What is the difference between Local Server and a Web Server? - apache

Hi i am new to Web Services. Here is my doubt
1) If i am hosting my website then their should be a web server which should keep my website into that this also we are calling server..
2) If i want to run PHP Program in my local system i should use Local Server lie XAMPP this also we are calling server.
My doubt is for example in local system i have downloaded Xampp and i am running my server side program.. but after uploading into server how its working
also AWS, Proxy is which server???
All the servers are confusing a lot

Both web servers and local servers are just computers with software installed on them.
Not much more.
That said a web server is a computer that is connected to the internet and has some kind of a web server software installed on it.
The most common one is an HTTP server software that can serve web pages.
For example, Apache, Nginx are both HTTP servers that can serve both static and dynamic web pages to browser across the world.
Another web server can be FTP, IRC, NTP, SMTP/IMAP/POP3 (mail servers) are all web servers that just have different software installed on them and so they serve other purposes.
A local server is again a computer that serves a client within the local network or LAN.
That means that in most cases it will not be connected to the internet or if it does it will be protected with a password so not everybody can access its services.
It can act as a file server or LDAP server that are roles of a typical local server but it can also be a local web server that holds web-based application only for the local organization.
For example, a company will have a local web server with Salesforce installed on it to serve it's CRM needs.
To make a long story short both servers are just computers connected to a network. Local servers are connected to the LAN and Web Servers are connected to the WAN. Other than that it really depends on the software you install on them and the use you want to make of them.
If you need more clarification, leave a comment and I'll try to help.

Related

Hosting server farm begind VPN

I have a set up I would like to implement but just not sure on the details. As you can see in the image below I have a single VPS in the web which I would like to use as a gateway to a number of locally running web servers. Im using the VPN to hide the IP/location of the server farm while maintaining the ability to host locally.
What I am not sure on is the implementation as I have never used a VPN before. My understanding is that I can host the VPN server on the server farm, have the VPS connect to it which will give me another 'local' network interface which I can then use apache to proxy traffic through?
The server farm is basically a small Kubernetes cluster give or take a little.
Is my understanding correct and can you offer any advice on implementaion?
Thanks in advance!
server farm example image
The VPN server should have two network interfaces. The first is the public interface that connects to the Internet and the second is the local interface that connects to the server farm. All the servers in the farm should connect only to the local interface and have the gateway set as the VPN server.
You can use the Reverse Proxy functionality in Apache to route incoming traffic to the appropriate server. See Reverse Proxy Guide

Where is guacamole-client?

I've followed the instructions here: http://guac-dev.org/doc/gug/installing-guacamole.html
This says
Guacamole is separated into two pieces: guacamole-server, which provides the guacd proxy and related libraries, and guacamole-client, which provides the client to be served by your servlet container, usually Tomcat.
guacamole-client is available in binary form, but guacamole-server must be built from source. Don't be discouraged: building the components of Guacamole from source is not as difficult as it sounds, and the build process is automated. You just need to be sure you have the necessary tools installed ahead of time. With the necessary dependencies in place, building Guacamole only takes a few minutes.
And then proceed to describe how to install guacamole-server and use it. I can now go to http://localhost:8080/guacamole/ and access the server and see which clients have connected.
How do I connect a client though? I see no documentation of where the remote desktop needs to browse to in order to run the guacamole-client?
Or have I totally misunderstood this?
The key phrase in the quoted documentation is:
... guacamole-client, which provides the client to be served by your servlet container, usually Tomcat.
"guacamole-client" is the web application and the client. When a user visits the URL for your Guacamole server, logs in, and clicks on a connection, they are connected to the corresponding remote desktop via Guacamole's JavaScript client which is served to their browser like any other web application.
I can now go to http://localhost:8080/guacamole/ and access the server and see which clients have connected.
The list you see when you first log in to your Guacamole server is not the list of clients that have connected; it is the list of connections to remote desktops which are available. If you click on one of those connections, you will be connected using Guacamole's own built-in JavaScript client.
How do I connect a client though? I see no documentation of where the remote desktop needs to browse to in order to run the guacamole-client?
The remote desktop does not need to do anything - Guacamole will simply connect to it. You can see a video of the overall user experience on the Guacamole website which may hopefully clear things up for you:
https://vimeo.com/116207678
Overall:
You deploy guacamole-client (the web application) and install guacamole-server (the remote desktop proxy that the web application uses in the backend). The combination of these two pieces of software makes up a typical Guacamole server.
You and your users can log in through the web application and connect to remote desktops using a web browser.
You do not need to explicitly run a client.
It looks like this
Internet -> Guacamole server (on the local network) -> Desktop pc
I installed Guacamole in a vmware enviroment on Ubuntu.
There is a file in /etc/guacamole what is called user-mapping.xml
In that file you add or edit the connections available to the user you want.
A connection for that user must be set between the <connection> tags

TeamViewer type of service for headless servers

So, we all use TeamViewer for accessing GUI based (Windows / Linux) remotely and of course, it works really well.
Any ideas of how to do the same with headless (Ubuntu) servers? I'm thinking that the headless servers would run some sort of service that connects to a central server, which I can then remote into (somehow) and then route through the central server to the remote server.
It's kinda like the server based TightVNC that was popular a view years ago, where you could host the "server" module and have all your TightVNC clients connect to that server, whilst you do the same on your client, and the server module provides a gateway through to the remote systems. Just like TeamViewer really.
I wonder if the remote servers can connect to the (central) gateway server via SSH, I would do the same (again via SSH) but then the gateway server will provide me a "tunnel" through to the remote server.
I would of course prefer to have the remote servers have SSH ports opened through their firewall and then connect to them directly, but sometimes their IT teams don't like that. Having a server that runs a service, connects to a public server, means that the IT team will typically permit this, as the traffic is initiated internally and would be even more so agreeable to permitting it if that traffic uses an encrypted protocol.
Anyway - I just wondered if there was something out there that I could have a look at and see if it would work??
If you don't want a cloud controlled service (with serious security issues as of late), then check out the self-hostable MeshCentral project. It creates outbound tunnels that allow devices to communicate behind NAT and other networks.
Good news! Teamviewer 11 supports headless Linux servers :)
https://www.teamviewer.com/en/help/1111-How-do-I-install-TeamViewer-on-a-Linux-system-with-no-graphical-user-interface
Try https://www.dwservice.net/en/
Works on RPI, Linux and Windows.Best Part is free and Support for Terminal access
not just GUI ( so works faster in slower internet ) .
Client side- > just run the script ( not need of GUI)
Remote side - > Run just browser.

Security Risks Associated With Local Web Servers

If I set up a local server using, say, Apache or WAMP are there any associated security risks? I'm not planning on hosting or making any content "publicly accessible," I just want to set up an environment where I can learn PHP and develop using an HTML5 game engine. Sorry if this is a completely naive question; I'm just a bit confused about how server security works.
If you don't open up any ports in your router to allow for public access to your web server, then it won't add any security risks. Just installing the local web server won't do this.
On a side note, WAMP is a collection of tools that includes Apache as the web server, they are not examples of two different web servers.

Can I open ports on Azure Websites?

If I want to self host WCF in a Windows Azure Website by spinning up my own ServiceHost can I host end points on 8080 or any other port I want to? Is there any specific usable range of ports I have access to or is port access entirely blocked?
Edit: for absolute clarification this question is NOT about web or worker roles and is only about Azure Websites
This blog post is slightly out dated now as Windows Azure Websites have more features now (like staging and production slots, WebJobs, etc) but the part regarding ports is still true for Azure Websites.
When to use Cloud Services [...] Windows Azure Websites is all IIS, the web server provides the entire platform, there is no room for long running processes or threads that can sit and wait for communication on another port outside of IIS
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cdndevs/archive/2013/11/21/windows-azure-websites-vs-cloud-services.aspx
Note that now you can have a long running process using webjobs that does back-end work, but you can't listen on anything other than 80
No, WAMS won't let you open ports. If you need that, you should host in a Web Role (Cloud services). Then you can configure your endpoints through windows azure management portal.