AceTheHost

Archive for April, 2008

Brian McArthur, the director of technology at Advantage Professionals, a managed services provider in Charlotte, N.C., wanted a better way to perform bare-metal installations on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server. He and his engineering staff used a pre-boot execution environment or PXE Boot server and the kick-start process for automating Linux installations. While the approach is fairly common, McArthur said, “It was a bit cumbersome and never really worked exactly as we needed.” For one thing, the process was not automated, requiring staff to manually assign roles to servers—a time-consuming and inefficient process.

McArthur set out to find a more automated approach to bare-metal server provisioning to quickly facilitate the addition of new servers running the CentOS distribution of Linux in his company’s data center. McArthur went online, conducted a search and came across LinMin Corp., a Redwood City, Calif.-based systems management startup that focuses on Linux administration and management. McArthur downloaded a demo of the company’s product, LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning and within hours realized he had found the right tool. (more…)

TippingPoint has entered into an agreement with GoDaddy.com to provide them with SSL Certificates.

The SSL Certificates enable a browser and server to form a secure, encrypted connection and is also the standard for protecting sensitive information from identity theft, hacking and tampering. Businesses depend on SSL Certificates to prevent hackers from gaining credit card information during online transactions.

“Both TippingPoint and GoDaddy.com know network security is of paramount importance. The combination of product, price and service made GoDaddy.com SSL Certificates an obvious choice for our networks,” said TippingPoint President James Hamilton.

GoDaddy.com’s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) business has grown by 83 percent from the time it started in 2004 making it the world’s second largest Certification Authority.

Source: http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/enterprise/articles/26248-godaddycom-provides-ssl-certificates-tippingpoint.htm

Microsoft is investigating a newly reported flaw that could put websites at risk of attack.

The company has issued an advisory on the vulnerability, which affects Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

The problem exists in Windows’ handling of code within its Internet Information Services (IIS) and SQL Server.

If exploited, the vulnerability could allow a user to elevate access privileges to that of the LocalSystem administration tool.

Microsoft warned that companies that make extensive use of user-provided code, such as site hosts, are especially vulnerable.

Microsoft has yet to receive any reports of the vulnerability being targeted, but security experts have already warned of a possible attack.

“The vulnerability is limited to a local privilege escalation, but IIS’ susceptibility is concerning,” wrote McAfee researcher Karthik Raman.

“The web server is widely used on the internet, and is a top pick by web-hosting providers. We might see web-hosting providers targeted, and their clients’ websites breached.”

Microsoft is still investigating the reports and will make a decision on whether to issue a patch immediately or wait until its next scheduled security update on 13 May.

Source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2214722/microsoft-warns-web-server

Customers at the MySQL conference this week said Sun Microsystems’ acquisition of the database company could increase MySQL’s credibility among senior IT decision makers still skittish about using open-source software.

There were some, though, who feared that ownership of MySQL by a traditional IT vendor would diminish growth in the community of MySQL developers, who provide a regular stream of patches and new features for the database.

“The main downside is that the community might reject it [Sun’s purchase of MySQL],” said Yuriy Demchenko, a database administrator and Web applications developer at a large Canadian telecommunications company. “We’ll see if the community continues to grow at the rate it has.”

Demchenko said his company, which he did not want identified because he is not authorized to speak for it publicly, runs primarily Oracle and IBM’s DB2 databases, but his department uses MySQL for “semi-official startup projects” that sometimes end up running in production. He uses the community edition of MySQL “because it’s free.”

The upside of the acquisition is that it will make higher-level executives at the carrier more comfortable with MySQL because it is owned by a big, stable company, Demchenko said. His company already uses Sun servers.

Sun closed its US$1 billion purchase of MySQL in February and is hosting its first MySQLuser conference this week in Santa Clara, California, where it released a near-final version of MySQL 5.1. It has been at pains to emphasize its support for open source and similarities in the companies’ cultures, despite their (more…)

Irish hosting market further strengthened by acquisition, offering customers a single solution provider for their hosting, data centre, broadband and telecoms needs.

April 8, 2008 - (TopHosts News Brief) - Digiweb, a leading supplier of web hosting and telecoms based in Ireland, announced on Monday that they have acquired reputable web hosting company, Novara.

Operating under the trade names host.ie and register.ie, web host and domain registrar, Novara, adds over eight years of intensive industry experience to Digiweb’s existing specialist hosting team and data centre services.

“Our drive to bring better services and value to the Irish hosting market has been further strengthened by the acquisition of Novara,” explained Dan King, Hosting and Managed Infrastructure Manager with Digiweb. “We’re absolutely thrilled to welcome Novara’s experienced and knowledgeable team to Digiweb, and look forward to supporting existing Novara customers with the same expert team and top service they already enjoy, and offering them now a single solution provider for their hosting, datacentre, broadband and telecoms needs.”

Having been fragmented for some time now, this merger represents the first major acquisition and consolidation in the Irish hosting industry in 10 years. Since Digiweb’s re-entry into the hosting market in 2006, the company has captured momentous market share and high profile customers.

Eoin Costello, Founder and Managing Director of Novara added: “Novara customers and staff will benefit hugely from Digiweb’s proven commitment to the Irish hosting industry. Digiweb’s determination to become the number one provider in the Irish hosting market, there being a wholly owned Irish business with strong customer service and business growth as a focus, made them the obvious choice as the best long term home to our customers. We know that they will be well looked after.”

Source: http://www.tophosts.com/articles/007226.html