hi all, i just purchased a windows 2008 web server to host my website (htm, php, vbulletin), it is my first dedicated server, HOW TO START? DO I NEED CP? THX
If you are asking such questions, I guess you will need a CP. Try to get the CP guys to install the CP as well as PHP and MySQL for you. They will normally obliged for a small fees. Also try to purchased a Windows hardening service from them to secure your server.
You should be able to get a control panel from your host. It sounds like you just bought a server, without doing any research
There are free versions of CPs (such as DotNetPanel) but they will take some knowledge and effort to install correctly. Either have your host install them for you or hire someone for the task.
If you have a dedicated server which you plan to use for only yourself and not host other accounts, then I would skip the control panel and just do a local install of your web server (it takes less than an hour to install IIS, PHP, MySQL ---- for someone like me, with experience it takes less than 20 minutes). It would be more beneficial in the long run and you'll learn a lot more about server administration. However it does sound like you may be a novice --- not just to web management but also server administration, which may be a huge problem because server administration can be troublesome, but if you have the time to learn then I would start now by doing a local web server install. Anyone who buys a dedicated server should know and understand server administration or expect to pay for it.
I suggest running whichever you are most comfortable with. Though, if you are not comfortable with either, then its a coin toss. For me, IIS is much easier, but for many others Apache is much easier. Many may argue that IIS is not as secure or robust as Apache, but I have years of Microsoft and Linux experience and I prefer Windows environments over Linux environments, but the truth is any server is only as good as the server admin. This means you can make IIS or Apache secure, robust, and top performing if you are a good server administrator. Anyway, if you have no experience with either --- then I would suggest that you run Apache and give it a try. It may be a bit harder to figure out, but if you search the web you'll find lots of documentation. I suggest Apache simply because it is the most popular and most used web server in the industry, therefore the learning experience will benefit you in the long run and open up doors. Additionally, it will probably be easier to pass the responsibility of server maintenance to another administrator if you ever had to. Plus its free, so if ever you ran into money problems and couldn't afford licensing then you could switch to a Linux server and run Apache there --- all for free. You'll never have a free option with Windows/IIS (not legally). Good luck.