Hosting website on SBS2003

dl763 · 8 Jul 2009 at 14:47

Hi all,

My boss wants us to host our website on our internal SBS server. I have no problems with how to do that, but our website is written in PHP with SQL database and our server has IIS on there for running Companyweb etc. Can I install Apache alongside IIS and use a different port with port forwarding on the router?

Thanks

Sin_Chase · 8 Jul 2009 at 14:52

You can install PHP on IIS, or am I reading what you need to do wrong?

Apache should live with IIS quite comfortably if you want to do that though.

dl763 · 8 Jul 2009 at 14:54

Oooh sounds good, just dont want to mess anything up

Rob7865 · 8 Jul 2009 at 18:11

Even though SBS can host website for external connections, I would HIGHLY advise against it - Remember the SBS is your only box and does ALL the jobs (AD, DNS, DHCP, Ect...) as well as holding all your companies data.
Now, do you and your Boss really understand what issues and security implications you will face once you open your SBS box to the world on port 80 ??!!

For the sake of a few quid each month I would prefer to keep my hosting external to my company and go with a webhost who knows what they are doing and have the bandwidth to handle the web traffic
Just my 2pence..

Rob

mdjmcnally · 8 Jul 2009 at 18:31

Second the above.

I really would advise hosting elsewhere, or at least on a seperate server.

iaind · 8 Jul 2009 at 19:51

Separate server is a waste for a company small enough to be using SBS

However, putting it on the same box isnt a very good idea.

VMware server and a LAMP installation with its own IP - easy.

n3vrmind · 9 Jul 2009 at 01:51

Indicate to your boss the expense he could occur if anything like payroll or customer data was exposed because someone got access to the server when they shouldnt.

The bad press alone can ruin a company

dl763 · 9 Jul 2009 at 08:34

I was thinking that exact same thing but he's the kind of guy who wants what he wants... Time to persuade him otherwise!

iaind · 9 Jul 2009 at 08:48

In that case my vmware idea is a good compromise - will be much more secure and wont cost any more to do.

dl763 · 9 Jul 2009 at 08:50

I'll have a look into it. At the moment it is hosted on our back up (shared hosting) email server which is a bit flaky so he's looking at getting rid of that and just having website in house and our 2 mail servers.

I'll get some things together and show them to him and see what he thinks.