I have been holding off the deployment of a server in production for over month, waiting for a Windows Server 2008 upgrade product from Windows Server 2003. It has been several months since the release of Windows Server 2008, and still no upgrade product SKU available!
When I asked my Dell Gold Team for an upgrade product from Windows 2003, I was told that if I had a software assurance on the server (which I don't), the upgrade would be free. Otherwise I have to purchase a full Windows 2008 license!
It is a new server and going for deployment for the first time, and I thought it would be wise to upgrade before we publish live sites on it.
Now, why is not there an upgrade SKU yet, now that it has been serveral months since Windows Server 2008 was released?
I have a feeling that Microsoft knows that an upgrade SKU will be more of a problem for them, and everyone who tries to upgrade a production environment of 2003. There is no easy upgrade path from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008. I have heard some admins had to roll back the uprade as some applications/settings did not work properly in Windows 2008 after upgrading from Windows 2003. As far I recall, a fresh installation and migration is recommended, rather than upgrade. Thats no easy task.
Nevertheless, there should have been an upgrade SKU for Windows 2008 available for people like in my situation. I can not justify purchasing another full server license while there is already a Windows 2003 license on the hardware.
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There have been several Website hacking incidents recently that I think I should publish for the benefit of the Webmaster community.
Hacking Websites Via FTP
We are only as strong as the weakest link, remember? The weakest link, when it comes to Website security, happens to be FTP. Being a plain text authentication protocal, FTP account information is easy to intercept. Also, if there is a spyware/malware on your PC, it can pickup your FTP details when you log into the Web Hosting account. Once the FTP account is in the hands of a hacker or hacking software, all other security measures on your Website and code is virtually useless!
Hacked by Spyware, Virus or Malware
In few recent hacking cases, we have seen a virus or spyware on Web designer's local machine logged in to the FTP Server and replaced all index.php with another file that simply redirects to another Website. All visitors to the Website are automatically redirected to the target Website. Do you see those Websites or Businesses offering thousands of unique visitors for 20 bucks? May be some of them are using these tools.
Hacked via a Network
In another hacking incident, the FTP Server was being used from IP addresses all over the world. An IFRAME pointing to a target Website was embedded in most HTML pages. Looked like they have a large network of proxy setup so they can't easily be traced. We are not sure how they obtained the FTP account details. Since FTP is plain text, it could have been picked up anywhere along the way. The Web Developer may have had a spyware on their PC. But looking at the number of IPs used to connect to the Server, it appears that this hacking network have a spyware installed on PCs all over the worl!
What is this spyware anyway?
So what is this spyware program or virus that is stealing FTP accounts from people? It could be a software running quietly in the background, a peer to peer networking/torrent client that is freely available, a browser plug in (Toolbar), an innocent freeware program or it could be anything! We don't really know.
So how can we protect our Websites?
Make sure your PC is clean from Virus Spyware etc. Avoid plain FTP and try using FTP over SSH (SFTP) or SSL (FTPS). If your hosting provider does not support any of these, consider switching to one that does! The FileZilla FTP Client (Free and available for both Windows and Unix/Linux) supports these secure FTP protocols.
If you are in Bangladesh and looking for a secure and reliable Web Hosting Company: Try Alpha Net's Web Hosting in Bangladesh.
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Looking at the number of searches relating to this issue, it appears to be the biggest concern about Hyper-V so far.
While it is not acceptable that a Virtual Machine must boot from an IDE drive interface when the underlying storage is SCSI, it is possible that the IDE performance in Hyper-V could be better than pre-existing virtual SCSI storages (Virtual Server, for example). The virtualization team on Microsoft explains it better, but the new synthetic drivers on Hyper-V utilizes a much better way of providing virtualization, resulting in better performance. It is possible that the IDE driver in Hyper-V can perform better than SCSI driver in Virtual Server 2005.
We have yet to run a performance comparison between Hyper-V IDE and Virtual Server 2005 SCSI. However, once the integration services (synthetic drivers) installed on a Windows 2003 guest machine, it appears pretty fast.
Also, a SCSI hard drive can be added to a Virtual Machine and used as the data storage. We often seperate boot and data drives on servers anyways. Having a seperate data drive makes it easy to backup virtual machine data.
These of course, are just work arounds until Microsoft figures a way to boot Hyper-V machines from SCSI.
They must be working hard on it.
Hopefully soon we will be able to run some performance comparison between Hyper-V and Virtual Server guest machines.
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Windows Server 2003 introduced a POP3 component, which, along with the already existing SMTP component made a complete Email Server on Windows. But this combination was never adapted widely due to various limitations. Specifically the SMTP component lacked most security features needed for any robust mail server. Microsoft did not make the built in SMTP and POP3 components feature complete for obvious reasons. Doing so would make Exchange Server a less attractive solution. Windows 2008 completely dropped the POP3 component!
Fortunately, there are several great Email solutions available on Windows today, and some of them are completely free! Searching for free Mail Server for Windows however is a little tricky. It is because every commercial software offers 'Free Downloads' and the search engines have a hard time in distinguishing 'Free Mail Server' from 'Free Download of a Commercial Product'. I am going to list a few Email Servers for Windows that I am familiar with, just in case you were looking for a reliable but free Email solution on Windows.
List of Free Email Servers for Windows
- One of the two Open Source Mail Servers for Windows!
- Windows only, not cross platform.
- Features many security and filtering options
- Long and active development.
- Uses SQL server or MySQL Server as mail storage.
- Does not include a Webmail interface, but you can use any POP3 or IMAP compatible Webmail solution with it.
- Very easy to install and configure.
- Another Open Source and Free Mail Server for Windows.
- Multi platform, also available on Linux/Unix etc.
- Very stable, long and active development.
- Configuration is via tab delimited files, and may require some learning.
- Webmail not included, use your own.
- In my opinion, not as feature rich as the hMailServer, but still a very good option.
- Free version of a commercial software.
- No limitations on the number of Users or Domains. However, many advanced features are not available in the free edition.
- Webmail, IMAP and Anti-SPAM features not included.
- Free edition of this commercial software allows one domain with unlimited users.
- Feature rich.
- Developed with .NET, with Web based administration and Webmail, Web Services etc.
- Active development, now coming with version 5.x.
- Free for non commercial use.
- Also available for Novel Netware.
- Feature rich, developed by the creator of Pegasus Mail Client.
- SMTP, POP3 and IMAP, but no Webmail.
- I have no personal experience with this one.
Some of these Free Email Servers are supported by popular hosting control panels.
You may also want to check out Macallam Mail Solution for Windows, which is a relatively new product but seems promising. The free edition has allows a maximum of 128 user accounts.
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Pretty much like Virtual Server 2005, Hyper-V has options to create virtual network cards for guest machines that directly maps with a physical network adapter on the host machine. There is an important issue that may surprise you, however, especially if you are working on a remote server.
When you create a virtual network and map it to a physical Network Adapter (External Virtual Network), Hyper-V automatically removes all protocols from the physical Network Adapter on the host machine and enables Virtual Network Switch Protocol. This means TCP/IP protocol is also removed! The host server will appear disconnected/offline from the outsite world. If you were working over remote desktop, you will be kicked out, and won't be able to connect anymore.
All you have to do is re-enable TCP/IP on the physical Network Adapter in order to bring the server back online. Which of course you can't do unless you are logging in locally.
It is not a big deal if you have a second network card that is also connected to the Internet. In fact thats how I was saved, twice.
Why does Hyper-V remove all protocols from the physical network adapter except virtual networking? Is there some stability issues? Security issues? poor performance? I have yet to check the documentation on this.
But if you are reading this before it is too late, at least you can be prepared.
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