Posts Tagged ‘server’

VPS vs Reseller Web Hosting

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

When building a new website, it can be difficult to decide which type of web hosting plan it will require to run smoothly and efficiently for its users. With a virtual private server or VPS plan, customers are still sharing server space with other users, though there is a great deal more control for each user, and there are less users on each server, when compared to standard shared hosting. With reseller hosting plans, there is not much more than a traditional shared hosting plan, with a few extra bells and whistles. Learning more about these two plans will help you make the right decision when purchasing your web hosting plan.

What are VPS Plans About?

Virtual private server plans provide you with a small section of a larger server, and allow you to control certain aspects of the environment, such as the types of OS installed. Though users must share resources because they are all are being given a smaller section of the same large server, there are only about 20 users per server, whereas the typical shared server account hosts 150 users per server and does not provide the users with any sort of control over the server environment or resources. That said, users may need the basic operating system knowledge to manage a vps server, so it may be a good idea to start with the cheap vps hosting providers and try it out first, however, if you have already decided using vps and money is not a concern, go for a fully managed vps is the best option.

what is a reseller hosting?

Reseller plans are basically an extremely large shared hosting plan that allows a person to sell hosting to other customers. While this may sound like a good idea and a feasible way to make money, the truth is that because the server resources are all shared between all the accounts, it really is not a good way to go, unless all the websites hosted on it are going to be very small with limited traffic and features.

Conclusion

In general, most customers tend to go for the virtual private server, especially if they deal with business applications. Not only does this provide more control, but it will limit the sharing of resources and allow for the hosting of multiple websites. For a business who intends to market several websites and services with the goal of increased traffic levels, the virtual private server is the way to go. Still, the reseller plan is definitely the better option for indivudual customers who want to try selling web hosting services.

If you are having trouble deciding what plan to buy, try checking several different companies and the services they offer. Determine which company will provide the best plan for the money and then make a purchasing decision from there. Don’t be afraid to ask questions when talking to representatives from all of these companies, because it is their job to make sure all concerns are addressed before a plan is purchased.

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Which One to Choose: Xen or OpenVZ?

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Web hosting services are type of online services that allow companies and private customers to make their sites accesible to other Intenet users. A web hosting company offers space on a server that users can pay to rent for a monthly fee. As you probably guess, any company that wants to be present on-line simply must use this service.

However, different hosting plans are suitable for different kind of applications. For a personal web page a single page hosting is usually enough. But a larger company website that has dozens of pages will need a more sophisticated platform, especially if the website has many visitors.

Usually you can get personal web hosting either for free or a token fee, but you’ll have to pay a monthly fee for a more complex business website. Why is this? Well, the more complex sites often require database support as well as application platforms. Thanks to such services clients are able to create and install significant applications, e.g. website forums.

We’re going to introduce you to two most popular web hosting platforms: Xen and OpenVZ.

Which to choose?

Answering that will require some dwelling on the theme. Both platforms have forever changed the hosting industry by offering a viable alternative to dedicated servers, by creating systems where a single server can be devided into servreral virtual servers with reduced cost, full root access, choice of multiple operating systems, and full file compartmentalization for private servers.

Xen

Xen is a popular paravirtualization platform that has familiar hardware emulation. Paravirtualization operates by establishing an interface between the operating system and the system’s hardware, which then responds to requests from other operating systems that have access and can interact with a paravirtualization interface.

One of the many benefits of using Xen is that it lets system administrators modify the kernel modules and take advantage of unused swap space to meet memory demands.

Open VZ

OpenVz is a platform built on a Linux kernel, which has been altered to allow the operating system virtualization platform to support several Linux virtual private servers. Administrators are provided with full root access and power to carry out all commands normally found on a dedicated server.

What’s our recommendation?

As you might expect, each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. In case of Xen, it’s recommended for websites that need more memory. Additional memory is especially important for those who plan to do a lot of one-off tasks like encoding video, compiling applications or Java development. But those who would prefer to constantly use swap space instead of installing the appropriate amount of RAM, shouldn’t go for Xen. The reason is possible performance penalties in case of constant space swapping. Actually, Xen quite often overloads when swap space is used too often, which makes it useless.
Therefore, the majority of users prefer OpenVZ. It deals faster with average operations and additionally rarely overloads, which proves higher reliability. Private users in need of reliable service and more memory overhead will particularly benefit from this platform.

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Virtualization Software: Xen vs. VMware

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

In this blog post we are going to discuss two of the most popular systems of virtualization technologies - Xen and VMware. Obviously, the products of both companies have many advantages and drawbacks. And by the end of the article we hope that you are closer to deciding which one is right for you.

Xen

One of the most important things that Xen software offers is extra memory. Extra memory is provided by a tool called VP swap. It’s a useful feature for those who need big memory overhead. However, when swaps are overused, there is a small chance that a server will overload, but a much greater one that essential applications will slow down. Additionally, Xen does offer plenty of memory, more than many other popular platforms, which is important for some memory-consuming applications like apache. Still, when used on Xen they may slow everything down.Is then Xen’s extra memory that important? Generally speaking, the more memory or Ram that is available, the less frequently a server will have to access data from the much slower hard disk.The reason Xen is a preferred platform for customers who require a lot of memory is because of the swap space feature. When the memory is getting short, it pushes inactive processes are pushed aside to free up hard disk storage space.

VMware

VMware is currently the number one provider of virtualization software. Their software runs on Mac, Linux and Microsoft Windows. VMware utilize the CPU to run code whenever possible, and when it cannot, the software can actually re-write code to make it compatible. This process is known as binary translation. Once the code is translated, it can then be stored as spare memory. That is one of the reasons why VMware runs much faster - sometimes more than 80% - than its competitors/emulators. Not surprisingly, VMware results slightly more expensive than software offered by other companies. The price range for their products is between one thousand to nearly six thousand dollars, you can see why cheap vps hosting providers don’t usually use vmware. Despite that VMware opens the list of the world’s most popular virtualization software creators. The popularity may be due to the simple fact that they have been on the market longer than others and so they offer well tested and reliable products. On top of that, unlike with many of their top competitors, no operating system modifications are required to improve performance.

What will be the choice?

There are several reasons why WMware is a better product. To begin with, Xen relies on Paravirtualization, which requires operating system modification by a vendor to optimize performance. On the other hand, relying on emulation and binary transition in case of VMware causes any adjustments made by a vendor to be unnecessary. VMware also has several features that help reduce downtime, while Xen has no such thing. Finally, Xen is simply to new to the market to be as reliable as thoroughly tested VMware.

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Pandela Review

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Web hosting companies are rapidly opening up as older and more popular providers are experiencing issues due to so many customers and not enough fast servers to serve new ones to the fullest. While these companies remain competitive, they cannot avoid some criticism coming from unsatisfied customers. Other web hosting providers, including Pandela which belongs to the category of VPS solutions, are trying to take advantage of that.trying to take advantage of that including Pandela which falls in the category of Virtual Private Server solutions. These types of solutions aim to remove the frustration by using the power of virtualization to make these servers more functional, more secure, and more importantly, more affordable. Pandela aims to offer as many plans as possible to attract all kinds of customers.

About Pandela Hosting

Pandela is a company that has been in the IT industry for more than 20 years with its value recognized in 2008 when it was bought by UltraHosting, Inc. which is one of the leading providers of dedicated and collocation services. They have servers in Los   Angeles, CA, Dallas  TX, and Toronto,  Canada.

Pros

The huge advantage of Pandela over other VPS providers is their experience and innovativeness resulting from the time they have been in the IT market. Pandela offers a special web hosting control panel called NextGen. Using Flash and XML technologies, the performance is surprisingly fast and allows all aspects of the host to be controlled with ease. It is possible to do common tasks such as setting up FTPs or e-mail accounts in not more than 3 clicks. There are also some tools that are not often seen in control panels including hotlink protection, IP blocking, and custom redirects.
It also overcomes one of the main problems many other companies fail to cope with which is offrering good support. Pandela uses a built-in ticketing system to make it easy for customers to voice out their problems. There is also a searchable knowledge base comprising answers to most often asked questions. Queries are usually replied in minutes. Monthly costs are also very competitive with basic plans costing only $17. The storage space of 5 GB may seem little, but the 256 MB RAM makes it far better than standard shared hosting packages. Other plans can be seen at the home page in Linux and Windows flavors. The Linux distro may also be chosen for any plan without worrying about contracts. The Windows Xen plans are unique and use Parallels Virtuozzo virtualization combined with powerful Quad-core Xeon servers.

Cons

Pandela began first as a free web hosting company and their services didn’t do so well compared to other free hosing providers. It seems now as if they solved these problems, although some hosting companies offer more storage space at the same price.
Still, Pandela remains a great hosting company to sign up with as it offers amazing uptimes and a variety of VPS plans to choose from. Pandela will remain as a great server solution as long as they keep up the good work with the support and uptimes.

Pandela is also great for debian vps

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