To Setup ATM On A Remote Server

I asked one of my customers for a brief description of how he set TS up on a dedicated server.  Here is his reply.  Thanks mate :-)

I'm with http://superbservers.net on the 'server solo package'. (after a lot of research on the net I chose this.  Make sure to choose the "East Coast Datacentre - Dulles, VA".  FYI - Oanda's servers are with Server Vault in Mclean, VA).

Details of my server......P 4 2.4 ghz, 512 ram, 1000 gb traffic and with windows 2003 standard edition.  It costs usd 104.00 a month.  Setup fee of USD$75 for the first month.  I didn't choose any additional add-ons.  This package is stil available on their site.

No additional softwares installed.  Just the ones that are required by TS.  (PostgreSQL, Oanda API files, etc etc.  The .NET framework is already preinstalled).  TS should be able to connect to the version and subscription-checking database, if not just open up IE and allow connections to www.thinkingstuff.com.

To access the database, I only use window's Remote Desktop Connection under Start/Accessories/Communications.  It's simple and easy.  I have not tried other programs like logmein.com or ultraVNC etc etc.

My local computer is on windows XP pro ed2.  If somehow the person has a different version of windows which doesn't have RDC like windows 98, they need to use third party remote access programs as mentioned above.  They can also connect to the server using Internet Explorer but that's a bit technical and I haven't tried that.

hmmm thats about it.  Alerts from TS are important especially the 'Everything is ok' email.

I get it sent to me every 30 mins.  And using Gmail and Gmail notifier detinitely helps.

Do database maintenance every weekend.  Most of the server maintenance part, I do it manually.

So I actually have to log in quite a couple of times if there are problems like server downtime (never happened), Gmail down (can't receive alerts), Oanda disconnections (never happened), or TS server down.  You can't automate everything... but all in all I'm a happy customer of TS and superbservers.net :-)

And what about anti-virus?

hehe nah I'm an anti-anti-virus person.  Only believe in firewalls (Comodo) and routine spyware and adware and virus checks.  But at the moment no, I don't do this on the server.

The only security is the default settings of the server.  I'm trying to limit the number of applications I install on it.  Afraid that anti-virus and third-party firewalls might screw things up with windows 2003.

At the beginning, I had to open up Internet Explorer to download PostgreSQL and TS and to Gmail to download Oanda's api files.  So those are the only websites that I allowed connection.  I couldn't find a way to transfer files using RDC.  But I'm aware that the third-party programs are able to do this by just 'click-drag-drop'.

Quick explanation of why you probably don't need an anti-virus on a dedicated server, is that viruses come through websites you visit, or from infected files you download.  You wouldn't normally use the dedicated server for web-browsing, or normal day-to-day use.  So if you limit your browsing to only essential, trusted websites, and you limit the software to only essential, trusted software, then theoretically you shouldn't have any problems with viruses.  It all depends on your risk profile.

And that's what he means by "opening up Internet Explorer", is that on a dedicated server, the one this customer is using at least, you need to explicitly allow access to the websites that you want to visit.