Dedicated Web Server Hosting

Web hosting is one of the revolutionary breakthroughs brought to us by the advent of cyber technology. Now you can learn, play, interact, make friends, draw, or compose music on the Net. Dedicated hosting means creating a site and making it available on the internet. Nonetheless, Websites with multiple numbers of pages, or Websites which are commercial and business oriented, are hosted at various prices. Obviously, for that there has to be a registered domain name to run the related Website. Dedicated servers are meant for faster processing and more disk space and RAM than shared hosting. A dedicated server not only allows an individual to customize and individualize server settings for his unique requirements, but also augments all kinds of Web-based works with faster delivery and maximum performance. Service Level Agreements (SLA's) are another important part of the dedicated Web hosting server requirement systems.

A combination of highly technical characteristics contributes a lot to the optimal performance of a dedicated Web hosting server, to exercise total control over the Web and its other affiliated programs and other things.

A few of the most desirable features for the ideal dedicated Web-hosting server are:

a) High availability of data processing units

b) High performance data centers for maximum output in minimum time

c) Multiple backup generators along with battery backup

d) Fiber entry on two sides of the facilities

e) Superfluous path fiber to upstream providers through multiple transport providers

f) Total of more than twenty-five gigabyte Internet connections

g) Redundant network cores and total of 30 backbone routers for optimal output mode

h) Two network operations centers staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

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Web Server Hosting

A successful website does not end with a well designed website. If you have a website for your business, it should have an online presence in order to generate traffic. One of the most effective ways to do this is through web server hosting.

Web server hosting is a web hosting solution committed to providing you with the advanced changes in technology. It gives your online business exposure on the worldwide web in order to reach your target market. This makes you more competitive, and helps you keep up with the fast-paced online technology.

With so many web-hosting companies, packages for web server hosting also begin to look very similar. That is why you have to look at all the features and small details included in the package such as articles, images, shopping carts and music.

Before you choose a web server-hosting package, you must first know your specific needs such as the amount of traffic per month, size of disk space, number of needed email addresses and price. After determining your needs, you can start your search for a server hosting company with a web server hosting service that features 24/7 live support, a 30-day money-back guarantee, Windows and Linux hosting, shared SSL and free setup.

When looking for a web server hosting company, you can begin your search by going online. You can also rely on word of mouth. Sometimes, colleagues can recommend a company. Online and printed advertisements can also help you in your search.

With stiff competition in the online industry, it is necessary that you rely on web server hosting solutions to better give you an online presence. This way, your competitors will not leave you behind the scene.

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Web Server And Web Hosting Services - An Overview

Web hosting providers provide the following basic services for web servers - anything else can be considered add-on features in theory, although in practice they are essential to run a successful Internet business or business website.

A web hosting provider should provide the following functionality for your web server:

1. Hard Disk Space.
This is what you are actually renting, for all practical purposes. You need hard disk space on a web server to host your website. A website really consists of a lot of files, much like MSWord documents, or Excel spreadsheets. These files take up hard disk space. The web hosting provider provides you with space so that people around the world who has access to the Internet can access those files on that web server.

The price or hard disks have come down dramatically over the past year or so and it is not unknown for a hosting provider to make provision for packages from 250Megabytes up to 2000 Megabytes and even more.

How much would you need? The average web site that just makes use of static HTML pages need about 5 MB to 10 MB of space. If you use a dynamic website where some of your data is stored in a MySQL database the database will also take up space. These types of sites require more space and anything between 100MB and 250MB should be enough.

If you are going to store emails on your server you need to add these into your calculations. Emails can take up a lot of web space very quickly if people send you large files. You will need to monitor the space taken up by Emails very carefully since I have seen individual mailboxes go up to 50 or 60 MBs very quickly.

If you want to host video or audio files on your server, you will have to make provision for quite a lot more disk space. One audio file can easily take up 30 to 40MB.

2. Bandwidth
Bandwidth depends on your traffic. Every visitor to your website will consume bandwidth since this is what they will use when they open any pages on your site. Once again, if you have video and audio files on your site you will require more bandwidth. A good rule of thumb is to have an allocation of about 100KB (Kilobytes) for every visitor. This means that 500 visitors per month will consume about 50MB of bandwidth - although this is only true for an average site with mostly text and a few pictures. If you have large picture galleries, audio and/or video files you should rather work on 150KB per visitor or even more. Search engine spiders also consume bandwidth! You should monitor your bandwidth usage through your CPanel control panel or your website statistics and make sure that you communicate early enough with your hosting provider in case you need to purchase more bandwidth to prevent penalties and/or lockouts.

3. Access to your site
Under this can be counted access to a control panel, such as CPanel, Plesk or Helm, that will help you with setting up of emails, sub-domains, software installations and your MySQL database if you are running dynamic functionality such as shopping carts, forums, Content Management Systems etc.

You are also going to need FTP access to upload files to your web server. Without being able to use FTP you will not be able to maintain the content on your site (unless you make use of a Content Management System). FTP access is still required even in that case since you will definitely have occasion to have to upload files such as pictures, audio, video and other files to your server.

These are the very basic functionality that a web hosting provider should provide!

Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4You Web Design and Web Development Services and Internet Web Hosting for South Africa. Read the original article on http://www.internet-web-hosting.co.za/webhosting-info/web-server-and-web-hosting-services.html

Applying Data Center Performance Measurement to Mitigate Challenges

Organizations increasingly depend on their IT infrastructure to support mission-critical activities. IT personnel are held accountable for managing this infrastructure and data center performance measurement is a vital tool in maintaining high performance and delivery. From assessing and ensuring the availability of critical facilities, monitoring geographically dispersed environments, and improving the overall organizational bottom line, IT personnel require tools that allow them to measure performance and proactively identify and mitigate potential issues. Several industry-related publications and groups have noted the importance of data center metrics, and have named the need to measure data center performance as a key issue for 2006 and 2007. (1)

Recommended Data Center Performance Measurements and Solutions

Issue #1: Ability to Track and Assess Equipment Availability
For most organizations, the cost of server or network downtime is significant and internal customers expect network and system availability of “Five Nines” or 99.999% (2). On a daily basis, IT managers need to be able to assess availability/reliability of equipment and all external components that support operations, so that they can reduce downtime, identify and mitigate issues, and provide a secure environment for an organization’s mission-critical equipment. IT professionals also need an effective way to review historical trends to identify equipment or systems that need to be redesigned or replaced.

Meeting the Challenge: Environmental monitoring solutions provide real-time feedback about critical systems with continuous, proactive monitoring of all pertinent factors including temperature, amperage draw, humidity, dew point, and physical security. These solutions allow administrators to set thresholds for environmental conditions and send alerts securely via e-mail, text message, or SNMP if said thresholds are exceeded. In addition, environmental monitoring systems provide valuable historical reports, alert information, and logs that allow administrators to identify trends and adapt practices accordingly. This data can help with statistical analysis, modeling, and forecasting.

Centralized Environmental Monitoring Solution

Issue #2: Ability to Assess Availability/Reliability of Critical Facilities
When assigning critical resources, IT professionals need to determine the highest-priority sites and facilities. Several organizations have proposed systems to help administrators classify and rate their facilities. For example, the Uptime Institute applies a four-tier classification system based on factors such as fault tolerance, useable capacity, sustainability, and concurrent maintainability (3). As another approach, the Syska Hennessy Group provides a seven-level criticality classification system that aims to help data center managers evaluate facilities that are vital to the mission of their organizations and provides a framework to help assess potential data center vulnerabilities (4). After determining critical sites, administrators need to be able to implement appropriate management and control systems.

Meeting the Challenge: Enterprise management solutions, such as KVM over IP or service processor aggregation appliances, provide administrators with 24/7 access to servers, serial devices, remote power, and other equipment both locally and remotely. These solutions provide BIOS-level access to mission-critical equipment, reducing system and network downtime by enabling immediate access to failed resources and centralizing data center management. These solutions also provide visibility to daily operations and occurrences through comprehensive audit logging and reporting tools. Enterprise-level management tools provide redundant architecture, including primary failover access at both the hardware and software levels.

Issue #3: Ability to Measure Energy Consumption in the Data Center
Across almost every industry, rising data center power consumption and heat are major issues, particularly as organizations are incorporating blade servers and high-density server racks into their IT infrastructures. Many organizations are studying how power consumption can be reduced in the data center. For example, the EPA is studying ways to make computer servers and data centers more energy efficient, and is considering a possible Energy Star designation for servers and other data center equipment. (5) The Green Grid, a newly formed non-profit consortium of information technology companies, is proposing the use of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Datacenter Efficiency (DCE) metrics, which would enable IT personnel to estimate the energy efficiency of data centers, compare results against other data centers, and determine if energy efficiency improvements need to be made. As defined by the Green Grid, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)= Total Facility Power/ IT Equipment Power; Datacenter Efficiency (DCE)= IT Equipment Power/ Total Facility Power. (6)

Meeting the Challenge: Utilizing PUE and DCE information, IT personnel can begin to evaluate their own energy efficiency. Using these metrics, as well as application-specific data, data center managers should start to consider ways of reducing data center power consumption. Standalone data centers can also use the EPA Energy Star building performance rating tool, Portfolio Manager, to rate a facility’s energy performance in comparison to similar facilities (at the whole-building level). Some answers include transitioning to 208V or three-phase power provisioning. Higher voltage power reduces amperage requirements, allows equipment to operate more efficiently, and can reduce the amount of hardware required. IT personnel should conduct a thorough audit of equipment, determine if any servers can be consolidated or discarded, and clean up any clutter under the data center floor, such as cabling, that might be impeding air flow. The use of blanking panels and cable management accessories in the rack can also assist in these efforts.

References:
(1) Stansberry, Matt, “Top Ten Data Center Stories of 2006.” http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid80_gci1232599,00.html; MacKinnon, Chris, “How Is Your Data Center Performing? A Metric To The Madness.”http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/p2826/09p26/09p26.asp&guid=&searchtype=&WordList=&bJumpTo=True; and “Optimizing Datacenter Performance and Building ROI: The TeamQuest Approach”, IDC/TeamQuest, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.teamquest.com/pdfs/whitepaper/idc-roi.pdf

(2) Brill, Kenneth; Pitt, Turner; and Seader, John. “Tier Classifications Define Site Infrastructure Performance,” Uptime Institute, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.upsite.com/file_downloads/PDF/Tier_Classification.pdf

(3) Brill, Kenneth; Pitt, Turner; and Seader, John. “Tier Classifications Define Site Infrastructure Performance,” Uptime Institute, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.upsite.com/file_downloads/PDF/Tier_Classification.pdf

(4) Burkhardt, Jerry and Dennis, Richard. “Assessing criticality levels in the data center”, Data Center Management Advisory Newsletter, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1218937,00.html

(5) “Enterprise Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency Initiatives” http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_servers_datacenters

(6) “Green Grid Metrics: Describing Datacenter Power Efficiency”, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.thegreengrid.org/downloads/Green_Grid_Metrics_WP.pdf

This article was written by Lauren Nowenstein, Technical Writer, with guidance and input from DirectNET’s team of Solutions Sales Engineers. If you would like to send us feedback about this article, or have any questions, please write to us.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lauren_Nowenstein

More On How To Choose A Data Center

As a follow-up to an earlier article "How To Choose A Data Center"....here are just a few other considerations / concerns I would recommend. Combine the lists from both articles and you're more likely to make a smart decision choosing a data center.

Current Customers:

This is not a guaranteed seal of approval, but a Data Center's current customer base should give you an idea of the type of due diligence that others have performed on the Data Center you are evaluating. If numerous Fortune 50 companies are at a Data Center then there is a good chance it is a reliable place to keep your servers. NOTE: Some Data Centers will take on a "marquee" client at a loss in order to get the brand name. Make sure there are at least 2 high profile companies colocated there.

Employee Retention:

Ask the company how long the facility engineers have worked for that particular Data Center. High turn-over can be an indication of a number of things (including issues).

Power Outages:

Ask about the last power issue / outage they suffered - time-frame, length of the outage, reason(s) for the outage, mitigation steps. Most Data Centers will face some time of issue over the course of its use and you want to make sure they are honest with you about past issues, and have taken steps to correct any errors.

Bandwidth Connectivity:

How many "separate" bandwidth feeds are coming into the facility? A lot of companies say they have peering with "numerous" providers. BUT, all of that fiber may be coming into the building in single conduit. That means that if someone is digging a trench your Internet access may be cut off.

Expansion:

If your company makes it big, will you have room to grow? Right now there are a LOT of Data Centers out of space and / or power. Make sure you aren't in a position where you have to choose another place to go down the road.

SLAs (Service Level Agreement):

Although there is no compensation for your e-commerce site taking a hit for an hour, make sure there are strict SLAs in place which will bring some financial relief in the case of an outage.

Managed Hosting:

There is a trade-off between owning the equipment (and keeping it at a Data Center), and utilizing a managed hosting provider. Make sure analyze the pros and cons of both based on the current and future needs of your business. If you have older equipment, don't want to staff-up, I.T. isn't your core competence, etc, then consider going managed.

Data Recovery:

No matter where you go...make sure you have a DR plan in place. Keep backups of everything off-site and have a plan of action (hot-spares, DNS change-over, contact list, etc).

Fire suppression systems:

What provisions does the facility have for fire suppression? Is it a regular sprinkler system, Dry Pip Pre-action, gaseous CO2 or something else.

A Water based system is to protect the building, it will not protect the systems or the data because you're spraying water on computer systems in the event of a fire. A Pre-action system with dry pipes that only charge when there is a fire detected (smoke and heat detectors) is better because it prevents a construction accident where a sprinkler head is bumped or a pipe is broken from causing an incident.

Gaseous CO2, Energen, Halotron, Halon, etc are best, but more expensive. A combination of CO2 where power is run (under the floor perhaps?) and Pre-action sprinkler's above allows for a small fire to be contained in the underfloor space before water enters into the equation.

One thing to be very wary are what kind of hand held extinguishers are in the Data Center space? Are they Dry Chemical? If so, that's bad. Very bad. A fire (say in a garbage can) that would not jeopardize the data center or building can be made worse (in terms of the protection of the data center) because when someone goes to fight that fire, they're going to perhaps put the fire out (likely if small) but very likely spread a corrosive dust around the data center which will require either replacement of the systems OR professional cleaning of them. Look for halogenated or CO2 type extinguishers in the data-center for handheld use.

Physical Security:

Armed security guards are better than not armed in my opinion. Better training (ie more) and a more serious perspective on security of the building and the people. Guards more able to respond to serious problems are preferable to an old retiring that's more of a night watchman who calls 911 when there's an issue.

Physical Structure security is also important. What kind of walls does the building have? Are they several layers of concrete block or just one layer? Is it glass? Bullet Resistant glass (also good in storms) and is there an inner layer between the glass and the rest of the facility?

Do they have spill protection kits for dealing with water leaks? If there's a major rain storm and the roof is damaged, how does this impact the facility? Badly, slightly, total shutdown? Look for drip pans over critical infrastructure like PDUs and UPS systems.

Logistics:

Does the facility have a good loading dock that's near the data center or sufficiently proximate? If not, you're going to have a harder time getting your systems to the data center to install them. A good sized door large enough for the largest of racks and gear is important. Is there a lab where you can diagnose problems with your systems there? An area where you can stand up your systems if you need to? How are you getting final configuration work done at the site?

Generator Power:

Fuel Supplies cannot be underscored. A large on-site bunker is a good thing to see. A contract with a fuel supplier to be able to provide supplemental fuel on a daily basis is also important. I've seen an instance where a call center was left without power because the backup generator ran out of fuel after running for 24 hours. No-one thought o check the generator and get a fuel shipment to the call center.

Generator Maintenance can be important as well. A periodic maintenance contract with a major service company is good. But having someone that rides herd on the generator and power systems themselves is also important. Many small things that would not be noticed by a rotating batch of mechanics would be noticed by someone that can get a feel for all of the systems and perform periodic checks. It could be as simple as noticing that Generator No 2 sounds off and realizing there's an exhaust leak or as complex as a lubrication problem that is only found by periodic oil and coolant analysis by a lab that specializes in such tasks.

Periodic maintenance of the fuel is also important. Fuel that becomes contaminated with water can stop a generator system cold if bacteria begin growing in the fuel. The sludge that the bacteria produce will clog injectors and pumps as well as the fuel filters themselves. Periodic checks of the fuel as well as polishing and treatment is important.

There you go. Now you're fully armed with all the details you need to select just the right data center to meet your needs....and expectations.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.