eAPPS upDATE Newsletter

eAPPS upDATE Newsletter
Published by eApps Hosting
October 2007

In this issue:

News - Customer Forum Monthly Best Post Winners!
More News - Marketplace forum now available!
Even More News - Work underway for CentOS 5 plans
Promotion - One Month Free on 2nd VPS Subscription
Feature - Meet eApps
New Applications - Zend Optimizer 3.3.0a, Spam Assassin 3.2.3, Mod_jk 1.2.25
Article - Will Google offer a mobile phone soon?
Tech Tips - Security, VPS Resources

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News
Winners Announced for October's Best Post in Customer Forum

In last month's newsletter, we announced the launch of our new community forum, at http://community.eapps.com. The purpose of the forum is to allow customers to collaborate and share information. In that announcement we also stated that we would select two people each month that made the best post on the forum and award a $50 credit to each person's account. Drum roll, please. The winners are . . .

dotcomUNDERGROUND - for an excellent post on how to change the time zone on your VPS
mmamet - for his contribution regarding how to use the date 0000-00-00 in Java/MySQL

When you go to this forum, please keep in mind that it was recently launched. We would be delighted to see you to get on the forum and make your post! You might just win a $50 credit. We are not worried that it will become like that restaurant referred to by the infamous Yogi Berra when he said, "no one goes there any more, its too crowded." The more crowded the better, we say.

More News
Marketplace Forum Now Available!
Wow, this eApps Community site keeps getting better and better! We now have a Marketplace forum. This forum is for our customers to promote their products and services. Please feel free to hang your shingle at MarketPlace.

Even More News
Hosting Plans for CentOS 5 underway
We have received a lot of feedback from customers that want a more up to date operating system environment. We are pleased to report that work is now underway on hosting plans using the CentOS 5 operating system. This version of CentOS is significant because it includes Apache 2.2, in addition to an updated Linux kernel. Apache 2.2 has improvements in authentication, caching, and management of the httpd processes. New to 2.2 are proxy/load balancer support which significantly improves the power of the web server when used with Ruby on Rails, Tomcat, and PHP. Other new features such as filtering, large file support, and the introduction of direct SQL support are also significant for some applications.

Since eApps Hosting builds its own packages, the roll out of a new OS version is not trivial. Our R&D staff is hard at work making it happen. Look for news in the next two upcoming newsletters.

Promotion

One Month Free on 2nd VPS Subscription
Many of our customers get a second VPS. One of the most common reasons is to have a separate development environment for their application. Others choose to have a second VPS to serve as a replication repository for their database. Still others want to have an administrative environment running Subversion, dotProject or other application. The reasons are numerous. If you were thinking about getting a second VPS now is the time. Our October promotion, good until November 15, is for one month free on a second VPS. Just purchase your VPS and send an email to sales@eapps.com with "One Month Free" in the subject. We will issue a credit to your account for one month of the hosting fee. This offer is valid until November 15, 2007 for any VPS plan up to Premier Max.

Feature

Meet eApps

This month's featured staff member is Alan Bowman. Alan is a member of our Technical Support department.

Alan was born in Wertheim, West Germany, but grew up in Augusta, GA. He attended Johnson and Wales College, where he obtained a degree in Culinary Arts. Alan worked for 15 years as a chef prior to getting into the technology field. Alan is recently married and has a younger sister and brother.

Prior to joining eApps, Alan worked as a technical support representative for a large multinational corporation that specialized in Dental practice management software. Alan says about his job at eApps Hosting . . . "I have learned a lot, and enjoy helping our customers and solving their problems to get things working to their satisfaction." As for hobbies, Alan doesn't have much time for any just now as he is focusing on selling his house to lessen the commute for both himself and his wife. The next time you speak to Alan, ask him "What's Cooking, Chef?"

New Applications
Updates are now available for the following applications. These versions are available for all customers on a CentOS plan. If you are not on a CentOs plan you might consider making the move. Contact us for more information. Applications can be upgraded from the System tab of your Control Panel. Please read the eApps Release Notes before you upgrade your application versions! For info on how to upgrade in the eApps Control Panel see http://support.eapps.com/release/all.

Spam Assassin 3.2.3 - This new release has a number of bug fixes and new features. For more info visit the official release notes. Most important are the fixes we have put in for our packaged application of Spam Assassin. All customers on CentOS plans are strongly advised to upgrade to this version. Due to the fact that version 3.2.3 requires some additional Perl Modules, we must update your plan to make this available to you. Please send an email to support@eapps.com with "Spam Assassin 3.2.3" in the subject and we will make these modules available.

The key changes are:

Removed Spam Rules set. We had high hopes for the Spam Rules set but in hindsight this add on was designed for large servers, not smaller VPS servers. We reverted to the standard Spam Assassin rules set which is very effective and consumes significantly less resources.
Added a Cron job to update the standard Rules set nightly at midnight Eastern time zone.
Fixed the Vilter error state process. Sendmail will continue to deliver mail even if the Vilter fails due to very high volumes of mail. The Vilter will automatically be restarted if it fails.
Outbound mail is now white listed and will not be flagged as SPAM.

Please Note: SPAM ASSASSIN itself will consume at least 20 MB of memory, and considerably more if there is a heavy flow of mail. We do not guarantee SPAM ASSASSIN to be the ideal solution for all plans and usage. You may need to consider our other SPAM fighting tools or even third party SPAM services, such as Postini.

Zend Optimizer 3.3.0a - The Zend Optimizer is a free application that runs the files encoded by the Zend Guard, while enhancing the performance of PHP applications. This version corrects a serious problem with the implemention of previous versions in the eApps Hosting environment. All customers that want to use Zend Optimizer are strongly advised to upgrade to this version. Zend Optimizer requires PHP 5.

Mod_jk 1.2.25 - This version of the Apache-Tomcat connector fixes a number of bugs. We recommend that all customers upgrade to this version. Please see the official change log for more information.

Article

Will Google offer a mobile phone soon?

Google's stock recently exceeded $600 per share, another milestone for the juggernaut. Will they ever falter? Probably, but Google appears to be investing heavily to ensure that their pending Google phone offering will not turn out to be their first face plant. There is a lot of anticipation about the offering, but so far Google has kep mum, fueling the speculation. The concensus has settled on the following notions:

the primary goal is to extend Google's dominance in advertising to the mobile Internet, which is expected to grow rapidly
the offering is not expected to compete against the iPod, but rather Windows Mobile PDAs and their ilk
several prototypes have been seen, using phones typically used to deliver Windows Mobile services
HTC is believed to have signed on as a hardware partner
the prototypes use Linux and Java
Google will pitch their offering to phone service carriers as a poweful open source (i.e. low cost) software alternative to Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, Nokia and other operating systems vying for the mobile device market.
Large carriers are leary of Google's motives, but small carriers may see the offering as a competitive advantage

If you believe that the Mobile Internet is going to grow significantly, and to some extent replace conventional PC internet usage, you have to believe Google will figure out a way to get there. Keep your eyes open and get ready for more Google.

Tech Tips
Last month we offered tips on how to effectively use Passwords. This week we share information on the most common security breaches and how to make your site more secure. We also have a tip on how memory, CPU and other resources are allocated to your VPS, and how you can make the most of your resources.

Security

We do our best to ensure that our network is secure and protected from threats. We also make sure that there are no vulnerabilities in the operating system and applications we offer. In fact, we have implemented many confidential measures of which, as the saying goes, "we can tell you but then we would have to kill you." Suffice it to say we take security very seriously and are very proud of our uptime record. Nevertheless, some of our customers have their security compromised. This tech tip explains the three most common breaches and what you can do to prevent them.

Exploits in Self Installed Apps - The number one security breach occurs when customers have vulnerabilities in 1) self installed applications or 2) applications that they have developed. The former is more common. Content management applications such as phpBB and Mambo have a very poor track record for security. Once an exploit is discovered, it is only a matter of time before the hackers find sites with vulnerabilities. The hackers move very fast and can sometimes take advantage of these holes before our scanning and prevention services can be configured to mount a defense. The consequences of these vulnerabilities are potentially severe. The hackers can basically take complete control of your VPS and add it to their "botnet" network of hijacked servers.

Unsecured Forms/Scripts - Spammers look for unsecured forms and the underlying script because it allows them to send spam through your VPS using an automated process (bot). Most forms send emails and if the form is not secure, the spammers can alter the "send to" address and forward spam messages. Customers can unknowingly be allowing thousands of SPAM messages to be sent from their VPS. Programmers must ensure that their form is secure. This is done by using input validation techniques that ensure that a live human is submitting the form and not an automated bot. There are also various programming techniques that should be used to restrict how the message is being sent through the form. A Google search on "secure web form" or "securing web form" will yield useful information.

Weak Passwords - Last month we spoke about passwords. Hackers have a hard time breaking passwords on the eApps service because we enforce strong passwords via the control panel and we also block repeated attempts to access any VPS on our service. Nevertheless, customers do get hacked as a result of a weak password, generally because it was created outside of the control panel. Please remember to always create your passwords using the control panel, and change your password periodically to minimize the risk of your VPS being compromised.

VPS Resources

We use the SLM (Service Level Management) approach to allocating resources in your VPS. This approach is recommended by SW Soft, the vendor of the VPS sofware we use. Under SLM, you do not have to worry about limits on obscure server resources. The only limits you have to be concerned about are Memory, CPU, Disk, and Traffic. Here is a primer on each of these four resources. A more detailed description can be found in an article in our knowledgebase. Please note that resource allocations are proportional to the price of the hosting plan.

Memory (RAM) - Memory is a critical resource related to the reliability of your VPS service. Your memory allocation is a hard limit that can not be exceeded. You must choose a plan that will have enough memory for peak usage. For Java users, we incorporate a "wrapper" that will attempt to restart your JVM when you run out of memory heap. However, severe memory errors are often not recoverable. You can control your memory usage by making sure you are not running too many memory intensive applications and setting memory heap using our guidelines. You can increase your memory by upgrading your plan. You can see your usage with the Linux "free" command.
CPU - Your VPS also receives an allocation of CPU resources based on a percentage of the available CPU of the physical server that your VPS is running on. Your allocation allows you to burst higher than a straight percentage of the CPU capacity. However, if you hit your limit your CPU cycles will be rationed. Generally, most applications will just slow down when CPU is rationed. However, some applications will time out, causing service problems. Also, if you repeatedly burst to your maximum allowance, you may be subject to being quarantined. You can control your CPU usage by choosing the correct plan and having optimal program code. You can increase your CPU by upgrading your plan. You can see your CPU usage using the Linux "top" command.
Disk space - Your VPS gets a soft limit and a hard limit. The soft limit is your included amount. The hard limit is twice the soft limit. If you exceed the soft limit you are billed at $.01 per MB per month. If you exceed the hard limit your VPS will likely crash and experience service issues. You can control your allocation by removing unneeded files and emails. You can increase your allocation by upgrading your plan. You can see your allocation and usage from the System tab of the Control Panel.
Traffic - Your VPS gets a soft limit for traffic (data transfer). You may exceed your soft limit but are billed at the rate of $1 per GB. You can control your allocation by ensuring that you do not have security vulnerabilities in your applications and restricting usage of your site to intended users. You can increase your allocation by upgrading your plan. You can see your allocation and usage from the System tab of the Control Panel.

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