Former Latham New York U.S. Post Office
This building once stood as the U.S. Post Office serving as a communication hub for thousands of residents here in Colonie. Today it now stands as a modern hub from which millions of people communicate from across the globe.

TurnKey Internet purchases this vacant U.S. Government building in 2010 which had been previously used for 35+ years as the Post Office for Latham, New York. After invested millions in retrofitting the facility with high capacity redundant power, fiber optic and cooling systems to make it a state of the art of Datacenter – TurnKey Internet launched it as their new flagship GREEN Datacenter in 2012.  The official ribbon cutting was April 18th, 2012 – and here is the video of the entire event, as well as the transcript of the speech from our CEO, Adam Wills.

Thank you Mark, thank you for the kind words, appreciate it.  Thank you everyone for coming out here today.  I really want to thank the partners that helped make this happen.  Jim Conroy from NYBDC, Kevin Catalano from the Technology Accelerator Fund, Phil Engborg from M&T Bank – These guys helped see the vision to assist us in getting this project done.  Thank you guys, you stood up and helped get to the vision we had, and I really appreciate that.  National Grid and NYSERDA you were very helpful in funding some of the green technologies we were able to bring to the project that has helped set TurnKey aside from others in this industry.

This building at one time back in the 1970’s was the U.S. Post office.  It used to be the communications hub for about 8,000 residents here in Colonie, NY.  Today, it sits as the modern communications hub for millions of people across the globe.  Clients from 100 different countries access their data through this facility right now.  It’s the old vs the new, it’s the way people communicate today – its very different. 

Up above us on the roof is our own dedicated solar power plant.  We are producing clean renewable energy that is powering up to 75% of our facility right this very second.  We are focused on green technologies not because it’s just the ‘in thing’, but to be sustainable in this business for the next 20, 50, 100 years you have to look to these types of green clean efficient uses of technology. 

We have made significant multi-million dollar investments here in special green cold containment pods, smart aisle precision cooling, and many other things that you will have the chance to see when you go in for a tour.  All of these make this datacenter among the most green, the most efficient you will find not only in New York state but across the globe.

New York’s Tech Valley region has talked about being the leader in Green Business.  I really feel this facility, with the partners that helped make this happen; the Chambers, the funding partners, NYSERDA, National Grid; you have all shown the commitment to making Green businesses happen here in Tech Valley, and I think this facility is a monument to that.

Thank you all for coming today.

One of the most frustrating things that can happen to shared hosting provider is to find that one or more of their servers have been compromised.   As a shared hosting provider we are responsible for maintaining the integrity of our servers and the client data residing on the server.   Not always an easy task.

What makes securing a shared server such a challenge?  Well, the intrinsic problems that come with having dozens, if not hundreds, of individual users accessing a single server should be obvious.  Each client has the ability to upload any scripts they desire which are rift with security holes due to poor design, coding errors, or just plain laziness on the part of the programmer.  (A good example is the continued use of “register_globals” by many PHP scripts…a sure guarantee of an injection attack.)  On top of that, a majority of shared hosting clients are not that entirely (if at all) well versed in how to maintain their sites and fail to keep their scripts updated.

But don’t be discouraged as there are some simple steps you can take to help make your servers more secure against many of the more common hacks.    I’ll be outlining the security steps I take when setting up new servers.  Note that I have a few tricks that I won’t be sharing since I don’t want to give the script-kiddies too much info.    Also, I’m only going to give you a brief overview of the steps.  In future articles I’ll get into the details of each step and how to implement them.

• Disable dangerous PHP functions.   These include exec(), passthru(), shell_exec(), system(), proc_open(), popen(), and show_source().   Some clients might complain that some of their scripts no longer work, but the security this one step provides far outweighs a few broken scripts.
• Secure your /tmp folder.   The latest versions of cPanel do this by default now, but it’s always good to go back and check.  And while you’re at it, make sure your /usr/tmpDSK file is large enough.   It defaults to 512K, but personally, I’d resize it to 1GB or better.
• Recompile Apache and PHP to add additional security features.   cPanel makes recompiling and enabling most Apache and PHP features very simple via the EasyApache configuration tool.  At minimum, security wise, enable Mod_suPHP and Mod_Security.
• Disable php.ini overrides in suPHP.    suPHP forces all users scripts to run as their username.  This prevents users from running any scripts as root or nobody.  It also disables the ability to override php.ini settings in the .htaccess file.  Unfortunately, by default, users can still create custom php.ini files that will override the system-wide version.  Thus, if left in this state, they can reactivate the disabled functions from above.  You can easily fix this by editing the /opt/suphp/etc/suphp.conf file and uncommenting the three lines in the [phprc_paths] section.
• Configure mod_security.  Now that you have mod_security compiled in, you need to configure it.  I suggest using the GotRoot rules (http://www.gotroot.com/mod_security+rules) and ConfigServer ModSecurity Control  (http://www.configserver.com/cp/cmc.html).   Be prepared to spend some time tweaking the rules, but in the end, well worth the effort.
• Install ConfigServer Firewall.    CSF w/LFD (http://www.configserver.com/cp/csf.html) is probably the best free firewall protection I’ve used.  Easy to install and manage and it works right out of the box.
• Install Rack911.com’s Symlink Patch.   By default, Apache allows you to symlink to ANY file on the server.   This means a malicious user or hacker can symlink to system configuration file and other users commonly known scripts config files and read them.  While you could simply disable symlink altogether, that would almost certainly break many system functions.  Rack991 generously released a patch that simply prevents the system from creating a symlink to files that are not owned by the user.
• Secure SSH.   You can change the SSH port, but I’ve found that it’s not really all that beneficial as port scanners can eventually find the port and it just makes our job harder as admins.  Instead,  simply don’t allow SSH for ANY cPanel user, not even jailed.  And add “PermitRootLogin without-password” to your sshd_config file.  This will only allow you to SSH into the server is if you have a valid SSH key in the authorized_keys file (Be sure to add that BEFORE you change the sshd_config file).
• Install Maldetect.  Install Linux Malware Detect from R-fx Networks (http://www.rfxn.com/projects/linux-malware-detect/).  While not perfect, it does give that extra layer of detection.
• Review your Tweak Settings.   Under Mail, set your Emails per hour limits to a low number (100);  enable prevent NOBODY from sending mail; enable Add X-PopBeforeSMTP.    These settings will put a strangle hold to mass-mail spamming and if you do have a spammer, quickly find who it is.

While implementing these steps will not 100% guarantee that your server will never be compromised, it does put you on good footing to prevent a vast majority of the types of attacks that you might see.  I’ll touch more on each of these points in later articles and on other things that can be done to give you that balance of security vs. usability that shared hosting clients require.

It began April 17th, 2012 – Greenpeace ran it’s story about How Clean is your Cloud taking to task some of the industry giants such as Microsoft, Apple, Google and Dell – for not being as forthcoming about their energy consumption and lack of green technologies being utilized to their potential. This story set off a chain reaction of events from Apple, and even GreenPeace activists bringing awareness across the globe about Datacenters and energy utilization. It is currently leading to public protests in front of Amazon and Microsoft’s headquarters to bring awareness on the subject.

Just 18 hours later, after GreenPeace ran it’s report, TurnKey Internet unveiled it’s new Green Datacenter in New York’s Tech Valley Region showing off the latest in both Renewable Energy (both Solar, and HydroElectric) as well as massive investments in new state of the art technology that reduces energy consumption by up to 33% versus other datacenters across the globe. TurnKey Internet had already been working on this new Green Datacenter for over 12 months to release it, but the timing couldn’t be better to help everyone understand the importance of utilizing Green based technology for your “Cloud” and Datacenter.

Datacenters use massive quantities of energy, by 2020 the datacenter and Cloud Services industry will be as big of a polluter as the airline industry. Datacenters centralize power consumption, and help businesses greatly reduce their energy consumption through virtualization and shared/scaling of their Cloud resources- but as you place 100,000’s of businesses into a datacenter that makes that datacenter now consume the power of a small city or town all in one small location. True, that datacenter will still net huge savings on power consumption versus those same 100,000’s of businesses running their own office services or power consumption desktop pc’s all the time – but that doesn’t mean the Datacenter its self is exempt from being both efficient and leveraging every possible modern green technology and renewable energy resource available.

So how does this impact you directly? Well GreenPeace has fired the first bullet quite frankly, publicly shedding light on this subject to help promote awareness for Earth Day 2012. GreenPeace has now gone as far as to bring public demonstrations to protest the lack of green efficient technologies and lack of utilization of renewable energies for some of the biggest datacenter players world wide. GreenPeace’s message is simple:

■ Be more transparent about their energy usage and carbon footprint, and to share innovative solutions so that the rest of the sector can improve;

■ Develop a siting policy that demonstrates a preference to build data centers in areas where clean energy can power the facility;

■ Invest in or directly purchase renewable energy;

■ Demand that governments and electric utilities increase the amount of renewable electricity available on the grid.

We, at TurnKey also share this same vision. Knowing full well that our business model for providing Cloud Services is all about helping businesses to leverage lower cost, higher performing resources in The Cloud to replace their expensive, power-hungry in-office IT solutions of today is only 1 part of the equation. It’s vital every Cloud Service provider be leveraging advanced Green Technologies, and renewable energy or they will be part of the problem (and by 2020, among the worst polluters on the planet!).

So if your business is hosting with one of the ‘dirty’ Clouds as Greenpeace terms it – you better talk to your Cloud provider and tell them what you want, or find a Cloud provider that has made investments in the future, to responsibly provide for your IT needs now, and by 2020!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Edward Parham, Director of Public Relations
Rueckert Advertising & Public Relations, Inc.
Tel: (518) 446-1091

TURNKEY INTERNET UNVEILS MULTIMILLION DOLLAR
GREEN DATACENTER IN NEW YORK’S TECH VALLEY:

Sun Powers “the Cloud” at Former Post Office

ALBANY, NEW YORK (April 18, 2012) — With Earth Day just around the corner and energy efficiency still firmly on the minds of business owners, TurnKey Internet — http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/media — has taken a proactive energy conservation role by purchasing and operating its own state-of-the-art datacenter featuring an array of technologies that ensure an environmentally friendly approach to web- and cloud-hosting services.

The company, which provides hosted IT solutions and cloud computing services to businesses and individuals in more than 100 countries, recently installed an advanced rooftop solar system. Clean, renewable energy from these panels now provides up to 75 percent of the company’s total energy needs.

TurnKey, which purchased a vacant U.S. Post Office for its headquarters, is also awaiting approval on hydropower from the Niagara Falls hydro project through Gov. Cuomo’s “Recharge New York” power program later this month. Through the year-old initiative, which is designed to spur job growth statewide, TurnKey expects to further bolster its overall renewable energy usage and create additional jobs.

“Datacenters use massive quantities of energy,” said TurnKey Internet CEO Adam Wills, noting that his 12,000-square-foot facility consumes more than 1.5 MW of electricity. “Without companies like us taking the initiative, studies have shown that by 2020 our industry will be as big of a polluter as the airline industry.

“By producing our own clean power on-site, we’ve been able to double the size of our local workforce over the past 18 months,” added Wills.

Besides tapping into green energy to run its expansive network of servers, TurnKey has also invested millions of dollars installing state-of-the-art cold containment pods. These energy efficient cooling systems, which provide a secure, clean-room environment for all servers and equipment, use 33 percent less energy to “spot cool” specific heat zones throughout the datacenter.

TurnKey’s facility also features specialized low-voltage computer servers from Dell and Intel that require less energy to power their cloud-based computing services.

“Innovative green technologies at our new facility in New York’s Tech Valley have not only helped us become more environmentally responsible, but also placed us on the cutting edge as a cloud services provider offering low-cost, energy-efficient green IT services and solutions,” said Wills.

To celebrate Earth Day and the grand opening of its datacenter, TurnKey Internet is offering $100 cash back, plus 75 percent off for life for each of its cloud-based products.

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About Turnkey Internet
Founded in 1999, Turnkey Internet, Inc. is a leading provider of managed web hosting and IT solutions. Located in New York’s Tech Valley region, Turnkey provides enterprise-class, cloud-based services to customers in more than 100 countries via its Latham, New York datacenter. For more information, call (518) 618-0999 or visit http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/media

Here is our latest video showcasing the new Green technologies.

For more information check out http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/green-initiative/

Everyone is on facebook and twitter, does my business really need a web site? Isn’t facebook really my web site these days?

These questions are common for businesses that have been starting up the last couple of years – especially businesses that focus on a non-online basis (say a local retail store). Facebook and other social mediums like LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter – all give you a little space to publish your message. Think of it as a small bill board that you get for free with facebook and other social media sites. But if you want to provide a branded and interactive experience that drives business to you – then having your owb web site is crucial.

Think you don’t need a web site – because you just have local clients who come to your shop? You can get more local clients aware of your buisness by having a web site, combined with using the social media tools. But having your own web site lets you setup email news letters (so you can re-announce to your current clients to come back in during promotional periods), as well as sell direct to people outside your region. Any business can use more business – opening your self up to the world for client with a strong web site can only help (it never hurts!). Even if you are a local retailer, focused on walk in sales only – a web site won’t hurt you, it will only help promote more people to come in and check you out!

First, we need to define what is web hosting.

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that
allows individuals or organizations to make their website visible on
the Internet. This can very greatly from a simple Static web page to
a trully interactive video rich experience that drives sales through an online e-commerce shopping cart. Web hosting companies provide
space on a server owned or leased for use by clients that typically
includes internet connectivity housed in a datacenter. Web hosts can
also provide data center space and connectivity for other advanced needs beyond just web site hosting, such as an office’s central file server, mail server, or even virtual desk tops. Web Hosting is the most common and basic form of what commonly today is refered to as “Cloud Hosting”, or “The Cloud” since your web site resides out on the internet, allowing anyone to access the information you want publicized.

How do you get your own web site and start web hosting?

You would contact a hosting provider such as Turnkey Internet. You
would then decide on whether you’re looking for a quick and easy web site to build, or perhaps something more involved that might include your own shopping cart to sell products online, an email newsletter to promote recurring businesses, and even your own blog to publish content to attract new visitors.

If you’re looking to start up your own hosting company, reseller hosting is the way to go. However, if you’re like most people, you’re attempting to host your website so that you can
bring traffic to your business. You could accomplish your goals by
purchasing a cPanel web hosting account. A cPanel account allows you to have a
location where you store your files, setup email along with a myriad
of tools.

Next time we will go deeper into this mysterious world of reseller
hosting vs cpanel web site hosting- as well as some great tips on how to make your web site stand out!