Dedicated Server Hosting

Those who do not want other sites to be hosted on the same hosting server as theirs prefer to go for dedicated servers. They find this kind of arrangement very flexible as they can choose the type of hardware and other software applications of their choice.
All of us are aware that in this day of the internet, every business needs a website to promote their business and that in turn needs a hosting service provider. When the business is fledgling and just growing, there is no need for a dedicated hosting server and you can do with shared hosting. However, as the business grows larger, it is necessary to go for dedicated hosting since your website is likely to receive high traffic, the support for which may not be correctly provided by shared hosting servers.
These dedicated servers are equally well ensconced in data centers and also enjoy uninterrupted power usage, redundant bandwidth and adequate disk space. These servers are ideal for websites that need special features and add on.
Other benefits that you can get from dedicated servers are the flexibility of installing your own software and not worry about the bandwidth consumption or even content management of any other websites. You are the sole occupant of the server and have total freedom to do anything related to your business.
Despite all these benefits, dedicated host servers are not very expensive and you can get cheap dedicated servers with a little bit of looking around.

Unmanaged dedicated servers – basic security to make it secure

Once you outgrow shared hosting or you want to move from your reseller hosting account to having your own dedicated server, you have two options, you can get a managed dedicated server (the server company or a third party manages security, applying patches, updates and the general wellbeing of your server) or you can get unmanaged dedicated server which you have to manage yourself. The going rate for third party managing a dedicated server seem to to start from about £100 per month.
If you prefer to save money and manage the server by yourself, you can certainly do this, all you have to do is apply some tried and tested setup to update and secure your dedicated server. The list below gives some of the most important things you need to do on your unmanaged server to ensure its secure.
Disable direct root login – By default you can login directly to the root of Linux/Unix servers, add an extra layer of security by disabling this so that you need to login as admin first before you can login as root. Naturally you should set two different passwords for root and admin users.

Difficult complex password - Set hard password that includes alphanumeric numbers, upper and lowercase letters for both root and admin account.
Install a firewall
Spam protection – Setup rule import rfxn.com, spamhause.org and dshield.org
Setup the spam assassin
Set up “logwatch” to monitor logs and send email to you should a security related even take place.
Install automatically root kit scanner - This scans your server every day to see if root kit is installed on your server. (Set cron to run this and send report to you).
Set minimum password strength for accounts on your server to 10
Enable brute force protection
Enable open base dir protection for PHP to prevents users from opening files outside of their home directory with PHP
Create a custom/changed sendmail script to log spammers whose want to use form found on your server to send spam.
Enable secure FTP (anonymous ftp should be disabled.
To reduced server resources use change your mail server to Dovecot if it comes with Courier, have very high memory usage.
Setup the log rotation to delete or store old log files
Recompile Apache and PHP with the options SuPHP, and all security related modules.
Install GD for image manipulation, openSSL, mod auth, mod bandwidth
Install Ion Cube and Zend.
Setup Hardened PHP (Suhosin). Is the same PHP version 5.2.8 just with enhanced security (http://www.hardened-php.net/)
Setup and enable automatic updates for the server.
Update the server and system software.

Please not that the above should not necessarily be done in the order listed above and you may not even need to all especially if you are not reselleing hosting space on the server.