Microsoft Exchange Server and Zimbra are both highly popular collaboration suites used by businesses to connect their employees in a unified way, although the main difference between the two is that Microsoft Exchange server is a costly commercial application whereas Zimbra is an open source solution. Collaboration suites allow you to store all of your calendar items, emails, contacts and lots more in one central location that can then be access is a variety of ways meaning that you will be able to have the same content in front of you wherever you are. Mobile phones and desktop computers are the two most common devices used in conjunction with collaboration suites, although both Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange Server will provide you with access to a web interface so that you can manage your calendar, contacts and emails. Both Microsoft Exchange Server and Zimbra are feature rich and are built on the same principle of offering businesses and their employees a more streamlined method of managing their schedules; however, the requirements of businesses may dictate the requirement for one over another as there are many factors that will need to be considered in order for a business to come to the correct decision as to which one to use.

Zimbra is an application that can work on multiple platforms meaning that regardless of the operating system that you are running on your servers, the chances are that Zimbra will support it to some extent. Microsoft Exchange Server on the other hand is a commercial application that will only work with the Windows operating system, something that could cause problems for businesses that only use Linux servers as it means that they will need to buy in their own Windows servers. By using Linux a business will be able to save a large amount of money over other operating systems since if a business was to use Microsoft Windows for its servers, it would have to purchase an individual license for each server whereas Linux is an open source operating system.

There are two versions of Zimbra – an open source edition and a commercial edition and although there are vast differences between the two different versions, the same core lies at the heart of both versions. Microsoft Exchange Server is also available in two versions – Standard and Enterprise; the Standard Edition of Microsoft Exchange Server comes with individual user storage limits although it is cheaper than the Enterprise Edition. If a business is looking to make use of an enterprise-level collaboration setup without spending a vast amount of money then it is a good idea to have a dabble with the open source version of Zimbra – however, a high specification dedicated server will still be required in order for you to be able to make the most of the application. The price of Microsoft Exchange Server is something that can only usually be justified by large companies who employ many people since otherwise it just isn’t cost effective for most businesses.

Both Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange Server come with AJAX-based web interfaces that will provide you with full access to the information stored within your user account including all of your contacts, emails and calendar items. Web access is something that isn’t so important in this day and age as mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberrys can be fully synchronized with Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange accounts; however, the richness and usability of the web interfaces provided by both is something that should still be taken into consideration as your employees may prefer to access their account via a web browser every once in a while.

Sharing is one of the main principles that both have systems have been built around, although Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange Server deliver sharing facilities in different ways. One of the most popular features of Microsoft Exchange Server is ‘Public Folders’ that allows each individual Microsoft Exchange user to post items and files that can then be viewed by others. Zimbra lacks such a feature although it will still allow you to share calendar items and contacts with other users easily. Personal tasks and shared tasks are another popular feature of Microsoft Exchange Server since they will allow you to keep tabs on your own activities that have to completed as well as those responsibilities that you may be sharing with others.
Web hosting services offered by eUKhost can provide you with hosted solutions for both Microsoft Exchange Server and Zimbra which will be of benefit to you if you are indecisive as to which solution to use because you will then be able to trial them both for yourself. Hosted services are ideal for smaller businesses that may not necessarily be able to fund their own IT hardware but still require the use of a large collaboration system. Similarly, hosted services will also offer you better reliability and security than if you were to use your own single server setup.

In conclusion, both Microsoft Exchange Server and Zimbra are viable solutions for businesses that are looking to use a central collaboration system to help employees work better with each other and to streamline their methods of communication. Although Microsoft Exchange Server may be the more expensive solution, it can offer a large number of and generally more practical solutions than Zimbra. However, for a low price Zimbra can offer you a highly usable solution that is capable of meeting business’s requirements at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft Exchange Server.

FAQ’s on UK Dedicated servers offered by eUKhost.com

1. Where are your servers based ?
Ans : Our Servers are based in Maidenhead which is 25 miles west of London, UK

2. Which Datacenter in Maidenhead ?
Ans : BlueSquare Data center in Maidenhead.

3. Questions on Data center Connectivity, uplink for each Dedicated Servers.
Ans : In total we have 20,000mbits of network connectivity for our Servers. We have 2 x 10 Gbps uplinks for our data center. Each Server in our data center is setup on 100 Mbps, fully-switched port on an edge switch. Each edge switch is then in turn plugged into two separate aggregation switches at 1gbit, with failover redundancy allowing either 1gbit link to fail.

4. Which ISPs do you use for network connectivity of your Datacenter / Servers?
Ans : Our network transit connections are currently to Level 3, Tiscali, and Deutsche Telekom. We also peer with approximately 150 ISPs at the peering points LINX, XChangePoint, and LoNAP.

5. What Brand of servers/Chassis do you use for the Servers?
Ans : We use only branded Chassis from Dell and we use latest state of the art Intel CPUs for our servers.

6. What types of Hard drives (HDD) do you use and what is the speed of your drives ?
Ans :- We use SATA drives on our servers advertised on our website, all of our SATA drives have a speed of 7200 rpm. We provide SAS drives as well on some of our high configuration servers but for this you will need to contact our Sales Department from our helpdesk to get more details on the available configurations. SAS drives have a speed of 15,000 rpm.

7. What are the RAM specifications?
Ans : Our Servers advertised on our website are equipped with DDR2, ECC, SD RAM.

8. What is your uptime Guarantee for Dedicated servers?
Ans :- We offer 100% network and power uptime guarantee on all our dedicated servers.

9. Where is your Support staff based?
Ans :- Our support operations are managed from 3 different locations. Some staff members are based in the datacenter, some in our office in Leeds and the rest of our staff members are based in our office in India.

10. Do you include a backup service with the Dedicated Server Hosting plans?
Ans : We include a 25 GB remote backup space for free of cost with all our dedicated servers but for that you will need to contact us on setup of your server to allow our system admins to login and setup the backup scripts.

11. Do you provide RAID Configurations with your UK Dedicated Servers?
Ans : We offer RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 options with our dedicated servers. RAID 1 configurations needs 2 identical drives which helps in case of HDD failure. RAID 1 mirrors data on 2 identical drives which allows you to swap drives in case of failure of one drive. RAID 5 configuration needs 3 identical drives. RAID 5 provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. RAID 10 provides high availability by combining features of RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 0 increases performance by striping volume data across multiple disk drives. RAID 1 provides disk mirroring which duplicates data between two disk drives. By combining the features of RAID 0 and RAID 1, RAID 10 provides a second optimization for fault tolerance. RAID 10 option is available on eUK E5540 and eUK E5520 servers only. More information on RAID can be obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

12. What Operating systems do you Support ?
Ans : We Support Debian 4.0, CentOS 5.2, Fedora Core 8/9 and RHEL 5.x, Ubuntu 8.10 and FreeBSD 6.x / 7.x on our Linux Dedicated servers while for Windows Dedicated servers we offer Windows Server 2003 Standard, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Windows Server 2008 Web edition, Windows 2008 Standard edition and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter edition.

13. What control panels do you support on your Dedicated servers ?
Ans :- We offer cPanel/WHM and Plesk Control panel on our Linux Dedicated servers for additional pricing whilst on Windows servers we offer Plesk and DotNetPanel control panel options. You can install any other control panel as per your requirements but we won’t support those control panels. As a part of our managed service we will provide support for OS related problems only if the control panel is not purchased through eUKhost.

14. Is there any money back guarantee on Dedicated servers ?
Ans : We offer 30 day money back guarantee only in case of hardware failure or if the hardware is not as per the advertised specifications. We don’t offer any refunds for software related problems as you should communicate with our support team or the accounts person in charge of your account to get those sorted.

15. Where can I find your TOS ( Terms of Service ) and SLA ( Service Level Agreement ) ?
Ans :- Our TOS is located at http://www.eukhost.com/terms.php and our Dedicated Servers Service Level Agreement is located at http://www.eukhost.com/sla.php

16. Do you offer Load Balanced Servers ?
Ans :- Yes. We do offer Linux Load Balanced servers as well as Windows Load Balanced Servers . We can setup a load balanced cluster using Cisco Load Balancing hardware or using Windows load balancing feature which is inbuilt within the Windows Operating System.

Q. What are Custom Branded Dedicated Servers?

Ans. Custom Branded Dedicated Servers are basically Dedicated Web Servers, as the name suggests, with “custom” whois information in the IP whois. As an example, please see below for the current eUKhost whois information.

netname: EUKHost-LTD
descr: Server Lan
country: GB
admin-c: PETE3-RIPE
tech-c: PETE3-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: blueconnex-mnt
mnt-routes: blueconnex-mnt
source: RIPE # Filtered

Now, the idea behind Custom Branded Dedicated Web Servers is that we can swap EUKHost-LTD to match your company name. So, I’m sure many of you are now asking “Do I need it?”. For the vast majority of you, the answer is, quite simply, NO. The service of Custom Branded Dedicated Web Servers is mainly a service that would be offered to medium/large web hosting providers. For example, if you are a web hosting provider you may have good reasons for not wanting your customers to know, or easily find out, where your services are located. There is no deception involved here, it’s simple marketing. You don’t want your customers to know that they can get the same service with us directly. This can be for a variety of reasons. Such as, our service offerings may be cheaper than yours, offer more hard disk space, more bandwidth, more support. You have done the hard work by getting the client and it would be unfair for them to switch to us directly. We have no interest in competing directly with our clients or with taking their customers. This is the main reason that we offer Custom Branded Dedicated Servers. Another reason behind Custom Branded Dedicated Servers is the benefit of receiving abuse e-mails directly and not having to have us forward them to you. As an example, one of the websites you are hosting has been compromised and is sending out spam messages. In the current system we will either have to spend time contacting you directly and if we are not able to do so in a timely manner, we may suspend your account. obviously this would have serious implications for your business and may ultimately lose your clients. In this case, Custom Branded Dedicated Servers could prevent this from happening.

Okay, so we have given some example as to who Custom Branded Dedicated Web Servers are useful for. Now, let’s look into the type of client that definitely don’t need Custom Branded Dedicated Servers. If we are not providing the same service as you provide, there is no reason for you to consider custom whois information. Your clients could, in theory, see our name mentioned and then visit our website. If our website is not offering the same services, they will have no reason to consider moving. If you host a forum advising people on the best fishing spots in the UK, your visitors or customers couldn’t care less where your website is hosted from. If it’s a personal hobby site, again, your visitors don’t care where your website is hosted.

There are also some technical limitations involved. It’s not possible to offer Custom Branded Dedicated Servers on a small number of IP addresses. It’s also not possible to rename currently assigned IP address whois information, please keep this in mind. A similar service is not currently available on individual VPS hosting services and it’s not currently possible for shared hosting. Costs can vary and as always subject to RIPE guidelines. Please contact sales@eukhost.com for more information.

Fully Managed UK Dedicated Servers.

Ans. Having fully managed dedicated server from eUKhost provides you with the ultimate level of control over your experience. The advantage of having a fully managed dedicated server is that you don’t have to worry about all the work involved in running your own server: applying security patches, backups, compiling all the tools you need, monitoring the server as we will take care of all those aspects. We at eUKhost provide branded server hardware from Dell Computers so that you receive the fastest servers with genuine hardware. With a dedicated server you have access to the full administration console to add domains and class of service levels along with the ability to install and run custom software/applications to meet your individual needs.

Applications/programs one can run on a dedicated server ?
As a user you can run applications/programs of your choice on your dedicated server provided it’s in line with our Terms of Service. You can use your dedicated server for whatever you like – be it developing websites for other people, hosting your business website, reselling hosting or even setting up an online store. Please bear in mind that we are only able to offer support for the server and the applications it is supplied with. We won’t be able to offer support for third party applications/programs installed on the server.

If you are interested in a fully managed eUKhost dedicated server, please contact our sales department for a quote based around your specific needs.

Dedicated Cisco ASA 5510 Hardware Firewall :-

A dedicated hardware firewall can help to protect against :-

* IP Spoofing by blocking hackers who are using spoofed IP addresses to attempt to attack or hack into your dedicated server.

* Brute force attacks (repeated attempts to hack) passwords of email, ftp, and other services.

* Exploitable Port Ranges by locking down ports your dedicated servers can use.

* MSSQL and MySQL Remote Exploitation by locking MySQL and MSSQL database’s down so only specific IP Addresses can access them remotely.

* Remote Administration Tools - Servers need to be remotely managed, by specifying the IP addresses that can access the management adds another layer of protection to your dedicated server.

Shared Cisco ASA 5510 Hardware Firewall

Shared firewall is basically configured to:

* Filter the packets that has been exchanged from the server to rest of the world to avoid any packet snipping within the network of the server that has been added in firewall.

* Block any IP that is sending too many SYN packets, for 15 minutes.

* create a log of all the traffic that has been sent & received on a particular IP and then react to other traffic on the port whether to allow or block it.

Shared Firewall does not have any specific hardcore rules to block any ports on the servers except to allow standard ports all the time. It will close all the ports if they have not been use for long time and will only enable it unless there is a request out from the server from that port.

Shared firewall has very basic rules due to the amount of traffic it handles on numerous IPs, adding more rules may cause a bit delay or time outs to the server. This also helps us to make sure that there is minimum human interface to manage the rules as one mistake may bring all the servers out of network, therefore it has been configured to intelligently handle the traffic.

A Dedicated Cisco ASA 5510 hardware firewall costs £199.00 per month with a one time setup fee of £199.00 while Shared Cisco ASA 5510 firewall costs £25.00 per month.

The firewall is fully managed by our certified technicians and requires zero administration from you.

.ac.uk is a second-level domain under the .uk top-level domain. The .ac.uk domain is used by organisations providing education at tertiary level and above along with organizations historically associated with higher education such as the Research Councils. There are several mandatory criteria which are required for eligibility to register a .ac.uk domain name.

Eligiblity criteria for .ac.uk domains:

An institution may have an entry in .ac.uk provided it satisfies at least one of the following statements.

A degree awarding institution.
Institutions that teach at tertiary level (including sixth-form colleges) and above, i.e. do not normally accept students below the age for compulsory education. Institutions that conduct research where a reasonable proportion of the results are placed in the public domain.
Learned societies.
The UK further and higher education funding councils and the UK research councils.
The method of determining what name an institution may adopt shall be.
No two character names.
One domain per trading name of the institution will be allowed.
Name requested shall reflect the legal name or trading name of the institution.
The chosen name shall minimise the risk of confusion with other similarly named institutions and avoid the risk of inadvertent masquerading.
First come first served subject to above.

Background to .ac.uk

Institutions that wish to register .ac.uk domain name can apply for their registration through us. Please click here for the entire information you need to provide us for registration of a .ac.uk domain name. Please fill in the complete information and send us the same to billing [ @ ] eukhost.com and eUKhost will help you register the domain name of your choice.

Once all the required information is submitted, eUKhost as an ISP would submit a request for registration of the .ac.uk domain name on your behalf.

.gov.uk is a second-level domain under the .uk top-level domain, and can be used by all UK government departments (except Defence), local government bodies and associated government funded organisations. The Cabinet Office e-Government Unit (eGU) is responsible for the policy governing the gov.uk domain, and for its rules and guidelines. UKERNA administers the gov.uk domain on behalf of eGU, in providing the name submission, approval and registration systems for the domain.

The usual rules about approval apply with the added exception that the SOA and/or its advisors may reject an application.

To preserve the integrity of the .gov.uk namespace the registration/ownership of .gov.uk names is limited to:

* UK government and devolved administration departments and agencies
* executive and advisory non-departmental public bodies and appropriate projects
* local and regional government bodies (including properly constituted town and parish councils)

Background to .gov.uk

Organizations that wish to register a .gov.uk domain name can apply for their registration through us. Please click here for the entire information you need to provide us for registration of a .gov.uk domain name. Please fill in the complete information and send us the same to billing [ @ ] eukhost.com and eUKhost will help you register the domain name of your choice.

Once all the required information is submitted, eUKhost as an ISP would submit a request for registration of the .gov.uk domain name on your behalf.

eUKhost has now launched Windows Shared Hosting & Windows Reseller Hosting with DotNetPanel control panel. DotNetPanel is unique feature-rich solution for simplifying Windows hosting management operations. It manages multiple servers, has robust, scalable and secure architecture, it’s very simple in use and offers unique & competitive features.

Some of the important features of DotNetPanel

Ease of Use
The installation process is quick and easy. You don’t need to spend days to make your control panel work for you!

Security
DotNetPanel uses the most advanced security technologies like asymmetric cryptography, Web Services messages signing and process isolation.

Multi-Server
DotNetPanel is a truly distributed, scalable, n-tier application.

DotNetPanel structure at eUKhost

DotNetPanel is a secure and flexible hosting management solution which supports multiple servers in a cluster. At eUKhost, we have implemented DotNetPanel for Windows Shared hosting & Windows Reseller hosting with Active Directory integration. We have installed individual service on one server and clubbed all other services under DotNetPortal to manage all hosting plans effectively.

The eUKhost structure with specifications of services is listed below:-

How eUKhost’s DotNetPanel Structure works :-

DotNetPanel has 3 separate web applications:

• DNP Web Portal
• DNP Standard Server
• DNP Server

Web Portal - DotNetPanel Web Portal is a control panel interface which works with port 9001; users and resellers can manage user accounts, hosting spaces, web sites, FTP accounts, files etc through this interface.

Standard Server - Standard Server license is a central application of the DotNetPanel system, this helps Portal and DNP server to manage web hosting operations and remote services. It also includes all business logic of the application and maintains DotNetPanel meta-data database. Enterprise Server manages remote servers through SOAP Web Services.

Server - DotNetPanel Server is a non-visual application representing a set of web services and currently hosted in IIS. DotNetPanel Server receives requests from DotNetPanel Enterprise Server and performs all low-level operations (creating web sites, FTP accounts, mail boxes, databases, etc.) on the server.

SQL Servers

Looking for high performance SQL Server Hosting? Choose one of eUKhost’s fully managed SQL dedicated servers. Dedicated SQL Servers provide enhanced performance, reliability, and dedicated resources for your application. eUKhost offers a wide range of cost effective SQL Server Hosting solutions to suit the needs of any web business. Try one of our fully managed Dedicated SQL Servers, equipped with Dual Core/Quad Core/ Dual Quad Core Xeon processors, up to 32 GB of RAM and up to 450 GB of fault tolerant SAS disk space. Create unlimited databases, users, packages, SQL jobs, maintenance plans and more.

Microsoft® SQL Server 2000/2005/2008 hosting solutions provide you with the most comprehensive platform for building and deploying database driven applications for an online business. Since Dedicated SQL Servers require intensive resources such as CPU and RAM, each of eUKhost’s SQL Dedicated Servers deliver the ultimate in terms of performance, dependability, and security, coupled with guaranteed uptime, affordable pricing, and round the clock technical support.

Our Dedicated SQL Servers allow a user the privileges to manage the entire SQL Server remotely with SQL Enterprise Manager or via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). All SQL Server hosting packages come with round the clock technical support from our Microsoft Certified staff. eUKhost has a dedicated team of Dedicated SQL Server Hosting experts who have sound experience in SQL Hosting administration, optimization, backups, restores, as well as implementation.

With our branded hardware dedicated server configurations, world-class data center and support for Windows Servers, you can be rest assured that your data is being delivered on the most advanced database hosting platform available.

eUKhost also offers custom solutions for your web and SQL Dedicated Server needs. Please contact our Sales Department for a quote based around your specific needs.

If you have a requirement for SQL Server 2005/SQL Server 2008 but cannot afford the costly per-cpu licenses required or quite simply do not want the extra hassle of maintaining SQL databases then why not take advantage of our Windows Web Hosting. We have shared SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 servers and can offer this to all customers who need SQL Server hosting at an much lesser cost than a full dedicated SQL server.

Q. Do You offer load balanced apache servers and mysql dedicated servers?

Ans : Yes. We offer load balanced apache servers (Web Servers) as well as MySQL servers. We are hosting a couple of biggest forums in the world which use multiple apache servers and high configurations quad core xeons for MySQL. Clustering of multiple MySQL servers is expensive but clustering of apache servers is quite simple and the only cost involved in it is for the dedicated servers. Basic dedicated server configurations are available at http://www.eukhost.com/dedicated-server-hosting.php but high configuration quad xeon servers can be setup as per requirement.

Please contact our sales department for custom quote.

For Load Balanced Web servers’ architecture, we will setup 2 or more similar configuration Web Servers which will be behind the Load Balancer. Each Web Server will have a public IP assigned to it as well as a Internal LAN IP. We prefer LAN over VLAN as internal communication of the Web Servers and Database Server(s) can be completely isolated from external traffic. After the implementation of Load Balancing routing rules on the Load Balancer, we configure Firewall rules to allow web traffic on the Web servers to pass trough the Load Balancer. Our Office IP and Customers IP will be the only IPs to have remote access of all Servers. No other IP will be able to access any of the Web Servers or Database Server(s). Load Balancer will take care of equal distribution of traffic on each of the Web Servers and each of your web servers will then pass on SQL queries to the Database Server. Web Servers will allow only inbound connection on port 80, while SQL servers will allow only inbound connection on port 1433 if using MSSQL on the Database Servers or port 3306 if using MySQL on the Database Server. Database Servers will allow incoming SQL queries only from the LAN IP of the Web Servers. Inbuilt TCP / IP firewall settings of Linux 0S (Load Balancer) will be utilized for this setup and this will eliminate any requirement of additional Hardware Firewall. Firewall rules on the Web Servers and Database Servers will be configured using inbuilt IP security Firewall if Windows or TCP/IP based host access control policy if using Linux Servers. We have expertise in setup of such Load Balanced secure clusters and there’s absolutely no reason to be concerned about server security, Load Balanced routing rules or Firewall settings.

We also use some specific Load Balancers procured from Cisco and Juniper for such Load Balanced clusters. We prefer CSS 11000 (Cisco) & Juniper TX2200 for high-end clusters.