Managing your Ubuntu server

When most people think of Ubuntu, they think of the award-winning community-driven desktop Linux distribution created by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth and his army loyal supporters. But Shuttleworth is still a businessman, and part of his investment is making sure people who use Ubuntu at the server level have support.

Don’t worry. Despite how it sounds, this is a good thing. It means those who use Ubuntu at the server level are not up a creek if something goes wrong. Most server-ready Linux distributions are backed by companies that will offer support for them. Ubuntu offers a service called Landscape that helps you monitor and manage your server.

Landscape has two versions: Hosted Edition, which is hosted remotely and accessed over the web and Dedicated Server Edition, which you install directly on your dedicated server. Canonical currently offers a free 60 day trial, and a subscription to Landscape is $150 per node per year.

Source: Canonical

Remotely managing your Windows web server

Question: How do I setup remote management of an IIS 7 server on Windows Server 2008?

Answer: By default, remote management is turned off. Therefore, you must turn it on before you can use any of its features. Although IIS is available for Vista and other versions of Microsoft Windows, remote management only works on Windows Server. You can install remote management with three easy steps:

1. Install the service called Web Management Service (WMSVC)
2. Turn on remote connections.
3. Set any other configurations you desire, such as ports, IP address and domain settings.
4. Start the WMSVC service. You can also set it to start up automatically at boot.

A full detailed description of each step is available on the Learn IIS website.

Tomorrow, we will learn about using the remote management software.

Photo: Flickr