Safest way to setup my Firewall, E-mail & Web Server
 

Hello,

I'm looking at setting up a Home network which has it's own E-mail and Web Server, and I was wanting some advice about the best way to set it up securely while minimising the computers used.

I am planning to run a SME firewall; is it safe to also run an apache web server on the same machine, or does that put holes in my firewall? If it does, is it safe to run an e-mail server and a web server off the same machine? Or should I bit the bullet and just run 3 computer 24/7?

Thanks,

Matthew Collins

Email and web servers can happily co-exist in one box if it has enough resources to run both.
Your firewall should be the most secure machine on your network. This means
ideally no services running on it. If you must run sshd for admining it make sure its
only accessable from the lan side.

:-)

well, personally i'd be running smoothwall on a smaller box and mail/apache on a bigger server box... two boxes, safer setup...

Thanks, I thought it was the case. I just wasn't sure if the mail server would cause security issues with my e-mail server.

Thanks,

Matthew Collins