eAPPS upDATE Newsletter
Published by eApps Hosting
June 2008

In this issue:


News - New/Improved Features in your Control Panel
More News - eApps Attends Parallels Summit
Best Post Winners - Community Forum Monthly Best Post Winners!
Promotions - 50% off new Thawte Certificate SSL purchase, Free SSL Certificate with Hosting Purchase. This is a limited time offer!
Updated/New Applications - Java 5, Majordomo, osCommerce
Errata - Users/Groups edit problem, Control Panel going offline, Network disruptions
 Article - The Next Major Computing Platform
Tech Tips - Securing URLs when forwarding content


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News
New/Improved Features in your Control Panel
As a result of our recent maintenance events, new and improved features are available to you in your Control Panel. A summary of these improvements follows:

Ticket System Integrated with Control Panel - Our ticket system software and hosting management software are from different vendors. Since our ticket system is widely used, our hosting management software vendor has provided a way to integrate the two. We are pleased to report that we have activated this integration. When you log into your Control Panel you will automatically be logged in to the Ticket System. You now have the ability to view your ticket history, submit a new ticket, and access all of the information available at our support web site at http://support.eapps.com from inside your Control Panel. Just click on the Help tab, and then the Trouble Tickets icon.

Improved Help Information in Control Panel - As a convenience, we have also added a Documentation link that has a list of all of our User Guides. From the Help tab, click on the Documentation icon. There is also a link to the Control Panel user guide, called 'Parallels Business Automation - Standard Subscriber’s Guide,' which is provided by our software vendor.

Improved Features in Parallels Power Panel - The Parallels Power Panel (PPP), formerly called Virtuozzo Power Panel, is a supplemental control panel that provides additional administrative capabilties. The PPP is available from the System tab of your Control Panel. Login as root. We are pleased to report that this control panel has been improved. The key features of the PPP are listed below:
  • File Manager - Excellent implementation of a browser based file manager.
  • Maintenance - Repair and Re-install functions are available in this area, but we strongly recommend that you contact eApps Support before you use them.
  • Resources - Shows various CPU, memory, and disk usage statistics. Please note that the total available disk space shown is the hard limit, which is twice the soft (free) limit. This area shows more information than what is provided in the similar area in the regular Control Panel.
  • System Services - An area to manage your system services. You can see the status of services, stop and start them, and enable them for autostart on a reboot. You can also stop and start your entire VPS container.
  • Firewall - Provides an interface to your Linux IPtables. Allows you to activate default firewall rules and add custom rules. Note: you can not open ports.
  • SSH Connection - A built in SSH client for command line access.
  • Status Changes - A handy log that shows when your VPS was stopped, started, and backed up.
  • Resource Alerts - A valuable log that shows if and when your VPS exceeded allowed resources such as memory and CPU.
  • Traffic Log - This area shows traffic (data transfer) usage in your VPS. It is similar to the traffic resource graphs in the regular Control Panel.
More News
eApps Attends Parallels Summit
Prior to June, 2004, eApps Hosting used a mix of commercial software, home grown programs, and a lot of manual effort to run the hosting operation. We came to the conclusion that we needed a comprehensive, integrated automation platform to grow and thrive. We selected a hosting automation solution from an up and coming software vendor in the hosting industry, then known as SW Soft. Since that time we have grown over 500%, and SW Soft, now known as Parallels, Inc., has become the recognized leader in automation products for the hosting industry.

Our industry is continuosly changing, and Parallels is at the forefront of the development of automation solutions to drive this change. To ensure that we are on top of these changes we have attended the annual Parallels Summit since its inception. The summit gives us an opportunity to learn how to optimize the use of the Parallels software as well as see what products and features are in development. Here is a quick bullet point list of some key takeaways from the recent Parallels Summit meeting.
  • Billing/Hosting Management system - Parallels made its mark with a superior virtualization software product, called Virtuozzo, which has an extremely high market share in the hosting industry. A primary goal of the company is to now deliver a world class billing and accounting component. To this end, the Parallels Business Automation component, formerly known as HSP, is being rewritten. The new version will be available in 2009. We look forward to the improved billing and customer administration features.
  • Application Packaging Standard (APS) - More than a year ago, Parallels proposed to the industry a standard for packaging and delivering applications. Application Packaging Standard is gaining acceptance in our industry. Parallels is integrating their software products with the highly successful APS repository. eApps Hosting will support APS in the new Plesk Control Panel plans that are in final testing and will be launched in early July.
  • HyperVisor VPS container - As mentioned previously, the Virtuozzo virtualization product that your site runs on is by far the most widely used VPS technology in the hosting industry. Virtuozzo, which uses the approach known as Operating System virtualization, is very efficient and has a rich set of management features that make it ideal for hosting. Hypervisor virtualization, also referred to as hardware virtualization, is not commonly used in the hosting industry due to the lack of management tools and the fact that a lower density of VPS containers per physical server can be achieved. However, hypervisor based VPS containers have significant benefits included optimized speed and a higher degree of control of the environment. For some uses, a hypervisor VPS solution is preferable. Parallels now has a hypervisor VPS product, and is working hard to integrate it totally into their product offering. What this means to eApps customers is that they will have the opportunity to choose either type of VPS container, depending on their needs. Parallels will even support the automated migration from one type of container to the other. The new hypervisor container is expected to be completely integrated into their product line shortly after the beginning of 2009 at which time eApps will be pleased to include it in our offering.
Best Post Winners
Winners Announced for June's Best Post in Community Forum
Each month we select at least one outstanding post on our Community Forum and award a $50 credit to the account of the selected contributor(s)! The winners for the June newsletter are . . 
  • courtenayt - do you have a script for restarting tomcat? and detecting postgres is down and starting it
  • pdoren - MySQL Socket in database.yml
Please stop by the forum and check it out, ask a question, offer a suggestion, or answer a question. You might just win a $50 credit in July!

Promotion
We have two outstanding promotions this month on SSL certificates. But you must act fast. These offers are only valid through June 17, 2008 (no exceptions). 

50% off any Thawte SSL Certificate
For a limited time any Thawte SSL certificate in our store is half price. This promotion applies to new purchases, not renewals.

Free Thawte SSL123 One (1) Yr  Certificate with the purchase of any Standard Max or higher plan
Any customer buying a Standard Max plan or higher is eligible to receive a basic one year certificate for free, representing a value of $75!

To take advantage of this promotion, just send an email to sales@eapps.com with the subject 'June SSL Certificate Offer'  and specify which offer you are applying for and your domain so we can find your account. We will reply with additional information. This promotion is only valid through June 17, 2008.
 
Updated/New Application Versions
Updated: Java 5, Majordomo
For customers on our CentOS 5 plans, we now have updated versions of the following applications:
  • Java 5 update 15 - primarily bug fixes
  • Majordomo 1.94.5 - 15.1 - this version has not been updated, but a replacement is available which fixes a problem with the autoresponder
To install updates, login to your control panel, click on System tab, then All Applications. Select the application you want to upgrade and click Upgrade to Latest. If you are interested in moving to the new CentOS 5 environment, please contact billing@eapps.com.

New: osCommerce
For customers on our CentOS 5 plans, we now offer osCommerce, the popular PHP based shopping cart application.

To install osCommerce, login to your control panel, click on Sytem tab, then Add Application. Select the application you want to install and click Next. If you are interested in moving to the new CentOS 5 environment, please contact billing@eapps.com.

Errata
Users/Groups edit problem
Some customers may encounter an error when trying to edit their Users and Groups. This problem has been fixed for most customers and we expect to have it fixed for all customers within a week. If you encounter this problem, please contact our Support department and we will fix the problem for your VPS as soon as possible.

Control Panel going offline
We recently had a problem with the Control Panel going offline for several minutes at a time. Customer sites were not impacted, but use of the Control Panel was. This problem was caused by the upgrade to Virtuozzo version 4. What happened was the Control Panel was losing communications with several servers at a time. We are pleased to report that our software vendor has fixed the problem. We worked closely and actively with our vendor, who delivered the fix in a reasonably quick time considering the nature of the problem. We apologize for the inconvenience this issue caused for many of our customers.

Network disruptions
Since we moved our hosting operation two and one half years ago into our present data center, owned and operated by Quality Technology Services, Inc., we have been extremely pleased by the uptime we have experienced from what we call our "upstream" providers. This data center operator is a top tier provider and has never cut corners or taken their eye off of the ball.

However, we recently have experienced some network glitches that to some hosting companies are just par for the course, but to us prompted us to engage proactively with Quality Technology Services to ensure that we are doing everything we can to retain our high uptime. One problem occurred when our circuit did not failover when our primary circuit was taken down for planned maintenance. The reason it did not fail over was because some routing changes made previously on the failover circuit were not done correctly for our block of IPs. We also experienced two short outages during the past few weeks lasting from 3 to 10 minutes, depending on the end user's ISP. These outages were related to the same problem. We are actively engaged with Quality Technology Services and are confident that the proper corrections are being made to ensure that you continue to experience the high uptime of the eApps Hosting service that you have come to expect.

Article
The Next Major Computing Platform
Josh Quittner, in his Time Magazine article entitled "Who Will Rule the Internet," provides an overview of efforts by several companies to become the controlling force behind the next major computing platform.

The author notes that IBM's mainframe computing architecture was the defacto platform in the 1960s and 1970s. CIOs were guided in their buying decisions by the knowledge that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM." As a result, IBM became the largest and most powerful technology company in history.

After the introducion of the microcomputer, Microsoft became the most powerful, and wealthiest, technology company in the world, primarily on the platform established by the widely used Windows operating system. For over twenty years Windows has been the predominant operating system, supporting the computer processing needs of millions of people for the delivery of desktop applications, email, and corporate business applications.

The author believes that we are in the midst of a war between several companies, the outcome of which will determine the next major computing platform. How we get information, how we communicate, and who controls the flow of information is at stake. The winner will be enriched through the selling of hardware, software, services and advertising.

According to the author, social networking systems have a lot of momentum in the battle to become the next computing platform. Since Facebook launched its open platform initiative, hundreds of thousands of developers have downloaded the Facebook API kit. Over 24,000 programs have been deployed on the platform ranging from basic communication aids to full applications. Critics point out though, that Facebook is a proprietary environment.

Concern over the proprietary nature of Facebook has given Google an edge in their efforts to create an "open" platform for social networking. Google claims that Facebook and similar social networking sites are "closed wall" environments. Users are contained within the bounds of the social networking system and thus are cordoned off from the internet as a whole. According to Google, users are much more likely to find and use resources within a single social networking empire and much less from the Internet as a whole. Google's efforts are aimed at delivering an "open standard" for social networking capabilities that allows applications to be shared and used by users of any social networking system that adopts the standard. Facebook at this time has no plans to adopt the standard.

Facebook and Google are not the only technology companies that want to stake a claim to the next great platform land rush. Apple's next generation of iPhone is expected to be the first handheld device that has evolved from being a computerized phone to a fully functional computer that includes a phone. It is believed to have all of the capabilities required to become the critical hardware component of the next great platform, much as the IBM PC architecture became the hardware standard for the Microsoft Windows based platform. The difference between these two examples is that Apple controls both the hardware and operating environment very closely. iPhone's breakthrough technology has attracted a lot of attention. Developers are already at work building iPhone applications as evidenced by a claimed 200,000 downloads of the iPhone development kit since it was made available last year.

Not so fast, says Google. The Apple iPhone has the same basic problem as the Facebook system. Both are proprietary. Also, Apple has imposed steep fees for iPhone application developers which include a listing fee and a requirement to share 30% of their revenue with Apple. Google is actively promoting an "open platform" for mobile devices, called Android, which is supported by 34 mobile carriers and handset manufacturers. Handsets using Android are expected to be available by the end of 2008, at about the time when the next generation iPhone is expected to be shipped. Android has also attracted developer attention. Google claims that more than 1,200 applications have been developed for the platform today.

The author notes that the Internet may simply be too big for one primary platform to achieve dominance. Even so, these initiatives have major implications. It will be interesting to see who wins and who loses in the battle to create the next major platform.

Tech Tips
In our May newsletter we offered information and tips on Ruby on Rails and Using the Command Line. This month we offer a tip on how to secure URLs when forwarding content using mod_jk, mod_proxy_ajp, or mod-rewrite.

Securing URLS when forwarding content
This tip explains how to protect URLs from public access with a username or a password when the requests are forwarded to Tomcat/JBoss/GlassFish and for some reason you don't want to, or it is not possible to do this from the Java application server:

To protect URLs which have static content served directly by Apache you would normally use the .htaccess files. This is not possible when the URLs are forwarded through mod_jk/mod_proxy/mod_rewrite to Apache as instructed in our User Guides for JBoss, Tomcat and Glassfish.
To accomplish this you should instead add the directives you would normally add in an .htaccess file under the Custom Settings section of your web site as follows:

Site Tab -> Select the site you want to make the settings for -> Web Site Settings -> Custom Settings

Enter a <Location> directive, as follows:

<Location "/Web/path/to/your/URL">
AuthName "Authentication Name"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile "/home/webadmin/yoursitename/.htpasswd"
Require valid-user
</Location>

The "/web/path/to/your/URL" may be "/someurl",  "/some/composed/url" or even "/" - so this will apply to the entire site.

To learn how to create the .htpasswd files in your system please read this document:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/htpasswd.html

Of course, apart from the password authentication, some other access methods can be specified (additional to the password authentication or instead of them). To get an idea about these options we recommend that you read this document:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_access.html

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