Category: Website Hosting

Is Email Down Again?

While troubleshooting an email encryption issue after a WHM / cPanel web server migration, my thoughts turned to email down time and what it is worth to a small business. This is the core concept behind business continuity – “Business continuity encompasses planning and preparation to ensure that an organization can continue to operate in case of serious incidents or disasters and is able to recover to an operational state within a reasonably short period.” (Wikipedia) The best way to recover from a disaster is to have planned in advance for the eventuality and have systems in place that provide redundancy when the incident occurs. When it comes to business email continuity only one name comes to mind:

Microsoft Office 365

Guaranteed Uptime – Microsoft provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that financially backs their services based on a guaranteed amount of uptime per month. If service is down for more than 45 minutes (99.9% uptime) in a month then a 25% credit will be given, if service is down for more than 7 hours (99% uptime) in a month then a 50% credit will be given, and if for some reason they are down for more than 36 hours (95% uptime) in a month then a 100% credit will be given. Considering the literal billions of users of their products, having to give away credits for downtime would seriously cost Microsoft so it is in their favor to keep the services flowing.

Geographic Redundancy – Microsoft has Office 365 data copied to servers in no less than 8 datacenters around the United States including one nearby in Washington. This means that a hardware failure or lost data in one center will not effect the other 7 datacenters – email will continue to be routed through the others until services can be restored to the one. With redundancy like that there should be no worries about downtime or data loss.

Unparalleled Support – Office 365 email is running on Microsoft Exchange being administered and supported by the people who created it. There is nothing like going to the creator of something to talk to them when there is a problem. They have the breadth of experience that comes from using their own products for the past 20 years. This level of knowledge is unparalleled in the industry and it shows in the quality of service and support that is received.

If your company needs the best in class reliability and service that comes from switching to Office 365, then contact us for assistance.

WHM AWS S3 Glacier Backup Setup

Amazon AWS S3 Storage to the rescue again with native support in WebHost Manager (WHM) to backup directly to S3. WHM AWS S3 Glacier backup is easy to setup and works like a charm. Included in this post are the standard settings that I use for all WHM backups.

WHM AWS S3 Glacier Backup Setup

Login to WHM and run a quick search for backup at the top left of the navigation pane
Click on “Backup Configuration” to begin setup
Under “Backup Status” choose “Enabled”, under “Backup Type” choose “Compressed” to save on bandwidth and leave the timeouts at their defaults
Under “Scheduling and Retention” choose to do a backup each day of the week and keep them for 30 days
Under “Files” choose to disable “Backup Suspended Accounts”, choose to enable “Backup Access Logs”, choose to enable “Backup Bandwidth Data”, choose to disable “Use Local DNS” and put a check next to “Backup System Files” to allow for full restores if needed
Under “Databases” choose both “Per Account and Entire MySQL Directory”, under “Default Backup Directory” type in:

/backup

Leave the “Retain backups in default directory” unchecked and disable “Mount Backup Drive as Needed”
Under “Additional Destinations” choose Amazon S3 from the drop down list and click on the “Create new destination button”
Assuming there is already a bucket and user created in AWS for this purpose – give the destination a name, check the box next to “Transfer System Backups to Destination”, type in the name of a folder in the bucket under “Folder” that will be created and used, type in the name of the “Bucket”, type in the “Access Key ID” and “Secret Access Key” then change the timeout to 60 seconds
Click on the “Save and Validate Destination” button to make sure all settings are correct
Finally click on the “Save Configuration” at the bottom to complete the WHM AWS S3 Glacier Backup setup.

Your WHM AWS S3 Glacier Backup has now been setup and with proper setup of S3 Storage there will be automatic archival too. If your company is using Amazon Web Services or S3 Storage for backup and need help getting it setup properly, then contact us for assistance.

Configuring AWS S3 Glacier Backup User Setup

Working with Amazon Web Service (AWS) S3 Storage requires a user account, so it is natural to create a specific AWS S3 Glacier backup user account when connecting an outside service or device for backup purposes. This post will detail how to create a user that has full rights to a specific bucket on S3 and Glacier Storage so that backup files can be created or edited from an outside source.

AWS S3 Glacier Backup User Setup

Connect to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Click on “Users” on the left hand side.
Click on the “Create New User” button at the top.
Type in the username desired and leave the checkbox “Generate an access key for each user” checked then click the “Create” button at the bottom.
On this screen make sure to record the “Access Key ID” and “Secret Access Key” that will be needed when setting up backup service or device.
Click on the “close” link twice to exit.
Click on the username of the user just created, then click on the “Create User Policy” button to give the user proper rights.
Select “Custom Policy” then click on the “Select” button
Give the policy a name and then type in the following based on the S3 Storage Bucket (this will be setup in another blog post):

{
“Statement”: [
{
“Action”: “s3:ListAllMyBuckets”,
“Effect”: “Allow”,
“Resource”: “arn:aws:s3:::*”
},
{
“Action”: “s3:*”,
“Effect”: “Allow”,
“Resource”: [
“arn:aws:s3:::[S3 Bucket Name]/*”,
“arn:aws:s3:::[S3 Bucket Name]”
]
}
]
}

then click on the “Apply Policy” button.

Now it is time to connect the backup service or device using the AWS S3 Glacier Backup user with the “Access Key ID” and “Secret Access Key” recorded earlier. If your company is using Amazon Web Services or S3 Storage for backup and need help getting it setup properly, then contact us for assistance. Look for the next couple posts that will show how to setup a S3 bucket for automatic archival and how to setup WHM for backup to S3 Storage.

AWS Command Line Interface User Setup

The most basic task needed to get started with AWS is to have a user account, so it is natural to create a specific user account when accessing AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) for a specific purpose. This post will detail how to create a user that has read-only rights to S3 and Glacier Storage so that bucket content size can be determined. The details of how to install the AWS Command Line Interface can be found here and details of the setup are in linked documents from there.

AWS Command Line Interface User Setup

Connect to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Click on “Users” on the left hand side.
Click on the “Create New User” button at the top.
Type in the username desired and leave the checkbox “Generate an access key for each user” checked then click the “Create” button at the bottom.
On this screen make sure to record the “Access Key ID” and “Secret Access Key” that will be needed when setting up AWS CLI software.
Click on the “close” link twice to exit.
Click on the username of the user just created, then click on the “Attach Policy” button to give the user proper rights.
Select “AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess” and “AmazonGlacierReadOnlyAccess” from the list, then click on the “Attach Policy” button.

Once connected to the AWS Command Line Interface software commands can be run to check bucket content size which will be covered in an alternate post. If your company is using Amazon Web Services or S3 Storage and need help getting it setup properly, then contact us for assistance.

Configure cPanel Email Distribution Group

The local volunteer fire department wanted to have a feature typically only seen in Microsoft Exchange called Mail-Enabled Distribution Groups, the only problem is that they used cPanel for their cloud email provider instead. So I was tasked with determining if it were possible to create a cPanel email distribution group with similar functionality. To my surprise this is an option and works quite well.

Create a cPanel Email Distribution Group

This tutorial is based on the Go Daddy Pro version of cPanel which is just a skinned version of the standard cPanel control panel.

Login to the cPanel Main Page
Scroll down to the “Email” section and click on “Forwarders”
Click on the “Add Forwarder” button
Here is where decisions have to be made like the vanity name of the cPanel email distribution group can be something like AllStaff or Techs which would go in the “Address to Forward” box. This does not have to be an existing email box as it will be treated as an alias.
In the “Destination” section in the “Forward to Email Address” box type in a list of existing email addresses seperated by commas with no leading or trailing spaces. Click on the “Add Forwarder” to complete the creation process.

It will be easy to see now that the comma seperated list actually was used to create individual rules for each of the existing email addresses. This is a huge time saver in comparison to manually creating each one. This has been tested and verified to work. If your company is using cPanel as your cloud email hosting platform or need help setting up a cPanel email distribution group, then contact us for assistance.

Farmhouse Network Tech Blog WordPress Migration

While marketing Farmhouse Networking to the city of Grants Pass via the old fashioned method of knocking on doors, I came across a local company that does SEO for website and social media management. They are called Moving Mountains and though based in Grants Pass, OR they are really a global presence thanks to social media and marketing via SEO on Google. While speaking to the owner of this company I was pointed in the direction of a WordPress migration for my blog and eventually my whole site. After some consideration, I decided to take the plunge and learned the basics of WordPress and SEO to bring my readers a better experience than the old Serendipity blog could offer.

Serendipity to WordPress Migration

Export the Current Serendipity Blog to RSS

Make the following change to the rss.php file in the Seredipity blog install directory:

serendipity_printEntries_rss($entries, $version, $comments, $metadata[‘fullFeed’], $metadata[‘showMail’]);

Above this line type in the following:

$metadata[‘fullFeed’] = true;
Login to Serendipity Admin Console
Click on Maintenance in the left hand menu
Click on Export full RSS feed

Fix the RSS encoding

Open the RSS feed in your favorite text editor
Perform a search and replace for the following:

> replace with >
< replace with <
" replace with "

Fix Time-out Issue

Add the following to the top of the admin.php file in the admin folder in the WordPress install directory:

add set_time_limit(0);

Branded Email using Custom Domain Name

There are many reasons your business needs to use a branded email address using a customized domain name. Let’s look at what the top ones are:

Branded Email Establishes Legitimacy

Customers want to trust a companies before they choose to give their business to them. This is the number one reason businesses should use branded email – not only does it give your business a deeper level of branding, but it establishes the business' legitimacy. This is because your email is often the customer’s first impression of you, especially if email or print marketing had an email for contact. It makes your business look professional and can set it apart from the competition. Phishing schemes are a very real concern these days and many of these fake emails come from people trying to pose as a legitimate business. The best way for your customer to know if the email is really from you or a potentially dangerous location, is by the email address' domain name. If the customer can look at the sender address and see your business’ domain, they will feel more confident clicking links or replying back with sensitive information.

Branded Email Builds Your Brand

A business can never have too much company branding. From business cards to bumper stickers to coffee mugs, there are branding opportunities everywhere. This should includes your business email too. Every time your employees send an email, it reinforces your business brand to the customer. It not only reminds the customer that you have a website, but gives them a peek into what your company is all about.

Branded Email Separates Company Departments

Having a branded email allows you to create multiple email addresses or email aliases for different departments and company objectives. This is a huge benefit as yourname@mycompanyname.com may not always the best address to email or your business may not want the customer to directly contact your employees. It helps compartmentalize the work and make sure that the right person / department receives the correct emails. You can create emails like support@mycomanyname.com, info@mycompanyname.com, sales@mycompanyname.com and many others that can point to one or more members of the organization. It also helps the customer, by pointing them to the right email address for the issue they need addressed.

Branded Email Isn’t Expensive

With Office 365’s Hoste Exchange service your business can add as many individual email addresses and email aliases to your company's branded domain on an as needed basis, access email from anywhere across all major platforms, get industry leading anti-malware / anti-spam filtering built in, send email attachments up to 150MB in size and get 50GB of storage per mailbox. Prices start at just $4 per user per month. Microsoft manages the email server and Farmhouse Networking handles the setup / administration of the rest, which making it simple for you to have a professional branded customized business email address.

If you don’t have a branded email address, now is the perfect time to get one. Small businesses often think they don’t need one or can’t afford it, but that is simply not true. Help your business by setting up a branded email today by giving us a call or email to let our Office 365 experts get your business started on the path to better branding.

Category: Website Hosting

Is Email Down Again?

Microsoft Office 365