All posts by Oban

About Oban

Oban manages the Brownrice Internet staff, keeps the network humming, and chases his wife and twin boys around during his time off.

Oban Talks Hackers 2011 New Mexico Tour

Systems Administration, Web Development, Web Hosting
A web site owner

The “Oban Talks Hackers 2011 New Mexico Tour” continues this Friday, June 3rd at the prestigious Hotel don Fernando de Taos at 11:30am.

Its $15 for Taos Chamber of Commerce members to attend and $20 for non-members.  Note that this loot doesn’t line my pockets, it goes toward the fantastic hotel lunch that you’ll be served while I dissect how hackers will get into your site and make your life miserable.  The details about the talk are here: http://www.chambermaster.com/directory/jsp/events/EventPage.jsp?ccid=80&eventid=8511

Please RSVP to Steve Fuhlendorf at steve@taoschamber.com.

If enough people RSVP we’ll do a live webcast of this event as well.  i.e.  It’ll be blacked out just like a big sporting event unless it sells out locally, so RSVP!

Thanks,

~ Oban

PowerDNS migration creates bug ripples

Systems Administration, Web Hosting
Ripples

There is nothing more tricky and fraught with potential problems than DNS upgrades.

This week we migrated from BIND to PowerDNS.  Prior to the migration we dutifully tested PowerDNS on different servers, in different configurations, consulted other sysadmins who were running PowerDNS, and found all tests to be working flawlessly.

So we went ahead and upgraded all three of our DNS servers from BIND to PowerDNS, and watched…

Continue reading PowerDNS migration creates bug ripples →

Not Enough Nines!

Systems Administration
Happy Geek

For the second year in a row we experienced something like 99.9999999999999999999 network uptime.  Yes, we had a server have issues here and there, but never for more than a few minutes.  And one of our upstream pipes went down once or twice, but it never affected our users as the BGP routing switched traffic to our other pipes exactly as it was supposed to.

I’m knocking on wood as I type this – Two and a half years since our last major outage makes me a happy Systems Administrator.

The most secure shared hosting – Brownrice!

Systems Administration, Web Development, Web Hosting
Hacked!

Until recently our shared hosting servers suffered from some of the same vulnerabilities that many of the volume-based hosting providers do.  Namely, if one site on a shared server was hacked it was possible for the hacker to deface other sites on the same server that had files or directories with loose permissions.  I.e. 777 permissions.

Yep, even if you diligently keep your site and code up-to-date your site could still be hacked because someone else’s site on the same server was hacked.

Ugly, eh?

Read about this nastiness in action at Network Solutions, Bluehost, Dreamhost, and GoDaddy here: Continue reading The most secure shared hosting – Brownrice! →

Eight-core server for $168 per month

Systems Administration
Ready to roll!

We’ve got a dual cpu, quad-core server available on our racks right now that could be yours for $168.00 per month.  Yep, that’s 8 CPU’s and 4GB of RAM powering 1 Terabyte of drive space in a 3ware RAID 5 array.  This is a great deal.

The keys could be yours today if you’ve got the game to tame this beast.

And if you don’t have the game we can manage it for you starting at $99 per month.

No contract required, just a credit card.

Questions?  Contact us directly:  info@brownrice.com or 575-758-4175

~ Oban

Web site security for the common web site owner

Systems Administration

As a small hosting, systems administration, and programing company we’re on the front lines of Internet security. In the old days (oh, say pre 2003) our security focus was on upgrading and protecting the server’s operating system. Hackers would probe servers, find vulnerable applications (Apache, portmap, sendmail, etc.) and compromise the machine in the hopes of gaining root access.

Not any more.  Hackers could care less about the OS.  They attack web sites since a compromised web site provides them nearly everything they need; the ability to send spam, find user data, and attack other computers.  And hackers tend to reach for the low hanging fruit – web sites that run out-of-date open source software such as Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal (among a host of others.)

Continue reading Web site security for the common web site owner →

Easy, big-time scalable web hosting: Clustered hosting

Systems Administration
Hosting Cluster Servers
Many machines serving few sites!

What is Clustered Hosting you say?  It’s the top-of-the-line shared hosting service that we provide to clients that need high scalability (i.e. those with high traffic sites that a dedicated server might not be able to handle) but who don’t have the budget or technical experience to set up their own scalable server solution.

In a normal, shared hosting scenario ($8.95 per month), we place up to 200 web sites on a single server.  Though this may seem like a lot of sites on one server it’s actually far fewer than large, volume-based providers typically place on a theirs.  With Clustered Hosting ($99 per month) we currently have seven servers that host ten web sites.  Yep, that’s less than 1.5 web sites for each server.

Continue reading Easy, big-time scalable web hosting: Clustered hosting →