July 26, 2002
From the Desk of Sam C. Chan
The Birth of Mach-4 Network
Many
of you heard back in May that we're launching a new web hosting
service on June 1. Here's a behind the scene look...
First, a backgrounder on the
industry. There are 3 classes of web hosting companies. 1. Affiliates. 2.
Resellers and 3. Dedicated Hosts. Affiliates are simply private branding,
earning commission for account referrals. Resellers rent a portion of
space, known as a "virtual host" on dedicated servers and do
their own business and technical administration. Dedicated hosts actually
own and operate their own physical servers.
For the last 18 months, we've
been reselling web hosting. Profit motif not being a priority, we
recommended plans between $5/ and $15/month, and we did not "upsell"
all those needless goodies, while we're being charged all kinds of fees
for setup and changes. It became clear that we must raise prices, or
become a substantially subsidized branch of our consultancy. Alternatively, we took the
high road: invest in our own server with major capital and operational commitments.
The economy of scale and elimination of "middleman" would result
in significant savings for our clients.
As a bonus, we no longer have
to share an aging server with 200 other sites. Our new server is fast,
spacious and extremely under-utilized, which translates to high
performance. We can also run any software we wish, including our own DNS
servers and have direct physical control over the host. Plans are underway
to roll out such services as online backup, disaster recovery, site
replication, custom corporate portals, etc.
Please be assured that our
directions and philosophy have not changed. This is not intended to be a
profit center. Instead, it'd become yet another vehicle for us to deliver
our IT services, with improved control, quality and reliability.
Why the delay? Quite simply,
it’s a monumental task. The server was up and running within 2 days. 9
of our own sites were transferred, along with 3 client sites for beta
testing. We spent last 7 weeks refining the system and the processes.
Despite my 18 years of experience in SCO UNIX, there were many new things
to learn. It's been a humbling yet rewarding experience. Those of you who are responsible for running
corporate servers
would appreciate the challenges and pressure. When it came down to paying $500
extra for 2 months of delay vs. risking a premature switch, the
decision was easy!
For you techies, here's a summarized
list to give you a taste of what's involved: Load Linux O.S. Load and
configure drivers. Administer user accounts. Configure time sync.
with atomic clock. Schedule cron jobs for clean-up, log generation and bandwidth management.
Maintain a mirrored
system locally in-house, for experimentation and troubleshooting
purposes. Design, implement and
test firewall strategies and rules.
Install Ensim patches.
Ensim is what we use to create virtual hosts for our clients. Yes
they each have their own virtual host, complete with their own
seperate CGI's and even SSH and Telnet, not just a subset within a
reseller's space. O.S. patches to block
known Linux security holes.
Installing utilities for
our operations: Gzip, Zip, etc. Install DNS servers.
Configure BIND. Load patches.
Install subdomain
features "hacks" for Ensim so that we can offer such
domains as partners.bravotech.us
Disabling of unsafe
programs such as telnet. Testing SSH clients.
Install Squirrelmail for
web access to our IMAP server.
Upgrade Squirrelmail to
the lastest 1.2.7 version, with many new features added.
Customizing Squirrelmail
to include needed plug-ins.
Patch Apache for known
vulnerabilities. Remember, each step has many
sub steps and each of those could have problems and glitches. In short, it's a "great"
way to spend 10 to 20 solid days with no life.
Welcome on board! We're cleared
for takeoff!
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