Opinion wanted about ftp services

[Sebastien Masson]

Hi all,

Hope I'm at the good place to ask the question

We provide ftp services to a lot of client. Right now, the solution is the IIS ftp service running on Windows 2000 advance server (cluster).

The problem is windows adv 2002 doesn't provide very good I/O solution (multiple I/O path, etc). So it's hard to connect the system on a SAN.

We try Veritas but the software crash our server for 8h (we lost the OS).

Now my manager want me to find a better enterprise bullet proof solution. (Money is not an object)!

So what do you think is the best ? (move everything under HP-UX with MCSG ? Linux ? Leave it on windows crap ? move to windows 2003 ?

Thanks

[Rita C Workman]

For here...I put the FTP services needed on a smaller UNIX box and then just gave it the disk it needed.

It's been there for over 3 years...and never so much as 'burped'. Only time it has been down was when we loaded some latest patches (i.e. scheduled down).

Worked great for securing accounts with chroot too....

Just my opinion,
Rita

[Karthik S S]

It is always better to use some UNIX box as a FTP server. Popular FTP server for unix is wu-ftp. You can get it from

http://www.wu-ftpd.org/

And you can configure multiple NIC cards on the system to get good network throughput by tunneling them. In HP-UX you can use APA ( Auto Port Aggregation) software to utilize this feature. If you are going to stick with Windows some NICs like Intel Ether express comes with a software for increasing the bandwidth.

And for better I/O You can opt for Mirroring the data ( Hardware RAID preferably).

And ofcourse for fault tolerance you can go for MC/SG.

Regards,
Karthik S S

[Pete Randall]

Sebastien,

I think the fact that you asked this question here on this forum is very revealing. You wouldn't be somewhat predisposed toward HP-UX, would you?

I'm definitely a HP-UX bigot, so my obvious choice for reliability is an HP platform. I might consider Linux, just because of the cost factor, but you still end up dealing with the less reliable hardware and you have all the configuration issues of Linux. Go with HP.


Pete

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
Like Rita, Ive got the ftp services configured on a K360 (HPUX11 32bit) with good amount of disk space that is HDS 5800 in RAID5 using 2 separate FWSCSI ports, (the system boots also on the Subsystem...), works great no problems for 4 years now...


All the best
Victor

[Michael Steele_2]

I've seen a lot of writing about going to LINUX instead of HPUX and apparently Oracle has jumped into this boat for architectural reasons; Oracle does not apparently like Itanium. Windows 2003 has also not been rated very high.

'FTP' and the binary transfer mode of FTP works on all of these platforms as well as others. 'FTP' is a very 'good' cross platform utility that many other utilities cannot approach. Many, many network admins consider it the best network transfer utility for other reasons as well.

[Bill Douglass]

With a high-end configuration (multiple path to a SAN, high-availability needs) I would definately go with an HP-UX type solution. Good hardware, good support for SAN and multi-pathing, and competent support for problems.

I am in the process of moving our user community to ssh and scp for login and file transfer. Tools like PuTTY and win-scp help greatly in this regard.

[Bill Hassell]

Using ftp server on Windows means you have to turn on IIS, one of the most successfully compromised services in Windows. ftp is very difficult to scale in a Windows environment (multiple I/O paths both disk and LAN). So as mentioned already, for reliability and security, HP-UX makes a lot of sense. It is quite easy to turn on multiple and redundant LAN I/O as well as disk channels, although you'll need very high speed links to require high speed disks (like fibre channel). LAN is still a lot slower than disks until you get multiple LAN channels busy (easy with Auto-Port-Aggregation or APA).

HP-UX has incorporated the WU-ftpd code (Washington University) in HP-UX versions 11 and higher for several years. There are MANY controls available to control access for ftp that are not available for Windows platforms, and with MC ServiceGuard, users will likely never experience any downtime for years.

Now for an engterprise bullet-proof solution, I would STRONGLY recommend migrating (slowly if necessary due to your existing clients) to SSH (Secure Shell) so both login and data are securely encrypted over the network. Standard ftp will send plain-text login information over the network which is not a good idea today.

As far as a backup solution, I would look at HiComp's HiBack program for a very easy to use, very high throughput backup solution. It has outperformed Veritas, Omniback and other commercial solutions and runs on more than a dozen different platforms including Windows.

[Geoff Wild]

For ftp, I prefer Proftpd:

http://www.proftpd.org/

Works great on a wide variety of Unix, Linux and even MAX OSX...

Very configurable....

Yes - I would dump Windows....

Rgds...Geoff

[Shannon Petry]

I have 4 commercial FTP sites which have all been up for 3+ years. 2 are running wu_ftpd on HP-UX 11.0, and the other 2 are running Proftpd on Solaris.

I trust Proftpd alot more than wu_ftpd, but both are good. Proftpd allows me much more control, and has less known security bugs because of the way that they implemented user input(client).

In either case, most people think that windblows is cheaper because it costs less up front. Quite honestly, you can get a remanufactured HP or even a brand new Sunblade for under $5,000.00 US. It wont crash, handles I/O exceptionally well, and can do a helk of alot more if you need it too. I.E. Apache, Perl, SQL, etc...

Unix still has TCO of 1/2 or better any windblows server once you factor in administration costs, and downtime both scheduled and non-scheduled.

None of my critical apps run on windblows for this reason.

Regards,
Shannon

[Kevin Wright]

Why would anyone run IIS is beyond me. Configuring a secure FTP server is not hard at all, whether it be Linux/solaris/HP. I have used wu-ftpd for user accounts and anonymous for years and never had one problem.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

If money is not an objection, then you can go for a small HP box. Probably an RP5400/L-class?. You can really get them cheap. You will get much better IO response than a windows system. As your ftp server is a matter of fact of a floating IP and the storage, you can easily get it configured into ServiceGuard.

I suspect you cannot use SSH's sftp as it is supposed to be available to the outside customers. But you have good controls over ftp with ftpaccess file. Unix gives good options for security. Atleast a virus cannot take it down.


-Sri

[Jean-Guy GROSSE]

Hello,

We used proftpd under HPUX, SUn and Linux, I think it's very good product if you're using a virtualhosting.

http://www.proftpd.org/

Best regards.

Jgg.

[Sebastien Masson]

Hey guys...

Thanks a lot for all your answer...

My idea is same like yours. But I want to go to an other step.

The think is I don't want a user file transfer drop if a lost a node in cluster.

I currently check to put my ftp service on 3 alpha server running TruCluster (global devices, global file system, etc). 2 in the cluster and one in standby for maintenance. Those server connected to the SAN with multipath.

Some people are already play with TruCluster here ?

Thanks

[Shannon Petry]

I think that you will find most people here cluster with HP clustering tools. I have never used the cluster tool you talk of, but use Suns clustering tools.

Regards,
Shannon

[Zeev Schultz]

Alpha you mean OVMS or Tru64?If its Tru64 I'd
go for hp-ux (or linux ) solution instead unless there are another considerations.
I use wuftp (hp-ux) and vsftp (redhat),both are
nice and friendly.