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Blog posts tagged web hosting
Unmanaged servers: more flexibility for less money?
August 08, 2013
As your website traffic grows, an unmanaged server can help you cope
A dedicated server is a powerful form of web hosting that gives your business an entire server to call its own. You rent the server from a web hosting company, then can use it for whatever you wish.
The most common use for dedicated servers is to host websites.
A server with room to grow
Many start-ups and growing businesses require dedicated servers. As their website's traffic grows, this is the only type of hosting that can maintain sufficient speed, usability, functionality and security.
There are two main types of dedicated server - managed and unmanaged:
- With a managed server, your hosting company will take responsibility for many of the tasks involved in keeping a server running smoothly. These can include installing software updates and running backups.
- With an unmanaged server, those tasks are your responsibility. Unmanaged servers usually cost less, because the monthly fee doesn't have to cover all the management tasks.
Here are the top four things to consider when choosing an unmanaged server:
1. Reliability
An unreliable server is no use at all. If it goes down, so does your website. Reliability is the key thing to look for.
Use review sites and forums to evaluate the reliability of potential suppliers and be sure to speak to the company's sales team. Also make sure your server is covered by a service level agreement.
2. Flexibility
It's a good idea to opt for flexible product and service plans where possible. Make sure you can upgrade as your business grows. A plan that suits you now could be limiting in six months.
Most managed servers will have a minimum contract period (usually a year). However, rolling contracts can be the most sensible option for rapidly-changing firms.
3. Storage
Businesses now generate more data than ever before, which means it's important to make sure your server has enough storage for your needs now and in the future.
Big ecommerce websites with lots of product information can grow over time, as can customer databases and files. If you're using your server to replace a traditional network server then it's even more important to consider your data needs.
Some servers are also available with solid state storage. You'll pay a premium for this, but it can dramatically reduce the time it takes to find the data you need.
4. User-friendliness
Finally, it's important to be aware that although your web hosting company will set up your server and install the operating system, after that it's down to you.
You must install and configure the software you need yourself. It's likely your web host will only be responsible for the hardware and internet connection.
This means it's important you have good IT personnel who know how to run and set up a server.
Assuming you do have this expertise in your business, unmanaged hosting offers considerably more flexibility, allowing you to choose the software you want and optimise the server to fit your business needs.
- Managed server hosting: your server in the cloud
- What to check when you choose a web host
- Different types of web hosting explained
Sally Tomkotowicz works for names.co.uk, a company offering domain names, web hosting unmanaged servers and more.
SLA: three letters to look for with your web hosting
October 31, 2012
Having an online presence for your company has been virtually essential for several years now. And with the growing use of cloud and hosted services, finding the right web hosting has never been more important.
It's not always an easy decision. Hosting packages tend to be feature rich, and it's hard to tell them apart.
What's more, when you read the small print of many web hosting contracts, you'll find that although the provider will do their best to provide a good service, you don't have much comeback if things go wrong.
Get a service level agreement
If you're only buying hosting for a small, non-critical website, that might be ok. But if it's for an ecommerce site you rely on for income, or the cloud hosting service that runs your customer relationship management system, you need something with a little more certainty.
That's where you need to look for three letters in your web hosting company's contract: SLA. They stand for service level agreement. And they guarantee your business will receive a certain level of service from your hosting provider.
Three key elements of an SLA
Although SLAs are contractually binding, not all are created equal. Here are three key things to look for in a web hosting SLA:
- Guaranteed uptime. Almost every web hosting firm will guarantee a certain level of uptime for your hosting. Typically this might be 99.5%, which would mean there could be up to 216 minutes a month where your website could be unavailable. Make sure uptime is measured monthly - you should receive some sort of compensation if your host fails to achieve the promised limit in any given month.
- Guaranteed support time. When you need support from your hosting company, you want them to respond fast. If there's a guaranteed response time, that's the maximum time you may have to wait before a member of the support team acknolwedges your query. A guaranteed resolution time is more valuable, as it's the maximum time you may have to wait to actually get something fixed.
- Meaningful compensation. An SLA is only worth the paper it's written on if it entitles you to something meaningful back when things go wrong. Many hosting companies operate a sliding scale of refunds, where they'll credit a proportion of your fees back depending on how far they missed their SLA by. That's nice, but if you've lost business because they've messed up, you may want to try and negotiate a more tangible form of compensation.
Having an SLA in place should boost your confidence in your hosting company. Hopefully, you won't ever need to call on it. However, it's not the be-all-and-end-all of finding good web hosting.
If your hosting is a key part of your business infrastructure, take time over the choice. Learn a bit about the different types of web hosting available, get recommendations and ask the right questions before committing to a provider.
Companies offering web hosting with SLAs:Most hosts only offer SLAs with selected packages - always check before buying. |
- eBuyer shows how the wrong hosting can damage your business
- How to get reliable web hosting
- Free tools to monitor your website's reliability
Stopwatch image: William Warby on Flickr.
eBuyer shows how the wrong web hosting can damage your business
December 02, 2011
Could your web hosting be a roadblock for your website? (Image: williac on Flickr.)
If there's a piece of business IT that's a commodity, surely it's web hosting. There are countless providers, yet what you get is basically the same, right? It's space to get your website on the internet - how much difference can there possibly be between packages?
Well, when you're trying to find reliable web hosting for your business, you might want to learn from the recent experience of eBuyer. Earlier this week the online electronics retailer demonstrated that the ability of your web hosting to handle sudden surges in visitor numbers can hugely affect customer opinions.
How a £1 sale went wrong
Perhaps in an effort to jump on the 'black Friday' and 'cyber Monday' sales which have crossed the Atlantic in recent years, the company announced its exciting £1 clearance sale: 'Every product £1 - updated hourly.' Promising items such as flatscreen monitors for just a quid, it attracted lots of attention on Facebook, Twitter and deal websites.
Unfortunately, things didn't quite go to plan. Demand from customers crashed the eBuyer website even before the sale had started, taking it offline for several hours.
Inevitably, disappointed customers vented their frustration on the company's own Facebook page, and on other sites like MoneySavingExpert.com and HotUKDeals. News stories on The Register and other tech sites followed.
It turned what should have been an attention-grabbing sale into a damage limitation exercise. Check out the apology the company posted on its website.
Was the web hosting to blame?
Let's not be too harsh on eBuyer. They're by no means the first online retailer to fall into this trap and they won't be the last. It's a classic mistake: generating massive demand for your products or services, while failing to ensure your website can cope.
Problems like this are commonly caused by poor internal communication (the marketing department sets up a promotion without briefing the technical team properly), or simply underestimating the level of demand.
The type of web hosting and the way it's set up has a crucial role to play too. Large companies like eBuyer have complex hosting systems, probably with lots of servers spread around different locations. Getting these geared up for a traffic spike can be a complex job.
Talk to the tech guys
For smaller businesses, things are usually more straightforward. You might have cheap shared hosting, some sort of cloud hosting, or maybe your own dedicated hosting.
Whatever your set up, it's important to speak to whoever manages your hosting well before you launch a promotion or start a project with the potential to create a huge increase in website traffic.
Indeed, when you first choose your web hosting, ask yourself whether this is an important requirement. Some types of hosting - notably cloud hosting - are inherently better suited to managing big spikes in demand.
One-off flash sales are a great way to gain PR and boost your customer base - but only if your website is up to the task of serving all those customers. A failure during a traffic spike is incredibly frustrating, because it takes your website down when you have most potential customers trying to view it. Just ask eBuyer.
- Learn about the main types of web hosting
- Expert Q&A: finding the right web hosting for your business
The internet is running out of room
November 02, 2011
The internet is going to run out of room soon (Image: James Cridland on Flickr.)
It has long been accepted that the internet is vital to business operations. Even the smallest firms now rely on a web presence to attract custom and convert interest into sales.
Such exponential growth has been flagged as an issue for many years. As far back as the early 90s, the Internet Engineering Task Force realised that a way needed to be found to conserve address space. It was inevitable that the web would eventually reach its capacity.
More space for everyone
The problem lies with IP (internet protocol) addresses. Each device on the internet is allocated an IP address. These unique numbers allow those devices to communicate with each other.
The first publicly used version of IP addresses was IPv4, which allowed a capacity for 4.3 billion addresses. At the time, that figure probably seemed more than adequate. However, as internet use has exploded with servers, phones and other devices all requiring their own IP addresses, it’s become clear that 4.3 billion is not enough.
Are you ready for IPv6?
Twenty years on and the answer to this predicament has arrived in the form of IPv6, a new version of the internet protocol system. This theoretically offers a further 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses. It’s an impressive and welcome addition, but one that presents a challenge to every small business in the world.
We’re now entering a period of transition between IPv4 and IPv6. During this time, IPv4 will be phased out. New enterprises will automatically be set up in IPv6 and many businesses will migrate to the new protocol. In fact, since the late 1990s many products have been built with IPv6 capabilities - including widely-used operating systems and mobile phones.
As most businesses see the internet as critical to their operations, migrating to IPv6 is a sensible move. There will come a time when IPv4 public addresses no longer exist, so it would be wise to cater for partners and customers with both versions now. This will ensure that no issues arise further down the line.
Getting started with IPv6
It will be much more cost-effective for businesses to start implementing IPv6 now, if only gradually at first. Carrying out a mass overhaul when IPv4 disappears could be time-consuming and disruptive. But how do you get started?
Well, some companies may be already running on IPv6 without knowing it. New operating systems and applications will be IPv6-enabled, so you might simply need to update your firewall or router. Larger firms may require a more complex reconfiguration. It’s also important to check that service providers (like your web hosting company) are IPv6 ready.
As each business is different, individual implementation plans will need to be drawn up. If you rely on an external IT supplier, speaking to them is a good place to start.
By being proactive and planning ahead to make IPv6 fully operational, companies can steal a march on competitors who are sitting back to assess what happens.
SynergyPlus provides telephony and technology solutions for businesses.
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