We are designing asp.net web application in wcsf. Web application will be deployed to Windows Server 2003 shared VDS hosting. Web site will be used for b2b, monthly service fee and credit card transactions used in web application so it must be secure site. I want to consider what must be done before deployment and i need an answer to a few questions:
1) How can i copy protect my site & my code. Is code signing enough? What should i do for reflector protection? Obfuscation is enough?
2) What about Windows Server 2003 VDS hosting pros & cons?
3) MS SQL Server 2005 Express is suitable for that kind of business use? Limitation of mssql express (4GB storage and 1Gb ram) cause bottlenecks in website?
4) Can I transfer database from express edition to mssql 2005 workgroup edition in the future without problem?
Obfuscation would be sufficient. Code signing doesn’t provide any protection from prying eyes. Also most respectable hosters aren’t interested in your intellectual property and data. They’re in the hosting business at the end of the day.
I work for a hosting company and we have a fast growing number of customers hosted on our virtualisation platform. One of the advantages for both the customer and ourselves is that if you need more CPU or memory, we can add them almost immediately because this is just a config setting on the VM. Ultimately it all depends on how your supplier has built his virtual environment. You really need to gather more information about the capabilities and limits of their environment, how many servers per node they typically run etc, and decide if it’s adequate for you.
SQL 2005 express will perform as well as full fat SQL 2005. The limitations are in functionality (e.g. no olap, that kinda thing) and as you correctly point out, the maximum amount of memory it can utilise and max size of DB. Performance will degrade however if you outgrow the maximum amount of memory available.
SQL 2005 Express databases can be backed up and restored to any SQL 2005/2008 product without any problems.
Without knowing the volume of traffic that will hit your application it would be hard to predict whether a virtual server is the best choice of environment. The same applies to SQL 2005 express. If the app is database intensive you may find yourself under increased memory pressure – the more memory SQL server has the more it can cache. I think you need to do some of your own capacity planning and decide for yourself what is the the optimal solution for now and later down the line.