AnyHosting

Not sure how I missed 3tera before, they look like an interesting entrant to the “utility computing” market, which everyone is excited about again since Amazon’s got into it.

I haven’t really done my due diligence on this company yet, but I checked out the slick demo  (bonus points that it shows their app running in Firefox, takes the worry of cross-browser compatbility off the table) and have been reading back issues of the blog, and it sounds like a pretty solid offering.

If you don’t have time to watch the demo, in a nutshell it looks like you can architect your own virtual datacenter using their browser-based drag’n'drop schematic editor, including things like load balancers, and they automatically instantiate everything for you.

The Dynamic Appliance idea sounds pretty cool, as the idea of being able to seamlessly tap into more supply when demand runs high (and not pay for supply when demand runs low) seems to be the whole point of the utility computing thing.

I worry a little about what happens to my servers if this company goes away, or if they’re bought and put into maintenance mode, etc. but this is a pretty normal worry for any company. I think open-sourcing more of their stuff would assuage this a bit since I wouldn’t necessarily have to reconfigure everything to move to a competitor, but I can certainly understand their business reasons for not doing this.

However, like I said I haven’t looked at them in-depth yet, so take these worries with a grain of salt. Hosting providers of all flavors are susceptible to this kind of thing, as they often have their own home-grown or customized administration software, so it’s generally a pain to move between different providers.

I think that to be a true commodity, switching between providers has to be no-brainer as it is for services like telephone and electricity: you get the same dial-tone and same voltage, just at a different pricing model. I think this issue will be forced if the utility computing idea really catches fire this time.

I’m thinking about doing series of how-to style articles on more technical subjects, here are some thoughts on a starting point: how to install and use Ubuntu Server, with AnyHosting as a case study.

AnyHosting currently uses Ubuntu Server (LTS) on a Rimuhosting.com virtual host. Ubuntu is very easy to install and use as a desktop, but if you haven’t done administration purely from the command line then Server can be a bit daunting. There are excellent starter guides and forums on the Ubuntu website.

Services

The following external services are provided (description followed by Ubuntu package name) :

• web server - apache2
• SMTP(+SSL) email server - postfix
• IMAP/POP(+SSL) email server - courier
• FTP - proftpd

Additionally, there are some internal services running, which are not visible from the internet (blocked by the “iptables” firewall):

• Database - mysql
• Monitoring/auto-recovery service - monit
• Automatic installation of security updates - cron-apt
• Log monitoring and reporting - logwatch logcheck
• Append-only network backups - rsync

Security

All unused ports are blocked. Any connection attempts are logged and reported. FTP and email services authenticate against the database, so clients do not need system or shell accounts.

For shared hosting, Apache is configured to proxy to chrooted installs which users have access to (as discussed previously). This is not as secure as having a real separate VM or better yet a separate machine for each web hosting client, but therein lies the dilemma of low-cost shared hosting versus moderate-to-high priced dedicated hosting.

The primary goal is to protect legitimate users from eachother; protecting the system from unauthorized intrusion (and detecting such intrustion) probably deserves it’s own series of articles, however the last few services listed in the “Services” section above should give some clues.

EDIT 01/14/08 18:33 PST - logcheck, not logwatch