eApps Blog http://blog.eapps.com eApps hosting blog Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:19:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 eAPPS upDATE Newsletter – March 2010 http://blog.eapps.com/newsletters/eapps-update-newsletter-march-2010.html http://blog.eapps.com/newsletters/eapps-update-newsletter-march-2010.html#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:09:26 +0000 eApps Staff http://blog.eapps.com/?p=405
eAPPS upDATE Newsletter

March 2010

from eApps Hosting
IN THIS ISSUE:
eApps Hosting
News: eApps Data Center Expansion

Promotion: Free Trial of IPsec Compatible VPN
Best Post Winner: Community Forum Monthly Best Post Winner!
Webinar: Enterprise Email featuring Zimbra, with Mobile Support and Email Archiving
Updated/New Applications: Updates: KonaKart, Zend Framework, Java, Joomla, mod_rails, rubygem-rack, Proftpd
Article: Total Computer Security, is it this simple?
Tech Tips: How to upgrade your application versions, Setting up a Subversion mirror
News: eApps Data Center Expansion

eApps Hosting recently added 40% more capacity to its data center facilities. The additional capacity will be required to meet the expected future growth of existing and new services. During the economic downturn, eApps Hosting has continued to invest in the infrastructure needed to provide world class managed hosting services. We thank our customers for selecting eApps as their preferred hosting services provider.
Promotion: Free trial of IPsec compatible VPN service

Some of customers may be aware that we offer the OpenVPN application, which uses SSL/TLS encryption to establish a secure VPN tunnel between the end user and their eApps VPS. But many of our customers are not aware that we also offer an IPsec compatible VPN tunnel service that runs outside of their VPS. This service is Cisco compatible and supports any IPsec compliant device or software. For more information, visit our VPN services page.
The service uses a software firewall, called Vyatta, running in a separate Xen container. The service offers great value, with prices starting at $20 per month. The service has been operational for several months now in a Beta mode and is expected to transition from Beta to production status by May 1. Until that time we are still accepting customers into the Beta program. Users of the Beta IPSec compatible VPN service will not be billed until May 1! To take advantage of this exciting offer, contact sales@eapps.com.
Best Post Winner:
Each month we select at least one outstanding post on our Community Forum and award a $50 credit to the account of the selected contributor(s)! The winner for the March newsletter is:

phpMyAdmin 3.2.2 – Pay attention when you update data for
VARCHAR(36) – paola

Please stop by the forum and check it out, ask a question, offer a suggestion, or answer a question. You might just win a $50 credit in April!

Webinar: Enterprise Email featuring Zimbra, with Mobile Support and Email Archiving

The Exchange/Outlook compatible eApps Enterprise Email service is one of the fastest growing services that we have launched. The service unleashes the full power of your mobile device through over-the-air synchronization of Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks between your hand-held and desktop.
For more information about Zimbra, check out this short, informative video tour. You can also sign up for an informative 30 minute Enterprise Email Webinar on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 10AM Eastern or 3PM Eastern (GMT-5).
Updated/New Applications:

 Updated versions of the following applications are now available, all for CentOS 5 plans:

  • KonaKart 4.2.0.1
  • Zend Framework 1.9.6
  • Java 1.6.0_17
  • Joomla 1.5.15
  • mod_rails 2.2.9
  • rubygem-rack 1.1.0
  • Proftpd 1.3.2c
If you are interested in moving to the new CentOS 5 environment, please contact billing@eapps.com.
Article: Total Computer Security, is it this simple?

In January 2010 hackers launched attacks, believed to originate from China, which compromised corporate computer systems at more than 30 U.S. companies, including Google. This incident drew a lot of attention due to the visibility of Google and the fact that the attacks occurred during a high stakes dispute about censorship between Google and the Chinese government. The attacks were widely publicized, but in the total scheme of things were just another example of the skyrocketing increase in cybercrime. Estimates of the cost impact of computer crime vary because of the size and scope of the problem, but is believe to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and growing fast.
To battle the threats, an entire industry has grown to deliver security solutions. Unfortunately, each security solution is eventually circumvented by increasingly sophisticated hackers. This security “arms race” continues, resulting in increased costs, lost productivity and ongoing damages from attacks.
Is it possible that there is a simple solution? A new company based in Herndon, VA called InZero thinks so. InZero’s approach is to have a hardware device between the Internet and the user’s computer that acts like a buffer that can not be breached. This idea itself is not new, but Oleksiy Shevchenko, the Ukrainian inventor of the device, appears to have built the ultimate security appliance. His concept is to set the device up as a fully functioning computer, called a sandbox, which runs in a “read only” mode. The sandbox computer allows the user to send emails and interact with the Internet freely, and even visit sites known to harbor malware without the risk of infection.
InZero has challenged several high profile computer security firms to hack the device. So far the device has been impervious to all attacks, surprising and frustrating the CEO of one well respected computer security firm. InZero is moving forward on launching their product, a standalone security appliance for personal computers. The company has plans to sell a family of devices based on the technology ranging from embedded devices for laptops all the way up to devices devoted to protecting entire networks.The device has also gotten the attention of the US government. An interesting twist is that InZero needs to prove that their Ukrainian based software engineers have not built in back doors for spies in order to pass muster by highly sensitive users. Check the company out at http://www.inzerosystems.com/.

Tech Tips: Setting up a Subversion mirror; How to upgrade your application versions

In our previous newsletter we offered a tip on Preventing security vulnerabilities in your application . This month we
offer the following tips:
How to upgrade your application versions

eApps Hosting offers a large repository of supported applications. A full list, with version numbers, can be found in our application index. Our applications team keeps an eye on new versions and regularly adds them to our repository after ensuring that they are compatible with our technical environment and can be upgraded properly. We announce the availability of these upgrades on eapps.com, support.eapps.com and twitter.com/eapps.
Upgrading your application not only provides you the latest, greatest version, but it often ensures that you have the most secure version of your application. The process to upgrade your application is easy from the control panel. Just go to the System tab and click on the Upgrade Applications icon. For more information, visit our Upgrade Applications User Guide.
How to setup a Subversion mirror

As of version 1.4, Subversion provides an “svnsync” utility that may be used to create a mirror of a repository. It should be used only for read-only mirrors — it will break if any changes are committed in the   target repository that were not made in the source repository. This is primarily useful for backup purposes, or for creating a local mirror  used by clients that have no intention of checking in changes, as it is not a trivial operation to check out from one repository and commit to another and it requires manipulation of the mirror repository.

To create a new Subversion repository that is a mirror of an existing repository, do the following:

Create a new filesystem directory that will be used to hold the mirror, such as:

$ mkdir /mirror/subversion

Use the svnadmin utility to create a new repository within that directory, such as:

$ svnadmin create /mirror/subversion/OpenDS

The mirror repository must be configured to allow revision properties, and it should only allow those changes by the “svnsync”   user, which can be done by creating a “hooks/pre-revprop-change” file
in that repository with the execute permission set and with the
following contents:
#!/bin/sh

if [ "$3" = "guest" ]; then exit 0; fi

echo “Only the guest user may edit revision properties through

svnsync” >&2

exit 1

Initialize the mirror repository using the “svnsync init” command, such as:
svnsync init –username guest file:///mirror/subversion/OpenDS https://opends.dev.java.net/svn/opendsUse the “svnsync sync” command to populate the mirror repository, such as:

svnsync sync file:///mirror/subversion/OpenDS

To keep the mirror up to date, periodically re-issue the above “svnsync sync” command (for example, using a cron job).
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]]> http://blog.eapps.com/newsletters/eapps-update-newsletter-march-2010.html/feed 0 Message to eApps Customers regarding recently crashed server http://blog.eapps.com/general/message-to-eapps-customers-regarding-recently-crashed-server.html http://blog.eapps.com/general/message-to-eapps-customers-regarding-recently-crashed-server.html#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:50:19 +0000 eApps Staff http://blog.eapps.com/?p=396

Dear Valued Customer,

Recently we had an extended outage for the customers on one of our servers. Now that the crisis has passed and we have had time to analyze the root cause of this incident I would like to provide this report.

On February 17th our monitoring system alerted us that a server running Standard class VPS plans was not responding. We immediately investigated why the server was down. The severity of the crash required that we dispatch our on-site data center technicians to gain physical access to the server. We determined that the RAID array had a catastrophic failure and that the data on the array was unrecoverable. Losing data on a RAID array is not a frequent occurrence, but those in our industry know that it does happen. When it does so our recovery process is to restore the VPS containers from nightly backup. We began this process immediately and notified the customers on the server.

This server was using a new backup system that we purchased from a leading vendor in 2009. This system was activated for Standard Class servers in late 2009 and we had been running on the new backup system for several months. This backup software does an excellent job of backing up the servers and provides a high degree of control for managing the backups and selectively restoring files. The backup system also resulted in much higher efficiency of processing when making the backups, resulting in lower load on our production servers. Our plan was to roll this new backup system out to our other types of plans in the future.

When we began restoring the VPS containers from backup, we encountered excruciatingly slow speeds. Prior to deploying the new backup system we performed extensive testing of the restoration process. We found that the restoration speed was about 50% slower than our old method, but we were willing to accept that for two reasons. First, the backup processing side of it was significantly faster than the old method, resulting in less load on the servers, and secondly the vendor promised us that a new version with much faster restore speeds was going to be released soon. We accepted this trade off.

Unfortunately in the real world, the restoration process was not 50% slower, but up to five times slower depending on the number and size of files in the container, and other factors. Our post incident analysis determined that the amount of time and incremental backups taken since the initial seed backup greatly affected the restore times. The restoration process took over 24 hours. In a worst case scenario it would take 4 to 5 hours to restore a server under our previous method. This of course was beyond totally unacceptable. Monitoring during the restore process showed that while the backup server hardware (external FC array, dual quad core cpus, 4Gb of RAM) was showing a load of less than 1, the backups were still taking an exorbitant amount of time. The bottleneck was in the software.

The nightmare didn’t end when we completed the restores. We found out that more than half of the VPS containers that were restored inexplicably had files with their permissions altered. We had never encountered this problem during our pre-implementation testing. When we discovered this we assigned a team comprised of our Chief Technical Officer and other top technical staff to analyze the problem. They devised a solution that used a combination of programming tools and manual effort to fix the problem. This solution was successful due the hard work and perseverance of our staff, but unfortunately took two days to complete.

We have now reverted back to our old, tried and true, backup method and have no plans at this time to implement this new commercial backup system for our other servers. We are engaging this vendor to learn more about the problems we have had with their software.

At this time we would like to again express our deepest apologies to the customers that were impacted by this unfortunate event. A downed server is serious business to us and we appreciate the extreme patience of those customers whose sites were down. We understand that a site outage makes our customers frustrated and upset. A few customers let not only us, but the world, know it. But we believe that our customers have a right to be demanding, and when we do not live up to expectations our company must accept the consequences.

In closing I would like to mention two things. First, our technical staff is seriously engaged in evaluating and testing out a new generation of hosting technologies that we expect to take our service to the next level in terms of performance and reliability. We are setting the bar higher for ourselves and at the proper time we will announce the results of this effort. Secondly, we are blessed by having extremely loyal customers. We are truly grateful for the trust you place in us. We do not take that trust for granted. The people in our company will continue to work as hard as possible to earn the right to be your preferred hosting provider.

Sincerely,
Rick Lingsch
President
eApps Hosting

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/general/message-to-eapps-customers-regarding-recently-crashed-server.html/feed 0 Updated versions of rubygem-rack, mod_rails, & konakart now available. http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-rubygem-rack-mod_rails-konakart-now-available.html http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-rubygem-rack-mod_rails-konakart-now-available.html#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:34:28 +0000 bcoleman http://blog.eapps.com/?p=388 Updated versions of the following applications are now available, all for CentOS 5 plans:

rubygem-rack 1.1.0

mod_rails 2.2.9

Read Release notes here-https://support.eapps.com/release/modrails

konakart 4.2.0.1

Read Release notes here- https://support.eapps.com/release/konakart

For customers that are not on the CentOS 5 operating system plans, contact sales@eapps.com for information on how to take advantage of the latest supported versions.
***** FOLLOW US ON TWITTER *****
http://twitter.com/eapps – Follow this for news, application updates, and exclusive [...]

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-rubygem-rack-mod_rails-konakart-now-available.html/feed 0 eApps Offers Enterprise Email Hosting featuring Zimbra Collaboration Suite http://blog.eapps.com/press-releases/eapps-offers-enterprise-email-hosting-featuring-zimbra-collaboration-suite.html http://blog.eapps.com/press-releases/eapps-offers-enterprise-email-hosting-featuring-zimbra-collaboration-suite.html#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:07:32 +0000 eApps Staff http://blog.eapps.com/?p=380

Norcross, GA, February 11, 2010 — eApps Hosting announces the launch of an Outlook compatible  Enterprise Email and Collaboration service using the highly regarded Zimbra Collaboration Suite. ZCS is a complete messaging and collaboration server that is interoperable with Microsoft Exchange, yet offers many additional features for Enterprise use. ZCS is the most widely-used Linux-based Email, calendaring and collaboration solution with over 55 million users world-wide.


Users have the choice of an award winning webmail user interface for browsers built with the latest Ajax technology, a light weight desktop client that serves as a functional replacement for Outlook, or any of the widely used Email clients. Real-time wireless “over the air” synchronization of user’s Email, calendar, contacts and tasks for Smartphones and PDAs, Palm devices and iPhones is included with the service. BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) support is offered as an add-on for BlackBerry devices.


The Zimbra based eApps Enterprise Email hosting service is an outsourced solution that allows organizations to reduce IT spending and avoid Microsoft server proliferation. eApps Enterprise Email customers will benefit from:

  • Seamless Outlook Compatibility - Provides the Outlook experience users expect with push Email, PIM, group calendaring, free/busy services, public folders, delegation, and more.

  • Over the Air Mobile Synchronization - Real time synchronization of Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks is included at no extra cost for Smartphones and PDA devices, such as the Palm Treo / Centro, and Apple iPhone. BlackBerry’s BES service is available as an add-on.

  • Lower Email operating costs - Cost-effective licensing and low-cost virtualization technology results in a high value solution at a lower cost than competing Microsoft based services.

  • A Stable Email Environment and Satisfied Users - Keeps Email flowing and reduces technical challenges with a stable managed outsourced solution.

  • Extensibility – The open architecture of ZCS allows for integration and enhancements. Zimlets, a mechanism for integrating third party systems and content as well as creating “mash-up” user interfaces, provide a powerful way to incorporate business processes into the Email client.

  • Postini SPAM/Virus protection - Each plan comes with free SPAM and Virus Email protection by Postini, a highly effective and widely used filtering service.

  • Best-of-Class 24/7 support - Free Technical Support is available 24 hours a day via Phone, Skype, Email, web form, and chat.

eApps is offering the Enterprise Class Email service on a low cost per user per month basis with full administrative control. Customer administrators have the ability to add and remove users and perform administrative tasks using a web interface. The eApps Enterprise Email service includes continuous automatic system backups, Postini SPAM/Virus filtering, and a 30 day money-back guarantee. eApps also offers custom private deployments using advanced VPS technology for large scale environments or those with complex requirements.

For additional information contact eApps Hosting at +1-770-448-2100 USA or +44 (0)20 8133 6940 UK or visit http://www.eApps.com for on-line chat assistance.

eApps Hosting is a value-added provider of managed hosting services for businesses and organizations, serving more than 5000 customers, hosting over 25,000 domains in more than 150 countries. eApps Hosting offers a state of the art Linux hosting platform using 64-Bit Virtual Private Server technology by for commercial-grade web sites, web applications and Email services with highly personalized, responsive service. Zimbra is a product of Yahoo!. Exchange and Outlook are products of Microsoft Corporation. Postini is a service of Google. Skype is a service of Skype Technologies S.A.

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/press-releases/eapps-offers-enterprise-email-hosting-featuring-zimbra-collaboration-suite.html/feed 0 Info on careers with eApps Hosting http://blog.eapps.com/careers/info-on-careers-with-eapps-hosting.html http://blog.eapps.com/careers/info-on-careers-with-eapps-hosting.html#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:20:04 +0000 eApps Staff http://blog.eapps.com/?p=375 eApps Hosting is always looking for highly effective people to join our team.

We have no specific openings at this time. However, if you have experience in technical support, system administration, or marketing in the hosting industry please send your resume to sales@eapps.com, for future consideration.

Thank you

eApps Hosting

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/careers/info-on-careers-with-eapps-hosting.html/feed 0 Updated versions of Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 are available http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-drupal-5-and-drupal-6-are-available.html http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-drupal-5-and-drupal-6-are-available.html#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:38:53 +0000 eApps Staff http://blog.eapps.com/?p=372 Updated versions of the following applications are now available, all for CentOS 5 plans:

Drupal 5.21
Drupal 6.15

For customers that are not on the CentOS 5 operating system plans, contact sales@eapps.com for information on how to take advantage of the latest supported versions.

***** FOLLOW US ON TWITTER *****

http://twitter.com/eapps – Follow this for news, application updates, and exclusive special offers and promotions.
http://twitter.com/eapps_status – Follow this for status reports related to service issues or outages.

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-drupal-5-and-drupal-6-are-available.html/feed 0 Featured Solution: O3Spaces® for Document Management and Collaboration http://blog.eapps.com/articles/featured-solution-o3spaces%c2%ae-for-document-management-and-collaboration.html http://blog.eapps.com/articles/featured-solution-o3spaces%c2%ae-for-document-management-and-collaboration.html#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:25:29 +0000 eApps Staff http://blog.eapps.com/?p=368 All companies, large and small face the challenge of managing and using electronic documents. Joe Ferrazano, President of OpenSystems21, an eApps Hosting customer and expert in document management systems states that “users have two categories of products – Enterprise-Wide (i.e. Novell GroupWise, MS SharePoint) and SaaS (i.e. Box.net, Google Docs and Alfresco). However, there is an unmet need in the small to medium-sized market for hosted document management and collaboration software that provide business critical capabilities but are also easy to evaluate, fast-to-deploy, low-cost (comparatively), and flexible. SMB users are stuck. Either they pay up and adopt a SharePoint solution, they settle for basic shared file functionality or they do nothing.”

To meet this challenge, Joe endorses O3Spaces, a full featured document management and collaboration system designed to significantly improve the effectiveness of virtual teams, without breaking the bank. Some key points in favor of O3Spaces are as follows:

  • It’s a high-end product with a robust architecture capable of supporting several thousand active users
  • Web 2.0 cross-platform compatible – MAC, Windows, Linux, OpenOffice, MS Office. Any file type can be managed
  • Rules can be added to facilitate a complex work flow
  • No need for dedicated index servers or application servers. The VPS works great
  • Easy-to-use. There are client plug-ins for email and Office applications, including the Zimbra Enterprise Email service offered by eApps Hosting
  • Costs about the same as Google Docs or Box.net but far more capable

Contact sales@eapps.com for more information. We will be pleased to introduce you to OpenSystems21 for more information about how to succeed with O3Spaces.

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/articles/featured-solution-o3spaces%c2%ae-for-document-management-and-collaboration.html/feed 0 Updated versions of Joomla, Zend Framework, Proftpd, Java 6 are available http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-joomla-zend-framework-proftpd-java-6-are-available.html http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-joomla-zend-framework-proftpd-java-6-are-available.html#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:06:52 +0000 eApps Staff http://www.eapps.com/wp/?p=363 Updated versions of the following applications are now available, all for CentOS 5 plans:

Joomla 1.5.15
Zend Framework 1.9.6
Proftpd 1.3.2c
Java 1.6.0_17

For customers that are not on the CentOS 5 operating system plans, contact sales@eapps.com for information on how to take advantage of the latest supported versions.

***** FOLLOW US ON TWITTER *****

http://twitter.com/eapps – Follow this for news, application updates, and exclusive special offers and promotions.
http://twitter.com/eapps_status – Follow this for status reports related to service issues or outages.

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/news/updated-versions-of-joomla-zend-framework-proftpd-java-6-are-available.html/feed 0 eApps Plan Comparison Tool helps you choose the right service http://blog.eapps.com/articles/eapps-plan-comparison-tool-helps-you-choose-the-right-service.html http://blog.eapps.com/articles/eapps-plan-comparison-tool-helps-you-choose-the-right-service.html#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:46:55 +0000 eApps Staff http://www.eapps.com/wp/?p=361 One of the most frequently asked questions we get in the eApps Sales department is “How do I know which plan best fits my needs?”

When we built the new eapps.com web site, we included a feature called the  “Plan Comparison Tool.” Our goal was to create a powerful tool, but one that gave the user full control and a speedy way to see relevant plans. We specifically did not want to offer a wizard because we felt strongly that our site visitors should not be lead down an increasingly narrow path. Our vision of the Plan Comparison Tool was to recommend respective plans based on user needs but also give the user an easy way to jump directly to specific plans or groups of plans.

Based on initial feedback, we feel that we have accomplished our objective. Since this is such a new feature, we are eagerly seeking feedback on how to improve it. So please pass along any comments you have to sales@eapps.com.

***** FOLLOW US ON TWITTER *****

http://twitter.com/eapps – Follow this for news, application updates, and exclusive special offers and promotions.
http://twitter.com/eapps_status – Follow this for status reports related to service issues or outages.

]]> http://blog.eapps.com/articles/eapps-plan-comparison-tool-helps-you-choose-the-right-service.html/feed 0 eAPPS upDATE January, 2010 Newsletter http://blog.eapps.com/newsletters/eapps-update-january-2010-newsletter.html http://blog.eapps.com/newsletters/eapps-update-january-2010-newsletter.html#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:38:13 +0000 eApps Staff http://www.eapps.com/wp/?p=355
eAPPS upDATE NewsletterJanuary 2010 – Happy New Year! from eApps Hosting
IN THIS ISSUE:
eApps Hosting
News: New eapps.com site launched!

More News: eApps BlackBerry Service in Beta mode

Promotion: Free Trial for Email Archive Service
Best Post Winner: Community Forum Monthly Best Post Winner!
Webinar: Enterprise Email featuring Zimbra, with Mobile Support and Email Archiving
Updated/New Applications: Updates: Joomla, Zend Framework, Proftpd, Java 1.6; New: GlassFish v3

Article: 9 Businesses You can Start in Your Pajamas in 2010, by Inc.com
Tech Tip: Preventing security vulnerabilities in your application
News: New eapps.com site launched!

On Monday, January 4 we launched a new web site.  The new eapps.com has a fresh look and makes it easier for visitors to find information about our company and services. Some of the many key improvements are:

  • Services and Products – a complete list of products and services offered and supported can be found in the Services menu
  • Supported Applications – a complete list of the available and supported applications, with versions, can be found on the Applications Index page
  • News and Articles – an integrated blog, using WordPress, allows us to quickly publish useful and relevant information for you
  • Details on Plans and Services – our new Plan Comparison Tool provides a powerful and easy way to analyze and compare details of our hosting plans
We hope you can take a few minutes to browse the new eapps.com. We welcome any feedback you have at sales@eapps.com. We are pleased to give a hat tip to MoiaGroup, a long time eApps customer that provided extensive site design and graphics development services on the project.
More News: eApps Blackberry BES service in Beta mode

In the last issue of eAPPS upDATE we announced our acceptance into RIM’s BlackBerry Alliance Program. We are pleased to announce that we have now launched our BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) service for users of our Enterprise Email service.
The BES add-on service automatically encrypts email messages sent to and received from other users running on the world-wide BES network and allows for over-the-air synchronization of email, calendar, contacts, and tasks between the mobile user’s hand-held BlackBerry device and desktop. The service is running as a Beta program initially, and has active customers using the service successfully. There is no cost for the BES add-on service during the Beta phase. For information about the service, or to request participation, please contact sales@eapps.com.
Promotion: Free trial for eApps Email archive service

The eApps Enterprise Email service has an add-on feature for archiving all inbound and outbound messages. The service is very flexible. Archiving can be activated selectively for one or more Email users and provides several options for the storage location of the archived messages. The add-on is priced at $1.95 per user per month.From now until the end of February, current and new users of the eApps Enterprise Email service can add the Archiving feature for any or all Email users at no cost. Users of the add-on Archive service would not be billed until April 1! To take advantage of this exciting offer, contact sales@eapps.com.
Best Post Winner:Each month we select at least one outstanding post on our Community Forum and award a $50 credit to the account of the selected contributor(s)! The winner for the January newsletter is  . . .

Override /icons per host – tudaen

Please stop by the forum and check it out, ask a question, offer a suggestion, or answer a question. You might just win a $50 credit in February!

Webinar: Enterprise Email featuring Zimbra, with Mobile Support and Email Archiving

The Exchange/Outlook compatible eApps Enterprise Email service is one of the fastest growing services that we have launched. The service unleashes the full power of your mobile device through over-the-air synchronization of Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks between your hand-held and desktop.
For more information about Zimbra, check out this short, informative video tour. You can also sign up for an informative 30 minute Enterprise Email Webinar on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 10AM Eastern or 3PM Eastern (GMT-5).
Updated/New Applications:Updated
versions of the following applications are now available, all for
CentOS 5 plans:

  • Joomla 1.5.15
  • Zend Framework 1.9.6
  • Proftpd 1.3.2
  • Java 1.6.0_17

New application, for all CentOS 5 plans: GlassFish v3 (major new version!)

If you are interested in moving to the new CentOS 5 environment, please contact billing@eapps.com.

Article: 9 Businesses You Can Start in Your Pajamas in 2010, by Inc.com

Inc provides a magazine and web site devoted to helping business owners start, operate and grow their businesses more successfully. Throughout the current recession, Inc has increased its emphasis on delivering advice, tools, and services for entrepreneurial start-ups. These resources have been useful for many people in their efforts to recover from a job loss or improve the ability to ensure that their new business succeeds in a challenging economy.
An article on Inc.com titled “9 Businesses You Can Start In Your Pajamas” takes a look at nine real life start-ups of home-based businesses in hot industries. The examples cover a wide range of disciplines including consulting, franchising, clothing manufacturing, marketing, personal fitness, travel and more.
Check it out!

Tech Tip: Preventing security vulnerabilities in your application

In our previous newsletter we offered a tip on Tuning Apache’s MaxClient setting . This month we offer the following tip.
Preventing security vulnerabilities in your application
When we started offering Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting services back in 2003, we knew one of the key advantages was the power and control our customers would have. A true VPS of course, means providing root access. Of course, “with great power comes great responsibility.”  One of the first things we did was ensure that all passwords pass the cracklib test. This single measure dramatically reduced the incidence of passwords being compromised. We also formulated important processes and policies which are recapped as follows:
  • eApps will implement state of the art systems to aid in the detection of, and protection against, threats
  • eApps will strive to provide secure versions of all applications that we offer and support
  • Customers will ultimately assume responsibility for the security of applications that they build or upload
  • eApps will reserve the right to take action as appropriate, based on severity and risk, to deal with any breach in a customer’s application

Security breaches are serious. Even though we do everything we can to prevent and protect the thousands of servers running on our network, we expect our customers to be our partner in helping to combat this threat. To help you, our customer, better manage your responsibility to be a “good citizen” of the eApps network, here are some tips.

  1. Use Secure Coding Practices – resources abound on the web. Search for “secure coding practices” for relevant information
  2. Verify that your app is secure – for third party applications, the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures organization provides resources and a link to the US Government National Vulnerabilities Database
  3. Follow your app provider – each application provider has information on vulnerabilities via their web site or community. In many cases you can subscribe to a notification service that will alert you when vulnerabilities are discovered.
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