: more advanced, cutting edge, BETA versions which can lead to possible failures and lack of the necessary support.

Infrastructure

• Hosting: customers control the infrastructure they need.
• Cloud Hosting: customers cannot control the infrastructure they need.

Scalability

• Hosting: the provisioning of extra resources needs to be manual. Extra hardware (if needed) has to be paid up front. Traffic spikes must be planned and worked on previously.
• Cloud Hosting: the provisioning of extra resources can be done automatically. Extra hardware (if needed) is paid depending on what was used at the end of the billing cycle. Traffic spikes can be handled as they happen.

Cost

• Hosting: payment in advance. Usually it is more expensive, especially for large sites with large amounts of traffic that need to be paid up-front.
• Cloud Hosting: payment is based on the use of the resources. There is usually a flat fee plus a variable fee depending on the amount of resources used during the billing period. It is usually cheaper as you only pay for what you use.

Redundancy

• Hosting: must be manually set up and managed (as it requires expertise, usually requires extra payments).
• Cloud Hosting: Automatic failover in the cloud redundant SAN storage as standard.

Security

• Hosting: the location of the data is known and the webmaster can control and configure the way data is accessed. The storage for sensitive data can be set on a different (separated) physical machine. Everything that operates in the same shared server is at the mercy of the other sites in that server, for example, any kind of update affects anyone; if there is a spammer in that server it will take up all the resources on that server and affect all the sites reputation as they share the same IP address.
• Cloud Hosting: the location of the data is unknown, the webmaster is not able to control and configure the access to it as easily and directly as done in the traditional way. Sensitive data may share the same physical machine as other web sites or users, although it will be virtually separated. The virtual partitioning of the files and the way resources are allocated ensures that all the web applications are separated form one another, so no resources are shared and the mess created by other users won’t affect your website.

These are some of the differences between Hosting and Cloud Hosting. Of course, as with Dedicated Servers, the way to choose one or other always relays on the needs and demands of a website.

Para español: En español

Well, it will always depend on what you need the server for:

• e-mail: the main feature for email servers is memory.
• hosting: you must care about memory and hard drive capacity.
• databases: then you have to look at more features. Databases need high velocity rates, data needs to be accessed in a very fast way, so, you need to have good memory and hard drive capacity. In order to improve the data access velocity you could get an SSD (Solid State Drives), these are faster, more consistent and less vulnerable to failures. Also, a good processor won’t hurt the database performance.
• streaming: in this case it depends on what kind of streaming you wish to offer, sound, video or sound/video streaming. Despite the kind of streaming you need to be very careful about the bandwidth, these services need a very good bandwidth plan. Also, most streaming clients are based in Windows Operating Systems as they are more easily managed.

This is my idea of the main features to look for when a Dedicated server. There is a very good provider I found that you might like to check out, DomainGurus, take the time to look at it and decide on what you are looking for.

Para español: Servidores Dedicados

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers, similar to collocation facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to collocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications.

To date, no industry standards have been set to clearly define the management role of dedicated server providers. What this means is that each provider will use industry standard terms, but each provider will define them differently. For some dedicated server providers, fully managed is defined as having a web based control panel while other providers define it as having dedicated system engineers readily available to handle all server and network related functions of the dedicated server provider.

Server management can include some or all of the following:

• Operating system updates
• Application updates
• Server monitoring
• SNMP hardware monitoring
• Application monitoring
• Application management
• Technical support
• Firewall services
• Antivirus updates
• Security audits
• DDoS protection and mitigation
• Intrusion detection
• Backups and restoration
• Disaster recovery
• DNS hosting service
• Load balancing
• Database administration
• Performance tuning
• Software installation and configuration
• User management
• Programming consultation

Dedicated hosting server providers define their level of management based on the services they provide. In comparison, fully managed could equal self managed from provider to provider.

For more information: Dedicated servers

Para español: Servidores Dedicados