In an ideal world, your applications will be load balanced over several servers to prevent any load issues and downtime due to server crashes and have a failover system identical to the main system which can take over should your main system completely fail or become unreachable. This is usually very expensive and many companies have to make a choice between having a load balanced system or employing a failover mirrored system.

A load balanced system tends to be the industry standard and provides high availability, speed and data resilience. A true load balanced system will contain 1 or more load balancers, 2 or more web/application servers and then 2 or more database servers (if required). The load balanced system can be much more complex depending on the nature of the service it is designed to provide, however the benefits are the same no matter how complex it is. Having multiple servers to do the same job means that you can share the load your application generates across more hardware then you would get with 1 server. If you allocate enough resources, it also means should you suffer individual hardware failure; the other parts of the system can take over seamlessly, thus resulting in zero downtime due to hardware problems, in theory. As you usually allow for this, the amount of servers in the system tends to mean you have more resources between them then you would require for the application so the speed tends to be improved as well.

Clustered systems also allow for greater data integrity, as fast connections between data servers means replication of data can often occur in near real time so individual hard drive failure usually does not result in major data loss.

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Building an online business is a time of hard work whilst you are building your website, perhaps learning as you go along, and also about you trying to build an online reputation as someone that can be trusted by potential customers. Keeping your website free from harmful viruses and protecting customers’ data is a very serious practice. The Data Protection Act is there to protect a person’s identity and all details should be kept confidential. The leaking of any personal details could not only result in trouble for you but also lose the trust of your customers.

When you sign up for a contract with a web hosting company you should ask questions about the security provided and ensure that you are protected. If you are going to be taking payments on your website you will need to double check security against the possibility of unscrupulous hackers. When a weakness or loophole has been found, hackers could take advantage and obtain your customers’ credit card details and therefore, money. Even though you are not personally responsible for the theft of personal details, your customers will understandably blame you as you should have made sure your website hosting was secure.

The web hosting company’s server should be housed in a secure environment free from all security risks so that you are able to concentrate on building your online business knowing that you are safe from security issues. Here at CWCS, we believe that web hosting security should always be a number one priority and house our servers in totally secure web site hosting environments.

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In an ideal world, your applications will be load balanced over several dedicated servers to prevent any load issues and downtime due to server crashes and have a failover system identical to the main system which can take over should your main system completely fail or become unreachable. This is usually very expensive and many companies have to make a choice between having a load balanced system or employing a failover mirrored system.

With a failover mirrored system, you would usually have 2 identical systems in 2 different physical locations with no common factor connecting them, so if the main system goes down, the backup system would take over.

Having a failover system is the best method for having a disaster recovery plan and is used widely in the Financial Services industry, indeed the FSA require many organisations to have a Diaster Recovery (DR) plan in case their data is damaged or lost. It allows for almost 0 loss of data and fairly high availability as well

The pitfalls of failover systems are that the speed of failover can be fairly slow depending on the method used, as its hard to divert web traffic from one server to the other in different physical locations and on different networks, it does not tend to be recommended for high availability web sites, however for office based applications where manual domain names resolution isn’t crucial it can result in much better availability. The cost is also a major issue as having an equivalent redundant system does mean you are paying for two systems but only using one at any one time.

Its recommended that failover systems are best for those who disaster recovery is the largest priority and where the retention and duplication of data is business critical.

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Selecting a reputable web hosting company can be a complex task, especially if you are learning how to build a website and the technology that accompanies it. Even if you are an expert in the world of online business it is important to know what to look for in a web hosting company. There are many different prices on offer from low cost to expensive, but how do you know what you are paying for?

It is always necessary to do some research into different web hosting companies and what they are offering you before signing any contract with them. If you are not familiar with technology and online business, perhaps because you are only just building a business, it may a good idea to obtain advice from someone who is familiar with the necessities of hosting.

Here at CWCS, we advise you to contact us with your website hosting requirements and we will be able to help you choose the hosting package that will best suit your needs. We have a range of different web site hosting packages at different prices so we are confident that you will find what you need without paying more than you have to.

Sometimes you will see price plans that are much cheaper if you sign up to a contract of a year or more. These can be very good value but you should never sign up to a long contract in order to save money unless you are sure the package will be satisfactory for the life of the contract or you could end up out of pocket.

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Managed hosting can be beneficial to websites of all sizes, from the small online business to a large company with several websites. Choosing managed hosting will give you peace of mind and security as your website will be managed by a team of professionals around the clock to make sure that there are no problems. This leaves you free to concentrate on actually running your business without having to worry about problems with the maintenance of your website.

If you are new to internet business and you have little or no knowledge of the technology then this would be a cost-effective option for you. Basically the company who provide your managed hosting take care of all the running of the actual website on your behalf. When you initially build a website you really have to spend time learning about the intricacies of how web site hosting works, about the security aspects and about all the other factors relevant to a website.

Choosing managed website hosting with a company such as us at CWCS will mean that you are receiving affordable hosting with someone to run your website far more efficiently than if you had to gain technical knowledge from scratch. We also provide twenty-four hour support by email or telephone seven days a week with someone to answer your queries.

Select a company that has a guarantee of almost total operational time as this is an important factor in the smooth running of your business. The company that supplies your managed hosting should be maximising your return on your investment.

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For users with dedicated servers or VDS servers which use MySQL quite heavily, there can be ways to improve the performance without having to increase the specification and cost of the service.

Setting the memory limits correctly in the my.cnf file can help optimise a slow running server by limiting or expanding the amount of memory MySQL has to play with. This is usually stored for linux users in /etc/my.cnf or /etc/mysql/my.cnf. For most windows users it can be in the MySQL directory or etc directory within the mysql install directory.

Pay special attention to the [mysqld] command and those directly below it. Here are some useful limits which may already be set on your server:

set-variable = max_connections = 300

This variable will help limit the effects of any attacks or badly written code, but if you set this too low then users will start getting MySQL errors as soon as the limit is hit. We recommend somewhere between 100 and 500, depending on your server spec and the complexity of your MySQL code.

set-variable = max_allowed_packet=32M

This is the size of any individual packet sent from or to the SQL server, it can be a statement or one returned row. Try to keep this at 32M or below unless you know you are storing huge amounts of data (like a BLOB) in your databases, although for better speed try to keep the databases as small as possible and do not store large data chunks which could easily be stored as files and just referenced in the DB.

If you change these values, ensure to restart MySQL afterwards.

Special attention should be paid to the “query cache”. This is especially useful for sites which have a lot of SELECT statements running often. The query cache allows you to cache in memory the most common select queries, this reduces the load on the hard disk and can speed up MySQL processing quite considerably.

Log onto MySQL command line or a PHPMyAdmin (as the admin or root user) and type:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE ‘have_query_cache’;

You should get a response similar to this:

+——————+——-+

| Variable_name | Value |

+——————+——-+

| have_query_cache | NO |

+——————+——-+

You might get a YES response, however it is important to set the cache size. This is the size in Bytes of the query cache (minimum 40000). We recommend you calculate this as a proportion of your overall available RAM on your server, avoid any more than 25% for a normal web server. It can sometimes be worth adjusting this to see how results change.

More details for this can be found here (if you use version 5.0 of MySQL) http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/query-cache-configuration.html

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Choosing a web hosting company is a complicated task which can easily end up with you paying excess money out each month for a poor service. There is so much competition on the internet that finding a cheap web hosting company isn’t difficult, in fact you can easily find companies that offer unlimited services at a reasonable price. However, before signing a contract with a web site hosting company it is important to look a little bit deeper into what you actually receive for your money.

Bandwidth and storage are the two main factors when selecting your web hosting company. It is difficult to work out how much bandwidth and storage you will use, especially if you are new to the Internet but it is essential that you try to decide on an estimate. You can work out a rough estimate of required bandwidth by calculating the average page views multiplied by the average page size, multiply this by the average number of daily visitors and then again by the number of days in a month. You should multiply this total by an emergency amount of bandwidth, for example 1.5. This will give you a rough idea of your requirements on a monthly basis.

However, what happens if your website traffic goes up and you need more bandwidth? You may find that you are charged extra money for going over a certain amount, even with unlimited plans. Here at CWCS we believe that you should be totally aware of what you are paying for and we can advise you of the website hosting that will best suit your specific needs.

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