Digital Pacific Company Blog » Web Hosting

VPS Hosting

Digital Pacific — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:56:58 +0000

VPS stands for virtual private server. A VPS hosting option is one step up from shared hosting. With VPS, a physical server is subdivided into smaller virtual servers – each with its own set of isolated hardware and software features. A virtual server is private and dedicated, but it does share actual physical server space with other VPS accounts.

The Advantage of VPS over Shared Hosting
A VPS account will allow a user root access via remote Desktop Access on a Windows hosting service, or through SSH on a Linux server. Having root access means VPS users can install their own chosen programs, applications, and scripts. A VPS option offers greater flexibility and overall control compared to a shared hosting account.

In terms of resources, a VPS will have certain limitations but nothing as restrictive as a shared hosting account. VPS resource allowance depends on the resources installed on the physical server it resides on. However, because each VPS is isolated it will have a dedicated amount of resources at its disposal. These resources won’t be affected by other VPS accounts.

With shared hosting, resources are unilaterally shared. So a sudden spike of traffic, or resource usage, from one or two websites may hamper the performance of other websites sharing the same server. Because a VPS is allocated its own dedicated share of resources, this problem will not occur.

Additional Security
A VPS is more secure than a shared hosting account. Unlike a shared hosting package, a VPS does not share memory-related resources with other accounts. It has its own dedicated allotment of RAM and disk space that cannot be accessed by other VPS accounts hosted on the same physical server.

The security advantage of possessing your own private disk space, RAM, and other resources is obvious. No one can maliciously tamper, other users cannot pry, and you have complete control over any applications or programs you install.

Managed and Unmanaged Versions
A managed version will be easier for anyone that has limited technical ability. With a managed option, the hosting company will lend a helping hand and provide and manage some aspects of your account, such as software installation and upgrades.

An unmanaged version is simply what it says. Users have full control over all aspects and are free to install and manage their own VPS application and programs. For the technically proficient, an unmanaged VPS account offers total control.

An unmanaged VPS package will be cheaper than a managed one because there are no additional administration costs to incorporate.

VPS Problems Created by Poor Hosting

Overselling and CPU Usage
CPU resources available to a VPS depend on the size of the CPU processor installed on the hosting physical server and the amount of VPS accounts sharing the same CPU.

A low-powered CPU may struggle to efficiently manage the demands placed on it by too many VPS accounts, resulting in slower load speeds and downtime for websites.

Poor-performance situations occur when a web host is guilty of overselling the server space. It is said ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ and this rings true for VPS hosting. An excess of VPS users on one server can overload a CPU, resulting in decreased performance.

Look for reputable hosts who provide decent CPU resources and competently manage VPS-to-server ratios.

Restrictive RAM Issues
Some cheaper VPS hosting packages have low RAM allocation. It is important to check the amount of RAM included in a package. The amount of RAM a website needs depends on various factors: If a website intends to run large databases, numerous smaller databases, and/or resource-intensive CMS platforms, then restricted RAM will be an issue.

At Digital Pacific, we provide between 512MB of RAM up to 2GB of RAM depending on which plan you sign up with. A low-cost VPS hosting provider may only provide 124MB of dedicated RAM. Fine for the most basic of websites, but way too limited for the majority of blogs, CMS-managed websites, and sites with intensive graphical elements and databases.

In some cases, a decent shared hosting account may be superior to a cheap VPS hosting package with limited RAM. Never get swayed by low cost without first checking RAM availability.

Two Signs of a Quality VPS Web Host

Account Flexibility
A decent VPS hosting provider should offer a user the option to modify and apply only the specifications they require (disk space, RAM etc). The benefit of this over, say, a dedicated server account, is the user will only be paying for the resources they are realistically going to use.

A good VPS host will be able to quickly increase the level of allocated resources available to a user if required (monthly charge will increase).

Burstable RAM
A VPS package with burstable RAM offers an aspect of flexibility. Bursting allows a user to exceed allocated RAM limits when required. A website getting a sudden spike in traffic could suddenly require extra RAM. Even if this RAM was in excess of the user’s agreed allocation, burstable RAM would allow this.

Burstable RAM is not guaranteed and may not always be available. It is simply a potential back-up. If a website is constantly exceeding its basic RAM allocation, the account user should be looking to upgrade the hosting package to include a larger RAM allowance. At Digital Pacific, we offer our VPS customers between 1GB and 4GB of Burstable RAM.

Why Choose a VPS Package?
A VPS offers a secure, flexible hosting option. It is a way of obtaining a hosting service with dedicated resources without paying the higher costs of a dedicated server package. A VPS account provides more security than shared hosting, and users do not have to worry about incurring website downtime or drag caused by other websites sharing the same resources.

It is prudent to assess the amount of overall resources a website will need before choosing a VPS service. At Digital Pacific, we provide between 512MB of RAM up to 2GB of RAM depending on which plan you sign up with. However, it is important to note that a low-cost VPS hosting provider’s package with a tiny (124Mb) RAM allowance often proves to be inefficient compared to a higher-end shared hosting package.

VPS accounts are flexible and can be adapted to suit individual needs. They come in many sizes and with various resource allocations, additional support, and pricing policies. Decide on the type of VPS package you will need by researching what programs you want to install, the traffic you hope to achieve, and the disk space your resources may require.

Plan ahead if you can and choose a VPS package that will allow for expansion, but it is not necessary to go over budget and purchase a plan that is way beyond your needs. A good VPS hosting provider will be able to upgrade your package at an individual resource level, as and when you require.

If you would like further information on the VPS hosting plans offered at Digital Pacific visit our website or feel free to give us a call on 1300 MY HOST for a friendly chat.

VPS Hosting is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

How to Manage SPAM in cPanel

Digital Pacific — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:56:41 +0000

To setup your control panel to manage SPAM email, do the following:

1. Log into your control panel at:

http://www.yourdomain.com.au/cpanel

Replace www.yourdomain.com.au with the domain name of your hosting account.

If you are unsure of your cPanel login details please refer the the email “Hosting Account Information – Please Keep Safe – Please do not reply”. This email was originally sent out to your default billing email address when you first purchased your web hosting.

2. Go to the Mail section and select MailScanner Configuration

3. In the Change All Domain Settings select the folllowing:

Low Scoring Spam: Deliver
High Scoring Spam: Delete:

4. Alternatively you may prefer to forward your low scoring spam to a dedicated spam email address. The control panel will allow you to forward either low or high scoring spam messages to a mailbox called spam@domain.com. You will need to create this mailbox before applying the setting. If you do use this setting then you will need to check your dedicated spam mailbox on a regular basis to ensure that no legitimate email is appearing there.

5. If you wish to either permanently allow (whitelist) or prevent (blacklist) an email, or emails from particular domain names, then click on the Email Black/Whitelist settings link.

In this area you can adjust what email accounts or domains can be allowed through or blocked.

How to Manage SPAM in cPanel is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

Advantages Of Cloud Hosting

Digital Pacific — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:30:08 +0000

With cloud hosting you can perform computing tasks via the Internet. The term “cloud” refers to a network of servers on the net. These servers contain software that you, as a cloud hosting client, can use. This means you no longer have to store bulky software packages on your own server, and because of high speed internet connections, applications runs faster than ever before. However, this is just the start of the advantages that cloud hosting offers. Here is an overview of the main benefits of cloud hosting.

Efficiency
Employees can work independently when on location. All information necessary to do their job can be accessed online via the cloud. All they need is a laptop and/or a smartphone. This way of working is said to increase productivity. Once you have set up an account with your cloud hosting provider, you can start working straight away. There is no hardware or software to install. A so-called dynamic cloud server will be made ready for your use in just a couple of minutes.

Cost Effectiveness
Applications are available 24/7 from your hosting provider. As a business owner you no longer have to buy and maintain your own servers, which makes a significant difference in the running costs of your business.

Scalability
No large upfront investment is needed. You pay a monthly fee based on what you need, which gives you a large degree of control over your budget. If you need more storage capacity or more computing power on a temporary basis, you can upgrade for the time you need, and afterwards you can simply change the parameters of your dynamic cloud server back to the old settings. In the same way, you can start out small, and as your business grows you can upgrade your cloud hosting package to fit your needs without having to worry about installing more hardware and software. Everything is already available to you. All you have to do is opt in.

Reliability
You don’t have to worry about updating software. Your hosting provider will regularly carry out updates automatically from a central location. This ensures you are always working with the most up-to-date software that is available. Additionally, all servers need regular maintenance, and the same is true for the servers that make up the cloud. But this won’t affect cloud users, as everything they need is automatically moved to another location in the cloud where it can be accessed as usual until the maintenance is done. You won’t even notice it.

Cloud computing has a lot to offer, and these advantages make having a powerful, personalized IT system accessible to even small or start-up businesses. The scalability and efficiency of cloud hosting supports business growth and encourages entrepreneurialism. If you are ready to give the cloud a test run, there are several applications that you can install immediately with any Digital Pacific business hosting plan.

Advantages Of Cloud Hosting is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

Seven Good Reasons to Buy a Domain Name For Your Small Business Blog

Digital Pacific — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:13:31 +0000

If you are starting a blog for your small business it’s tempting to skip buying a domain name and jump right into a free blog hosting service. You’re trying to grow your business so you want to keep costs down where you can. Free is good, right?

Wrong. If you are at all serious about your company, be nice to your business blog and buy it a domain name. Here are seven good reasons why you should register a domain name for your small business blog.

1. If the aim of your blog is to market a business then it must look business-like. A self-hosted domain is the first step to a professional looking blog. Internet-savvy readers simply won’t take seriously a blog like yourbusinessblog.freeblogsite.com. It looks amateurish. Readers will take far more seriously the self-hosted yourbusinessblog.com. It looks like a real site. Whether you’re selling a product, a service, or your own expertise, a proper domain name will inspire customer confidence.

2. If you don’t buy your own domain name then you do not own your own blog. Simple as that. While you do own the copyright to all your content, it is the free hosting site that actually owns your blog. This means you have no protection should they decide to suspend the blog or should the host site itself close down.

3. With self-hosting you have complete control over the ads you may to choose to place on your blog, unlike a free hosting site which may place irrelevant or even counter-productive ads on your blog. By having your own domain name and paying for hosting, you can select ads which are relevant to your business, or choose to have no ads at all.

4. A shorter URL address is easier to remember. Readers won’t return to a blog they can’t remember the name of. They are more likely to return to yourbusinessblog.com than yourbusinessblog.freeblogsite.com.

5. Buying domain names gives you multiple email addresses to the same domain name. You can have a different email address for sales, support or feedback for example, all at yourbusinessblog.com. This adds to the customer’s impression that you are a reputable and efficient company.

6. Using your own domain name from the start helps reinforce your brand whether it be a business, product or service. Your domain name represents your business, your blog and ultimately your brand. It is one of the first things people recognise about your blog.

7. If you don’t buy the domain name for your business, someone else might. If your business becomes successful, internet opportunists may register your business domain name in the hope of capturing some of your traffic or selling the domain for profit.

Having your own domain names for your small business blog may not be free but is relatively low compared to the credibility and business recognition (and therefore profit) you might lose by not having your own domain.

Seven Good Reasons to Buy a Domain Name For Your Small Business Blog is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

Magento Hosting Explained

Digital Pacific — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:46:44 +0000

Australian Statistics reveal that Six-and-a-half million Australians have Internet access at home or work, and they spend more than $11 billion dollars a year in online purchases. So, if you own a shop selling anything from jeans to jams you need to be able to tap into this lucrative marketing opportunity and open an online store with an e-commerce platform.

Magento is one of the fastest growing e-commerce platforms around and the Magento Community Edition is free! Its flexibility and wealth of features are some of the reasons this software has been downloaded by over 1 million users. Magento has placed itself in the market as one of the strongest ecommerce platforms around for stores of any size who are looking for a great online solution.

What Can Magento Be Used For?

Magento has a huge array of features to suit your online store. You can start small and grow as you become more familiar with the platform and as free updates become available for download.
There are too many features to list here but outlined below are just some of the great tools you can access through the Magento Community Edition:-

Control multiple stores and websites from one admin panel
Flexible coupons and pricing rules (assign to groups, specific stores etc)
Catalogue promotional pricing
Multiple currencies
One Page Checkout
Dashboard Reporting
Abandoned Shopping Cart/Best Customers Reports
SEO
I-Phone optimised

Magento Hosting

Digital Pacific offers a wide array of Magento hosting options to boost your ecommerce website. In fact, Magento can be used on any Digital Pacific hosting plan except for the Personal Basic package. The hosting plan must include a MySQL database in order to store the website’s content, and that capability starts with the Personal Standard plan.

Our Hosting Control Panel, Cpanel, makes installing the latest version of Magento a breeze using the built-in software installer called Softaculous. Softaculous provides users with a one-click install option, truly taking any headache out of the setup process. All other control panel users can take advantage of Digital Pacific’s Extended Web Hosting Support to get the job done.

Importance of updating Magento

With Magento you can start out at a basic level and then once you have the confidence and see how successful certain features are you can expand and build on them. Don’t try and do too much at once. To get the most out of Magento its worth really understanding the program and how it all works first to truly get the most out of it.

New software applications and updates are available regularly so your Magento Community Edition platform will always stay up to date and fresh. Downloading the regular updates also keeps your Magento application clean and security tight.

The Enterprise and Professional editions of Magento are paid for and the benefits of this is that they come with full warranty and support services, these editions however are more suited to much larger online retailers.

Magento Themes and Styling

Magento concentrate more on the technical side of layout and themes rather than the aesthetics. But there are thousands of free and paid for themes available online to suit any kind of online retailer. You can even create your own if you have the time and the creative talent to do so!

Does Digital Pacific do website design for Magento?

Unfortunately Digital Pacific does not offer design services. But the Magento application is so popular that a quick Google search will find you great apps and funky themes so you will have a professional looking online store in no time at all.

Supporting the Magento community

There are hundreds of forums and blogging communities on the net for Magento hosting, so you will not need to look far for support or to have any questions answered.

Magento also have their own dedicated community forum on their website which houses a whole back catalogue of tips and answers to common questions. If you can’t see your question answered on the site you are welcome to post your own.

Magento Hosting Explained is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

5 Ways to Find Good Quality and Affordable Web Hosting

Digital Pacific — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:10:29 +0000

When you are trying to create your own website, finding a web hosting service is usually the first step in the process. A web host will give you the means to physically create a website by providing you with a domain name through a registry.

However, there are plenty of different web hosting services out there, each offering differing services and prices to cater to your needs. Free services exist but they are rarely reliable enough to meet the needs of a small business. There are also more expensive web hosting services that could end up charging you an arm and a leg. So how do you find a good quality and affordable web host?

1. Read Reviews
Online reviews of web hosting services are very instructive, and reading your fair share of these reviews can help you determine the best from the rest. While it may seem that some of the negative reviews are planted by rival hosting services to smear the competition, most hosting services allow users to post reviews on their website, enabling you to get an unbiased look at people’s opinions.

2. Review Support Options
The less you’re willing to spend on web hosting, the fewer options you will have at your disposal. Depending on your needs, that might be perfectly fine. Just make sure you know what you need in a web hosting provider before you sign up.

3. Factor in the Service’s Reputation
A reputable web hosting service is generally one you can trust to deliver in terms of price, customer service and functionality. There is a reason so many free web hosting services have a bad image, so try not to associate yourself with these providers.

4. Compare Suites
‘You get what you pay for’ is an old maxim that applies to almost every consumer purchase. However, do you really need to spend all that money on the deluxe package when the chances are very remote you will even need such a robust suite? When looking to sign up for hosting with Digital Pacific, if your unsure about which hosting package will suit your website, you can speak to one of the team members and they will advise you which package will best cater to your needs.

5. Evaluate Space
Do you need multiple domain names and a large amount of bandwidth for your site? Figuring out how much space your website will take up is essential to choosing the right suite. To be on the safe side, purchase a little more than you think you’ll need.

Finding a good quality web hosting provider is never easy, but with this article in hand you will have your site up and running in no time at all, and at a very affordable price.

5 Ways to Find Good Quality and Affordable Web Hosting is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

How to use Domain Names to Protect your Online Brand

Digital Pacific — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 07:08:03 +0000

It is important to begin developing strategies to protect your business’ brand as soon as you launch its web presence. A key element of your online brand is a good domain name.

You can find strategies for selecting a good domain name in a number of places. However, some basic principles to keep in mind are to try and keep the domain name simple, keep it close to your business name or how people refer to your business, and make it easy to pronounce and spell by avoiding hyphens, numerical characters and unusual spelling if you can.

Once you have selected a domain name that is available, you should register your domain with a reputable domain name registrar (a service that Digital Pacific provides). It is then time to start protecting your brand. It’s best to start doing this before you launch your presence, as the process will become more difficult and costly as your brand grows in popularity.

Prevent Domain Prospecting

Domain name prospectors buy domains that might be used by businesses that aren’t yet online. They are gambling that once a business decides it wants the domain name, it will be prepared to buy the domain off the prospector for an inflated price. This is also referred to as cyber squatting, and is a practice that has extended to buying similar sounding domain names and obvious misspellings of common words. Prospectors will often set up small portal web pages at a domain and use broadly relevant links to take advantage of affiliate marketing and advertising. These portals generate revenue through page views, high click through rates and affiliate purchases.

Domain prospecting is an issue for you and your business because typos happen all the time. Less savvy internet users may not even realise that they have typed in the wrong address and will think that a domain prospector’s useless page is your business. This is not a good outcome for you as you are unable to control the experience that these potential clients have while they are searching for your products and services.

Strike First

A quick and effective way to stop someone from squatting on variations of your domain name is to register the most likely variations yourself. You should consider registering variations across the major top level domains of .com, .org and .net, as well as the country level domains of your main markets for maximum protection. For example, in Australia this means registering .com.au, .org.au and .net.au domains where possible. AuDA, the body responsible for the governance of Australian domain names, places specific restrictions around registering many of the .au domains. This will reduce the likelihood of opportunistic squatting around your .au domain names, but will not protect you completely.

Guard Against Bad Publicity

Another domain name phenomenon worth watching is disgruntled customers (and sometimes competitors) using variations of your domain name to publish negative impressions of your brand. A common technique is to add the word “sucks”or something similar to the end of a domain name and use the site to publish negative reviews and opinions of a service. A well-known example is the large number of sites that have been created to discuss the service of PayPal (try typing “paypal sucks” into Google for a taste). While it won’t be economical to register every potential offensive domain, it could be to your benefit to own and control the more obvious options if you operate business that focuses on customer service.

Be Ever Vigilant

Protecting your brand through domain name ownership is not a “cheap and easy” task. Less reputable organisations will continue to look for new ways to gain an advantage off the back of your brand, and different techniques will continue to be developed. However, protecting your domain name has clear and immediate benefits for all businesses serious about owning their brand and reputation online.

How to use Domain Names to Protect your Online Brand is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

IPv4 Exhaustion – Is The Internet Running Out Of Room?

Digital Pacific — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 05:37:05 +0000

As you may have already read, the internet is, in theory, about to run out of IP addresses. “What does that even mean?” I hear you ask, and I’m glad you did.

There is a lot of conflicting information about this address situation (also known as “IPv4 exhaustion“) and what it means for internet users, with the most obvious concern cited that somehow the internet is about to “run out of room”.

Rest assured that this is not the case. There are plenty of IP addresses for everybody.

What is an IP address anyway?

IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is a way for devices to communicate with each other over a network. While the technical details of the Internet Protocol and the network communications protocol stack are many and detailed, it is enough to know that every device that communicates on a network that uses IP needs to have a unique number. This number is referred to as an IP address. Almost every network currently in use, including the internet, uses IP as part of its underlying framework.

There are two versions of IP in use today: IPv4 and IPv6.

Why does it look like we are running out of addresses?

The way that IP is structured creates a finite number of possible addresses. The allocation of these addresses is managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which allocated the last large blocks of addresses earlier this year. While there are still many addresses available in already allocated address blocks, it is true that the supply of new IPv4 addresses is “exhausted”.

IP addresses were allocated inefficiently in the early days of the internet, leaving a large number of addresses unused and in the hands of private corporations and government bodies. As the number of people and devices attempting to connect to the internet has grown, the pressure has increased on the publicly available number of IP addresses.

While techniques such as private network addresses and Network Address Translation have been developed to combat the issue, IPv4 exhaustion remains.

IPv4 exhaustion is a concern as IP addresses underpin something that makes the internet easier to navigate — domain names. While machines can remember a series of numbers for a server address, it is not as easy for humans. Domain names were invented as a way of assigning natural language to IP addresses. After all, it is easier to remember www.digitalpacific.com.au than it is to remember 203.19.59.122.

Luckily for everyone, IPv6 is waiting in the wings.

What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

The key difference between IPv4 and IPv6 in relation to the problem of IPv4 exhaustion is the number of addresses available for use. IPv4 uses a 32 bit numbering system, which allows for 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 theoretical unique addresses, although in practice the number available is smaller. By contrast, IPv6 uses a 128 bit numbering system, increasing the number of theoretically available addresses to 2^128, or approximately 340 undecillion (a number so large as to be almost meaningless).

Why are we still using IPv4 if IPv6 solves the problem?

A substantial obstacle preventing wide scale adoption of IPv6 is that software and hardware support is still maturing. While the latest versions of most operating systems now support IPv6 natively, hardware support is still immature, particularly at the consumer level. Consumers replace hardware such as routers and switches less often than they upgrade their software, leaving a large amount of legacy hardware still in use that is not IPv6 ready or capable.

Another issue is that IPv6 was not designed to be interoperable with IPv4. Anyone who wishes to offer an IPv6 service has to run it alongside an existing IPv4 service and use special network gateways to translate between the two different versions. This arrangement requires a service provider to maintain two separate services, increasing the amount of resources required to operate their business.

Should I be worried?

Short answer: no.

For the average internet user, the internet will continue as it has always done before. For example, Digital Pacific was recently assigned around 64 million IPv6 addresses, guaranteeing that your favourite web hosting company won’t run out anytime soon. This does not include all the IPv4 addresses still available for Digital Pacific customers.

The techniques that have been pioneered to combat IPv4 exhaustion will continue to provide enough space for the internet to keep growing in the short term. These techniques also buy time necessary to enable IPv6 adoption to increase and to enable more IPv6-ready consumer hardware to enter the market.

For now, there is still enough room for everybody.

IPv4 Exhaustion – Is The Internet Running Out Of Room? is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

An Introduction to VPS

Digital Pacific — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:10:30 +0000

Recently we discussed recognising when you might need to move from shared hosting to a dedicated server. What wasn’t discussed was that, for some people, moving to a dedicated server is a big commitment of time and money. While dedicated servers are an excellent option, it is a big step from a shared server to dedicated server solution.

Luckily for those people who are still unsure if a dedicated server is right for them, there is a middle ground. That middle ground is a Virtual Private Server, or VPS.

I should note that all server types play a role, from share hosting right through to dedicated servers. Each type of hosting has pros and cons that depend on your needs. Your needs will change over time, as will the type of hosting that provides the best fit your needs. The most important thing is that you choose the type of hosting that provides what you need right now.

WHAT IS A VPS?

A Virtual Private Server is just that – virtual, private and on a server. A VPS takes advantage of virtualisation to offer a dedicated hosting-like experience, albeit with a number of virtual servers hosted on the one physical piece of hardware. As the hardware is shared amongst several users, the cost of leasing the hardware is less than for a dedicated server. However, you retain some of the flexibility of a dedicated server, enabling you to get a better understanding of what a dedicated server can do for you.

HOW DOES A VPS WORK?

A VPS uses virtualisation to divide a single physical server into a number of self-contained servers. The server runs a full operating system with root access for the administrator, a guaranteed amount of RAM and has secure shell access for remote administration.

Almost all server-side virtualisation on the market today is either hardware-based or operating system-based virtualisation.

Hardware-based virtualisation uses a thin software layer, called a hypervisor, that imitates the hardware of the server, creating a copy of the system resources for each “guest” operating system running on the server. While this increases the number of different types of guest operating systems available, efficiency is reduced as the hypervisor is emulating all the hardware to maintain compatibility with different operating systems.

Operating system-based virtualisation creates a single layer of the common operating system elements and then allocates the server’s resources across each of the virtual servers, which run in “containers”. Operating system-based virtualisation is more efficient than hardware based virtualisation, as it only needs to virtualise system resources, which is then shared by all containers, rather than for each of the containers as required.

Each VPS at Digital Pacific operates in this way thanks to Parallel’s Virtuozzo server-side virtualisation software. Virtuozzo allocates the server’s resources across all of the containers and is able to dynamically allocate these resources as required. This method requires that each container runs the same type of operating system as only a single set of components is made available to all the containers.

In the case of Digital Pacific, each VPS runs a Linux-based operating system, and several different distributions of Linux are available for you to use.

MANAGED SERVERS

Administering your own server can be intimidating, as you still need to have an understanding of the basics of server administration. Digital Pacific eases the transition from shared hosting to a VPS through its managed VPS plans. The Digital Pacific managed VPS service is designed to reduce some of the workload of running a VPS for people that don’t have access to a system administrator, or don’t have the time to run the server on their own. The plans include initial server set up and ongoing maintenance (such as firewalls and operating system updates), daily backups and bundles in some additional support hours at no extra cost.

If you think you’re ready to get a taste of the flexibility of running your own server, be sure to check out Digital Pacific’s managed and unmanaged VPS plans today.

An Introduction to VPS is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

How will I Know if I Need a Dedicated Server?

Digital Pacific — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 05:15:02 +0000

Many growing websites and online businesses will eventually hit the limitations of shared hosting. While shared hosting is a cost-effective solution for smaller sites, some people will need more.The question for these websites and business is, “How will I know if I need a dedicated server?”

Do you need room to move?

Many shared hosting facilities have limitations on storage space and the number of files you can store on your share of the server. This can be an issue for community-based sites that encourage members to upload files such as user account avatars or larger files like user-generated audio and video.

This is also an issue for anyone who wants to host a number of their own sites in the one location, especially if those sites have many users. Think about the hard drive on your personal computer for a moment. If you are the only one who uses the computer, you can generally keep the number of files and the amount of storage space used under control. Even if the numbers start to climb, it is a relatively easy task to get rid of old, unwanted files and save some storage space. However, if you share the computer with your family, storage space becomes a bigger issue as everyone has their own ideas about what number and size of files is reasonable.

Dedicated servers have greater storage allowances and the number of files is only restricted by the size of the hard drive you leased. This makes dedicated servers well suited to sites built around user-generated content or servers that host a number of different sites. The more generous storage arrangements means you need rarely worry about coming up against your quotas.

Special Apps

Shared hosting is designed to meet the needs of the majority of users. This often means supporting only a small selection of web applications, such as PHP-based frameworks, and in some cases Perl. Many other web application frameworks are not well supported by shared hosting plans. If you want to run a service built on Ruby on Rails for example, or a custom-built content management system, you will need to consider the flexibility of a dedicated server.

You will also appreciate the flexibility of the dedicated server if you like to experiment with the latest software. While most shared hosting environments offer a range of simple “one click installs” of popular software packages like WordPress, they support for emerging or highly niche products is rare. Leasing a dedicated server means you are able to install and evaluate anything you like, no matter how highly specialized or niche it might be.

More Bandwidth

Shared hosting provides enough bandwidth for all but the busiest servers. However, if you have a very highly trafficked website, for example a very popular internet forum, or your server transfers a lot of files (project management applications are a good example here), you will find that shared hosting doesn’t provide quite enough bandwidth. Dedicated server hosting plans will give you that little bit more bandwidth headroom that you need to keep your server working fluidly as well as the peace of mind that your users are having a smooth experience.

Is a dedicated server worth it?

Although a dedicated server is a substantial investment, it can be a worthwhile one. Any single one of the above reasons is legitimate grounds to move from shared hosting to a dedicated server. If server uptime and flexibility is important to you, it is time to start thinking about what a dedicated server can do for you.

How will I Know if I Need a Dedicated Server? is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog