Knowledgebase
dotDefender by Applicure Review
| Posted by RivalHost-Todd, 11-01-2010, 10:12 AM | | We recently implemented dotDefender on a couple of our production shared Linux servers so we could offer a Web Application Firewall solution to our clients. After speaking with their sales rep Andy Mahler off and on for a couple years I decided to bite the bullet and signup. with my previous hosting company we never could run dotDefender because it is not yet compatible with Litespeed. From the sales end I always got emails answered and phone calls return so I felt comfortable in making the move.
Support has been a completely different story. Our experiences have been outlined below.
ISSUE ONE:
We installed 2 copies on some nice Dell R610's running CentOS 5.5 with cPanel. It seemed to load without issue, however...we started getting receiving dozens of alerts per day that HTTPD was being restarted see error below:
###
httpd failed @ Sun Oct 31 09:53:08 2010. A restart was attempted automagically.
Service Check Method: [tcp connect]
Failure Reason: Service check failed to completehttpd: [ != HTTP/1..]
###
I opened a ticket Oct 25th. Chicko Yanin replied the same day asking for root access. I provided the wrong info and he actually followed up with a phone call on the 27th and we got the login info straightened out. I waited until much later the same day and replied that the issue had gotten worse and httpd was restarting every 20 minutes. Chicko Yanin replied with...At the moment our Linux expert is working on it in order to get to the root of it. As soon as we have our findings, we will let you know. We hope this is not an inconvenience for you. (obviously httpd restarting a production server every 20 minutes is an issue...do I really need to point that out?).
The next day (Oct 28th) I replied and asked if I need to open a ticket for my other server as well or will this ticket work for both. Chicko Yanin replied with...As we understand, other servers you have encountered the same issue.
For the moment do not open more tickets since we believe this matter has a common denominator. Once our Linux expert resolves the given issue, we will try to implement this solution on your other servers. Thank you for your patience.
Its now been 4-days since the last reply. I realize removing it and calling it a day would be the quickest solution but I figure for their techs to solve the issue I should leave it running.
ISSUE TWO:
I can't say for particular this issue is universal to all cpanel installs but it seems strange to me their support can't even offer a solution. I figured out on my own a work-around.
Problem...when you load up dotDefender on a cpanel server and you add sites or rebuild apache it drops the entries in the httpd config file unless you add the code below into your pre_main_global.confGlobal file:
# Adds dotDefender module to apache
LoadModule dotDefender_module /usr/local/APPCure-full/contrib/apache2.2/dotDefender.so
ISSUE THREE:
Not a big deal but their cpanel/WHM plugin does not work. To be fair I have not opened a ticket on this issue. I don't really see the point when they can't answer my other more critical issues.
I noticed that a couple months back Phone support was included for hosting companies but it seems that option and phone number have been removed from the site.
Bottom line...nice product, seems to work, but if its not supported in a timely fashion and the techs show no sense of urgency I am having serious thoughts on whether this company is the one I want to bank on for my WAF solution.
|
|
 Add to Favourites
 Print this Article
|
Also Read
