Does digitalocean provide admin panel like Plesk to manage Windows VPS? - windows

I have Windows VPS with a local hosting provider. Right now I have four .Net applications hosted on this VPS. I want to migrate my all applications to digitalocean.com. As I know Digitalocean provides VPS and they name it droplets.
In their documents, they say we provide unmanaged VPS which means I have to take care of software installation)(s).
Before starting this migration I have these questions in my mind.
Does it provide an admin panel like Plesk to manage Windows droplet?
Can I manage to deploy multiple sites on single droplet through an admin panel?
Does it include Windows server license in their package or I have to
pay separately to create a Windows VPS? I am not even sure if they
provide Windows server ready or I have to install Windows Server OS too
..... :)
Answers to these questions will be really helpful. Thanks.

As far as I know, currently, DigitalOcean only supports Linux and Linux-based OS's. You can try to use something like https://steemit.com/tech/#hursh/tutorials-how-to-install-windows-on-digital-ocean but it is not confirmed feature.

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I have a windows pc, can I develop with LAMP?

I have a pc running windows but I want to use a linux server. Is there a way for me to develop my website on my computer before I rent space on a server? Also its probably important to note that I have no linux experience. Should I just stick with wamp?
Unless you specifically and purposely use .NET features in your PHP Application, then an application developed in WAMP will work fine on a LAMP Server as long as you have included all the same PHP plugins.
PHP is independent from Linux or Windows. 99.9% of the time you have to knowingly use features from the host OS.
You should try ubuntu in a virtualbox, there are lots of well written guides that'll get you up and running.
For best performance, use coLinux. Install a linux distro like ubuntu (easier for beginners) and you should be ok.
Yes. I have developed and maintained a website like this before. My development environment was WAMP and the server was a LAMP shared server. Shouldn't be a problem till your site is using fairly basic libraries and they are available both for windows/linux.
However as others mentioned, its wiser to have the development environment as close possible to the production environment. You don't hit any surprises that way. And hey its not difficult and involves no cost:
You can use dual boot to have linux as other operating system.
Depending on your machine, you can just install VirtualBox and install a Linux VM.

WAMP or XAMPP for Windows XP Professional

I have Windows XP Professional as my OS.
Which of the following solutions is best?
WAMP
XAMPP
Separate installation
I'd recommend WAMP, as it's very easy to set up.
XAMPP is more feature rich though, as it includes Tomcat, and a slightly newer version of PHP.
Here's a simple breakdown of what's included in each:
http://www.wampserver.com/en/
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
I would actually suggest that users go for XAMPP server.
Reason for choosing XAMPP over WAMP
XAMPP has a beginner friendly interface with simple on/off buttons to start Apache and MySQL services. Whereas the latter has more options but it's interface is jam-packed which proves confusing for beginners.
XAMPP supports FileZilla so you can easily upload your local work onto your online server. It also comes with TOMCAT and newer version of PHP ( recommended for PHP Programmers )
XAMPP has more extensions to it compared to wamp.
You can check out my article on xampp and wamp comparison to get a more detailed understanding:
Wamp, faster and more noob friendly. Easy to configure and easy to install.
WAMP is easier to use in my opinion, but XAMPP may be more feature-rich.
Seeing as you're asking the question, though, I'd recommend WAMP.
You may also want to consider using BitNami WampStack. It is a free all-in-one installer that includes Apache, PHP, phpMyAdmin, MySQL and a GUI management tool for the servers.
It is similar to XAMPP, WAMPServer, etc. in that regard but with some differences: We keep it up to date (XAMPP is also kept fairly up to date, WAMPServer has not been updated since 2010 at the time of writing this posting). Also, any of the all-in-one Apache bundles are
Windows specific. We are multiplatform, meaning that you can use the same environment across multiple operating systems (Mac, Linux, Windows). We find this very useful internally, since our designer works on Windows and the rest of us run on Linux or OS X.
Also, we have found that a lot users want to setup XAMPP for local development on top of Joomla!, Drupal or Wordpress for developing plugins, themes, etc. and that is why we created all-in-one packages that include Apache, MySQL, PHP and those applications pre-installed. We also have Rails and Django versions of the stacks if that's what you are developing on.
Give it a try (it is free!) and let us know what you think :)
I use Visual-AMP & Visual-NMP, It is like the IIS,
Green portable, requires no installation. Stop related services that are running the program, you can move the directory.

Cloud Compiling Applications with Visual Studio

How would I develop apps if I had a Cloud Only PC?
I'm looking at the Acer-AC700-1099-Chromebook-Wi-Fi on Amazon.
The idea is kind of neat, and I can see this being the way more PCs are going to go. Nothing installed on your PC - you are basically running a "dumb terminal" that lives off an Internet connection.
So far, the biggest concern has been that apps like PhotoShop can not be run on them.
As programmers, most of us don't care about PhotoShop, but we need to compile our C#!
Does anyone have any information on whether some form of Cloud Compiling is in the works?
Maybe my employer would be able to purchase an X-License copy of Visual Studio that is installed on the server and I'd just log into that to develop all of my apps.
This is totally doable. I would suggest that you/your employer take a look at XenDesktop. This is technology that lets you run Windows Virtual Machines in your own private cloud. Then to access these machines you run a "thin client" which is basically like a Remote Desktop session. The thin client can run on a normal laptop, an iPad, and even Google ChromeOS. The basics of this technology are free, and not that hard to setup.
See these articles here which are Citrix announcing support for ChromeOS.
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=2311983
http://lazure2.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/chromebook-box-with-citrix-receiver-going-against-microsoft/
The coolest part about this, is you are using a Chromebook which is a cloud only laptop to access the public cloud AND your own private cloud. Pretty cloudy in here :)
Given that Visual Studio is Windows-only, you have to run Windows somewhere - either on your local PC (not an option with Chrome) or on some remote server (and access it via some web-based RDP client IF such beast exists and works with Chrome). I.e. the question can be split in two - where to get the powerful server system to run VS on it (and don't forget that compilation is resource-consuming, so the server system is to be very powerful if several users work on it in parallel), and how to connect to remote Windows system using Chrome OS. Both of those questions are offtopic here ;).

Is there an online application simulator somewhere?

I've developed some Java applications and wrapped them in exe files, some of them require JDIC files, the apps run on Windows systems, since my PC is all setup for development, it has all the necessary parts, but if a user downloads and runs my apps, they may not work as I thought. So I wonder if there is any place online that I can upload my apps and try to run them in a Windows environment and see if they work in the simulation ?
Frank
Consider using VirtualPC. You can get licensing for free.
Also you can get images from MS site for various versions of Windows to test with - supposedly for browser compatibility but you can use them for other things (which may or may not violate the EULA).
Consider using VMWare Workstation. You can get licensing for free.
You could use Amazon's EC2 instances to get easy access to virtual Windows machines. There is a bit of set up involved, but once you've done that you can spin up new machines easily enough. There are a number of tutorials online.
However, doing it locally with virtual windows instances is going to be even easier. I'd second VMware workstation or player.
You can download trial Windows server images directly from Microsoft for free.

Easiest free email server for Windows development

I'm developing a Java app on the Windows platform, and my application needs to send email. For development/testing purposes, what is an easy and free email server I can run on Windows?
If you're not running the low-end Home edition of Windows then there is a SMTP server built in (Install IIS and components).
But maybe you want a 'fake' server, one that only pretends to forward mail. Look for Dumbster or the .NET port NDumbster
I have had good luck with MailEnable. It's free and fairly easy to set up.

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