HostEntrepreneur

Here’s a link to an interesting tutorial on GIF and PNG-8 compression. Too many web developers get stuck into a single type of graphic format. The reality is that different formats are better suited for different uses… this tutorial helps point some of that out:

Tutorial Link: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/web_graphics/article.php/3907261

Lower Costs and Increase Differentiation with Cloud Storage
on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 1pm – 2pm EST

Join Jack Norris, VP of Marketing and Business

Development at Parascale, as he presents “Lower Costs and Increase Differentiation with Cloud Storage”. This webinar will provide an overview of how service providers today are using enterprise cloud storage to reduce operational costs. This session will also discuss how cloud storage can serve as a flexible platform for an array of new value-added services for the future.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

Quickly and cost-effectively scale up, without increasing management complexity
Provide a flexible storage platform for internal use, partners and customers
Repurpose fully depreciated hardware into cloud storage nodes
Support a variety of use cases to maximize the value of cloud storage infrastructure
Maintain high availability, replication and security for today’s hosted private clouds
Jack Norris has over 20 years of enterprise software experience with leading virtualization and storage technology companies, both private and public organizations. During this time, he has catapulted start-ups including Rainfinity, the leader in network file virtualization acquired by EMC, to a leader in its respective marketplace and successfully directed the integration of its technology into EMC’s virtualization portfolio.

Most recently, Norris served as vice president of marketing for Wanova, an early-stage desktop virtualization software provider; and previously held senior executive roles with Aster Data, Brio Technology, SQRIBE, and Bain Consulting. Norris holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and a BA in economics with honors and distinction from Stanford University.

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/578972152

http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/web-seminars/display-507.html

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Join us for Part 1 of the MySQL in the Cloud webinar series with Jimmy Guerrero and Mike Frank of the MySQL group at Sun Microsystems. In this presentation we will explore the benefits and some specifics related to deploying and managing MySQL in a “cloud” environment. We will discus several cloud computing platforms suitable for hosting MySQL, including the Joyent Public Cloud, Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure. Included will be a discussion of cloud enabling technologies like VMWare and Xen. If you are interested in learning how to leverage cloud computing with MySQL, this webinar is for you.

WHO:

• Jimmy Guerrero, Sr Product Marketing Manager – Sun Microsystems
• Mike Frank, Sr Product Marketing Manager – Sun Microsystems

WHAT:

MySQL in the Cloud – Part 1: Introduction to Deploying MySQL in the Cloud web presentation.

WHEN:

Thursday, February 25, 2010: 10:00 Pacific time (America)

The presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long followed by Q&A.

So you want to start your own webhosting business… Should you choose “reseller hosting”? And what is it? Numerous options exist to get started selling hosting as a side or primary business. But like everything there are trade-offs, things to consider, and “gotchas” to watch out for… In part 1 of our new Getting Start series, I’m going to talk about what is “reseller hosting”, who it is right for (and not), and what to look for.

Reseller hosting is a shared server setup, meaning your accounts will be placed on the same server as others from other customers. This is probably the number one thing to watch out for with reseller hosting. Since you have no control over the other customers, or their customers, you have to be able to trust that the provider is setting things up properly, securely and and monitoring/maintaining the server and network properly.  Things could go wrong if not done properly… insecure setups can lead to others getting to your data, a spammer could get onto the server leading to blacklisting, or an account could suck up all the bandwidth or cpu resources. These are just a couple examples of what could go wrong. Since you’re not in control of the server, you need to be able to rely on the provider to watch for it and fix it quickly should it happen.

Leaving the server administration is also one of the biggest advantages as well. This is especially true for new hosts who probably don’t have the experience or manpower to administer servers on their own. It is also considerably cheaper to go the reseller route. A decent reseller account can be had complete with control panel, possibly some billing software to handle collections from your customers, installation script, etc. for $10 to $15 per month.

When looking for a reseller account, be aware of the disk space and traffic (often incorrectly call bandwidth) that are included. Some reseller accounts can get so large in these stats that they rival small VPS accounts. When choosing you want to selection on that meets your needs and provides some growth room. You also want to make sure that the provider will upgrade the account without having to migrate and without penalty.

A nice feature, if you can get it, is a dedicated ip address or two for your accounts. This does a couple things for you. One it limits the impact if a spammer gets onto the server. Blacklists usually are at the single ip level unless it’s so rampant on a network that they block the whole network. It also does something else… The larger hosts probably have multiple physical servers.  By having your accounts to a single ip address, migrating the account, say for load balancing the servers, becomes significantly easier WITHOUT changing ip address. If your account shares ips with other accounts, that option is out the window…

If you’re serious about growing your business, a reseller account is a good way to get started with minimal cost.  But be sure to check with the company that they will support you should you need to move up to a vps or dedicated servers. That dedicated ip address can help there too. Once the vps is up and running they can copy the data over and move the ip to the new server. We’re talking minutes of downtime… a lot easier than if you had to backup the accounts, download the backup, upload to the new server and then change dns, and potentially wait hours for dns cache to die.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here to ask or email me at rob -at- lagniappeinternet.com

One of the harder things for me is coming up with ideas for articles… I’ve been doing this a long time and trying to put myself back into the mindset of a relatively new webhosting entrepreneur can be difficult for me.  I have to think about what might they want to know. I’m not saying I know it all. That’s just plain impossible. There’s always something new to learn… and I love learning. But what I might be looking to learn might not be interesting to you.

So I was wondering what would some of the readers here want to read about?  What topics interest you?  My experience ranges from programming to building server class systems, from DOS (yeah real DOS I’m that old) to HP-UX, from MySQL & Microsoft SQL to Rocket’s (formerly IBM’s) UniVerse database system.  And I don’t know something about it, all the better… I do love learning and can usually relate 25 years of IT experience to the new information.

Webhosting entrepreneurs spend a lot of time online. We work weird hours, day and night, to get the job done. Western Govenors’ University works well for people like us. With WGU it’s all about results. How long you sit in a classroom doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding the material and can you do the work?

Online education has been steadily growing. But you need to watch out… Many of the names you’ve heard are for profits (nothing wrong with that in itself), that worry more about selling courses. There’s the problem… a typical large name accredited (we’ll talk more about that in a minute) online school that’s not part of a state university system charges upwards of $40 to $50 thousand dollars for a undergrad degree.  Let’s take the University of Phoenix, most courses run 3 credits $ 530 per credit hour plus a $85 fee for online ‘resources’, or $1675 per course. To satisfy the 120 credit hour requirement (124 in Kansas), that means 40 course… or a grand total $67,000 assuming you came into it with no credits… That’s a chunk of change.  The value of a degree is substantial, but that’s a big hole to dig out of from the start.

And there’s the time requirements… Usually you can’t take more than 16 hours or so at a time. That will take years to complete the degree! And if you’re working at the same time, it’s even slower.

But there’s another way… the WGU way. I’m currently enrolled in their IT – Software Development program. I started last October 1st. To date I have completed 41 comptency units (their equivalent to the credit). I’m working on another 17 before the end of my term at the end of February. If you were paying attention, you noticed that’s a long term – 6 months. WGU is a continuous enrollment school. Terms start every month on the 1st and go for 6 months. Since you’re working on your courses individually with the help of others in the course as well as course mentors, you get to set the pace. WGU requires you take 16 credits and pass 12 of those every semester to maintain “Satisfactory Academic Progress” or “SAP”. You have to also pass 2/3rd of everything you take… Fortunately, you can add courses as you need. So you start out with the required 16 CU’s at the begining of the term (which figuring in breaks and such as almost twice as long as a normal semester), then as you complete courses you add others in.

Courses are divided up into ‘Objective’ and ‘Performance’  Assessments. For objective assessments, you will take a final exam after completing the course work (or are able to show you are ready). You will go to a testing facility  available at Prometric, most universities, and many libraries  for proctoring.  You will be given a certain amount of time to complete the exam and take it online under the supervision of the proctor. If you’ve ever taken an industry certification exam, that’s what these are like. Actually many of the IT courses use industry certifications as their assessment from known names like Microsoft, CompTIA, CIW, Sun, etc.  A quick word about industry certs at WGU… WGU has decided to place a limit of 4 attempts on an industry cert (1st 2 tries are included in tuition:) !) afterwards, you will need to choose another degree program. I support this move. It prevents people from going over and over until they pass, in something they apparently are prepared for…  but some others were upset about it.

Performance evaluations are another matter… it’s all about the work. You will be given a set of tasks to complete. For example, you may be asked to complete a slide presentation, write a paper, and perform an experiment complete with journals, etc. and submit that to graders. They will use a rubric to evaluate your work and tell you if any revisions need to occur. There are 2 types of tasks, the ‘required’ tasks are more like course-work and can be submitted multiple times. You’ll do this as you go through the course text. Then after you’ve completed those, the final task(s) will be opened for you. These are the what you’re actually evaluated on… You can only revise them once. So you have to pay attention to what you’re doing. Afterwards, a different task is used for the course.

One of the things you need to pay attention to in looking for online college degrees is the school’s accreditation. There are too many ‘degree mills’ out there, and you won’t be well served by them. Others, like the big names, do have accreditation from the DECT – a nationally recognized accreditation authority. There are also many other accreditation bodies, many of whom have no authority to do so see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecognized_accreditation_associations_of_higher_learning  … The “gold standard” though is “Regional accreditation” (the same you’re local state university uses) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation. WGU is DETC AND regionally accredited through the Northwest Commission. Additionally for teachers and nurses, WGU holds NCATE and CCNE respectively. Actually WGU is the first and only exclusively online university to hold NCATE accreditation. The CCNE accreditation helped me getting approved for tuition reimbursement actually… Just be careful when choosing a school, get DETC at a minimum and preferably regional.

Lastly, let’s talk about cost… WGU has a fixed cost of just $2890 per 6 month term, plus a few fees for library, etc. So figure about $3000 a semester – it varies a little with lab fees, etc. To use me as an example, I’ve already completed 41 CUs, so my cost per CU (credit) is already down to ($3000/41)  under $75. And if I complete the others in time, it will drop to just over $50/credit. I’ve found no other university that even comes close…  Not to mention my goal is to go from zero credits (it’s all too old to count anymore really) to done in a year to a year and half. So my total cost will be $6 to 9 thousand, instead of $50 to $60 thousand! And I’ll have TEN industry certifications to boot!

If you decide you want to apply, email me at rob -at- lagniappeinternet.com and I can get you the application fee waived… Disclosure: I’d also get a Amazon credit for $50 or so (I forget the amount) as well towards books… BTW, most books are included or eBooks. If you want printed copies you have to buy them, and for a couple (2 I think in my case) you will have to buy books period. Those are not included in tuition, but that’s pretty normal.

There are several web hosting plans available in the market but it is the Linux reseller hosting, which is ideal for web designers. So if you are planning to start your own web designing venture the Linux hosting is the ideal plan for you.

To understand the concept of Linux reseller hosting, it is very important to know about reseller hosting. The reseller is the one, who buys huge chunks of web hosting space for a parent web hosting company and then sell its to third parties. So if you are looking for small amount of web space to start your own web designing company then Linux hosting is the ideal plan for you. The best thing about Linux hosting is that it is cheap and easily available. For a host of reasons, Linux reseller web space has become a very popular solution for web hosting.

The main reason why Linux reseller has become the most preferred choice is because Linux operating system is considered to be very robust and stable and it also supports many open source application for the web. Generally websites run on Linux reseller platform have an extremely high uptime and the control panel, which h is basically, cPanel/WHM, is also known to be one of the best available in the market. You can get over 52 scripts and all can be easily installed with a click of a mouse.

Working with Linux has become extremely fast if your web hosting provide is having linux server setup on good configuration hardware. The Linux has become one of the preferred choices of hosting plan for users because it is comparatively cheaper than windows hosting plans and it is also convenient for both users and resellers.

Resellers selling Linux reseller plans don’t have to create multiple accounts that will help them to keep a track of their different clients. Since there are different user panels in Linux hosting at times it may seem that is very important to create multiple accounts but in reality it is not the case. In Linux hosting it is very easy to keep a track of the clients and it also helps you to save a lot of time.

Another important feature of Linux web space plan is that we can run any application, irrespective of the language, on it. This gives you an extra edge to run PHP or MySQL based websites as well as to run html, jsp, perl or cgi-bin applications. All these are found on the same server and are also operated with the same control panel. So what are you waiting for switch to Linux hosting plans and kick-start your web designing plans.

Just a quick tip today…

eBay is a great source for most anything… especially for computer releated items. For example, we’re often looking for a particular RAID controller, type of ECC memory, or other part that you won’t find down at your local computer shop. BUT eBay’s search function leaves something to be desired, at least until you start learning some of the nuances.

For example, we’re always on the lookout for deals for certain series of Xeon processors we use. For example one of the servers will use several of the X3000 series quad cores. eBay has a nice feature that you can save searches and it will email you the results daily. But the search itself takes some practice. In  our example we’re looking for a Xeon X3210, 3320, 3350 or 3360 processor. But if you type “xeon x3210 x3320 x3350 x3360″ into the search box, ebay will politely tell you “Your search returned 0 items.”  But we know ebay has some of these on there, so how can that be. It’s the Boolean logic that eBay uses. It is searching for an item that has ALL of those terms in it, and there aren’t any.  What we really want is “xeon” AND ( “X3210″ OR “X3320″ OR “X3350″ OR “X3360″) and may want to narrow down which categories we search under, but we’d be pretty close to right on with just that alone. So how do we tell ebay to use “or” logic?   We put a “,” between them, but we also need to separate them out from the term “xeon” we do that with parentheses.  The resulting search string becomes “xeon (x3210, x3320, x3350, x3360)”  which as I write this results in 15 auction and 37 store items, of which all but a dozen of which are what we’re looking for. The others happen to be IBM X3350 servers which use xeon processors (but not the xeons we are looking for).

To get eBay to email you, use the “save this search” feature near the top. Sign in if needed, and tell it how often and logn to email you.

When choosing a data center to colocate your servers in, it is important to check the colocation providers financial situation and consider how reliable they are. Colocation is a costly business and should it happen that the provider runs in to financial problems or goes bankrupt it can have serious consequences for your business.

In case the power or connectivity is turned off, your servers will become unavailable and unless you have planned for disaster recovery with a secondary backup data center your business will most likely be damaged. It obviously depends on what kind of business you are in and what the servers in colocation are used for, but on the short term clients could be unable to find you and do business with you while in the long term it could damage your reputation due to your site(s) and/or services being unavailable.

Furthermore if the colocation provider is filing for bankruptcy and all the assets are being held back in the bankruptcy estate, you might be unable to get your servers and more importantly data until the attorney handling the case has an overview of the colocation business. He obviously needs to validate that the servers are actually owned by you and not an asset owned by the bankruptcy estate, usable for improving the financial situation for the creditors. In such a situation you could risk having to purchase new equipment and set up from a backup at a new colocation data center if the process takes too long.

Therefore make sure to raise the topic of financial stability with the colocation data center before signing a contract, to see how they respond to it and how they feel about their own financial situation and if they have taken any measures to ensure that things keep on running and that you can get your servers and data in case problems should occur.

Going with a large provider with a good reputation and perhaps even several data centers is therefore often worth considering. Checking for business and data center certifications is also a smart thing to do, as it often is a good signal if the data center is SAS 70 audited, tier 4 certified, PCI compliant or has taken other measures of that kind. Make sure to google the provider and check industry forums and blogs to see if there are any bad reviews, outages or other negative things about the company you are considering using.

Colocation providers can easily be found via tools such as Data Center Map, where you can search for colocation data centers.

cPanel servers have a good small file named as antivirus.exim. It is a central filter for the exim mail server which lets you setup all kinds of good filters which helps you to stop spam from coming in and going out of your server.

In this article I will provide you my /etc/antivirus.exim config file which will help you to protect your servers from spammers. First off the default /etc/antivirus.exim has a couple different rule sets in it. The main ones are attachment filters to help stop email viruses from your users. They stop things like .src and .com and .exe attachments.This shows you some custom rules to stop spammers from sending out of your server, you can also use it to stop spam from coming in. I don’t really go into a lot of detail for filtering incoming mail since other applications like Spam Assassin handle that better IMO.

You will need root access to your cPanel server.

First off we need to create a special log file for these filters do this:

touch /var/log/filter.log chmod 0644 /var/log/filter.log

Now open up the configuration file vi /etc/antivirus.exim

Simply add this to your existing file, and save the changes and they take effect instantly.

# START # Filters all incoming an outgoing mail

logfile /var/log/filter.log 0644 ## Common Spam if

# Header Spam $header_subject: contains “Pharmaceutical” or $header_subject: contains “Viagra” or $header_subject: contains “Cialis” or $header_subject: is “The Ultimate Online Pharmaceutical” or $header_subject: contains “***SPAM***” or $header_subject: contains “[SPAM]”

# Body Spam or $message_body: contains “Cialis” or $message_body: contains “Viagra” or $message_body: contains “Leavitra” or $message_body: contains “St0ck” or $message_body: contains “Viaagrra” or $message_body: contains “Cia1iis” or $message_body: contains “URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSAL” or $message_body matches “angka[^s]+[net|com|org|biz|info|us|name]+?” or $message_body matches “v(i|1)agra|vag(i|1)n(a|4)|pen( i|1)s|asu|seks|l(o|0)l(i|1)ta|dewacolok”

then # Log Message – SENDS RESPONSE BACK TO SENDER # SUGGESTED TO LEAVE OFF to prevent fail loops # and more work for the mail system #fail text “Message has been rejected because it hasn # triggered our central filter.” logwrite “$tod_log $message_id from $sender_address contained spam keywords”

seen finish endif

# END # Filters all incoming an outgoing mail

# START # All outgoing mail on the server only – what is sent out

#Check forwarders so it doesn’t get blocked #Forwarders still work =)

## FINANCIAL FAKE SENDERS ## Log all outgoing mail from server that matches rules logfile /var/log/filter.log 0644 if ( $received_protocol is “local” or $received_protocol is “esmtpa” ) and ( $header_from contains “@citibank.com” or $header_from contains “@bankofamerica.com” or $header_from contains “@wamu.com” or $header_from contains “@ebay.com” or $header_from contains “@chase.com” or $header_from contains “@paypal.com” or $header_from contains “@wellsfargo.com” or $header_from contains “@bankunited.com” or $header_from contains “@bankerstrust.com” or $header_from contains “@bankfirst.com” or $header_from contains “@capitalone.com” or $header_from contains “@citizensbank.com” or $header_from contains “@jpmorgan.com” or $header_from contains “@wachovia.com” or $header_from contains “@bankone.com” or $header_from contains “@suntrust.com” or $header_from contains “@amazon.com” or $header_from contains “@banksecurity.com” or $header_from contains “@visa.com” or $header_from contains “@mastercard.com” or $header_from contains “@mbna.com” ) then logwrite “$tod_log $message_id from $sender_address is fraud” seen finish endif

## OTHER FAKE SENDERS SPAM ## Enable this to prevent users using @domain from addresses ## Not recommended since users do use from addresses not on the server ## Log all outgoing mail from server that matches rules logfile /var/log/filter.log 0644 if ( $received_protocol is “local” or $received_protocol is “esmtpa” ) and ( $header_from contains “@hotmail.com” or $header_from contains “@yahoo.com” or $header_from contains “@aol.com”

) then logwrite “$tod_log $message_id from $sender_address is forged fake” seen finish endif

## KNOWN FAKE PHISHING ### Log all outgoing mail from server that matches rules logfile /var/log/filter.log 0644 if ( $received_protocol is “local” or $received_protocol is “esmtpa” ) and ( #Paypal $message_body: contains “Dear valued PayPal member” or $message_body: contains “Dear valued PayPal customer” or $message_body: contains “Dear Paypal” or $message_body: contains “The PayPal Team” or $message_body: contains “Dear Paypal Customer” or $message_body: contains “Paypal Account Review Department” or

#Ebay $message_body: contains “Dear eBay member” or $message_body: contains “Dear eBay User” or $message_body: contains “The eBay team” or $message_body: contains “Dear eBay Community Member” or

#Banks $message_body: contains “Dear Charter One Customer” or $message_body: contains “Dear wamu.com customer” or $message_body: contains “Dear valued Citizens Bank member” or $message_body: contains “Dear Visa” or $message_body: contains “Dear Citibank” or $message_body: contains “Citibank Email” or $message_body: contains “Dear customer of Chase Bank” or $message_body: contains “Dear Bank of America customer” or

#ISPs $message_body: contains “Dear AOL Member” or $message_body: contains “Dear AOL Customer”

) then logwrite “$tod_log $message_id from $sender_address is phishing” seen finish endif

# END # All outgoing mail on the server only – what is sent out

The log file will have the logging format like this: /var/log/filter.log

2006-05-10 12:05:13 1Fds7S-0002Sa-MV from smooth595@gmail.com contained spam keywords 2006-05-10 14:18:47 1FduCn-0006GV-1r from dayton.nowellu7xn@gmail.com contained spam keywords 2006-04-27 15:44:35 1FZDLn-0005Mo-5z from nobody@ocean.wavepointmedia.com is fraud 2006-04-27 16:37:40 1FZEB9-0002KQ-VP from nobody@ocean.wavepointmedia.com is phishing

Date and time, the Exim message ID, the sender and the section of the filter, like phishing, fraud or spam. You can check the mail message by grepping the exim_mainlog for it like this

grep 1FZEB9-0002KQ-VP /var/log/exim_mainlog