People who are familiar with me know that there are two things I’m not forgiving about. The first is backups, the second is security.

If backups interest you, perhaps we can discuss it some other time. This time we’re going to discuss security.

I’m going to outline in the following article some of the best practices I’ve learned along the years and help you “almost brick up, but not just yet” or “harden” your Linux server.

While reading this article, however, I suggest also reading this article as well. As we both try to tackle the same issues. I believe both articles eventually represent the same views in a different guise.

All of the ideas I’m coming up with are already implemented in shk. I suggest downloading shk, reviewing the code and using it.

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July. Here is a summary of the blog posts from this week.

1. Getting Started with Node.js
Server-side programming languages aim to do the most work in the most efficient way in the least amount of time. This post is a thorough introduction to Node.js. We go over its fundamental features like callback functions and the module system. There is also some sample code including a “Hello World” example.

1. Reading from a file

Problem:

You want to read a file from the file system and display its contents on the terminal screen.

Solution:

var fs = require('fs');
fs.readFile('data.txt', function (err, data) {
  if (err)
    throw err;
  if (data)
    console.log(data.toString('utf8'));
});

We at Monitis like to keep you informed and we want to make your job as a system admin or webmaster as easy as possible. We’re all about reducing the pressure! So, lately we’ve been creating all kinds of online resources for you to access that offer tips on everything from monitoring server metrics with WMI, to tracking IIS with VBScript, to picking the most effective NoSQL database tool.  The list goes on!

Today, we’d like to offer some tips on hyper-v virtualization. What exactly is that? some of you may be asking, and why should I care?  According to Wikipedia, Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian and formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a hypervisor-based virtualization system for x86-64 systems. Released as a beta version, Hyper-V  has since been released in a free stand-alone version, and has been upgraded to Release 2 (R2) status.

There is an almost insurmountable myriad of server-side environments and web servers all aiming to accomplish the same task: doing the most work in the most efficient way in the least amount of time. However, there are few of these technologies which arguably conquer the many road blocks to achieving this goal (namely concurrency issues and handling the overhead of connection allocation). Among these select few is Node.js.

We make a lot of posts that give IT tips and advice, as well as recommendations on how to use Monitis, so here is a summary of the posts for this week in case you missed them.

Monitoring IIS With VBScript via Monitis; It’s so Easy!

This post demonstrates how to monitor an IIS using Monitis Custom Monitors and VBscript. You can use the Monitis API to monitor your own custom metrics. This is very powerful because it lets you monitor any IIS metrics you like, set thresholds and receive notifications.

Monitis provides you with the ability to monitor almost any detail on your Windows server (also see our post How to Monitor Windows Servers with VBScript, WMI and Monitis).

Using a simple Visual Basic Script (VBS), you will be able to read the value of any Performance Counter on your Windows Server and send it to a Custom Monitor.

It’s easy as pie. Keep reading for the recipe!