Pardon my stupidity, but how would one go about getting an IP address for a server installed at home? Is it a static IP address provided by my ISP, or something else ?
How to set up a safe and secure Web server
11–20 of 148 posts
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#12Better hardware would be an HP Microserver (which should win the contest for "worst URL ever"):
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-42...
Has ECC RAM support. Takes 4 3.5" hard disks, and runs very quiet and cool.
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#13Frankly, articles like these are a deterrent to all but the most techie of people. Why go through all this and shell $270 when you can get an Amazon EC2 instance free for a year!
Did you read the article? You still need to setup nginx or apache or whatever on EC2. Page 2 onwards actually deals with these things
Yeah. So why pay $270?
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#14"...being locked to IIS as a Web server (or dependent on crippled Windows ports of better Web servers) means you'll be playing in the bush leagues. IIS is found running many huge and powerful websites in the world, but it's rarely selected in a vacuum..."
I sense a little bit of bias.
As a multiplatform developer I can think of a number of reasons why someone might opt to go the Windows Server route. ASP.NET MVC 4 is a first class framework and many prefer it over other popular alternatives on other platforms such as Django, Rails, and Cake. In addition, Visual Studio is arguably the best IDE available and publishing to an IIS server is dead simple.
As for cost, full versions of Visual Studio and Windows Server can both be obtained for free through the DreamSpark program for college students and through the similar BizSpark program for startups and small businesses.
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#15"...being locked to IIS as a Web server (or dependent on crippled Windows ports of better Web servers) means you'll be playing in the bush leagues. IIS is found running many huge and powerful websites in the world, but it's rarely selected in a vacuum..." I sense a little bit of bias. As a multiplatform developer I can think of a number of reasons why someone might opt to go the Windows Server route. ASP.NET MVC 4 is…
Do those versions let you use the products on production web servers though?
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#16Pardon my stupidity, but how would one go about getting an IP address for a server installed at home? Is it a static IP address provided by my ISP, or something else ?
If you have a dynamic IP, Dyn offers DNS services[0] that let you tie a domain to it through them. I believe it requires you to install something on your machine that monitors your IP and reports it back.
Otherwise, you just use your IP and make sure to edit the DNS yourself when it changes.
[0]: http://dyn.com/dns/
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#17Pardon my stupidity, but how would one go about getting an IP address for a server installed at home? Is it a static IP address provided by my ISP, or something else ?
By your ISP. Some plans come with a static IP by default, but many providers make you pay extra (or go onto a business plan if you tell them you want to run servers)
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#18Pardon my stupidity, but how would one go about getting an IP address for a server installed at home? Is it a static IP address provided by my ISP, or something else ?
The messages that your computer sends to the internet include an IP address which the internet uses to send responses back to your computer. The problem is that these addresses are unstable -- your ISP reserves the right to change it, basically.
If you want to host a server from home, you have a few choices:
a) Obtain a static IP address from your ISP.
b) Obtain a domain name from a dynamic DNS provider and map that to your current IP address. Update the mapping as necessary.
c) Just use your existing IP address -- this is how P2P or Skype works, for example.
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#19I think it's time articles like these start suggesting an infrastructure as code product, like chef or puppet, to do the heavy lifting. I feel like doing this stuff by hand should be considered insecure and outdated..
All chef and puppet give you is a tool to setup 100 insecure and outdated servers, they don't help at all with the initial security decisions.
Re: How to set up a safe and secure Web server
#20Better hardware would be an HP Microserver (which should win the contest for "worst URL ever"): http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-42... Has ECC RAM support. Takes 4 3.5" hard disks, and runs very quiet and cool.
That is a truly frightening URL, makes me wonder what kind of CMS they are running that generates 100 character long URI (Vignette?).