The first time I heard about Grid Computing I was still up at school in the late 90s which, not surprisingly, was around the same time I was engrossed in my parallel computing course. All the talk of IPC and modulo arithmetic joined in an unholy matrimony with massive amounts of Mountain Dew and 3am whiteboarding in the labs, the offspring of which was a simple understanding of why and when to use parallel computing.

Fast forward to today and Silicon Valley’s VCs have eliminated all but the most trendy of ideas to back, the recent darlings being so-called Cloud computing. So what is Cloud Computing? Supposedly The Cloud is an ultra-scalable architecture that has implicit redundancy so no one ever has to go through the painful process of upgrading hardware; is this not the panacea of Datacenter logistics – completely automated vertical scalability?

The Promise
Current providers of Cloud provisioning software, such as 3Tera, promise less cost, ease of maintenance, and simple scalability. Need a new server? Just click a few buttons and you have a new virtual server, possibly pre-configured with software and even your specific settings.

The Failure
While having a large and dynamic infrastructure is appealing, there are inherent problems with the current approaches, the most obvious of which is the lack of failure abstraction. While products like VMWare have the ability to provide fail-over automatically, the fact that offerings like Applogic and EC2 do not provide such capabilities out-of-the-box is very telling about the underlying architecture. While many can argue that Xen-based hypervisors can be instrumented to failover, the fact that the technology does not, as a matter of its DNA, provide failover is The Failure. In order to provide the promises marketing for the various grid services has suggested, not only do we need to scale easily, but we need reliability; you cannot provide one and not the other.

Commentary
We all know that technology changes rapidly, but vendors and pundits fail when they speak as if change is good just for the sake of itself. Recently we’ve seen many old architectures rehashed: mainframe dumb-terminals have become remote desktops and terminal services, talk of Ethernet’s limitations being replaced with a protocol that involves a “Token” and the new SMP craze disguised as multi-core processing. It’s time for some real progress. It may be in the same way virtualization has brought us the Cloud that the Cloud itself may be an intermediate step to something better. At the very least let’s hope that the next step on the ladder is up, not down.

So with so many moving parts to consider when getting services what should you look out for? Here are a few crucial things to keep in mind:

Global Routing
While many lay claim to how global the Internet is, those of us that operate backend systems know that there are plenty of caveats. The reachability of your server, and subsequently your services, is dependent upon how many peers your upstream provider has, and in turn, how many peers their peers have. As an example, in my area of the globe a company called Comcast provides residential broadband services. While I have one of our datacenters no more then 15 miles away, the best way to get a fast connection between my house and our local DC’s servers is to do some research and find out who Comcast peers with. It turns out that a nasty little secret is that, at least in my area, Comcast’s backbone is really Cogent, so we have a Cogent line coming into out local DC. By doing this the connection from my house to our local DC never leaves Cogent’s network, except for the edge equipment. Now there are always exceptions: if a link goes down for example the network gear will route around the failure, which may take my connection half-way across the country, but the primary route will typically be the shortest and least-expensive.

Business-Centric Infrastructure
Similar to many industries there are retail(consumer) and business(commercial) facets to the hosting industry, and as such providers tailor their services toward a particular audience. For businesses it’s important to find a provider that is aware of the requirements a business demands such as redundant components, high-performance network, reliable support contacts and value-added services. Today, more so then even 12 months ago, reliable power(main and backups) is high on the list of features to examine. It doesn’t hurt if a provider has current or previous experience in your industry either.

Managed Services
Perhaps the most import type of hosting for small and large businesses alike includes various forms of management, which indicates there are resources on-staff that are experts in a particular technology. There are a few handfuls of reliable hosting providers that can, for example, provision and host your server, manage the network and manage the software on your server. Most times the end-users of your server(i.e. your clients, your team, your internal users) are still your responsibility, but things like OS, network and backup configurations are handled by your service provider. The allure of managed services are two-fold: time savings for you and your team due to not worrying about the server and cost savings through having access to experts nearly immediately if issues ever arise.

If you are looking for a small business hosting service, you have several options to choose from. You really don’t have to worry about the cost because there are many affordable webhosting providers offering their service.

Different Categories of Small Business Webhosting Services

Hosting website services for small businesses can be divided into four categories — corporate co-location, managed web hosting, shared and in-house. Among these four, it is advisable for you to start with managed dedicated hosting. What does this mean? Basically, when you use a dedicated hosting website service, it means that you would rent your dedicated server from a service provider. Of course, you may customize your server and place remote server access. However, the service provider would be responsible for providing the hardware and software needed to operate the server. They would also be responsible for installing and maintaining the same. What does this mean to you then? This translates into cost savings for you and your business.

When you opt for managed dedicated hosting, you will be able to avoid the expense associated with setting up and maintaining a website. The cost of the bandwidth is oftentimes distributed to all the provider’s clients, so all of these clients save a lot of money. You would also be able to enjoy the quirks offered by the managed dedicated hosting providers. You could take advantage of the service packages as well.

A corporate co-located webhosting, on the other hand, allows you to store your own hardware and Internet connection into a particular server space that your provider will allocated for you. This allows you to save a few dollars here and there, but this does not offer the same savings that managed dedicated hosting service does.

Choosing Your Managed Dedicated Hosting Server

Generally if you want a secure, reliable but completely affordable way of putting up your website, website hosting is the perfect choice. However, you should make sure that you have a reliable webhosting provider. They should be able to ensure that they can provide search engine visibility for your website, so check for a dedicated webhosting server that is continuously up and running. This will guarantee that your website will be up all the time and people will be able to have access to you and your service at all times.

These days, business owners need to have their own website if they want to stay ahead of their competitors. However, you need to make sure that would still be able to save money from setting up and maintaining a website and you can only do this if you use a managed dedicated hosting service.

When you are running a business you know there is a need to store data, be it data that your clients have access to or data that you access to service your clients.  For any business data loss will lead to a serious disaster. It is obvious that you will be storing all your data in the server at your office. Now consider a situation where your office infrastructure will not allow the server placement. In such conditions, you will be looking for a server hosting services that host your data in their servers. You will not be able to maintain the actual hardware and you have to share the critical data with other companies. These are all avoided with server co-location.

The changing business trend

Today any business needs to store information and there is a great importance on the reliability of that data.  For anything ranging from the company’s progress to future research to project-related information, data is very essential. Without appropriate data, the business cannot continue. Network redundancy is becoming more and more important. The IT infrastructure is gaining value and these days, every business is having its own servers. The cost of server systems is also reducing and you can easily get a server for your business. Catastrophes can occur at any time and if you have a single server at your office and some serious disaster happens at your office, you may not be able to recover the lost data. This will create serious damages to your company and data redundancy is commonly demanded by modern day businesses.

What is server co-location?

You may have an office with excellently built IT infrastructure but you are not able to manage your own server. Server management includes 24/7 monitoring and you have to also concentrate on the temperature and environmental conditions. The servers should be placed in an air conditioned room all the time and the changes in temperature like heat and humidity affect the data in the server. If you install the server in your own office itself, you will have to spend a lot of manpower in taking care of the server. With server co-location, you can have your server at the company offering server co-location service and remotely access the server using high speed high bandwidth connections. Your day to day activities will not be affected by the server co-location. You can the access data in the server just as if you are operating the server located in a different room within the same building.

Server co-location services

With the increasing demand of the businesses, many companies are now offering server co-location services. These companies will give you the shelf space and the man power for server management. A reliable team of engineers will be available with the server co-location company who will offer 24/7 support for your server. A dedicated premium network that has several Tier-1 carriers will be made available to you for enabling the network redundancy and for minimizing the latency. This is critical because you have to access the server from your office and latency is undesirable. The network that is provided will be highly secure with all the necessary firewall protection. You can visit the server co-location company and physically access your server and upgrade the hardware if you wish.  For more information on server colocation visit http://utropicmedia.net/colocation.php.

So what if a host has an uptime guarantee? Sure it’s important that your website is available all the time, but there’s another million and one web hosts who provide a similar uptime guarantee. So what if they provide XX/X support? So does everyone else. So what if they provide more storage than you know what to do with? So what if they provide enough bandwidth to serve 99% of the civilized world? It seems every other host has turned to mass overselling* these days. So what DO you look for? Look for all of the basics. A good uptime guarantee, fast, friendly support, and enough storage and bandwidth for your needs.

Then look for individuality. Look for things that set one particular host apart from another. What do they do differently? What do they do better? What value added services do they offer? Do they cater to your specific needs? Not sure? Contact them, talk to them and see what they can do for you. See how they can help your hosting work for you. Look for reasons why a host deserves your hard earned cash over the hordes of other hosts out there. By finding a distinction between hosts, you will not only become a more informed customer, but your hosting experience will be much more enjoyable.

* overselling: A tactic employed by web hosts whereby they sell more storage and bandwidth than they could provide if every single client used their entire allocation. Properly managed overselling doesn’t negatively impact clients – in fact quite the opposite. It can allow the host to provide cheaper services while more fully utilizing their resources. The problem is when hosts start going over the top with overselling – e.g. offering hundreds of GB’s of storage and almost unlimited bandwidth for prices that boggle the mind (e.g. prices under the $10 mark).

What does a Registrar do?

A Registrar is responsible for submitting a domain name for assignment. Typically a person or business will use a Registrar like Dotster or Nework Solutions to purchase a domain name. Once purchased, the Registrar is responsible for submitting the Domain, along with the person’s or business’s information(mailing address, phone numbers, etc.) to the organization[Sponsor] that manages the Top Level Domain[TLD]. For example, Network Solutions operates the .com gTLD[generic TLD] and NeuStar operates the .us ccTLD[country code TLD].

Cutting Through the hype
So besides submitting your information to a sponsor what does a Registrar do? Nothing. They should be available to answer any questions but have no impact on your domain once it is registered; your only contact with the Registrar from this point forward is to modify your personal information or if you decide to transfer the domain to another registrar. In reality people often get hosting service from the company they register their domain with, and may move their domain if they decide to cancel their hosting service with the Registrar.

Gimmicks to look for: Price

Selection

If a Registrar’s selection of TLDs is sparce(i.e. less than 15) then be sure to read the fine print of any agreements they provide. Registrars with few TLD selections often are relying on volume of customers, which could be a sign of poor customer service. Offering around 30 TLDs, including all the basics(.com, .net) shows the Registrar is has done additional effort to create partnerships with other groups or Sponsors. Because Sponsors have varying standards that Registrars must comply with finding a company that offers more then 15 TLDs often means the company has had their back-office scrutinized by several different organizations to ensure compliance.

Policies(esp. lockin)

The policies the Registrar provides are where 95% of the potential headaches hide. Many companies will put stipulations in their fine-print, such as automatically charging your credit card when your domain expires or preventing you from transferring your domain to another Registrar if you are unhappy. In one case, a Registrar decided to hold over 1300 domains “hostage” because of an internal decision by the Registrar. The owners of the domains had 2 options: pay $50 to transfer the domain to another Registrar or pay $199 to re-activate the domain.

Value Added Services

Your registrar should offer some basic services that have evolved over the years. One such service is masking the information in the Registration record of your domain. Since the owner information of a domain is publicly available, spammers and marketers use this information to add the email, mailing address, and other information to their marketing lists. This information is often sold to other companies by business whose only job is to gather such information.

Conclusion

It is easy to get lost in the marketing of domain registration companies. Whether it is low price they offer or bikini-clad women on motorcycles a gimmick is still a gimmick. You get what you pay for and the most important thing is to find a registrar that provides you with a balance between your budget and the quality you expect from a professional solutions company.

Sources:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/17/1319233&from=rss
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=239

“Things To Look For” Series

We develop articles based on needs and concern our customers share with us. Our suite of services is a direct result of questions and business challenges we have helped our clients overcome.

Our goal is to make you knowledgeable about technology and make informed decisions for your business. If you have a suggestion for an article or would like to know more about a particular topic, feel free to contact us – we are always happy to help.

Cutting through the Hype
After sifting through the Internet you will find that 90% of hosting providers offer the same service which we will call Domain Hosting. Domain Hosting includes hosting your domain, www.yourcompany.com, so that you can have a website and email addresses.

Transfer
Sometimes referred to as bandwidth, transfer is the amount of data you are allowed to move to and from your domain over a period of time – this includes email and website traffic. The amount of data you transfer is usually tracked monthly with the usage getting reset at the end of your billing cycle.

Disk Space
You may see it called storage, disk space is the amount of room you have to store data in your domain. Disk space is measured in either Megabytes(MB) or Gigabytes(GB) where one GB is equal to 1000 MB.

Common Ploys
That’s it. You now have the knowledge to choose a Hosting provider based on the two fundamental measures: transfer and disk space. But you should read on – there are several marketing ploys used to convince you to sign-up for service, only to leave you stuck when you realize you did not get what you expected.

1) Payment terms
The most blatant marketing gimmick is to offer a basement-bottom price, something in bright colors that is made to look attractive.(Some companies have even been known to have TV commercials with swimsuit models that advertise hosting and domain registration.) The fact that a price seems cheap is the first and most important warning flag. Often you must agree to pay the amount for an entire year to get the price that is advertised; some companies require you to sign a two-year contract! Though you typically get a short trial period in which you can get a refund, it takes months to realize the quality of a hosting provider. By the time you have your first outage or support issue your refund period has expired and you have no recourse.

2) Transfer as a Gimmick
Recently many hosting companies have begun offering extremely high amounts of transfer. With a complete website size of under 20 MB many businesses are drawn in by companies that offer 250 GB, or more, of transfer each month. What these companies will not tell you on the front page is that they limit the types of files you can transfer, specifically they must be files that compose the website. This does not include media files which many business and individuals like to include on websites. Limiting the type of files that you are allowed to transfer makes the amount of transfer irrelevent.

3) Bandwidth Throttling
Under times of heavy use many companies will limit the amount of bandwidth you have available by throttling, or reducing the speed at which your site can be viewed by visitors.
Overloading servers with accounts will also give the same effect. Network resources such as Servers and Bandwidth are fixed costs for many hosting companies; a company can increase margins by putting more websites on a single server. The more websites on a server the fewer resources available to each website. The sites will still work but your performance will drop as each website fights for the resources provided by the server.

4) Disk Space as a Gimmick
Many hosting companies will limit the types of data you can store on your website. Because you are restricted in the way you can use your disk space, you will be provided a ridiculously large amount of storage. As a background, premium disk space costs an IT company like IBM or EDS 4.00-20.00$ per GB of disk space. If you find a provider that gives you 1000 GB for 3.95$ per month, that is your warning sign that there are restrictions in the fine print. Also, some companies will limit the types of files you can store on your domain. All the disk space in the world is useless if you cannot use it without restriction.

Conclusion
The most important thing you can do is create a relationship with a service provider that will help you accomplish your goals. We built Utropicmedia Network Solutions to be up-front – whether it’s pricing, support or developing new tools, our goal is to keep things simple so you can get more done. Please visit us at http://utropicmedia.net for more information on the services we provide. Be sure to check out the hosting page to see a no-nonsense list of packages that give you the tools to help your business grow.

“Things To Look For” Series

We develop articles based on needs and concern our customers share with us. Our suite of services is a direct result of questions and business challenges we have helped our clients overcome.

Our goal is to make you knowledgeable about technology and make informed decisions for your business. If you have a suggestion for an article or would like to know more about a particular topic, feel free to contact us – we are always happy to help.

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