January 22, 2010
How Much Bandwidth Do You Need?
Determining how much bandwidth is necessary for any given hosting situation is challenging. We usually don’t track our personal usage close enough to have a clear idea of our needs. And while the amount of bandwidth alloted for a given hosting plan may seem very generous, overage costs are mostly quite high with underestimated bandwidth needs. Here are some guidelines to help determine how much bandwidth to anticipate using for any given hosting setup.
First, identify your hosting needs. Specifically, what servers are you planning on hosting, and how many users do you anticipate? If hosting servers with potentially large bandwidth needs, what content do you plan to provide? Depending on these factors, the amount of bandwidth you need varies considerably. For example, even personal sites can use a lot of bandwidth if they host podcasts, photos or other large files that can quickly become popular.
One logical method for calculating bandwidth necessary for hosting a website is multiplying: site visitors by page views by average page size by days per month by safety factor. This may help you check if a given hosting plan will meet your requirements. It can also help evaluate whether an existing provider can continue to meet visitor demand as popularity grows and, should it not do so indefinitely, to determine when action is necessary and what
steps to take.
In case of the above equation, it is very important to bear in mind the safety factor, which shoud generally fall between.5 and 2.0. In essence, this number takes into effect the consequences that sudden spikes in popularity may have on your bandwidth needs. It may seem tempting to do away with this variable and cut costs, still an unavailable site can spell the difference between a successful venture and a failed one. What is more, extra fees for using too much bandwidth can easily reduce the savings you made by cutting the costs on bandwidth.
There are a number of ways to use bandwidth more efficiently should the need arise. Much can be saved by offloading some hosting to specialized systems which, while not as flexible as typical web hosts, are particularly optimized for specific types of content or for other large files. Podcasts, music, photos and other forms of media can be hosted on third-party sites optimized for such needs, and can be linked to from your main site. Also, generic solutions such as Amazon’s Simple Storage System (S3) enable efficient and cheap hosting of large amounts of data.
Nowaday many web hosts set up very high limits of bandwidth or even none at all. It is important not to sacrifice quality solutions because they offer less bandwidth than do their competition, however. Bandwidth is one of many factors that make up a quality host, but it can easily become inflated by web hosts who offer high limits being certain that most users will come nowhere near them. Solutions of this kind quickly attract customers, but problems may soon appear if servers are over-provisioned and bandwidth becomes scarce. By becoming aware of roughly how much bandwidth is necessary, and by knowing what options are available should you find yourself near your limit, you can effectively avoid this trap and choose the host that best meets your specific needs. Also if you are planning to host large amount of videos or images you might need to look into vps solutions or dedicated servers.
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Filed under Graphics & Web by softwaredudette
January 12, 2010
Different VPS Technologies
Virtual Private Server (VPS) technology has become quite a popular alternative to more traditional shared hosting, as it offers far greater flexibility for little extra cost. Unfortunately, the complexity of choosing the best virtualization technology for a given situation is usually far greater than are the much simpler choices required for a shared host. If you’re unfamiliar with VPS technologies but really want to use one, here are a few popular ones.
Generally speaking, there are two major categories of virtualization technology, each coming with its advantages and disadvantages. The simplest type is at the operating system level. When a new server is supplied, it comes with its own virtual space owing to a fresh OS install made in a subdirectory on the hosting system. The server and its processes are still visible to the main operating system, although they are separated from any other virtual installations. This way the users and processes of different servers do not interfere with one another.
This type of operating system virtualization has several important advantages. It generally needs fewer resources than other virtualization technologies, which makes it cheaper to manage. Such servers are generally more reliable and easier to administer, as they rely on the host’s kernel and not on the custom ones that come with other virtualization solutions.
However, there are some drawbacks, too. With operating system virtualization you cannot use any OS or its version other than the one installed on the host. One consequence of using OS-level virtualization is that upgrading OS to take advantage of new technologies may result impossible, since hosts each time have to justify upgrading all their servers. It is also difficult to fully isolate and control resource use, so that particular servers consume only what have been granted.
Another virtualization technology involves emulating the underlying hardware of an operating system, and then installing it on top of the virtual computer. Since virtual servers are for all purposes independent of the host’s hardware, they may support various kernel versions, or even completely different OSs.
This is one of full virtualization’s greatest advantages. Having only one OS version on every single server would require high homogeneity, generally rarely acquired and more so in hosting, where flexibility is a key factor. Furthermore, most full virtualization solutions allow for the installation of custom kernels, making it possible to use VPS technology with new device drivers and kernel level technologies not anticipated by the provider.
Of course, these advantages come at a cost. Full virtualization generally requires more system resources and, as such, is more expensive to host. The ability to install custom kernels and operating systems introduces additional administrative overhead which, in the wrong hands, can render full virtual machines much less stable than are their OS-level counterparts.
Virtualization technology has revolutionized our concept of hosting as such. The choice is not confined to the limited shared hosting and expensive dedicated servers anymore. Understanding the virtualization landscape and available options is crucial in order to capitalize on this shift in hosting alternatives.
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Filed under Computer News & Reviews, Useful & Latest Computer Software by softwaredudette
December 28, 2009
Pandela Hosting
Web hosting companies are rapidly opening up as older and more popular providers are experiencing troubles due to insufficient number of fast servers that could give full service to so many customers. 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.
Who Is Pandela Hosting
Pandela is a company that has been in the IT industry for more than 2 decades with its hosting capabilities being recognized in July 2008 when it was acquired by UltraHosting, Inc. which is one of the leading providers in dedicated and collocation hosting solutions. They have servers in Los Angeles, CA, Dallas TX, and Toronto, Canada.
Pros
Pandela has a huge advantage over other Virtual Private Server companies because they have been in the IT market for a long while and it really shows with the innovation that they are bringing to customers. 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 manages to overcome the one problem that many other companies fail to provide and that is good support. Pandela uses a built-in ticketing system which allows the customers to voice out their experiences freely. The site is also equipped in a searchable knowledge base that has answers to most often asked questions. Responses are usually replied in minutes. Monthly costs are also very competitive with basic plans costing only . The storage space may seem limited at 5 GB, 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 can 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 as a free web hosting company not doing very well at first compared to other free hosting providers. It seems that they have fixed these problems, still there are hosting companies that offer more storage space at the same price.
Still, Pandela makes a great choice thanks to its amazing uptimes and a broad range of different VPS plans. Surely Pandela will remain a wonderful server solution provided they keep up the good work with their uptimes and support.
Pandela is also great for debian vps
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Filed under Graphics & Web by softwaredudette