Offsite Hosting/Meeting Notes 2017-05-08

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Offsite Hosting Meeting Notes

  • Introductions
  • Selecting a hosting provider
    • There's no "One size fits all"
    • What do you need?
      • Disaster recovery?
      • Microsoft licensing?
      • E-mail hosting?


  • What kinds of servers for a host?
    • Dell servers at one plc
    • Had HPs, didn't mind
    • Lenovo, but there was BIOS based malware
      • Liked IBM servers, anecdotally liked the reliability
    • indieServe has all Lenovo servers
      • Also has some HP servers for colocation
  • indieServe is hosting for KWLUG, KWVoIP, FairvoteWRC, KWPeace, &c.
  • Problems?
    • Shared hosting was OK for a while, but host was asking for more money
    • Other company, seems perfect shared hosting (using WordPress),
      • Works today, but lots of complaints on Facebook, so he no longer trusts
    • Backups?
      • Yes, keeping your own backups in addition to using the hosts' backups
  • indieServe Networks
  • About $10/month for shared host
  • No limits but on the honour system
    • Keep it to one company per shared host
  • Local non-profits may be able to get really good deal -- talk to Mark Steffen
  • Also has VPS (Virtual Private Servers)
  • Can do hosted Windows servers or domain
    • Good for small file sharing systems
    • Microsoft has a specific licensing arrangement for hosting providers
      • Cost based on cores and sockets, plus number of customers
      • Not cheap, $100's /month
      • Similar model to Azure or Amazon AWS
  • Some customers use offsite hosting only for data replication (disaster recovery)
    • Do keep offsite backups encrypted
  • Cheap backup? 20c/GiByte for storage is typical
    • But try Duplicity for Linux
    • DupliCaddy for Windows (Open Source, Beta software,supports SQL, kinda slow)
    • Cloud Berry for backup service
      • For Windows, do full backup, then everything is incremental afterwards
      • But it keeps a synthetic "Full" in the background
      • With S3 or Azure, you can restore to EC2 -- get (almost) instant restore on external VPS -- really cheap disaster recovery
    • Back Blaze (personal backup for $5/month, also B2 backup storage, .02c/Gibyte?, $10/month for 1 TByte?)
  • For any backup solution check with Legal for PIPEDA legislation
  • indieServe keeps hard backups (USB drives stored offsite)
  • Backup horror stories
    • Hijacked truck
    • Encrypted backups corrupted
    • Bulk files corrupted
    • Tape backup is still the most dense storage for immutable backups
    • Mark Steffen has techniques for redundant backup storage (good for ransomware attacks, &c.)
    • How much backup do you need?
      • How much data can you afford to lose?
      • Have at least one automated backup in place
  • Selfhosting?
    • Run your own service (XMPP, Wiki, Social media) instead of using Facebook, Google, Twitter
    • Manage your own server, colocated in a datacentre
    • Getting a DSL line (with multi-link support), and running a server on premises
    • Managed hosting - servers in house or colo, but contract out the SysAdmin
  • cPanel
    • Set up WordPress, &c.
    • Handles updates, patch management, backups, email
    • Installatron for managing applications
    • Varnish is a cache in front of Apache, for bursty traffic
    • cPanel is pricey? $20/month for bare metal, less for a VPS
      • Keeping it on a VPS makes it portable, allows cPanel admin to perform maintenance with no downtime
  • Zenserver
    • A Virtual Machine host
    • The free version is pretty unrestricted
    • Use Zenserver to run cPanel
  • Cloud Linux
    • uses CageFS,
    • isolates users from each other
  • Reseller hosting
    • Perhaps for Web developers, who want to manage resources for their customers
    • Can add multiple accounts, lets hosting provider manage growth and resources
    • Could be unlimited accounts, but typically 300 GBytes, good for about 50 accounts


  • Other panels?
    • CentOS Web Panel
    • ISP Config
    • Ubuntu MAAS
    • WebMin, VirtualMin
    • WHM is the management tool for cPanel
    • WHMCS is a shopping cart / billing system for hosting
      • But these apps may have security issues (PHP doncha know)