Server Smarts - The Official Blog of INetU Managed Hosting

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Blog Details

Blog Directory ID: 9286

Blog URL: http://blog.inetu.net/

Google Pagerank: N/A

Blog Description: Learn tips and tricks and gain expert knowledge about managed web hosting, security, and other hot industry topics from INetU's friendly and knowledgeable support staff.

Blog Tags: managed hosting - pci compliant web hosting - payment card industry hosting - dedicated servers

Blog Category: Technology Blogs

Additional Categories: Computer Blogs, Technology Security Blogs, Web Design Blogs

Blog Owner: Marketing

Blog Added: November 30, 2010 07:52:16 PM

Featured Blog Expires: 2012-11-30 09:02:51 (190 days left)

Audience Rating: General Audience

Blog Platform:

WordPress

Blog Country:

United States

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Total Visits: 119

Blog Rating: 4.00

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Latest Blog Post from Server Smarts - The Official Blog of INetU Managed Hosting

Managed IT Infrastructure Services: How to Keep Control and Reap the Benefits

Many new options have emerged in the past few years for IT executives looking for alternatives to traditional dedicated hosting and

collocation. Virtualization is at the forefront in many cases, but some IT managers are still reluctant to put their data "in the Cloud." Managed IT infrastructure services offer a compromise that hits a sweet spot for those that wish to retain control, but still want to capture the benefits of Cloud Computing.

IT Infrastructure Security

Traditional managed hosting means that someone else has access to your data. Even though there are certifications like SOC3 and PCI DSS that demonstrate that a certified hosting company appropriately runs their operation for high security standards, some firms remain uncomfortable with the idea of third party systems administrators having the ability to see their private data. In a managed infrastructure as a service scenario, the hosting company does not have root level logins to your systems. While the host manages the hardware and network layers, they do not directly access your operating system and the data that resides on top of it. This middle ground allows the host to provide you with a high quality network, the IT infrastructure itself, the management of the infrastructure and hypervisor/OS licensing without directly accessing your systems after you have installed your applications, thus ensuring your infrastructure security.

12 Advantages of Outsource Hosting vs. In House Hosting

Often in the world of SaaS, servers and cloud, the big question a company may ask themselves is this: Do I outsource my hosting or build it myself in house?

Often times on the surface the idea of building, buying your own gear, and running it on your own may appear to be the more cost effective option. However, if you consider the big picture including the emergence of the managed cloud then outsourcing is not only more cost effective, it makes the most sense. Consider these factors when comparing outsourcing vs. building it yourself.

1. Capital Depreciation

Outsourcing is considered an OPEX. There is no hardware to have depreciated over time. When hosting internally you have expensive equipment to purchase as a CAPEX plus maintenance agreements, collocation or utility costs, and other ?surprise? investments. Outsourcing presents a predictable monthly recurring expense.

2. Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can happen at any time for many reasons. If key people running your internal environment leave the company, you could be left trying to pick up and maintain critical pieces. Outsourcing removes this risk as you?re under contract with a business that provides and guarantees these services with complete documentation and continuity.

What?s This Multi-Factor Authentication About?.

For many companies looking for PCI compliance, or even just to improve their security footprint as a whole, multi-factor authentication has often become that unattainable unicorn. Security professionals alike have a challenge when it comes to meeting this requirement. Things like, what exactly is it, and what options are out there to fulfill that security requirement are questions that are often asked. In this article, I will go into what the security authentication factors are, and some basic example to help you understand the requirement. Hopefully it will better help in not only understanding what multifactor is, but also why it?s required. The principle around Multifactor authentication is that you are authentication yourself to some system via different factors. The factors available

are as follows:

Something you know
Something you are
Something you have

Most people are aware of the ?Something you know?. This is typically something that the true user would know. Like a user and password to their account. Seems secure, and would only be known by the ?true? user, right? Well, not exactly. How many people out there have given their password to someone else for some sort of use, or for that matter, have it saved somewhere for future reference? You may have a password stored somewhere on your computer, which would seem secure. But, if that gets compromised, then that ?true? identity is no longer guaranteed to be you. I bet most people have, and that is what compliance certifications like PCI and such are looking to correct. By incorporating an additional security authentication factor, they can better guarantee you are who you say you are. Of course, it gets very hard to guarantee 100%, but as you add factors, it gets pretty darn close.

Advantages of Layer 7 Load Balancing

Layer 7 Load Balancing

One of the great things about late-model load balancing hardware is the ability to balance on data from the application layer (layer 7 of the OSI model). Traditional load balancers balance traffic based on the virtual IP that was assigned to a cluster. Requests sent to the virtual IP are routed to a destination based on the algorithm used on the nodes in that cluster. With layer 7 load balancing, specific information within the request itself can be used to balance the request to the appropriate destination.

INetU used this technology primarily on our Cisco ACE 4710 load balancers. This dedicated network appliance is capable of various layer 7 functions, ranging from simple keyword or response code health probes to full-fledged layer 7 load balancing. A common example of request-based decision making is static content hosting. Images, style sheets, scripts and so on may be served up by a content delivery network that is standalone from an application platform. To implement this, we can simply create a classification on the load balancers as follows:

class-map type http loadbalance match-any PICS 3 match http url /*.jpg 4 match http url /*.png

When the above is assigned to a policy map in a config, any traffic that matches the pattern will divert it to a serverfarm unique to that traffic. Any traffic not matching will be routed along the standard path to one of the many application server nodes it resolves to based on the conventional distribution algorithm.

MySQL Tips From Percona Live 2012

Last week I summarized the Percona Live 2012 Conference for you. I went over some of the different topics that were covered during the talks. Today I’m going to briefly discuss the 2 tutorials that I personally felt were most beneficial to me and hopefully they will be to you too! Both talks were designed [...]

2012 Percona Live MySQL Conference Recap

We just got back from the Percona Live event in Santa Clara, CA and wanted to share our experience with our readers. The event, which was organized by Percona and sponsored by some great companies, was filled with amazing talks from some of the top minds in MySQL. Day 1 was filled with tutorials on many different topics related to administering database servers using MySQL ranging from security to

troubleshooting and performance tuning. There were so many to choose from, and we found the biggest problem was choosing which talks to attend. Peter Zaitsev (Percona CEO) had a tutorial on InnoDB and XtraDB specific performance optimizations while Sheeri Cabral (Mozilla) went over some ways to secure the database and verify security using the same tools that black hats would use. After lunch, Rene Cannao (PalominoDB) discussed measuring performance with proper benchmarking and profiling, and showed specific cases where using the tools he introduced, led to a quick resolution of otherwise difficult to diagnose problems. Baron Schwartz (Percona) also discussed ways to more effectively manage MySQL using the Percona Toolkit while Florian Haas (hastexo) discussed High Availability solutions with Yves Trudeau (Percona).

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