Anticipation Builds for ARM-Powered Servers

Yesterday, the popular tech blog GigaOM posted a story about Ian Drew, executive vice president of marketing at ARM Holdings. ARM is known for its low-powered processors that have cornered the market on smartphones, tablets, and many other devices.

Lately, Drew has become quite popular with the announcement that ARM is bringing their chips to the server market. In an arena that has been dominated by behemoths, Intel and AMD, it might surprise some to even think of an ARM processor in a server. But it is no surprise to technology experts working in web hosting, especially in data centers.

Power costs money. Energy consumption is an environmental and financial expense that many data centers are trying to significantly cut. As Drew explained,

“While the x86 world focused on pure megahertz, we have focused on the megahertz per milliwatt”

ARM-powered servers will introduce boxes that are powerful enough to still perform well on the Web, while also reducing energy consumption and, as a result, cost. Drew says the ARM advancement into the server realm will not happen overnight. They will begin testing next year and expect to produce market-ready low-power server chips within the next three to five years.

Source: GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2010/07/29/arm-server-foray/
Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Server Networking Tips

Over the past year, we have covered many networking tips for servers. Here is a brief summary of the most important networking tips you should keep in mind for your dedicated server.

1. Use both a router firewall and a software firewall
2. Your name servers should be hosted on at least two different servers
3. If you use content delivery services, make sure they have servers close to your primary users
4. Block all ports except the most essential (i.e. web server, ssh, ftp)
5. Use traceroute and dns lookups to test network connectivity issues
6. Be sure to follow Internet standards with your DNS records
7. Use SSH, SCP, SFTP, and other secure protocols whenever you need to connect to your server

Photo Source: Flickr

Microsoft, Dell, HP, Fujitsu Team Up to Sell Cloud Servers

Microsoft has formed an alliance with Dell, HP, and Fujitsu to sell pre-configured Microsoft Azure-powered cloud servers. By pre-configured, they mean that the servers should be ready to go without any further configuration required. As such, they call them “appliances” rather than servers.

These appliances will allow companies to take advantage of the “private cloud”, with which they run their own applications and storing them in their own data centers. This differs from the “public cloud”, in which the applications are on servers in third-party data centers.

Potential customers are expected to be larger businesses with scalable enterprise server needs. The first in line is the auction super site Ebay.com. The Azure software itself, however, will be more widely available. Microsoft is joining numerous other big IT companies that are now offering cloud services, including IBM, Google, and Amazon.

Source: The China Post
Photo: Flickr

What is PHP Safe Mode?

A “safe mode” in general is a term used to refer to software that has all but the most critical components disabled in order to increase stability. Often times when there is a stability or security issue, running in safe mode will allow the user to still access the system and fix any problems.

In PHP, safe mode is primarily a security option that prevents would-be attackers from using PHP scripts to execute operating system commands. Theoretically safe mode is supposed to be a method for increased web application security. It is intended to be run in shared hosting environments and is not needed on a VPS or dedicated server. In PHP 6, safe mode will be removed.

The downside of PHP Safe Mode is that certain scripts and web applications do not function properly with it enabled. Server administrators can disable it and take other security measures to harden their Web applications, and individual users can also work around it, although they should check with their web host first to make sure they do not compromise security.

Most web developers and website owners dislike safe mode because of the limitations it places on scripts. If you feel strongly about it, you should find out if a web host uses it before subscribing to their service.

Photo Source: Flickr

Preventing Viruses with ClamAV

Many people who run Linux or Unix servers think they do not have to concern themselves with anti-virus software because those operating systems are not commonly attacked by viruses. What they fail to realize is that a Linux server, particularly the mail server running on it, can still distribute viruses, effectively acting as a carrier.

Clam AntiVirus or ClamAV is a free anti-virus toolkit that detects and effectively removes viruses before they can infect a system or be passed on to others. It has a command line virus scanner, a database updater that pulls new virus definitions from the central server, and a daemon to run as a background service.

In order to scan incoming mail, ClamAV requires a mail filter, such as MailScanner. ClamAV is free and open source software, released under the GPL. It is available in most Linux distribution repositories, as well as BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and other Unix operating systems. There is also a separate organization that maintains a Windows version called ClamWin.

ARM CEO Promises Server CPUs in 2011

Warren East, CEO of Arm Holdings revealed that he expects servers based on ARM multicore processors to arrive in 2011. ARM processors are best known in the mobile device market, especially smartphones, because of their low power consumption.

Normally, low power consumption equates to low speed, which is fine for handheld devices but not for servers. Nevertheless, East argued that their multicore ARM processors are now “pushing up to 2GHz”. While this is still a far cry from the speed being delivered by current Intel and AMD server chips, it has potential.

At this point, there is no reason to suspect ARM will even have room to squeeze into the server processor market, even if their chips do start to come close to or match Intel and AMD performance. Still, many companies may have room for ARM-powered servers. Lowering energy consumption in data centers has become a concern, and ARM could offer an alternative, low-power solution.

Source: Tom’s Hardware
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Server redundancy

In an ideal world, you get what you want all the time. The shopping lines are always short, the traffic is always light, and there are more jobs than there are people to fill them. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world, and just like a street can come to a stand-still when there is too much traffic, so can a server.

If you have a single server and its working, you might never suspect you would have a problem, but if too many people visit your server, some visitors could start getting denied access. Even worse, too much congestion can even bring a server down. With redundant servers, you can spread the load over two or more identical servers. The information across both is the same, so it does not matter which one a user gets when they access your site.

The other, perhaps more critical advantage of server redundancy is that even if one server goes down, the other one will continue to work. The more redundant servers you have, the more reliable your site will be. Generally speaking redundancy is probably not necessary for small, low-traffic sites, but for big sites that see huge volumes of regular users, it could be a life saver.

Photo Source: Flickr

Open source vs proprietary servers

Open Source typically refers to software that has code released under some type of free software license (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.). Users and developers have access to the source code and can modify and redistribute it. Proprietary software usually means the source code is closed and/or the EULA (end user license agreement) forbids redistribution, copying, etc.

The benefit of open source software is that there is a large community involved in supporting it, finding bugs, and making it secure. For a server, this means that your software is not going anywhere even if the hardware vendor goes out of business. With proprietary software, you are at the mercy of the vendor or software developer when you need something fixed or have security problems.

The benefit of proprietary software is usually only evident if you make web applications in-house and do not intend to release that software to the outside public. In such cases you may view the software as your intellectual property. The cost for maintaining each varies depending on the setup and who you have maintaining it. If you or your employees have the knowledge to maintain free software, you can save a considerable amount of money.

Manage Amazon S3 storage with CrossFTP

Let’s face it, many of the today’s website owners and even system administrators are not as comfortable with code, scripts, and command line tools as the generation that come before them. Some may struggle with cloud services like Amazon S3 because of difficult and sometimes time-consuming command line programs.

CrossFTP is an FTP client, but among its features is built-in support for Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront. With it you can upload, download, perform backups, modify metadata, create schedules, and synchronize content with your servers.

The best part of all is that CrossFTP is a graphical client that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers while still providing access to both your remote server and your Amazon S3 remote storage. CrossFTP is free, and Amazon S3 support works out of the box, but there is also a “Pro” version that provides added features. It is available for download from the project’s website.

Photo Source: CrossFTP

5 Security tips for virtual private servers

There are many security factors you should consider when deploying Linux-based virtual private servers (VPS) on systems such as OpenVZ. Some protect your users and some protect your server as a whole. Here are five steps you can take to make sure your server is secure:

1. Disable the root password on the real server. Users may decide to use root passwords on their VPS systems, but do not make it easy for attackers to get past them to the real system.

2. Create a user designed just for admin tasks and give it “sudo” rights.

3. Create an ssh user to handle any remote logins and an sftp user for uploads to the real server. Disable remote access for all other users.

4. Run OpenSSH on a port other than the default 22. You can use 2222 or something else.

5. Rely on SSH keys for the two secure users and disable clear password authentication.

Photo Source: Flickr