Hello friends,

I am going to set us a Windows 2003 Server. It will be my first web server.
Help from the experienced will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your attention and advices!

Dot net ,MS SQL and an email server will run on this machine to support our online catalogue and ordering systems. A huge QTY of images will be stored. And 10 websites are to be hosted. Only one is premier, others have light traffic. Dynamic applications are not much heavy. But we make inserts and update our catalogue every day. Under this condition, I have some novice-level questions:

1. CPU
Shall I choose Celeron or Pentium?
1.7GHz or 2.4 GHz or even higher??

2. Firewall
We don't want a cisco to save budget.
Has windows 2003 server have a built-in firewall?
Or any other firewall software okay? e.g. Norton enterprise??

3. Anitvirus?
Norton?? or...

4. Email server software
Does Microsoft Exchange server suck?
Or other good options??

5. Which host company? ServerMatrix or other companies??

6. Any other things to note??

A lot thanks!!

Robert

1. CPU
Shall I choose Celeron or Pentium?
1.7GHz or 2.4 GHz or even higher??

Get a P4 2.4 or 2.8 depending on your market, normally not much diff in cost.

2. Firewall
U can try blackice

3. Anitvirus?
Norton?? or...
F-Prot , Norton shd be ok, with F-Prot can easily integrate with Anti virus


4. Email server software
Exchange is fantastic, but what it will do to your wallet sucks. I suggest mailenable.com which is free or icewarp.com merak which is powerful but cost slightly.

5. Which host company? ServerMatrix or other companies??
Cant give opinion, I am doing hosting, better not advise. But you can search on the forums for one which is established and have good reviews.


6. Any other things to note??

Patch Patch and Patch, stop whatever services not needed.

Thank you, boonchuan!

Should I try to keep all the softwares light weight??

The less you install the less software will be vulnerable. The less running means more avaible cpu for serving your content. So yes you want to streamline and optomize as much as you can.

Another common mistake do disable the anonymous FTP. Wonder can anyone tell Windows by default do put Anonymous as off. This is one of the more common problems that occur.

Good Advice so far....

Here is my 2 cents.

1. No Celeron. P4 or Xeon
2. ICF which is built in to Windows 2003 Standard sux. However, you can enable RRAS firewall which is a service you can configure. Its not "easy" to configure but works pretty well. If you need help holler. Blackice is pretty popular. Combo of software and hardware firewalls is good.
3. Trend and Norton are good. I like Trend quite a bit.
4. Mailenable is your bet. Exchange will break the bank and requires active directory. To do Exchange right you would want a multiserver situation.
5. I am with LiquidWeb and I have been quite impressed so far. I did have a Total Control Server at the Planet.
6. Make sure you configure some sort of firewall. Stop un-needed services. ASK FOR HELP / for someone to check out your arrangement.

Run your choices by us here and we can advise. If you need anything, just holler at me. I am going on vacation next saturday for a week and hard to reach, but until then and after feel free to holler.

Hope this helps.

We use SmarterMail (bought from www.helmtastic.com) at a discount. You might check them out & it is compatible with TrendMicro. SmarterMail is coming out with 2.0 in about one month I hear o you might want to wait. You can also download a free version which will allow you one domain & 10 users. That might be enough?

How about the Celeron 2.4 Ghz with 1GB RAM ?
Does it suitable to be web server to host 150 hosting account ?

I would have the SQL on a different server since it does tend to take up a lot of resources.

Originally posted by coreybryant
I would have the SQL on a different server since it does tend to take up a lot of resources.

But we want only one server.
Any way to solve this problem??

Well I remember when I started doing this - I was only configuring one server but we decided on three, I was told to have at least 2G of RAM.

1. CPU
Shall I choose Celeron or Pentium?
1.7GHz or 2.4 GHz or even higher??

>> Go in for a P4 2.4 with atleast 1GB of RAM.

2. Firewall
We don't want a cisco to save budget.
Has windows 2003 server have a built-in firewall?
Or any other firewall software okay? e.g. Norton enterprise??

>> Windows 2003 has ICS inbuilt but you can go in for blackice as suggested by lot of our friends here. SyGate is a good option too. One thing while installing the firewall, please note that you will be locked out of your own machine due to the firewall blocking the Terminal Services port. Take care for that!

3. Anitvirus?
Norton?? or...

>> FProt, McAfee, Trend Micro - all are good. If you are looking for a FREE option, go in for Clam AV windows version. It's pretty good too.


4. Email server software
Does Microsoft Exchange server suck?
Or other good options??

>> Would not suggest Exchange unless you or your clients really have the need for it. Go in for iMail or Merak Mail. Merak comes with a built-in Virus Scanner and SPAM filter.

5. Which host company? ServerMatrix or other companies??

>> 2 cents for ServerMatrix.

ServerMatrix is my suggestion.

Firewall wise:
Don't rely only on Blackice. I causes as many security problems as it solves. It VERY often has overflow bugs and remote execution vulnerabilities. BUT for a server-useable firewall, its pretty well priced (since you can use the workstation edition, I find). It also sucks because it is terribly implemented:
-Application monitoring is always haywire and cumbersome
-The firewall has no easy way of looking at older data it discovered.
I would also recommend some sort of harware firewall.
Also, you might want to consider ZoneAlarm pro. Never tried it on a server, but ZoneAlarm is a far better prodcut.

Hardware firewall is definately a great solution. Most hosts like SM offer them at an added price. However, some hosts will let you buy your own and "colo" for a reduction in fee. Buying your own is typically a good idea because most places charge an arm and a leg for leasing firewalls. I am partial to the Cisco 506e.

Jake