Web Hosting Journal

A security flaw related to the IPSsec VPN protocol may compromise your network and servers, leaving them open to DoS attacks and other malicious attention.

The Oulu University Secure Programming Group (OUSPG), a Finnish research team, announced this week they had discovered a security hole in the Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP). The team based in northern Finland is tasked to discover and eliminate software security vulnerabilities.

ISAKMP allows a workstation to authenticate a communicating peer and establish a secure connection in an Internet environment. ISAKMP is an elemental part of IPSec, a set of protocols used for secure exchange of data on the Internet. IPSec, in turn, is used in Virtual Private Networks which many companies use to connect branch offices each other. VPN allow their users to communicate over the public Internet as if they were communicating on a closed and secure private network. Beside Virtual Private Networks, IPSec support is included in some operating system and firewall products. The flaw now discovered may expose these technologies to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and other malicious attention.

cPanel's Exim based mail delivery will (optionally) replace MBOX mail storage format with qmail's MAILDIR format, to speed things up in mail servers.

Houston, Texas - November 9, 2005 - cPanel, a leading Web Hosting Control Panel Software provider, officially announced their plans to migrate their products to support maildir mail storage format. Maildir mail storage format was originally implemented on qmail to address the shortcomings of mbox. Maildir mail storage speeds up the functionality of the mail server and reduces memory usage due to mail related processes. Keep reading for more information about mbox vs. maildir.

If users have any concerns about migrating their servers to maildir format, we recommend contacting cPanel support to address any concerns they may have. As a result of this conversion, Neomail will not function and it is recommended that server administrators migrate their clients to either SquirrelMail or Horde before converting to maildir format. Please note that custom configurations related to email may be affected by this change.

New certification program for add-on scripts by third party software providers ensures seamless integration with cPanel and update compatibility.

Houston, Texas - November 9, 2005 - cPanel, a leading Web Hosting Control Panel Software provider, officially announced their cPanel Certified add on script certification program. cPanel Certified allows third party software providers to maintain a programming relationship with cPanel to ensure that their software can be used on any cPanel server without compatibility problems. It also allows developers to get information about changes to cPanel's interface to ensure that their software can be updated for compatibility with any changes.

"We are very excited about giving third party developers a chance to keep up with our ever evolving software platform, " said David Koston, Operations Manager at cPanel. "This program will allow developers to keep ahead of our changes and provide the support their customers need".

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has a quad-core server processor on its road map and promised to upgrade its software investments.

A recent article on PCWorld published some comments from Phil Hester (vice president and chief technology officer) during a local event at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. He announced that AMD will introduce a new core design in its Opteron line of microprocessors by 2007 with a similar core used by the company's Opteron and Athlon 64 processors.

The new Opteron processor will incorporate four cores connected together by a new version of the Hypertransport interconnect technology, and will support DDR3, he said at the event, which provides financial analysts and media with a "State of AMD" address that covers the company's technology, customers, and financial health.

Research and Markets, a leading market research firm announced earlier this year a study of 387 pages for prospects of server market from 2005 to 2011.

The key topics of the research are the Next Generation Of IT Infrastructure, Real-Time IT Infrastructure, IT Department Focus, Control Over The IT Department and Server Pricing. Companies included on the paper are IBM, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Egenera, Fujitsu, Steel Eye, NEC, Tatung Science and Technology, Hitachi Ltd, F5 Networks, RLX, Technologies, Sun Microsystems and Topspin.

Bottom line, the server market is anticipated to grow from $49.8 billion in shipments in 2004 to $81 billion shipments in 2011, that's close to double current market numbers. IBM led worldwide server shipments measured in dollars with shares 29% in 2004, in a market that totaled $49.8 billion in 2004 up from $44.6 billion in 2003. Hewlett Packard is number two in the blade sever market with 26% market share participation in dollars in 2004.

Press release for the latest update of Exim Pro for Windows.

Sunnyvale, California - November 21, 2005 - Moderngigabyte, LLC, the dominant automated billing solution for the hosting industry, and Ensim Corporation, a leader in service enablement and automation software solutions, today announced that support for Ensim Pro for Windows 4.0 has been added to ModernBill 4.3.3. This integration will give Ensim Pro for Windows customers an affordable billing and order management solution for managing the hosting businesses.

Ensim Pro is the leading native Windows-based control panel available, providing the most robust hosting automation solution to deploy, configure and manage commercial-quality Web sites for shared and dedicated offerings. This latest integration provides its customers with increased flexibility and cost savings.

Advanced Internet Technologies (AIT) announced cheap Celeron and Pentium dedicated servers for as low as $39.95 and $49,95.

For a limited time only and while their supplies last, AIT, one of the largest web hosting providers in the United States with over 210,000 domains worldwide, is offering Pentium or Celeron based servers along with 512 MB of RAM, 40GB of disk space and 2,000 GB of data transfer. The package also includes redundant OC-3 connectivity, multiple IP addresses, root access and server-specific firewalls.

The inventory is granted here on a first come first serve basis. This is a good oportunity for those who want a less restricted environment than those in shared and reseller web hosting plans with a minimal investment. With a dedicated server you get more control over what software and packages you want installed and of course root access.

New enterprise level features, high performance and low costs seemed to have caused big expectations for the new release of MySQL.

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- November 14, 2005 -- MySQL AB today reported record interest in the newest version of its popular open source database. MySQL 5.0 has already been downloaded over one million times since its introduction on October 24.

"We have been overwhelmed by the excitement generated around MySQL 5.0 -- including a record-breaking 100,000 downloads in a single day," said Zack Urlocker, vice president of marketing for MySQL AB. "It is a testament to our large community of users, developers and partners that 5.0 has taken off so swiftly. It's fantastic that we are also getting lots of new interest from users of other databases, trying out open source and MySQL for the first time."

MySQL 5.0 now delivers advanced SQL standard-compliant features
such as stored procedures, triggers, views & new pluggable storage engines.

UPPSALA, Sweden & CUPERTINO, Calif. -- October 24, 2005 -- MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company's ten-year history. Starting today, MySQL 5.0 can be downloaded under the open source GPL license at dev.mysql.com.

"We are quite proud to deliver this new version of MySQL -- as it includes the most-requested features from our users, customers and partners," said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. "With their feedback, we have been able to provide important enterprise-class features while staying true to MySQL's renowned heritage of high-performance, reliability and ease-of-use."

A new Java and J2EE Customer Service and Support Software is now available with Sun Microsystems Solaris 10 OS pre-installed and open source infrastructure.

Newport Beach - November 21, 2005 - LiveTime Software, a leading provider of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) based service management software, today announced the general availability of the LiveTime Appliance, the industry's first service management appliance. Designed exclusively for 64 bit operation, the appliance has been specifically optimized for high concurrent access, fault tolerance and security and is based upon the Solaris™ 10 Operating System (OS) from Sun Microsystems.

Designed for organizations that want a highly tuned, pre-configured, hardened service and support solution with no maintenance, the system is completely plug and play and can be installed within a matter of minutes. Complete with Active Directory, LDAP and asset management server integration, the LiveTime Appliance fits seamlessly into any enterprise environment. As a completely vendor neutral solution, customers can utilize the built-in MySQL or PostgreSQL RDBMS, or alternatively connect to any third party database such as Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase and many others.

SQL Server 2005 is the Microsoft's engine for the high end database market.

After a long wait since SQL Server 2000 was first available, last week Microsoft launched Microsoft SQL Server 2005 along with Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. This time Microsoft promises a  more secure by default, reliable, scalable and highly available relational database engine with improved performance and support for structured and unstructured (XML) data. The primary function of SQL Server 2005 is to allow organizations manage and analyze their data, with the extended benefits of reporting, business analytics, and data integration capabilities.

SQL Server 2005 makes significant enhancements to the security model of the database platform, providing more precise and flexible control to enable tighter security of the data. A considerable investment has been made in features that help to provide a high level of security for your enterprise data. These features include the advanced security of surface area reduction, data encryption, native encryption, authentication, granular permissions, and user and schema separations.

This is an extract from the official press release and Steve Ballmer's webcast introduction of the new platform.

The year 2005 brings the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006. With these three new products, Microsoft takes another step forward in delivering the Microsoft application platform and enabling customers and partners to realize their potential.

SQL Server 2005 offers new possibilities and opportunities for SQL Server administrators, developers, and information technology (IT) decision makers in both enterprise and midsize organizations. With up to 35 percent faster transaction processing, advanced business intelligence solutions, and enhanced developer productivity, upgrading to SQL Server 2005 optimizes your IT infrastructure for growth and helps align IT with business objectives.

Web hosting is a service that provides individuals, organizations and users with online systems for storing information, images, video, or any content accessible via the Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a dedicated server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center.

The scopes of web hosting services depends on the costumer's need since there are several types of service. The most obvious service is the Web page hosting, which may be used to publish Web sites and other files with the help of a FTP software or even a Web interface. The most basic Web sites have static pages without special requirements, and since these kind of pages require pretty little processing, many ISPs offer this service for free or sometimes with advertisements, like Yahoo! Geocities.