Cold Fusion Hosting The 5

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Cold Fusion HostingThe 5 Ss for Success

• July 29, 2000
• Presentation by Christine Pascarella
• Virtualscape

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S1 Starting out

• Who hosts CF?
• How do you find a CF Host?
• What to look for?

Getting your site live! Server
Management Technical Support
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Identifying a CF Hosting Company(What to ask
your host yourself)

• Questions to ask yourself.
• What is the role Cold Fusion on your site?
• Do you require special Cold Fusion tags,
  features, etc.
• What type of assistance do you need?
  (programming, design, management)
• Is your site mission critical?

• Questions to ask your provider
• What type of technical support do they offer?
• What is their experience with Cold Fusion?
• What version of CF are they running?
• What databases do they support?
• Do they perform keyword monitoring?

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S2 - Statistics

• What are they?
• Web server logs, Cold Fusion logs
• What tools are available?
• Webtrends, Live Stats
• How logs tie into scalability.

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How to use Statistics

• Dedicated Environment
• CF log analysis.
• Performance Monitoring.
• of Concurrent Connections.
• The importance of testing remotely.
• Keyword monitoring.

• In a Shared Environment
• The importance of raw log files.
• Looking at log reports.
• Knowing your traffic flow.

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S 3 - Scalability

• How Scaleable is your application?
• Database issues
• Session Management
• Sending Email (CFMail)
• Load Balancing Failover

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Database Scalability

• When is the right time to make a change?
• Moving from one database to another.
• Is the database slowing you down or is it your
  code?
• Optimizing your database queries to increase
  performance.

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Session Management

• NT Servers - Where to store your variables?
• 1) Registry
• 2) ODBC connection to SQL Server
• 3) Session management independent of Cold Fusion.

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CFMail

• How much mail are you sending out?
• Sharing vs. dedicated mail servers.
• Benefits of queuing.
• The SPAM test (formatting properly).

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Server Clusters - Web Farms

• Advanced Server Hosting
• Multi-server environment
• Insurance that site will always be available
• Load balancing and redundancy
• Failover options
• Higher cost of entry and maintenance

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S 4 - Security
How Secure is your application? SSL,
PGP Identifying Security Holes, security
scans Firewalls, VPNs and Point-to-Point
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SSL PGP

• SSL - just for e-commerce?
• PGP - how to implement it.
• Using CF to encrypt your pages.

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Finding Security Holes

• BugTraq (popular mailing lists)
• Security Scans
• Realtime security monitoring
• Security Officers (staff)

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Firewalls

• Firewall functions
• Packet filtering
• Port lockdowns
• Screening policies
• Secure remote server administration

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S 5 Speaking to your Host

• Make sure you have a good relationship.

Let your host know your plans.
Get advice on your approach.
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Summary

• The 5 Ss of Success
• Starting Out
• Statistics
• Scalability
• Speaking to your host
• Security