Topic: Can anyone recommend site that is capable of hosting an installation of SME serv

[cnagy]

HI,

Can anyone recommend a site that is capable of hosting an installation of SME server.

Regards

[CharlieBrady]

Can anyone recommend a site that is capable of hosting an installation of SME server.

SME server isn't really suitable for hosting in a data centre. It's designed primarily to support a LAN with local users. Such a LAN usually doesn't exist in a data centre.

You can fudge it, but I'd say there are other more suitable distros for running a hosted website.

[kruhm]

SME server isn't really suitable for hosting in a data centre. It's designed primarily to support a LAN with local users. Such a LAN usually doesn't exist in a data centre.

You can fudge it, but I'd say there are other more suitable distros for running a hosted website.

What would your recommendations be?

If the hardware has 2 nics to configure as SERVER/GATEWAY and the admins connect to the lan side in a secure manner, what to lose? The admins still gain the advantage that config can only be done "locally." And they gain the reliability of the templates.

If not SME, this pretty much leaves choices to:
-a REDHAT based release (CENTOS, FEDORA)
-a DEBIAN based release (DEBIAN, UBUNTU)
-or FreeBSD.

With a control panel of:
-cPanel+Fantastico
-Interworx w/NodeWorx/SiteWorx
-Plesk
-Webmin

[CharlieBrady]

What would your recommendations be?

Not my area of expertise. My guess is that it would depend on exactly what sort of website(s) you were wishing to host.

[arne]

Question:

If the sme server is set up as server only it will have the firewall confguration for an lan environment, so this might not work well.

But what if the sme server is set up as a server gateway with two network cards and one of the cards as the "dead lan end".

Then logon to the server-manager panel can be done via ssh tunneling (??!) or the text based version is used.

I do not remeber for sure if I have tested such a setup, but I believe I have.

Technically, coulden't this be used if one wanted a free and easy to maintain data senter server ? (Well I know it is not designed for that use and because of this it might not be a recommended use.)

[Boris]

But what if the sme server is set up as a server gateway with two network cards and one of the cards as the "dead lan end".
Then logon to the server-manager panel can be done via ssh tunneling (??!) or the text based version is used.

I have used this setup for a few clients. Management is possible over the Internet from static IPs assigned as local-network, via VPN or SSH tunnel. If needed LAN end of few server-gateways connected to dedicated database server behind them.
Works well for hosted site with limited to Internet applications only functionality (Web server, e-mail). Samba and other LAN services are disabled, not accessible or just not used.