But the technology market is different, and in the last three years we’ve seen it take on a whole new dimension where Windows is no longer the obvious operating system choice, and where comparisons are increasingly being made with IBM.  On tablets, a market that Microsoft invented back around 2003 they’re going to have a real fight on their hands, and in computing generally it’s no longer clear what devices and form factors we’ll be using in even five or ten years time.  What is obvious however is that the traditional desktop PC is well and truly on its way out.  Lastly new operating systems such as iOS, Android and WebOS have blown away the notion that people will resist a learning curve on new devices.  So what would the world be like if Microsoft stopped making Windows desktop and server products?

First of all it’s not very likely, Microsoft would probably drop Windows products last of all with their expensive research and development centres and other products such as Xbox falling by the wayside first, so there’s no need to worry in the short term.  Windows 8 is a big gamble though and if it fails then Microsoft will either have to backtrack with Windows 9, pull an immensely impressive rabbit out of their hat or face the consequences of poor decision-making.

There has already been talk that Google would like to bring Android to the desktop.  HP said the same of WebOS, which they are still developing or at least maintaining, and could put extra resources back into quickly.  Ubuntu Linux is now at least as friendly as Windows XP was, only the lack of big name software for the platform is holding it back now and Apple’s OS X is becoming more like iOS with every release.  So it’s already clear that there’s plenty of choice.

We might also expect an open-source upstart operating system to appear too and it might even be a reinvigorated WebOS.  Companies such as the Mozilla Foundation might see an opportunity as their Firefox browser begins to fade in popularity, and this is just one of several places where a new operating system might emerge.

In the business space, some of the GNU/Linux companies including Red Hat, might jump in with versions that will run Windows programs on the desktop.  This isn’t new and has already been done with operating systems such as Lindows (later renamed Linspire).  This product still exists today and could prove popular with businesses if Windows 8 and Windows 9 fail to deliver the working experience that they need.

Again it’s very unlikely that Microsoft will cease development of Windows in the next twenty years at least.  If they’d have done it even five years ago there would have been almost no alternatives to choose from.  Should they do it now though businesses and consumers would probably just shrug their shoulders and quietly move on to the next big thing.

When you first install Microsoft Windows 7, IIS is not turned on by default, so in other words you cannot begin to publish websites straight out the box. It is however, easy to turn on, and this is how you do it.

Firstly, you need to go to your start menu, and click on Control Panel. This is an area where you can alter settings on your computer, and add or remove specific programs. Find the section called “programs” and click on it. This should bring up a new window with a list of selections. One of these options will be to “turn windows features on or off”. Find this and click on it to go to the next screen.

The next screen will be a long list of windows features that are already a part of Windows. Some will be turned on already by default, and some will be switched off. You need to find the section called “Internet Information Services” and click on the plus symbol next to it. IIS has many parts to it, and by expanding this section, you are revealing all those parts so you can choose which ones to turn on.

You will see three sections, FTP Server, Web Management Tools, and World Wide Web Services. Each one will have multiple options inside. The main one will be under Web Management Tools, and will be called “IIS Management Console”. You need to check this box. This effectively turns on IIS on your system. While you’re in this section, you can also check any other features you think you may need. For example if you want to set up your computer as an FTP server, you can check the boxes related to that. FTP will allow you to give access to some of your files to friends and work colleagues by giving them login permissions. The will then be able to download files you give access to directly from the Internet. They may also be able to upload files directly to you computer if you give them access to do so. FTP can be a very useful feature.

However, now that you’ve checked the “IIS Management Console”, all you need to do is click on “apply”. You may then need to reboot your computer, as Windows will need to make certain changes in order to activate the new feature. Once you’ve rebooted, you should be able to go to the address http://localhost/ on your computer in order to access IIS. Of course you’ll need to set up the system and then design your web-pages, but for now you have successfully set up your very own web server.

Facebook has been working on their next generation data center for over a year, and managed to improve its efficiency by 38% while cutting down building and running costs by 24%. Even better, they have decided to share the information with everyone in form of the Open Compute Project.

Servers

Both technical specifications and CAD drawings have been released. The servers are “vanity free, with no extra plastic and significantly fewer parts than traditional servers”.

• Chassis: Completely screwless, vanity free with no sharp corners designed for servicing with quick release components.
• AMD Motherboards: Dual Opteron with 24 DIMM slots, custom designed, many features removed to reduce power consumption.
• Intel Motherboards: Dual Intel Xeon with 18 DIMM slots, custom designed, many features removed to reduce power consumption.
• Power Supply: State of the art power supply that is hot swap capable. 90+ efficiency

Data Centers

Cad drawings and technical specifications are available for the custom made data center components as well.

• Electrical: High-efficiency electrical system with a “48VDC UPS system integrated with a 277VAC server power supply”.
• Mechanical: High-efficient cooling system that uses “100% airside economization with an evaporative cooling system”.
• Battery Cabinet: Backup power at “48 volt DC nominal to a pair of triplet racks in the event of an AC outage in the data center. The batteries are a sealed 12.5 volt DC nominal, high-rate discharge type with a 10 year lifespan, commonly used in UPS systems, connected in a series of four elements for each group (called a string), for a nominal string voltage of 48VDC. There are five strings in parallel in the cabinet.”
• Triple Racks: 90 servers have place in a triplet with one battery pair sitting in between a pair of triplets.

Facebook has revealed information about the energy efficiency of the new data center. The energy consumption per unit of computer power dropped by 38% in the new data center. The PUE, power usage effectiveness, is 1.073 which basically means that 92.7% of the energy reaches the Open Compute servers. The industry standard, according to Facebook’s information sits at 1.5 PUE which means that only 50% of the energy reaches the servers.

Interested users can visit the Open Compute website for detailed information, and the aforementioned technical specifications and CAD drawings.

Last week however thousands of websites running Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005 were hit by cyber-criminals with an attack designed to circumvent their security. The attack injected code into the servers that meant every visitor thereafter would be greeted by a message saying their computer had been infected by hundreds of viruses.

This of course wasn’t true, it was a way to trick people into paying for a downloadable trojan that would clean the virus problem but would really install botnets, keyloggers and more onto your PC. Worse, in paying for this software, the criminals would then have your credit card details… or more!

This attack could have compromised 28,000 websites according to some reports and is frightening news, especially for all those of us with personal data held by web companies A, B and C.

This brings me back to SSL. If we want to shop online then for over a decade our web browsers have been able to warn us whether or not the information we send is being encrypted, and if that website is deemed safe for financial transactions or for the exchange of personal data.

Then we have companies including Microsoft and Google maintaining blacklists of unsafe websites, shared between them and anti-virus companies, to warn us further of malware-ridden websites by turning our browsers red.

What we don’t have are warnings about how secure the underlying technology on a website is, and whether we can trust that.

There’s no reason why this would be hard to do either, an encrypted file located on the server (probably with the SSL certificate) that could be read by the browser and certificated by a third-party would be all that would be needed, after all this is tried and tested technology. This file would contain informaton about the hosting on that computer, what operating system version it runs and the versions of what other technologies it is using.

In the cases outlined above a system such as this would have warned visitors to the websites that the sites they were visiting and trusting their personal information to, were using older technologies that, even when properly patched, could be vulnerable to attack.

Indeed many people who already know about such things, might choose to steer clear of all servers running Windows in favour of those running Linux and MySql.

It truly amazes me that we don’t already have a system such as this but I’m even more stunned that so many companies and hosting firms are using technologies on their website that are almost a decade old. So come on people, agree a standard by which, within a small margin of error, we can see a traffic light of how secure our personal information will be on a website before we hand it over.

Whatever it is they allow the developer or user to create, modify or offer contents locally in a safe environment. We have covered quite a few free server applications in the past including Windows File Server, the Apache server Wampserver and the Home Web Server

All had in common that they were relatively easy to setup and configure. Fortitude HTTP is another web server for the Windows operating system that makes a web server available on Windows after installation.

The web server is immediately functional after installation and it is possible to connect to example websites by pointing the web browser to http://localhost/.

fortitude http web server

The http management console is used to configure the web server locally. It displays the hosted websites, their settings and global settings in the left sidebar.

host website

New websites can be added easily by right-clicking the websites entry and selecting Configure from the context menu. Here it is possible to delete, add and edit websites.

A name, port, root directory and description can be added in the web site creation menu. Each website can be configured individually from a maximum connection limit and buffer size to the server admin email, root login details, scripting engines (supported are python, php, perl and vbs), SSI and CGI.

The global settings are identical to the local ones, with the difference that they are applicable for all web servers.

The only thing missing is a database server like MySQL which needs to be installed separately.

Fortitude HTTP is an easy to setup web server for Windows. The lack of MySQL or a comparable database makes is negative, everything else is there to get started developing or maintaining websites right away.

The web server is available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Dave Berkowitz, a Microsoft senior communication manager revealed that Vail has been improved in the four key areas “Extending media streaming outside the home or office”, “Multi-PC backup and restore”, “Simplified setup and user experience” and “Expanded development and customization tools for partners”.

Microsoft’s goal is to receive as much user feedback as possible about the Windows Home Server release

Berkowitz explained that Windows Home Server has been moved to “a new underlying server platform that will only run as a 64-bit OS” indicating that it is not recommended to run the server “on a 32-bit PC or existing Windows Home Server systems (even 64-bit Home Server systems) because there may be compatibility issues with some OEM drivers”.

He urged users to install the Home Server beta on a secondary computer as they might be experiencing a number of problems otherwise including “the inability to run WHS v1 add-in applications”. Berkowitz added that the “installation of the Vail OS on a PC will [..] require users to wipe all data from that PC or device.”

Windows Home Server Vail has relatively modest hardware requirements. A 1.4 Ghz 64-bit cpu, 1 Gigabyte of computer memory and at least a 160 Gigabyte hard drive are the minimum requirements to install and use Vail.

A Windows Home Server software development kit is available which can be downloaded from Microsoft Connect as well.

“We’re not ready to discuss delivery dates yet”, Berkowitz added

“So after you check out all of the great features in this public beta, you’ll probably want to know when the final version of Vail is going to ship. We’re not ready to discuss delivery dates yet. We want to ship the best possible product, and as that old commercial went (sort of), ‘we will ship no Windows Home Server before it’s time’,” Berkowitz added.

The general consensus is to not panic if the rankings did not take a dive in the last couple weeks. Google, as always, is not revealing most of the information that webmasters need to analyze the new situation. It is not clear how the site speed is calculated only that several factors are used to calculate it.

Webmasters do have options to speed up their websites and one of these options is a content distribution network. Most websites are hosted on one server (alone or with other websites, does not really matter). The geographic location of that server is one factor that determines the time it takes for visitors to display the website in their browsers. This is usually faster for users in the same country and slower for users from other continents.

A CDN counters this by providing access to the contents from several servers in different locations in the world. Ghacks for instance is hosted in the USA. US citizens, Canadians and Mexicans can retrieve elements from the website faster than users from Europe or Australia. The content distribution network uses servers in Europe and Asia to speed up site access for users from those continents.

We have just enabled a CDN here at Ghacks and would like to ask anyone to report problems and errors (and positive messages as well) so that we can find bugs and problems if they should exist.

Webmasters who are interested in a how to setup a cdn are also welcome to voice their opinion.

OneHTTPD is a basic file server that is available for Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The server has a size of less than 70 Kilobytes. It can be configured from the command line or by dragging and dropping a directory on the executable in Windows.

The basic command to start the file server is onehttpd directory with directory being a locally accessible folder. Parameters are provided to change the port the server is listening on and the level of status messages that are displayed in the command line window. OneHTTPD can be used to run a file server in less than a minute which is the greatest strength of the application.

It lacks several features like user authorization or access filters that most users might require from their file server. Windows users with those requirements might want to take a look at HTTP File Server which supports authentication. OneHTTPD Server can be downloaded from the project page at Google Code.

But for those who only need to monitor a few devices, configuring Nagios to do so is actually quite simple. In this article I am going to show you a few configurations to handle and then how to add devices and checks for your installation.

Post-install configurations and plugins

Before you get busy setting up devices for Nagios to monitor, you should first install some extra plugins for the system. Open up Synaptic, search for “nagios” (no quotes), mark nagios-plugins-extra for installation, and click Apply to install. Once that is done you will already have more functionality with Nagios.

Now let’s take care of a couple of configurations. The first is in the /etc/nagios3/conf.d directory. The file is called contacts_nagios2.cfg. In this file you will configure who is to receive the email alerts. The line to set this configuration is:

email    root@localhost

You will want to change that email address. That is it for this configuration file. Now in order for Nagios to be able to send out alerts via email, the machine housing Nagios has to be able to send those alerts out. You can check that by using the mail command like so:

mail email@address -s TEST

Where email@address is an actual address you can use for testing.

Once you enter that line, hit Enter and then type some random text. When you’re done typing hit <Ctrl>d and then Enter. The mail should send away. If not you will have to troubleshoot your mail server (beyond the scope of this tutorial).

Add a device

Figure 1

Now for the good stuff. We are going to add a device to Nagios. The device we will add is a Windows XP desktop to monitor. Within the /etc/nagios3/conf.d directory you will see a number of .cfg files. These are the files Nagios uses to dictate what is see and how it acts upon what it see. For every device you want to use, I find it best to add a .cfg file. So let’s create the file /etc/nagios3/conf.d/windows_xp.cfg. The contents of this fill will look like what you see in Figure 1.

As you can see there are a few directives here. The directives are as follows:

• check_command – The command used to check the status of the device.
• max_check_attempts – How many times will Nagios retry the status check.
• check_period – How often are the checks made.
• process_perf_data – Enable the processing of performance data.
• retain_nonstatus_information – Enable the retention of non-status information across reboots.
• notification_interval – How often are notifications sent to inform the administrator this host is not okay.
• notification_period – How often are notifications sent out.
• notification_options – The options shown are w – send notifications on “warning” state, u – send notifications on “unknown” state, and “r” – send notifications when a service stops flapping (when a service changes frequently).

NOTE: Depending upon the version of Nagios you have installed the notification_options will be different. Some instances will not accept the “w” option. If you get an error, exchange “w” with “d” (for down).

As you can see there are configuration options that will be specific to your devices and networking topology (host_name and address are examples). Once you have created this file save it and restart Nagios with the command sudo /etc/init.d/nagios3 restart command. Now take a look at your Nagios page and you will see the new device you just added.

Final thoughts

Someday someone will come up with an automated way to detect devices in Nagios. Until then we are relegated to adding them using this means. Does that mean you should shy away from Nagios? Not at all. Nagios is a powerful tool ready to help network administrators keep tabs on their network devices.

In this article I will show you how to quickly get Nagios up and running. In no time you will have Nagios up and running and monitoring your network.

Features of Nagios

Before we get to the installation, let’s take a look at the features of Nagios. Nagios can:

• Monitor network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
• Monitor host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.)
• Allow for simple plugin design
• Do parallelized service checks
• Define a network host hierarchy using
• Contact administrators when service or host problems occur
• Define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
• Automatd log file rotation
• Support the implementation of redundant monitoring hosts
• Offer an optional web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc

Sold yet? You should be, especially considering this tool is free and open source! Now, let’s get on with the installation.

Installation

Follow these simple steps to installing Nagios:

1. Fire up Synaptic.
2. Search for “nagios” (no quotes)
3. Mark nagios3 for installation (this will also pick up all of the dependencies)
4. Click Apply to install

During the installation you will be asked for an administrator password. This will be the password for the nagiosadmin user that will have access to the web interface. Once the installation is complete, you need to run a check to make sure everything is okay. The command for this check is:

sudo nagios3 -v /etc/nagios3/nagios.cfg

When this command runs you will see something like:

Nagios 3.0.2
Copyright (c) 1999-2008 Ethan Galstad (http://www.nagios.org)
Last Modified: 05-19-2008
License: GPL

Reading configuration data…

Running pre-flight check on configuration data…

Checking services…
Checked 7 services.
Checking hosts…
Checked 2 hosts.
Checking host groups…
Checked 5 host groups.
Checking service groups…
Checked 0 service groups.
Checking contacts…
Checked 1 contacts.
Checking contact groups…
Checked 1 contact groups.
Checking service escalations…
Checked 0 service escalations.
Checking service dependencies…
Checked 0 service dependencies.
Checking host escalations…
Checked 0 host escalations.
Checking host dependencies…
Checked 0 host dependencies.
Checking commands…
Checked 142 commands.
Checking time periods…
Checked 4 time periods.
Checking for circular paths between hosts…
Checking for circular host and service dependencies…
Checking global event handlers…
Checking obsessive compulsive processor commands…
Checking misc settings…

Total Warnings: 0
Total Errors:   0

With the results giving 0 errors and 0 warnings, you are ready to log in.

Logging in

Figure 1

Fire up your web browser and point it to http://IP_TO_SERVER/nagios3 at which point you will be asked for login credentials. Remember that password you gave during installation? That is the password you will use to login (with the user nagiosadmin).

When you log in you will be greeted with the Nagios welcome screen (see Figure 1), at which point you are ready to start monitoring.

Final thoughts

Wasn’t so bad was it? And you though Nagios was impossible to install. Fortunately it’s not. And even more fortunately is how powerful Nagios is. You will be blown away at how useful this tool is.

Every advertising company runs an ad server and it is not usually necessary to run another ad server to manage the ads on websites. An ad server on the other hand has several advantages (and some disadvantages) over using no ad server.

If you look at most websites you will notice that ads are usually displayed without an ad server in the background. All the webmaster has to do is to copy and paste the ad tags that are supplied by the advertising company on the website or pages the ads should be displayed.

That’s usually it for cpc based advertising solutions like Google Adsense but cpm based banner ads on the other hand require additional configurations. This can be largely attributed to the fact that cpm advertising companies often only display ads for some of the inventory. They do require a backup ad (passback ad) that they transfer the ad request to if they cannot display one. That’s tiered advertising (or ad chaining).

It is up to the webmaster where the passback ads are send to. It is possible to display a local banner, a transparent gif or ads from another company.

It becomes more difficulty if geographic parameters are taking into consideration. Say one advertiser is only offering banner ads for US visitors, one for UK visitors and one offers to display ads for all visitors. Most webmasters chain the ads then to direct all visitors from the US advertiser to the UK and the to the one that is serving all.

This means that the page loading time for visitors that are not coming from the US or UK increases. If you assume that each advertiser has the same loading time it increases by a factor of 3 for worldwide users.

An ad server on the other hand can be configured to take the geolocation of a visitor into account. It can for instance be configured to display ad 1 to US visitors, ad 2 to UK visitors and ad 3 to everyone else. This means that the loading time is always the same no matter where the visitor of the website comes from.

This is one of the biggest strengths of an ad server. It has to be noted though that an ad server that is not hosted locally adds its loading time to all ad displays. Locally hosted ad servers on the other hand require lots of server resources if the website is popular and it is often the case that they need to be hosted on another server because of their performance requirements.

An alternative to using an ad server for distributing ads to geotargeted users is to use a scripting language to do that during page loading time. This again has severe consequences as it increases the server’s load and prevents caching of those scripts since they have to be run individually for every visitor.

Most ad servers provide additional filtering options and ad display options. Google’s Ad Manager for instance can also filter by web browser, operating system and date or time. This opens interesting new options like displaying specific ads to Linux users for instance or Google Chrome users.

The second big benefit of an ad server are its ad management capabilities. It is for instance nearly impossible to sell part of the inventory directly to advertisers as it would be very difficulty to control the ads on the website.

An ad server can be easily used for that. An advertiser might want to purchase 100k impressions targeting Windows users from the UK. That would not be a problem with a proper ad manager which could be configured to run the 100k impressions on the web server disabling the ad after the last impression has been served.

Ad Server Benefits

• More flexibility to serve and manage ads
• Better performance by reducing the effects of ad chaining
• Ability to run highly targeted campaigns and to sell direct advertisement

Ad Server Disadvantages

• Requires some time to configure the ads that are served properly
• Might increase loading time for some users depending whether the ad server is hosted locally or remotely
• Not suitable for smaller websites or sites that display only ads from one advertising company

What’s your experience regarding ad servers? Would you recommend one if you could?

While it is not difficulty to change the DNS servers in the operating system it does require some knowledge as to where they are changed. And the IP addresses of the DNS server need to be known as well to apply the changes to the computer system.

DNS Jumper is a free and portable software program that aids the user by providing a one-click system to change DNS servers in Windows. The application displays a list of DNS servers that can be activated with the click of the mouse button. Available DNS server range from Google DNS over Open DNS to Ultra DNS, Level 3, Open NIC to the default DNS server of the system.

Changing DNS servers is therefor a breeze with DNS Jumper. The program does on the other hand lack relevant information and a configuration to edit the available DNS servers. DNS Jumper can be downloaded from the the Fiber Download website (via ASK VG)

Configuration of Stream Media is actually pretty simple. All that it takes is to define a home or root directory for the streaming media server that points to a path on the local hard drive of the computer. Every supported media file will be automatically displayed in the client access area with the possibility to add files easily by simply moving them into the root folder or a subfolder.

A wide variety of media formats are supported by the media server. This includes video formats like flv, avi, rm or mp4 and audio formats like mp3 or aac. The server can be accessed over the start page of the Opera Unite user which can be accessed from the operaunite.com page. The administrator can password protect the media server so that only authorized users can access it. It is also possible to change the visibility of the service.

Media files that are provided at the media server can be viewed directly in the web browser or downloaded to the local computer system. It is interesting that clients can access Opera Unite applications from within any modern web browser.

Opera users who want to provide media streaming need to make sure that they have the capabilities to do so. It usually is not a problem to offer access to a handful of users but someone with a 128Kbit upload stream will not be able to stream it simultaneously to lots of connected users.

Stream Media is an interesting Opera Unite application which can be used to quickly showcase videos and audio files to a selected user group. It can only be installed in versions of Opera that support Opera Unite. Opera users with Opera Unite enabled can visit the application’s profile page at the Opera website to install it directly in the web browser. First time Opera Unite users need an Opera user account before they can install the application.

I researched the new web hoster extensively before making my decision to move the website to the new hoster. That is probably the most important step in the process to ensure that the hoster has excellent customer support, servers and connections to the Internet. Wiredtree was all that and more and I learned during the server transfer that their 15 minute reaction time to customer support requests was not just a figure that they picked out of thin air.

I had to deal with customer support in a few occasions especially during server migration to ensure that everything went underway smoothly. Wiredtree was always prompt to response with a solid solution that solved my requests. They also contacted me after three months to find out if everything was as I expected it to be. Support is therefor excellent, cannot be better in my opinion. But what about the server and hardware?

I ordered one server upgrade in that time; A backup server to store backups of all the websites and databases that were on the server regularly. The performance of the server itself is great and capable of running Ghacks and a few minor websites without problems. The load average, cpu, swap file, hard drive and memory utilization of the server were much lower than on the old server. More importantly than that is the fact that the server never crashed under the load so that I did not have to get up late at night after receiving a SMS that the server was down to fix the problem.

The Wiredtree server is not as cheap as it can get but it is still a cheaper priced server especially compared to other web hosting companies who charge double or even more of the amount that I’m paying for a comparable server. The excellent hardware and connections of the dedicated server in combination with top notch customer support make Wiredtree the hosting company that I recommend to all my friends and colleagues. It cannot get much better than that. We (that’s Everton from Connected Internet and I) are for example hosting Windows 7 News on another Wiredtree server and had no complaints (only praise) there with the hardware or customer support there as well.

I will do another review in 4 or 8 months to see if they are keeping their high standard. I currently have no reason to believe they do not.

File Server is a simple http file server that can run on local computer systems. The program is a command line tool without graphical user interface. A user wanting to share files need to manually edit the FileServer.conf file with a text editor to add the right root directory and port for the file server.

The IP and port of the file server can then be shared with users who are allowed to access the file server. All that these users need to do is to point their web browser to the IP and port.

The software program will automatically display a html directory listing of all files and folders that are stored in that root directory. Files can be instantly launched by left-clicking them. Another option is to right-click the files to use actions that are presented in the context menu. This include actions to download the selected file.

Every get request is shown in the command line window. File Server is a tiny software program that uses less than 100 Kilobytes on the computer’s hard drive. It supports download resumes but lacks many features of similar products like password protection, IP filter or multiple file handling.

Users who simply want to share a folder on their local computer system with friends or colleagues without having to install and configure advanced software might want to take a closer look at the server software.

File Server is available from Softpedia. It requires the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable.

AutoPutty is a portable software program for Windows that can manage servers for all four software clients that have been mentioned in this article. Manage in this regard means that system administrators and webmasters can add server information, that is hostname or IP, port, username, password and type (WinSCP SCP or SFTP, Putty, Remote Desktop or VNC) in the program to connect to the server more quickly.

The system administrator can access the options of Autoputty to define the paths to the various applications and other settings like commands that should be executed or private key files for authentication (where supported). It is furthermore possible to password protect the application itself so that only authorized users are able to manage the connections and servers.

Autoputty (via Techie Buzz) is a free download for the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 and uses less than one Megabyte of computer memory in minimized state. The biggest benefit of the program for system administrators is that it can manage servers for several applications which makes it a tad easier to maintain and connect to them.

It does not take long before the SSH or SFTP server is up and running. All it takes is to start the server in the server management console and add at least one user account. User accounts require the usual set of information that include a username, home directory and a password. A public key can be added as well to provide public key authentication. The server administrator can define the user rights in the very same user creation dialog.

It is possible to enable command and shell access, sftp and forwarding separately from each other. The login requirements can also be configured. Users have basically three options to log into the server: password authentication, public key authentication or keyboard-interactive authentication. The server admin can make any or all of the selected methods a requirement.

The server management console contains several settings that are of importance. Administrators define the server-key file location and log path in there, session timeouts, the server port, ssh and sftp security settings like forcing a delay on new connections or blocking IPs after a number of failed connection attempts. The management console itself can be password protected and configured to a specific port and IP.

The free version of Silvershield SSH and SFTP Server should be just fine for smaller networks. Users who want more connections without having to pay for the SSH server can take a look at FreeSSHd A Free SSH Server For Windows or the Windows SSH Server WinSSHD.

WinSCP comes with the tools to backup the session data. The setting is hidden in the preferences of the scp client.

Server administrators need to check the Advanced options box in the lower left corner of the application to reveal addition options that include backups. Preferences will appear in the list of options after enabling the checkbox.

Selecting preferences in that menu and a click on the appearing preferences button will open a new window with lots of new options. The Export button in the left corner can be used to save the session information as an .ini file.

The ini file needs to be transferred to the new computer system. The easiest way to use that ini file is to delete the existing winscp.ini file in the new installation and replace it with the old file. The old file needs to be named winscp.ini as well. It can be that the storage settings of the program need to be edited as well if the ini file is not recognized by WinSCP.

WinSCP supports storing data in the Windows Registry or in ini files. If the former is the default the ini file will not be loaded. The storage location can be edited in the storage options under Preferences.

WinSCP should then use the ini file and display all stored sessions properly in its interface.

The first section will display information about the blog’s responses. This includes checking the web server’s IP, RSS feed, robots.txt file, web caching and search engine indexation in Google and Bing. The second section will display technical details about the blog which are mostly interesting to the webmaster of the website.

The technical details will display page generation and fetch times, transfer speeds, information about compression as well as the version of the blog software and the theme used.

The site links to three additional services that can be used to check out a website or blog. This includes HTML verification at W3c, feed validation at Feedvalidator and HTTP header checks at redbot.com.Is My Blog Working is a great way to quickly check various technical details of a blog. A bookmarklet is provided that can might also come in handy.

The server is not running after starting up the Windows SSH Server. It is up to the system administrator to start the server so that other users can connect to it.

Users with a Windows username and password are able to use SFTP and SCTP file transfers, access a command prompt via a terminal console and to route TCP connections through WinSSHD by default.

It is up to the administrator to modify the access rights or remove accounts from being able to access the system at all. The administrator can disable services provided by WinSSHD or restrict user access. Both methods can increase the system’s security and should be dealt with before starting the server for the first time.

A good start is the WinSSHD user guide which explains the core concepts of the SSH server and offers tips on how to configure and secure it properly. Interested users can download the WinSSHD SSH Server from the developer’s website