Archive for the ‘Operating System’ Category
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012 by Mario Duarte
Security studies (including GoGrid’s internal research) strongly demonstrate that most systems will be attacked
within 5 hours after becoming publicly accessible—in some cases, in less than 2 hours. The sources of the attacks are often unsuspecting users whose systems have been compromised by malware and are in turn being used to attack and infect other systems. The majority of attacks target two common threats:
- A combination of commonly used system accounts (e.g., the Administrator account) with weak, dictionary-based passwords
- Systems that are missing critical or high-security vulnerabilities
Solution
This document provides GoGrid’s security recommendations for Cloud Servers running Microsoft Windows. Perform these 5 steps in sequential order immediately after provisioning new GoGrid Cloud Servers to maintain the integrity and security of your system.
Note: For a step-by-step how-to with screenshots, please see the companion article, “How To Tighten Up Windows Security.”
(more…) «Security Basics: 5 Steps to Tighten Security for Microsoft Windows»
Tags: administrator, Anti-virus, AV, cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Servers, GoGrid, Microsoft Windows, password, Patch, Security, trusted sites, Windows, Windows Server 2008
Posted in Cloud Computing, General, GoGrid, How To, Microsoft, Security, Windows | No Comments »
Friday, October 19th, 2012 by Michael Sheehan
This week, InformationWeek published an extremely handy IaaS Buyer’s Guide designed to help companies navigate the complex airspace of cloud computing, specifically the Infrastructure-as-a-Service marketplace. The Guide covers 9 IaaS providers, including GoGrid, that each submitted responses to a questionnaire about their service offerings. InformationWeek then compiled and categorized those responses in this easy-to-understand Guide. You can find the full Guide (behind a registration wall) here.
Topics covered in the Guide include:
- CPU & Memory
- Storage
- Operating Systems
- Database Software Needs
- Redundancy/Data Center Needs
- Additional VM Features
- Cost
- Security & Compliance
- Support & SLA
- Additional Services
A few things have changed since GoGrid was originally interviewed, and we wanted to provide updated information for some of these categories.
CPU & Memory
(more…) «InformationWeek’s “IaaS Buyer’s Guide” with some Updated Information from GoGrid»
Tags: cloud, Cloud Computing, cost, CPU, Free Support, Guide, Help, How To, IaaS, IaaS Buyer's Guide, InformationWeek, Linux, Memory, operating systems, OS, Pricing, Resources, Security, SLA, Storage, Windows
Posted in Cloud Computing, Cloud Server, Features, General, GoGrid, GoGrid Exchange, Hosting, Industry, Operating System, Public Cloud | No Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2012 by Michael Sheehan
Let me preface this post by saying, I am NOT a Linux guru. In fact, I consider myself to be a newbie when it comes to the intricacies of Linux. I probably know enough to be dangerous, at least dangerous to the server. So, I’m writing this post with the following disclaimer: Don’t ask me for any details on the “why” or how to do what I’m outlining below differently. But since I figured that lots of you are like me, I wanted to share.
Since I’m a Linux newbie, you’ll probably understand why I wanted to write this post though. I’m not a command line junkie—GUIs are much more my thing. But when it comes to running a server that is speedy and high performance with low overhead (e.g., doing away with GUIs), you’re probably looking at various Linux distros. What I wanted to do was set up a basic Linux system running a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack that also had a web-interface and some added security controls.
The great thing about doing this type of experimentation in the cloud is that I can create essentially a Dev & Test environment where I can spin up a server in minutes, install software, configure it, and test everything out. Then if it doesn’t work the way I want it to, I can tear it down and start again from scratch. The cloud lets you do this quickly, easily, and inexpensively.
In this tutorial, you can basically have the entire configuration up and running in the GoGrid cloud in less than an hour and only spend about $0.25 to test this out (assumes a 2 GB server running for 1 hour at $0.12/GB RAM/hr.)
Here’s what we’re using:
- CentOS 6.0 (64-bit) – with 2 GB RAM
- Webmin – web-based interface for sysadmins for UNIX that lets users set up user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing, and a whole lot more
- ConfigServer Firewall & Security (CFS) – a Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall, login/intrusion detection, and security application for Linux servers
(more…) «How to Install LAMP, Webmin & ConfigServer Security & Firewall on a CentOS 6.0 GoGrid Cloud Server»
Tags: Apache, CentOS, ConfigServer, CSF, firewall, GoGrid, GUI, harden server, How To, LAMP, Linux, MySQL, Perl, PHP, secure server, Security, Server Management, Webmin
Posted in Cloud Computing, Cloud Server, General, GoGrid, How To, Linux, Open Source, Public Cloud, Security | 5 Comments »
Thursday, September 15th, 2011 by Michael Sheehan
Yesterday we release several new and updated base GoGrid cloud server images as part of our regular Operating System refreshes.
Below is a quick lists of the New, Updated and End of Life-d base images.
New Major Versions
- What’s new in CentOS 6 (RHEL technical details): http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/details/
- This version of CentOS is not subject to the “time drift” issue
- These machines now run in PV (paravirtualization) mode
Debian 6
(more…) «New & Updated CentOS, Debian, RHEL and Windows Base Cloud Server Images Released on GoGrid»
Tags: CentOS, cloud, Cloud infrastructure, Debian, GoGrid, Linux, Microsoft, Operating System, OS, R2, RHEL, SQL Server, Windows, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008
Posted in Cloud Server, General, GoGrid, Images, Linux, Operating System, Release, Windows | No Comments »
Monday, August 1st, 2011 by Michael Sheehan
When most people hear the phrase “operating system in the cloud” they usually think of a really cool client-side, Web-based desktop like EyeOS or CloudMe or even Chromium OS. Perhaps that is the future of client operating systems, but when cloud infrastructure providers talk about operating systems, they are making reference to which OS your cloud infrastructure will run on. And, it’s not always limited to just one in many cases.
At GoGrid, we provide a variety of operating systems including:
- Windows Server
- Ubuntu
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Debian
- CentOS
Operating systems in the cloud are very important because they are what your applications and infrastructure are built upon. Whether you’re using the cloud to deploy test & development environments, act as your data center or run your company’s business critical applications, the operating system plays a vital role in cloud infrastructure.
Most IT professionals are pretty passionate about what operating system they prefer. For instance, search for “Windows vs. Linux” on Google – over 109 million results have some sort of opinion on the topic. But, since actions speak louder than words, we wanted to determine which operating system was used more by the IT industry.
(more…) «GoGrid Cloud Survey Report – Operating Systems in the Cloud (Part 6)»
Tags: CentOS, Debian, GoGrid, IaaS, infrastructure, infrastructure as a service, Linux, Operating System, OS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Results, server, survey, Ubuntu, Windows, Windows Server
Posted in Cloud Computing, General, GoGrid, Images, Industry, Linux, Operating System, Public Cloud, Windows | 1 Comment »
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within 5 hours after becoming publicly accessible—in some cases, in less than 2 hours. The sources of the attacks are often unsuspecting users whose systems have been compromised by malware and are in turn being used to attack and infect other systems. The majority of attacks target two common threats:
(more…) «Security Basics: 5 Steps to Tighten Security for Microsoft Windows»
