Nitty Gritty Tech Talk 1

We finally got our server today. We ultimatly decided on peer1 - serverbeach servers because of the good feedback we have heard along with the *excellent* deal we were able to get. Serverbeach provided me with the following configuration

• Dual Core Dual Processor 2.0 ghz Xeon 4mb l2 cache Cpu's
• 2 Gig of Ram
• 1 TB of disk split into 2 x 500 GB's
• 5TB of data transfer
• 10 GB ftp server backup

All for a great price of $190.40 USD per month, this is also because we paid upfront for the year. So for the next year i'll be nicley housed and sitting sweet @ the beach !:)

I would like to point out that the initial representative that talked me through the sale was extermely helpful (thanks mr John spears from serverbeach) . He provided me with a great deal and assisted with applying my discount as i completed the purchase

As usual (like almost everything) there was some slight mishaps but they are now sorted. This is what happened.

• Credit Card got billed incorrectly the first time so it looked like 2 deductions were made (which kind of stressed me out) resulting in lots of money not being accessible whilst awaiting for the rollback to occur
• Initial login didnt work, so i couldnt get into the server and begin setup

UPDATE: All issues have now been addressed ...

After i had acceess to the server i configured the DNS hosting that i purchased to point my main domain and subdomains to the new provisioned server. I was worried it was going to take a while however the redirection was very quick (it was under 5 minutes. last time redirection took 4 hours!). I also configured putty on my development machines and laptops so i can tunnel to the server and access the applications without opening ports to the outside world. I will write a small article on how i did this later as it is a very useful way to secure access when you dont have a firewall or VPN configured)

Pending tasks for the server configuration include

• IP tables and blocking of non required ports
• Lock down of users accounts
• Configuring the mail server to send outbound emails
• Disablinng linux processes that dont need to be running
• Formatting the secondary drive
• Creating the softlinks that are required
• Installing and tuning the latest version of the mysql database
• Installing and configuring lighttpd
• Installing the application and testing performance
• LAUNCH !!!

So ... there are a few tasks but we are getting there. Currently we are still in stealth mode, however just about to start doing the user testing to ensure that all the functionality is understood by users who are not so tech savvy (and make ammendments if need be). Also we are starting this testing to identify potential additional features to consider or revoke.

Mark also completed new versions of the templates and they are looking extremely *hot*, cant wait to get them in and test it all out.

Thats it for now, we are abit behind and there is a deadline we need to meet, we feel there are events right now that would really allow our company to piggyback which would in turn maximize the launch impact ... soooo ... back to coding & configuring :)