Windows Web Hosting FAQs

General Windows Hosting FAQ

Overview

The website will be a public site for use to individual members of the General Public in the UK. As this is a new website product, the services provided are strictly confidential for commercial reasons.

Requirements
The requirements described in this document detail what is needed in a windows hosting package.

Windows Hosting Supplier Information

Please provide the following information: -

• How long has the company been established and trading?
• Where is the company based?
• Is the company a private limited company?
• How many employees does the company have?
• How many support staff does the company have?
• Where are the support staff based geographically?
• Where are the web servers and databases servers located geographically?
• What debit cards do you accept?

Platform
The website will need to be hosted for ASP.Net 2.0 and Ajax. Future plans are that we expect to migrate to ASP.Net 3.5 within 12 months. We will therefore be looking for a plan that could support this in 12 months time.

Windows Hosting & Security
The security of data is of vital importance in any hosting package. Although windows shared hosting is being considered as the viable option initially, the website must be hosted on one physical machine (i.e., not across several servers like a “web farm”). There needs to be a guarantee of security for the web server and database server. I would like details of how any potential hosting supplier handles this and the architectural set up of the web server and database server (i.e., do they reside on different machines, are they in different physical locations, etc). I would also need reassurances and guarantees over the firewalls between the web servers and database servers.

Disaster Recovery
I require full details of this from any potential windows hosting supplier.

Development Tools / Programming
The website shall be constructed, in the main, using Microsoft Visual Studio.Net 2005.

Database
The database used is Microsoft SQL Server 2005. It is important that if SQLServerAuthentication is being used that all data is secure and protected
by appropriate firewalls and security policies.

3rd Party Tools
A number of 3rd party components will be used in the project. These are controls and components that provide superior functionality to those supplied with ASP.Net 2.0 and/or provide additional functionality not found in ASP.Net 2.0. These are vital to the project. A full list is not yet available. However, those that will definitely be included will be a “file upload” component; a “image manipulation” component (which will be mainly used to resize and reformat uploaded images programmatically). There may also be a reporting component. Others may also be added if needed.
It is vital that all of the relevant runtime required files and components can be installed on the windows server being used to host the website.

Webservices and 3rd Party Site Integration
The website will need to integrate with other websites and make use of webservices. Do the packages fully support this? As an example, when visitors pay, payments will be handled via a 3rd party site. Additionally, aspects of order details will be obtained from a 3rd party web service.

Other Technologies
Other technologies used and that therefore need to be supported include: -
• HTTP
• HTML
• XML
• CSS

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ASP.NET MSSQL Hosting FAQ’s

Login & Security
The windows hosting website will make use of “Forms Authentication”. The website may make use of “Roles” (introduced into ASP.Net 2.0). However, there are some concerns over the security of certain data and some web pages / forms. For example, if you consider the “Login” page, when the user enters her credentials and submits the login page form, the credentials – including the password – are transmitted over the Internet to the web server in plain text. That means any hacker sniffing the network traffic can see the username and password. I would like to know what the windows hosting supplier does to prevent this? For example, can the network traffic be encrypted by using Secure Socket Layers (SSL)? This would ensure that the credentials (as well as the entire page’s HTML markup) are encrypted from the moment they leave the browser until they are received by the web server.
As far as I understand, I will only need to use SSL on the “Login” page and on other pages where the user’s password would otherwise be sent over the Internet in plain text. I do not want the entire site under SSL, as I believe this would be overkill and result in a slow user experience.
Obviously, this is something that needs to be clarified with any windows web hosting supplier. It is my understanding that I would not need to worry about securing the forms authentication ticket since, by default, it is both encrypted and digitally signed to prevent tampering.

IIS and URL Authentication
The “UrlAuthorizationModule” is managed code that is part of the ASP.NET runtime. Prior to version 7 of Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) web server, there was a distinct barrier between IIS’s HTTP pipeline and the ASP.NET runtime’s pipeline. In short, in IIS 6 and earlier, ASP.NET’s UrlAuthorizationModule only executes when a request is delegated from IIS to the ASP.NET runtime. By default, IIS processes static content itself – like HTML pages and CSS, JavaScript, and image files – and only hands off requests to the ASP.NET runtime when a page with an extension of .aspx, .asmx, or .ashx is requested.

IIS 7, however, allows for integrated IIS and ASP.NET pipelines. With a few configuration settings you can setup IIS 7 to invoke the UrlAuthorizationModule for all requests, meaning that URL authorization rules can be defined for files of any type. Additionally, IIS 7 includes its own URL authorization engine. In a nutshell, in versions prior to IIS 7, URL authorization rules are only applied to resources handled by the ASP.NET runtime. But with IIS 7, it is possible to use IIS’s native URL authorization feature or to integrate ASP.NET’s UrlAuthorizationModule into IIS’s HTTP pipeline, thereby extending this functionality to all requests. I would therefore like to know which version of IIS is being used currently and, if version 7 is not currently being used, when this is likely?

Emails
The website will need the facility to send e-mails from within the website application. This will be both as part of the integral functionality but also for error notifications. I will need to know that any potential windows hosting supplier can provide this and moreover what support there is for being able to send emails from my hosted site (e.g., visitor fills out a contact form and this is automatically emailed to an email address of my choice etc).
Also, does the windows hosting including SMTP server usage for sending emails?

Backups
Please provide me with full details of you backup policies and/or options (including SQL Server data). Are your backups off-site?

Support
Please provide me with full details of your technical support policies, including all relevant details and these in particular: -
• An overview of your service levels;
• Response times;
• Times when support is available;
• Is support available via e-mail or live chat?;
• Are any preinstalled scripts of any kind supplied?
• How many subdomains can I have?
• Do you supply a browser-based file manager?
• How frequent is your backup and is that offsite?
• What is you policy and procedure in event of server failure?
• Do you offer any webmail?
• Does the windows hosting package support streaming media?
• Can I use Flash and Shockwave on the website?
• I will want to run scripts against my hosted SQL Server database remotely from my PC - is this possible?

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General Windows Hosting FAQ

Development
In the advent of business growth, I may require more database storage space and/or user bandwidth quickly. What are your upgrade policies for such needs? How quickly can they be implemented? What are the costs of this type of scalability in your Windows hosting packages?

Other Requirements
Here is a list of other requirements that any hosting package would need to provide: -
• No file extension limitations
• Anti-spam and Anti-virus Protection
• Directory Password Protection
• Custom Error Pages
• Full Firewall Protection
• 24/7 FTP Access
• Control Panel (or similar) for Website
• Do you provide a browser-based file manager?
• Under the hosting package, how do I setup my SQL Server database?
• Under the hosting package, how do I add/edit/remove tables, stored procedures, triggers etc?
• Under the hosting package, how do I execute scripts against the server?
• Does the windows hosting package fully support managed stored procedures and UDFs in SQL Server?
• Under the asp.net hosting package, how do I upload and download a copy of the full SQL Server database?
• Under the windows asp mssql hosting package, how do I obtain and download the data within my SQL Server? And, what are the options for uploading data in order to insert it into the database via, for example, update scripts?

Exceptions
Are there any aspects or elements of the .Net Framework, ASP.Net, SQL Server or anything else that you do NOT provide and/or support in your hosting packages?

Upgrading
At some time in the future (within 3 years), the website shall be upgraded to Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and v3.5 of the .Net Framework. This is subject to review but the important requirement is that an upgrade path is available from the chosen hosting supplier.

Flexibility
I would like the ability to easily add-on services to my package as time goes by, without incurring excessive costs. How is this build into your packages?

Price
Do you supply a money-back guarantee for 30 or 60 days? This is important, as our deployment plans is under 60 days but more than 30.
I would like to know
(a) if you can supply a package that meets ALL the requirements above and
(b) a concrete price for this.

I would like a price both per month and annually for the package you can supply that MEETS the requirements above. Please could you supply this inclusive of VAT.

Disclaimer and Acknowledgements
Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, Windows, XP, Vista, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Internet Explorer, .Net, Microsoft .Net, ASP, ASP.Net, ASP.Net 1.1, ASP.Net 2.0, VB.Net, C#, C#.Net, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2007, .Net Framework, Microsoft .Net Framework, Microsoft .Net Framework v1.1, Microsoft .Net Framework v2, Microsoft .Net Framework v3, .Net 1.1, .Net2, .Net 3, LINQ, Exchange, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange 2007, Exchange 2007 are all registered trademarks and/or intellectual property and/or copyright of Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved worldwide.

All other products and technologies referenced are the intellectual property and/or registered trademarks and/or copyright of their respective owners and/or manufacturers.

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