Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting - Part 4: Security

Having compared cloud with traditional dedicated hosting solutions on their respective costs and performance issues in the preceding posts in this series, the final instalment provides further analysis of the two in regard to security issues.

Security

For many private and enterprise customers, security is the primary area of concern when making the switch from traditional localised computing to cloud computing solutions, particularly when it comes to the topic of hosting. Businesses that require high levels of security to be applied to their hosting platforms have traditionally flocked to dedicated hosting solutions, to avoid the vulnerabilities introduced by sharing servers with other companies or business functions. These enterprise customers have since been somewhat reticent to make the switch to cloud (despite the efficiencies mentioned previously).

Dedicated Server Security

Dedicated servers have, by design, features which are conducive to high levels of security in that they are individual platforms on discrete servers which are operated for single purposes - i.e., they do not share disk space or computing power with other services or businesses. This distinction leads to a number of security benefits in terms of both protecting access to hosted data and the preservation of that data. To achieve these twin aims, the risk of hackers or malware accessing the data and/or corrupting it is minimised; by not having any other functions/companies sharing the hosting platform it reduces the number of possible points of entry/access and therefore the number of security vulnerabilities on the server. What’s more, a business sharing a host server would have no control over the effectiveness of the measures taken to secure these vulnerabilities if they are sharing the server with third party businesses. The dedicated model also removes the competing demands placed on the physical computing capabilities of the server by other hosting platforms/solutions stacks/businesses’ IT projects, meaning that there is less risk of server or network failures leading to the unavailability or loss of data.

Cloud Hosting Security

Cloud Hosting platforms therefore need to re-address these issues as they fundamentally rely on the concept of shared or pooled computing resource. Public cloud models will struggle to offer the same protection as a dedicated platform because they not only share physical hosting infrastructure across multiple virtualised hosting platforms for disparate customers, but have further vulnerabilities in that the access points to such services are across public networks - in other words anyone can ‘knock on the door’ and any information being transferred between access point and server is at risk of being intercepted. Furthermore, one organisation who is a consumer of the service has no influence or control over the trustworthiness of others who may have signed up to share these pooled resources.


If you want to find out more about the respective benefits of cloud and dedicated hosting platforms then you can check out this blog from Interoute’s Matt Finnie.

Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting - Part 3: Enterprise Focus

SOMF Cloud Computing Model (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The third post in this series looks at some of the pros and cons of dedicated and cloud hosting solutions when it comes to providing the services that enterprise customers actually demand. Much focus in the industry has in the past been concentrated on the technical capabilities of the respective platforms but the key to adoption across enterprise is how that technology sates business requirements.

Customer Experience
A traditional weakness of cloud computing, and perhaps a consequence of its on-demand access model is the area of SLAs and targeting enterprise consumers’ needs effectively. The utility style of the service means that consumers have to some extent fitted their computing needs to the cloud services available rather than vice versa in order to benefit from the economies of scale and reduced costs. After all, the service is to a large extent defined and packaged up by the provider with the consumer tapping into it as and when they need it.

Dedicated platforms have, in the past, outperformed cloud in this area with the ability to provide customisation and control over individual servers and the use of more suitable SLAs on better defines services. Businesses have been able to take their IT requirements to a provider of dedicated hosting and build the platform around it (cost permitting) leading to a more bespoke set up.

However, there is now a concerted effort within the cloud sector to provide better targeted enterprise applications with in-built flexibility, scalability and security as well as SLAs which accurately reflect the performance of these services and the needs of enterprise. An example of this move away from a one-size-fits all model is the development of the idea of cloud application stores where organisations can purchase the components they need individually to construct a cloud package which is tailored to their business needs. In other words, providers create and define individual components but customers configure their overall bespoke service using these elements.

Choice
The benefits mentioned above and in the preceding posts in relation to the cloud result in arguably the key long term driver for enterprise adoption of cloud hosting and cloud computing in general, that of choice. Ultimately, the flexibility of the model means that anything is theoretically possible for an enterprise customer if they have the budget and their provider has the resources.

The same can be said about traditional dedicated platforms (at a greater cost) but the scalability issues encountered by businesses using dedicated servers are, as stated, negated with cloud hosting by the removal of the concept of capacity. As mentioned previously dedicated platforms can be used to provide a bespoke hosting solution for enterprise customers at any level but once the platform is established any further changes to it may require time and expense. With cloud hosting, if a business wishes to try a particular project or campaign as a short term venture they can so with minimal lead time, pay-as-you-go costing, and responsive scaling, thus reducing these costs and the resulting risks of the venture.

Part 4 of this series of posts goes on to focus in more detail on the topic of security and how the two hosting solutions compare.

If you want to find out more about the respective benefits of cloud and dedicated hosting platforms then you can check out this blog on IaaS.

Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting - Part 2: Performance

The second instalment of this series of posts looking at how cloud hosting platforms match up to traditional dedicated hosting platforms focusses on a number of issues which businesses look for in a package, including reliability, flexibility and responsiveness.

Responsiveness
For both the provider and the consumer there are considerable differences between cloud and dedicated in the time in which the services can be up and running. As mentioned previously, dedicated hosting platforms require considerable input from the provider, often in consultation with the client to understand the business requirements, quote for a service and then set up and provision that platform (one of the reasons for providers seeking a fixed term lock in to ensure return on that invested time).

However, cloud hosting does not require the latter of these processes. Once the level of resources required by a business customer has been defined a quote can be calculated much quicker, because the resource is already in place, and the set-up time is much reduced - in some cases almost instant - as the configuration needed to provide the final service is reduced. Consequently, dedicated hosting platforms may take weeks to provision whereas cloud hosting platforms can be provisioned in a matter of minutes or hours.

What’s more, when extra resource is required from a cloud hosting platform this again can often be provided and scaled in no time at all without the need for further server set-ups regardless of the demand. Instead already configured pooled computer resource can be tapped into as it is required. Dedicated platforms on the other hand may require the installation of further hardware and solution stacks, for example, when the capacity of the existing set-up has been exceeded, and so the time lag that that entails.

Reliability
Each hosting platform has its own plus-points in the area of reliability and, conversely, it own issues on which it may be bettered. Cloud computing fundamentally relies on the premise of pooled computing resource and so redundancy is built into the core model. Whether it be within a public or private cloud, the physical liability for the hosting platform will be spread across numerous servers and so the risk of hardware/solution stack issues causing downtime is greatly spread and reduced. If one server goes offline, the hosting service will be maintained without interruption on the remaining servers. What’s more, if the hosting service utilises services from disparate data centres it can also negate the risk of localised failures (e.g., power cuts) causing downtime.

However, for a consumer the cloud model can involve ambiguities as to the stability and reliability of the underlying physical resources and the hosting provider themselves if they do not plump for a trusted provider with known network capabilities. The cloud moniker is easy and popular to apply to computing services without the necessary resources to ensure high reliability and performance and so the level of service experienced across providers can vary greatly.

Dedicated platforms however, benefit from reduced risk of failures in the first place as the server’s resources are not shared with other business’s functions and therefore are not at risk from their potential security vulnerabilities (see Part 3) or from these functions draining shared resources (bandwidth, disk space etc). The flip side of this is that any failures may take the entire server offline, although dedicated services will employ back up systems (often tape back ups which are low maintenance) to ensure that functions can be restored as quickly as possible if failures do occur - albeit not necessarily seamlessly as with cloud platforms.

If you want to find out more about the respective benefits of cloud and dedicated hosting platforms then you can check out this blog on cloud hosting.

Cloud vs Dedicated Hosting - Part 1: Cost

The following trilogy of articles investigates the benefits and drawbacks of cloud hosting in comparison to the more traditional ‘all singing, all dancing’ hosting solutions of dedicated servers. It aims to discuss why enterprise consumers in particular are so tempted to migrate to the cloud as well as the barriers that often prevent them taking the leap.

Cost
The first great migration to cloud computing was centred on its most obvious benefit in comparison to traditional computing, that of cost efficiencies. Cloud hosting, more specifically, is no different and offers a number of cost savings for enterprise which are missing from traditional dedicated platforms. Although dedicated servers can offer a good number of services which are much desired, in particular by enterprise consumers, the physical investment in them comes at a certain cost.

The Cost of Dedicated Servers
A dedicated server may be completely ‘at the disposal’ of that one customer and, as such, may provide numerous security and performance benefits (as listed further on in series of posts) but maximum efficiency, in terms of the cost of the platforms versus the resource used, can only be realised if the platform is running at full capacity. If not, the consumer will inevitably be paying for capacity which they are getting any use from, because the cost of such platforms is met upfront. Essentially, customers are paying for physical capacity and it is then up to them to make use of it. Furthermore, if they need to increase resources (disk space, processing power etc) beyond current capacity, it requires upfront investment into the next ‘step up’, including the unused capacity that comes with that, as well as any reconfiguration and set up work that is required.

The Cost of Cloud Hosting
Conversely, the cloud computing model, including cloud hosting, revolves around the concept of tapping into pooled computing resource on demand. In other words a consumer can access the resource they need as and when they need it, and, moreover, only pay for what they use. It can operate in a fashion akin to a household utility such as water or electricity where the consumer is plugged into the public service and is then charged for what they consume. The capacity of the shared resource is vast and so there is no stepping up from one fixed capacity to another and no additional setup costs therefore involved. In practice, if a business wants to try a new venture they need only invest in the resource they require whilst they require it, without taking on damaging longer term costs.

What’s more, the costs incurred by the the maintenance of the underlying infrastructure (i.e., the pooled computing resource) can be diluted by economies of scale where there is no need for bespoke environments to be created for each consumer. This saving is perhaps less significant with cloud hosting on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) than other cloud services such as SaaS (Software as a Service) because there are less opportunities to standardise elements of the service, although it still returns sizeable savings compared to traditional localised computing environments.

Finally, cloud platforms are less likely to involve lock-ins to long term contracts. This is largely caused by the fact that there isn't the need for a cloud provider to invest so much upfront in the creation and configuration of the cloud platform and consequently seek a return on that investment over a fixed term. Without this need for set up each time a platform is provisioned, cloud hosting services, like other cloud services can be simply turned on or off for the customer as and when needed.

Part 2 of this article investigates some of the performance comparisons between cloud hosting and dedicated servers.

If you want to find out more about the respective benefits of cloud and dedicated hosting platforms then you can visit a provider of dedicated and cloud hosting.

How Data Centers Are Becoming Greener

Data Centre (Photo credit: Route79)

It’s all too easy when you’re surfing the net to completely forget the impact that doing so may have on environment. We instinctively know that it’s greener to look up some information online than drive down to the library for example, but that is partly because we tend to think of the internet as somehow ethereal with no physical base and therefore no tangible effect on the environment. However, all of the data that we view on the web must be stored somewhere and the vast majority lives on servers in large data centers which unfortunately do have a significant environmental footprint.


Reports in 2007 found that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) accounted for 2% of the world’s harmful gas emissions with data centers in turn culpable for 14% of that figure. As our use of the internet and the trade in digital information grows - and in particular as the concept of cloud computing continues to take off with our data being stored remotely ‘in the cloud’ (i.e., on providers’ vast server networks) for us to access anytime anywhere - the demand for data centers is continually abounding. Providers are therefore increasingly looking for solutions and innovations to become more efficient to meet the twin objectives of cutting their own costs whilst reducing their unsustainable environmental impacts.


All data centers comprise of two key elements which can each provide a number of opportunities for financial and environmental efficiencies. The first is the actual IT equipment. the stuff that provides the core function and purpose of a center, such as the servers themselves and the network switches serving them. The second is all of the infrastructure that is required to house the IT equipment and keep it running efficiently and securely. The infrastructure can be made up of cooling equipment, security devices, lighting etc.

The ratio of energy that is used in the data center’s infrastructure to the energy used to power the IT equipment is known as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and is the industry standard in measuring their efficiency. A PUE score of 2, for example, would signify that for every unit of power being consumed by the IT equipment a further unit was being consumed by the infrastructure.


Renewable Energy
The first step to becoming a greener data center can be to ensure that the source of the energy or electricity being used is renewable. This can be achieved either partnering up exclusively with a supplier of renewable energy or by sourcing energy directly using sustainable methods. Some providers are going as far as locating solar energy farms on site to obtain the energy they need.


Energy Monitoring
It is also important to have accurate and in depth monitoring of the energy that is consumed at each point within the data center so that further efficiencies can be spotted. Most providers will have monitoring in place to calculate the PUE score but the accuracy of this monitoring and the assignment of energy consumption between the IT equipment and infrastructure can potentially vary slightly from one center to another.


Energy Efficiency
It is unavoidable that the largest proportion of energy used by a data center will be used by its IT Equipment, such as the servers, which is the fundamental purpose of the center. However, savings can still be made here, and throughout the supporting infrastructure, by employing the most energy efficient hardware that can be sourced. A significant amount of energy is, for example, lost in inefficient power suppliers before it even reaches the servers. Although this might mean a high initial outlay the power savings, will over the long term translate to financial as well as environmental savings.


Temperature Management
Often the biggest consumer of power, aside from the IT equipment, is the equipment used for cooling the data center.


There is a slight myth in that conditions inside a data center need to be kept at a low temperature. In reality they can operate efficiently at temperatures up to 80F, so providers can make immediate power savings by simply turning down the thermostat. In addition the main chunk of the cost for keeping the interior of a building cool is usually spent on chiller units. As a result, providers are increasingly looking to other solutions to make both energy and cost savings. Amongst these alternative solutions is the choice of locating the data center in naturally cool environments such as Alaska or Scandinavia and then allowing the cool air from outside to circulate through the building. There are also so-called free cooling mechanisms which (although not strictly free) can use pumps to recycle the cool air within the data center rather than chillers.


As well as circulating cool air, many data centers use cold water to reduce their temperatures. Again this can be a cost effective and sustainable option when for example data centers are located by their own source of water and then use purify the water themselves. Cooling water does need to be purified for this purpose but not to the same extent as mains water so the data center can carry out the process with less wasted energy consumption if they do it themselves using a local source.


Materials
As with any manufacturing process, key savings can be made in the production of all of the equipment used in a data center, from the servers to the cooling systems. By sourcing materials locally, for example, the initial carbon footprint of those materials can be cut. Once they have served their purpose, they may also still have a life beyond that; servers which have been superseded for a particular role or function should still be re-purposed within the center in another role where they are still adequately powerful. Those elements which cannot be reused within the data center may still be of use to others and so reselling them may be a further option.


Finally, units which are completely redundant can still be broken down into their components and then repurposed or resold and, failing that, the core materials in the components should be recycled as appropriate. All repurposing and reselling will reduce the demand for new equipment to be built and acquired and therefore as well as saving the data center money from purchasing new equipment it will also reduce the consumption of the raw materials and the energy used in their construction.


Most large data center providers are constantly exploring new and innovative ways to reduce their PUE scores and therefore their energy consumption, keeping costs down and increasing their green credentials. However, the booming demand for services such as cloud hosting and Colocation means that this challenge will never go away.

© Stuart Mitchell 2011

Web Hosting - An Overview

If you have ever set up either a personal or business website you will no doubt have encountered the concept of website hosting and depending on the level of service you needed you may have investigated a few different hosting solutions. The following article aims to give a useful overview to the options that are available to you and how they meet the differing aims of security, availability, costs, technical guidance and performance.

A hosting provider will either provide clients with space on servers to store and make their website accessible or a location in which they can house their own web server.

Colocation Hosting:
When a hosting provider offers the use of a data centre to house the client’s own server, it is known as colocation. Although the client will need to supply the server they can still benefit from the physical safety and security of the data centre and the facility’s high bandwidth to boost performance and availability. According to the package they sign up for they may also benefit from expert maintenance supplied by the provider.

Shared Hosting:
For less critical and lower performance driven websites, particularly where security is not such an issue, clients can opt to host their website on a shared server provided by the hosting company. In this scenario the site is stored on the same physical server as the websites of other clients (usually many others) and consequently, if there are performance issues, security issues, corruptions etc that occur with the sharing sites they may have knock on effects on each other.

Websites which are hosted on shared servers may also have to share resources such as server configurations and software, and therefore will not necessarily provide the solution for clients wanting a bespoke or tailored hosting solution.

The big advantage of shared hosting is however, the fact that it is more affordable for smaller scale operations and you can even find some resellers who will offer free web hosting on shared servers, funded by advertising.

Virtual Dedicated Servers:
Otherwise referred to as a Virtual Private Server (VPS), this uses a shared physical server but employs separate operating system installations or partitions for each site so that there is less shared resource between sites and more independently tailored software configuration. Virtual dedicated servers therefore carry a lower risk of security issues such as malware propagating from one site to another. and higher performance levels as the virtual spaces can be set up independently.

Dedicated Hosting:
In this scenario a website is hosted on its own physical server, usually within a data centre and therefore will not be affected by knock on issues from other sites sharing the server. In addition, the client will be able to fully configure the server to their needs, either with their own access or by handing over control to the hosting provider (see Managed Hosting).

Clustered hosting:
The term clustered hosting applies to any hosting solution in which the website is hosted on multiple servers, whether they be dedicated or shared servers. The solution provides a good solution for client’s looking for a high levels of uptime - because if one server fails the website can still run off the remaining servers - and performance - as load balancing can be employed so that web traffic is evenly distributed between the different servers so that individual servers are not overloaded.

Cloud Hosting:
This is essentially a form of clustered hosting whereby websites are stored on multiple servers via the cloud and can therefore benefit from the high levels of capacity, scalability and load balancing that the clustered solution offers whilst bringing it to a wider consumer market. With cloud hosting the client has access to a vast resource of servers so that they can use and pay for as much or as little as they need at any given time without the physical hardware restrictions of traditional hosting.

Managed Hosting:
This type of hosting package is ideal for a client whose website will require more complex configuration or will need to be adaptable to the changes in the clients requirements, e.g., business domains with changing propositions and marketing strategies.

Managed services can incorporate any of the other hosting packages but are most often associated with dedicated hosting plans. Here the provider will offer the management and maintenance of the website’s server configuration using a level of knowledge that the client is not likely to have themselves to ensure that performance, availability and security are maintained to a high level.

Importantly, providers can ensure that the server set up is fully responsive to changes in the website’s proposition or usage, such as the introduction of an ecommerce element or spikes in the level of traffic hitting the site.

Whatever level of online presence you are looking for with a basic understanding of the different elements on offer, you will be well placed to pick a Hosting solution to suit your needs; whether you want an affordable mass market cloud solution for a personal website or a robust and fully managed dedicated server solution for a critical and high visibility business domain.

The Benefits of Colocation

front view of the cluster of Wikimedia servers in Aubervilliers near Paris, France, installed on December 18, 2004; the three 1U servers of the same model (HP Proliant sa1100) in the middle are ours (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the online presence of a business becomes more and more integral to not only their promotional activities, but also their point of sales, the reliability and flexibility that they demand from their online infrastructure becomes more critical. Therefore, it is a fundamental part of a business’s strategy to consider how their websites are hosted; how their servers can respond to high bandwidth if their sites become more popular, how they can ensure that they can keep up with changes in their online propositions, and the demands of their market place. This will allow them to provide the availability and service that their customers expect. The solution will often be colocation hosting, but what exactly is colocation and how does it work?

In short the concept of colocation is that the core infrastructure behind a client’s website, the physical hardware such as the servers and accompanying equipment, is located in a colocation provider’s facilities so that the client does not have to maintain it on their own site. This is quite a basic definition and in practice colocation providers will offer a range of services within that area.

Typically the client’s servers will be stored in metal racks within a data centre and the client will therefore be renting rack space. This rack space even has it’s own units of measurement, the Rack Unit (U) which equates to 1.75 inches of vertical space.

The client can retain complete control over the management and configuration of their servers or they can buy this as part of the service from the colocation provider who can take on all responsibilities of monitoring and maintaining the servers’ operations.

The principle benefits of colocation are that the facilities will usually provide a secure home on an internet backbone that will ensure not only high levels of uptime, but also high levels of bandwidth capability and ultimately plenty of flexibility if the client’s requirements change.

The facilities themselves often come with highly sophisticated features such as power back ups (both instant battery and more powerful diesel generators), air conditioning for cooling, fire safety technology, security features (CCTV, highly restricted access controls to both the building and racks), and multiple connections (both into the building and within it) to provide fail safes if individual connections fail.

The client can also benefit from economies of scale in two costly areas as well. Firstly it is often cheaper for a colocation provider to ensure physical preservation of the servers and their up time - the aforementioned fire protection, on site security, power backups - to a high degree across a whole facility than it is for individually businesses to achieve the same levels on their individual sites. Secondly the bandwidth that the servers can benefit from will come at a far more economical rate for the client than if they attempted to install the equivalent lines at their own site.

Moreover, when choosing a managed colocation service in particular, the facilities may offer greater levels of expertise and specialisation in up-time at a comparatively lower cost freeing up the client’s resources for more effective use elsewhere.

There is even a further option available to clients whereby the data centre can provide the server themselves as part of dedicated hosting service, rather than the client relocating their own servers. This is the complete package in terms of support and flexibility and tapping the full expertise of the data centre. It can be hugely beneficial for some clients, however it does therefore bring with it a greater cost.

Colocation is a real necessity for businesses which either need to exchange high amounts of data or cannot afford any downtime in their online services. Telecommunications businesses and critical e-commerce sites may already be aware of the benefits of colocation but it is fast attracting a wider church as businesses need to compete more efficiently online. There is no better time to see if your business can benefit from colocation hosting.

© Stuart Mitchell

Hosting Considerations for An E-commerce Business - Security

One particular feature of an e-commerce web site that often sets their hosting requirements apart from those of other brochure sites for example is the fact that they handle, almost by definition, personal and financially sensitive information. Therefore, an e-commerce site’s hosting platform must have measures in place to ensure that this information is kept secure.

E-commerce Risks
E-commerce websites are usually required to process and store customers’ personal details. These details include payment information, names and addresses and even their choice of purchase. The payment details have more obvious financial risks associated with them, but customers’ names and addresses could also be used by criminals for the purposes of identity theft and fraud amongst other things. Even the details of an individual’s purchases may have undesired consequences if they were to get into the public domain (particularly in some product markets).

There are many risks posed to the data that e-commerce sites process; threats from hackers, who are attempting to access the server itself and the data that is stored on it, viruses which may harvest the data or give access to these hackers, and viruses that simply corrupt the data or that cause failures in the platforms where the data is stored. Malicious viruses for example might be written with no intention other than to just wipe a server or computer.

Dedicated Security
As with many of the challenges faced by e-commerce sites, the most appropriate solution for this requirement is to choose a dedicated server. This type of hosting platform offers the most protection against the spread of viruses and against hackers attempting to access the site’s files. Sites which share servers, however, are more vulnerable to such threats from the presence of other sites on the server which may not be well protected themselves, especially where they also share software such as operating systems and database support.

Platforms which use a virtual partition to create virtual private servers, or virtual dedicated servers as they may be described, will introduce greater barriers to viruses and hackers, than simple shared servers. Their operating systems will be distinct, however, because they will still share the same physical server and they will retain some of the vulnerabilities associated with that.

Cloud Security
Many e-commerce businesses who are attracted by the reliability and scalability benefits of cloud hosting mentioned in the previous installment of this article also have concerns over the security of the platform due to its use of a multitude of shared servers across vast networks. However, the growing use of technologies such as MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching - a way of transmitting data), Virtual Data Centres (VDC - a network of connected virtualised cloud servers) and carrier clouds (where the cloud is carried on wide area networks, WAN, distinct from the internet) is ensuring that the security of the information stored on the virtualised servers and transmitted between them is reaching higher and higher levels, bringing the benefits of cloud hosting into the reacb of these e-commerce businesses.

Data Center Security
Finally, any server within a data center will benefit from the state-of-the-art security that most data center buildings have installed to prevent anyone, who shouldn’t be able to, accessing the servers in situ. Consequently, one option for companies looking to invest into their own servers rather than renting from a hosting provider, but who still need the security of the data center location, is to choose a colocation hosting option. With this choice they simply rent the space in the server racks from the provider, into which they can house their own servers.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012

Hosting Considerations for An E-commerce Business - Performance

Of course if an e-commerce site has recurring down time or reliability issues, the consumer may be put off using that site due to the expected hassle it may cause them if, for example, they are half way through a purchase when things go wrong. In addition reliability, stability and a lack of error messages can, for many users, be a good indicator of a site’s authority, its trustworthiness even, and those are important factors for a consumer when they are parting with their hard-earned money. What’s more any amount of downtime can be money down the drain, lost sales not to mention lost advertising and exposure.

Scalability
This consideration overlaps considerably with those mentioned in the previous installment of this article - access to bandwidth, disk space and processing resource - but it is a key factor in its own right in that it is important to consider, not just the current activity on the site and the demands it places on the hosting platform but also, potential fluctuations in this activity and the potential demands posed in the future if the business is to grow or diversify. If the site’s demands on its hosting platform are likely to fluctuate day-to-day then the hosting platform should have spare capacity in its hardware resource to ensure that these peaks can be met without performance or downtime issues, whereas if the e-commerce business’s future propositions are likely to place grater demands on its servers, there should at least be a plan in place to scale up the capacity at the right time.

As suggested before, a dedicated server can offer the extra capacity, bandwidth, server resource etc, to cope with fluctuating demands without suffering from the competition of shared servers. Adding a managed hosting element can also ensure that any such fluctuations can be monitored, identified and responded to as quickly as possible whilst future changes in the platform can be planned and implemented effectively.

In terms of responsive scalability however, cloud hosting offers the most suitable option as it allows providers to offer extra resource on demand, instantaneously. Depending on the package the capacity is always there and the e-commerce site can simply tap into it as it is required.

Reliable Support
Due to the complexities of e-commerce sites, the aforementioned demands of traffic levels, dynamic content and secure processing and storage of information, together with the more severe consequences if anything were to go wrong, the ability understand the requirements of the platform, configure it accordingly and then respond to changes is key. That is to respond to changes in demand, reconfiguring the platform or scaling it as described above, as well as responding to failures.

For most businesses, rather than employ their own internal technicians who have the expertise to manage their web servers, the more economical solution is to sign up to a managed hosting platform. The term itself is used by different hosting providers to describe differing levels of support but a typical fully managed platform will offer such advantages as round-the-clock telephone support, site/server monitoring, bespoke configuration and set up, and back up management - all the things that increase the chances of the site being on the right platform in the first place, minimising the scope for failures to occur at all whilst increasing the ability to deal with unforeseen issues that do arise. Ultimately with all the considerations made above, things can still go wrong and so it is certainly worth taking into account not just how the hosting platform responds to changes in demand but also how it responds if problems are unfortunately encountered.

Managed hosting can, by some providers, be packaged up and termed as business hosting to target the enterprise market because this level of management will provide the assurances that enterprise and especially e-commerce operations require.

Reliable Hardware
Packages which are described as managed hosting often incorporate a dedicated server which is ideal for hosting an e-commerce site as mentioned above but it is always worth checking because providers can offer management of hosting platforms for any type of server set up. Dedicate servers do provide the best assurances of a reliable platform. Sites hosted on dedicated servers are not at risk from other sites introducing viruses to the platform or the activities of those sites and their owners causing the software platforms (operating systems etc) or the hardware to fail, as can be the case with shared hosting. Again, as mentioned above, the dedicated access to hardware resource means that spikes in traffic for example would not overload the site and its hosting causing downtime. In contrast sites on shared platforms are not only subject to lower ceilings at which their own fluctuating activity could cause server side issues but they will be affected if other sites hosted on the same servers have their own spikes in activity.

As an alternative to the stability of dedicated hosting, the mechanics of cloud hosting can also provide the reliability that e-commerce sites require. Cloud hosting utilises a pool of hardware resource spread across multiple servers, often multiple data centers, and this ensures that the they do not have single points of failure. If a physical server goes down, the cloud’s virtual server and therefore the site won’t. Even if something were to compromise an entire data center, the site would most likely remain online (depending on the package).

© Stuart Mitchell 2012

Shared Web Hosting Packages in Brief

This blog is the first of two providing an overview of the various types of web hosting available on the market. The focus in this first part is on the various forms of hosting which rely on shared web servers within data centers to host multiple websites.

The following summaries mention some of the benefits and drawbacks of each type of hosting platform and it is important to bear in mind what you actually need from your hosting provider when you weigh these up. Broadly, the two areas to consider are performance and uptime, whilst of course offsetting these against cost.

Data centres are purpose built facilities which are designed to house servers which meet these aims at affordable costs for the clients. They offer complex security and safety systems to ensure that the servers are not compromised whilst they are running and also have extensive systems in place to generate the optimal conditions (heat and humidity etc) for the servers to run smoothly and efficiently.

Depending on the type of hosting package in question, the other features to consider are:

• the ability to control and customise hardware and software if the site needs bespoke or non-standard configurations.
• the access to bandwidth - high bandwidth connections allow large amounts of traffic to flow quickly to and from the web server and so are more important for websites which experience high traffic volumes (i.e., page requests) or need to display a lot of content
• the amount of disk space (i.e., storage) on offer which will determine how big the site can grow and how much content can be stored
• the digital security of the platform, especially for sites that are obtaining or using sensitive data such as ecommerce sites.

Shared Hosting
The ‘shared’ in shared hosting refers to the fact that the web server that hosts the site is shared between numerous clients and their websites. It is the typical ‘entry-level’ option for small scale non-critical and non-sensitive (data) websites.

Features:

• Client rents a portion of a server
• The shared server also hosts other clients’ websites

Benefits:

• Inexpensive in comparison to other hosting platforms
• Simple hosting platform for clients with limited hosting expertise
• Physical security of data center location
• Physical safety of data center location

Drawbacks:

• Higher risk of security issues spreading from other websites
• Higher risk of software failures caused activities by other clients etc
• Limited physical resources such as bandwidth and disk space
• Limited scope for configuration of the software platform (operating system etc)

Virtual Dedicated Servers
Usually shortened to VPS, this type of hosting still shares a single server across multiple sites/clients but each site has its own operating system partition and so it offers more control and security whilst remaining cost effective.

Features:

• Client rents a virtual partition on a server
• The shared server also hosts other clients’ websites on separate partitions

Benefits:

• Inexpensive in comparison to other hosting platforms
• Allows greater customisation of each operating system
• Physical security of data center location
• Physical safety of data center location

Drawbacks:

• Some risk of security issues spreading from other websites
• Some risk of software failures caused activities by other clients etc
• Limited physical resources such as bandwidth and disk space

Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting essentially uses a large pool of physical hardware and resource to build virtualised hosting environments which are therefore not restricted to physical limitations. It can provide a solution for those who want a flexible platform where complete control and customisation is not a requirement.

Features:

• Client rents virtual hosting resource
• Hardware resource taken from multiple servers
• Hosting resource (bandwidth, disk space etc) supplied on demand

Benefits:

• Not reliant on one server - less risk of failures/downtime
• Clients only pay for what they use
• Seamlessly scalable - extra virtual resource can be assigned as and when it is required

Drawbacks:

• Limitations on the ability to configure the platform
• No scope for customising hardware
• Risk of security issues spreading from other websites

© Stuart Mitchell 2012
If you are interested in finding out more about shared hosting in the cloud visit Cloud Hosting Provider.

A Summary of Web Hosting Packages

Having taken a quick look at the various forms of shared hosting that can be used by clients to serve a web site to the rest of the world, the second installment in this couplet introduces a few alternative options which may require slightly larger budgets.

Dedicated Hosting
Forms of dedicated hosting are popular with larger business clients where performance and security are paramount and the budget is in place to do pay for it, because it offers complete control, high security and uncompromised physical resources.

Features:

• Client rents an entire single server
• Web site has access to all physical resource and connectivity
• Often comes with managed hosting

Benefits:

• Scope for complete control over server configuration
• No competition for bandwidth resource
• No competition for processor (CPU) resource
• Access to entire server’s disk space
• No security threats from other sites/partitions on the server

Drawbacks:

• Cost of renting entire server
• Potential for wasted capacity if higher spec hardware is rented than the site requires

Clustered Hosting
Clustered hosting employs more than one server to reduce the risk of downtime for clients who can’t afford their site to go offline.

Features:

• Web site is hosted across multiple servers
• Can utilise shared or dedicated servers
• Can offer back up systems and load balancing

Benefits:

• No single point of failure - one server failing does not take the site offline
• Load balancing allows traffic to be distributed between servers reducing the demand on each and improving overall performance

Drawbacks:

• Cost if using dedicated servers
• Lack of customisation if using shared servers

Colocation
Sometimes referred to as Co-location or simply Colo, this form of hosting allows clients to reap the benefits of a data center location but still retain ownership of the hardware.

Features:

• Client buys and owns server(s)
• Servers are housed in a data center
• Client rents space for servers

Benefits:

• Physical security of data center location
• Physical safety of data center location
• Access to high bandwidth connections
• Retained value of the hardware as company assets

Drawbacks:

• Initial cost of purchasing servers.
• Less scalability due to cost of replacing hardware
• Potential for wasted capacity if high spec hardware is purchased to future-proof the platform

Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is a type of hosting where the features refer to the support that the client receives rather than the type of server it comes with and therefore it can incorporate any type of hosting/server set up such as shared or dedicated. A fully managed platform is effectively the deluxe package for clients with larger budgets and a shortage of expertise in-house.

Features (typically):

• Expert support and advice
• Technicians available to make configuration changes
• Performance monitoring
• Usually a dedicated server

Benefits (depending on the type of support):

• Access to the expertise and knowledge of hosting provider
• Round the clock support in case of performance issues or downtime
• Proactive and reactive support for changes in the web site or web site usage
• Help to effectively scale and configure platform

Drawbacks:

• Will tend to be expensive in comparison to self-managed packages

© Stuart Mitchell 2012
If you are interested in finding out more about hosting visit Dedicated Hosting.

Hosting Considerations for An E-commerce Business - Hardware

More and more businesses are moving their propositions online so that they can interact with their customers wherever they are the world. Shops that were previously restricted to trading in local markets can now sell their products nationally and in many cases globally. Others have reaped the benefits of reducing their overheads such as rent and boosting their profit margins as a result. As the .com bubble of the early 2000s demonstrated however it isn’t simply a gold rush. To have an effective and competitive online proposition, an e-commerce site needs to perform well, have high uptime, process requests quickly and smoothly and be secure whenever a user interacts with it.

The following article aims, therefore, to provide a quick guide to the elements that businesses should consider when choosing a hosting platform for their e-commerce site. By addressing these considerations it should maximise the likelihood of the site performing well when required, under whatever is asked of it, without it going offline. For an e-commerce site these performance criteria are even more important as poor performance/user experiences can deter customers, down time can lead to lost transactions and in worst case scenarios site errors can even have financial repercussions for the customer.

Bandwidth

One of the key considerations for a site where performance - the responsiveness of user interactions, seamless user experience, page load times - is paramount is to ensure that the site benefits from high bandwidth connections. In other words, that the site is able to send and receive large amounts of data at any given time. For e-commerce sites this is a particular consideration because the site may be required to process high volumes of user generated transactions at given points in time, and, whilst a sluggish site may put users off using the site again, actual failures to process the transactions can have financial consequences for both the business and the customer.

The use of a data center location to host the web server will allow a business to access higher bandwidth connections than they may be able to implement in their own location, particularly as data centers are often positioned on the internet backbone. Plumping for a dedicated server package also ensures that the network connections for the web server are not shared with any other sites and that the e-commerce business therefore has access to the entire bandwidth capacity of that connection. Where websites share servers and consequently network connections, they will compete for that bandwidth and if one site has a spike in traffic it may take away bandwidth resource from the other(s).

Disk Space & CPU

The provisioning of server space and processing power is a defining feature of many of the various hosting packages that are available on the market. Often platforms will be described as dedicated hosting/server or shared hosting/server for example depending on whether they give the website access to the whole server - entire disk space and processing power - or share that resource amongst multiple sites in some form.

Sites that are likely to place high demands on the processing capabilities of their server because they request a lot of data, and/or sites that need to store a large amount of content (information in databases, page files etc), both of which e-commerce sites are a prime example, benefit from being hosted on a dedicated server. E-commerce sites usually need to send, receive and store a lot of information, not just transaction data but (e.g. product) page content as well. With a dedicated package they won’t be in competition with any other sites for the use of processing power and will, by definition, have access to a greater amount of disk space, the entirety of their server’s disk space.

As an alternative, business hosting in the cloud, accessing pooled server space and computing power on demand, can also be a suitable option for achieving the capacity that e-commerce sites may need to handle the data they generate. This storage capacity can be accessed as and when the site needs it and theoretically without a practical ceiling as far as most businesses are concerned.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012

Purchasing Options for Web Hosting - Reseller & Cloud

Multiple racks of servers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you are still looking to rent hosting resources rather than invest in your own in-house IT to get your website up and running there are further channels which can provide alternatives to buying physical service space directly from a hosting provider and which have particular appeal to smaller scale clients.

Resellers
For those still looking to rent server space there is the additional option of using a hosting reseller rather than buying directly from the hosting provider. A reseller will buy up hosting resource, disk space and bandwidth wholesale and then sell on hosting packages to individual clients by dividing up these resources. They can add a layer of support to their offering if they are specialist resellers and some will include their own branded control panels to allow clients to configure their hosting platforms.

There are specialist reseller companies in the market, but there are also many organisations that either sell hosting as an add-on to another service, such as digital media companies who build or maintain web sites, or that need to buy their own hosting resource and find it economical to buy wholesale and then resell the excess that they don’t use to counterbalance their own costs.

The hosting packages on offer from resellers can incorporate both shared or dedicated hosting platforms as resellers can either sell on a certain amount of shared disk space or complete individual servers. The most common reseller packages, however, involve shared hosting and in particular Virtual Private Servers (VPS) where the shared servers use virtual partitions to create distinct operating environments.

Reseller packages can be particularly beneficial for clients that do not have the expertise or resource to work with their underlying service provider in maintaining their platform. They can, depending on the package, have no need to be involved, direct or indirectly, in maintaining any of the hardware and infrastructure themselves. The reseller can effectively act as a conduit between the client and the service provider, either working alongside them to resolve any issues that crop up on behalf of the client, or acting as a middle man with whom the client may find easier to deal than the underlying service provider, especially if the client isn’t overly confident with their own technical awareness. For those who do get more involved, the packaging of reseller hosting can be less esoteric and easier for private and small business users to understand making use, for example, of simple control panel interfaces for configuration changes.

In addition, the reseller-support dynamic works well where the reseller is involved in other elements of a client’s digital package, such as the aforementioned digital agency who would build and maintain a site and then liaise with the hosting provider to manage the hosting of the site as part of a more holistic and joined up approach.

The twin drawbacks of reseller hosting, however, are that it can introduce an added layer of cost and, for those who do have the technical awareness, the middle man is simply another level of communication when support is required. Instead, tech savvy clients in particular, may prefer to deal directly with service provider to resolve issues more expeditiously.

Cloud Hosting
A newer alternative to the more traditional idea of renting a portion of a server is the idea of renting space within a cloud of hosting resource. This service relies on the hosting provider pooling the physical resources they have - disk space, bandwidth etc - and offering consumers a virtualized platform within this virtualized pool of computing resource on which to host their site. The consumer does not rent space on, or the entirety of, a single physical server therefore, and instead their site will in reality be drawing resource from a network of multiple physical servers. The environments in which their hosting platforms exist will be distinct in a virtual sense rather than a physical one, by employing virtual partitions (similar to VPS). Consumers can even go one step further and rent an entire network of virtual servers to form a Virtual Data Center (VDC) to satisfy any of their web hosting or broader business hosting needs.

Hosting in the cloud sits within the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) band of cloud services and its dynamics mean that hosting resource is sold more like a utility which can be tapped into as and when it is needed. The virtualized hosting platforms can be scaled to suit the demand for resources because they are freed of physical constraints and the consumer need only pay for the resource that they need as and when they use it; negating the wasted capacity that could otherwise result from either in-house hosting or rented disk space (especially dedicated servers). What’s more, the economies of scale that the hosting provider generates by running large scale data center resources can be passed down to the consumer meaning that cloud hosting can also be a cost effective way for the consumer to access the particular levels of resource that they need.

Whatever your budget, the technical demands of your website, your expertise and your expectations there is likely to be a hosting option on the market that suits. Ultimately, hosting packages will vary from one provider to the next but it is still important to be aware of the different routes that you can go down and the options you’ll find when you get there.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012

Purchasing Options for Web Hosting - Renting Direct

A typical server "rack", commonly seen in colocation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every website needs to be hosted somewhere and so every business or private individual who is looking to claim one small corner of the world wide web for themselves will have to get to grips with the idea of web hosting and find their way through the many options that will be available to them. The following three part article outlines a few of the paths that prospective web site owners can take to get their site online.

Buying Direct Hosting Service Providers
The first and perhaps most obvious option available to consumers is to pay a hosting provider to host their site for them. As the bare minimum in this type of package the client is paying the service provider for rent of the hardware that they need to display their site to the world. In practice this hardware will consist of space on a physical server and its connectivity to the internet within a data centre environment. It will also therefore be accompanied by the physical infrastructure required to keep the server running smoothly and safely including cooling systems, tight building security and protection from physical damage such as fire.

Most hosting packages where the client is renting server (or disk) space within a data centre will additionally include the setting up and use of the software environments that the site needs to run successfully. The client should be able to choose between packages that offer the right combination of features the hosting environment needs such as Linux vs Windows operating systems, email servers, FTP access, the relevant database support and scripting software compatibility (PHP, Perl, ASP.NET etc).

Many such packages will extend to offering ongoing support which can vary from one provider to the next, and one package to the next, in what it will cover. Levels of support can range from fully managed hosting packages, where they will likely offer a 24/7 support telephone line, full monitoring of uptime/performance and advise on configuration changes etc, to self-managed packages where the client is supplied with a control panel to monitor and configure the hosting platform themselves.

Consumers are able to choose from dedicated hosting packages where a web site is hosted on its own distinct physical server with its own hardware and software resources, such as connectivity and operating systems, in order to benefit from high performance capability and stability. Alternatively there are an array of shared hosting packages on the market which use the same hardware to house more than one site. These packages can include Virtual Private Servers where the hardware (the servers) may be shared but the sites sit within distinct software partitions that allow the service provider and the client to individually configure the software partition. As a general rule of thumb the more dedicated resources that your hosting platform has, whether it be dedicated hardware or dedicated software partitions, the greater the cost of the platform but in exchange the better the performance, security and scalability.

When choosing your hosting package directly from the service provider there is more likelihood of being able to find, possibly in consultation with the provider, the appropriate hosting services for your requirement, particularly if your site requires specific or high performance.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012

Managed Hosting Services

As businesses put more and more emphasis on the online side of their operations for marketing and as a point of sales the performance of their websites becomes more integral to their success as a whole. Therefore, many businesses are now opting to place the management of their website infrastructure into more trusted hands and are opting for managed hosting.

In summary a managed hosting service is one that provides businesses with a complete package of a dedicated server to host their website, software, the set up and the ongoing maintenance of their server. Therefore, allowing the business to completely outsource their hosting requirements.

At the heart of the managed service package is the dedicated server. With a dedicated server, the client uses (most often rents) an entire distinct server within a data centre on which to host their website. This server is not physically shared by any other website or client and therefore will not suffer from performance issues that result from sharing, such as, load handling, malware or physical damage during the maintenance of the sharing website’s hosting.

A managed hosting service will also benefit from server colocation whereby the server is physically housed away from the businesses own premises and within a purpose built data centre. These data centres are usually located on the internet backbone (offering high degrees of connectivity) and have advanced systems in place to preserve the performance and up-time of the server, such as fire protection systems, security and back up servers/cables/power.

In practice managed hosting can incorporate a variety of different services offered by the hosting provider that distinguish it as being proactively managed, such as, advanced levels of server configuration (which the business itself may not be capable of achieving), software/operating system updates, malware protection/scans, performance monitoring and assistance in the deployment stages. What’s more providers will often include a certain level of client support access as part of their service - sometimes even 24 hour telephone support.

Managed hosting in particular gives businesses the flexibility to respond to changing business needs. For example, in a scenario where a website is likely to receive abnormally high levels of traffic at short notice the managed hosting provider will be able to offer bespoke solutions that may have proved too costly or technically out of the reach of a business managing their own hosting.

The key advantage of managed hosting that underpins all of the aforementioned benefits of a data centre location, the use of a dedicated rather than shared server, and the server management, is that the client business will gain from the expertise of the hosting provider in providing a bespoke and high performance hosting solution. Some businesses will be able to run a self-managed server but it can be difficult and costly to match this level of expertise in-house, without the economies of scale that a managed hosting provider utilises.

As managed hosting can offer the complete gamut of hosting services, providing the client with a fully outsourced, flexible and robust hosting platform, they do tend to come at a higher cost than simple colocation for example. However, for businesses looking to focus their expertise and resources on their own propositions whilst benefiting from a high degree of online reliability and performance, managed hosting really is the ideal solution.