Risk of hosting website on internal application server
-
This isn't really related to SEO, but it came up with a client....
We have a client that is hosting their website internally. That's not a problem except that the server it is hosted on is the same server where they host many secure applications with sensitive customer information.
We recommended to the marketing vp to move the website to a different server that doesn't host secure apps so we don't have be concerned about any conflicts. Their IT folks pushed back. So, I'm looking for some ammunition to support our recommendation.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Bernie Borges
Find and Convert
-
Just in case the question of site hosting is still under discussion, Bernie, I'd say you're absolutely right to be concerned about the website being hosted on the same server as sensitive client data. This is assuming they are actually hosting the website on the same operating system as the other apps.
This situation is EXACTLY what Virtual Servers have been invented for. They allow complete separation of different server instances, several of which can hosted on the same physical server hardware at the same time (so one piece of hardware can actually host several virtual servers).
The security aspect of this is huge. The harm that would come to the company if they had to disclose their client data had been hacked vastly outweighs the little bit of extra effort to maintain an additional virtual server for website hosting.
On a purely practical basis, the reality is that webservers often run into load issues, glitches, urgent security patches etc that require the server to be rebooted. This is far more likely to happen to webservers than application servers. There's no reason why these reboots should have to take down the other client apps in the process.
I've known companies running all on one server to avoid implementing patches because they were afraid the patches might break custom apps. As a result, the unpatched website got hacked, causing massive downtime for both website and apps.
So yea - if they're running everything under one server instance, they're begging for trouble (and breaking industry best practices).
If they're running all on one server but with the apps and website on different virtual servers (sometimes called virtual machines) they're fine.
Hope that gives you a little more ammunition.
Paul
-
Hi Paul,
Sorry for the tardy response. I don't actually know if the client is hosting the website on the same bank of servers as their client apps. Their website is https and they host it internally. Our contact is the marketing director and she has not been able to answer this question for us.
Thanks for your interest in helping me with this. Sorry I don't have more detail at this time.
Best regards,
Bernie Borges
Find and Convert
-
Just checking if you're still looking for help with this issue, Bernie. If so, still need my question above answered to give an opinion.
Paul
-
Bernie, when you say they are hosted on the same server - do you mean hosted on the same physical hardware but on separate virtualized server instances? Or are they actually running on and sharing the same OS install?
Paul
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to decrease the spam score of website ?
Hello , Everyone I have my own website crawlmyline we are doing seo from last 2 years but didn't do any spammy work on my my site .Still I won't able to stop the spam score and now my website has 28 % spam score according to the moz.I have taken subscription of moz pro but still i can't understand the process. Can anyone please tell me how to decrease the spam score of website ?
Technical SEO | | kuldeep_chauhan0 -
Website crawl error
Hi all, When I try to crawl a website, I got next error message: "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal cookie name" For the moment, I found next explanation: The errors indicate that one of the web servers within the same cookie domain as the server is setting a cookie for your domain with the name "path", as well as another cookie with the name "domain" Does anyone has experience with this problem, knows what it means and knows how to solve it? Thanks in advance! Jens
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
How long does it take to reindex the website
Generally speaking, how long does it take for Google to recrawl/reindex an (ecommerce) website? After changing a number of product subcategories from 'noindex' back to 'index', I regenerated the sitemap and have fetched as Google in WMT. This was a couple of weeks ago and no action yet. Second question: Does Google treat these pages as if they're brand new? I 'noindexed' them back in April, and they were ranking ok then. (I had noindexed them on the back of advice from my SEO, due to concerns about these pages being seen as duplicate content). Help!
Technical SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
Website not crawled
i added website www.nsale.in in add campaign, it shows only 1 page crawled. but its working fine for other sites, any idea why it failed ?
Technical SEO | | Dhinesh0 -
Website redirects
We consolidated websites. All the international sites have been brought under the roof of our mothership site based in the US: www.crisisprevention.com ... We mapped out all of the URLs and where they should be redirected. However, if someone types in, say, www.crisisprevention.co.uk it redirects to the mothership site, BUT the old URL hangs around no matter what page you navigate to. I feel like it has duplicate content ramifications or worse. I would like opinions on this, so I can take my findings to IT and figure out a solution. Here’s another example: http://www.positive-options.co.uk and another http://www.positive-options.com
Technical SEO | | spackle0 -
Does server location impact SEO?
Hi, I am about to purchase hosting for my WordPress site which is primarily targeting the UK and wondered if server location still has an impact on SEO? Also can anyone recommend a reliable hosting provider with CPanel?
Technical SEO | | Wallander0 -
.htaccess when integrating one website into another
My client would like to integrate one of it's smaller websites into its main website. I've identified around 20 pages which I'd like to 301 redirect to specific pages on the main website, and this is simple enough. The problem I have is that I am not sure how I can then put a catch-all to redirect all other pages on the site to the homepage of the main website. I'd originally though something like this would work: redirect 301 / http://www.mainwebsite.com/ (catch-all)
Technical SEO | | AndrewAkesson
redirect 301 /about.asp http://www.mainwebsite.com/about (specific redirect 1)
redirect 301 /latest.asp http://www.mainwebsite.com/news (specific redirect 1)
etc. Any ideas?0 -
Internal website search
Hi, I'd like to index dynamically generated - internal website search pages - to Google. A mod rewrite to make the URL strings friendlier might be one way, but as these pages are created on the fly and effectively don't exist till the search keywords are inputted, is it even possible to index them? thanks
Technical SEO | | richcowley0