Finding the Right Hosting Solution for Your Database

May 31, 2017 Jerry Leave a comment

Often when business owners think about hosting solutions, they’re operating within a website hosting mindset. This is typically what business owners are really concerned about when it comes to hosting. After all, that’s generally what people associate with hosting companies. They provide a way to put your website online so you can sell things or blog or whatever your business model is.

But, depending on your specific business, it’s not just website hosting you need to worry about. Large e-commerce sites or even large-scale informational sites have to worry about their databases as well. Any business that receives, manages, and uses huge amounts of information has to be concerned about the ability to process it all via a database. In fact, some businesses are only concerned about finding a hosting solution exclusively for their database needs. Whatever camp you happen to fall into, a managed VPS can provide you with the hosting solution you need to run your business.

You need to take your database hosting just as seriously as you would your website hosting. While poor performance and downtime have immediate, easy to see negative results on your business in the form of higher bounce rates and low sales, a database that can’t properly function is just as disruptive. You rely on having access to your information. Whether it’s an e-commerce product database or customer information, you can’t run your business without it.

Even if you aren’t running a massive “Big Data” sized database, you’re probably still going to be managing some kind of MySQL (or similar) powered database. So, what do you need to look for in a hosting solution for your database? Are you going to be hosting a website as well? Does it make sense to separate the two? Let’s take a look at hosting solutions for business owners concerned about keeping a database online.

Should you try to keep a database local?

The first thing that needs to be addressed is the idea that a database should be separate from a website. What separate really means in this instance is different servers for each. We’ll get to that concept shortly, but there is also a belief that a database can be housed locally for “security” reasons. Often, this is considered when there are concerns about certain regulatory issues or remaining in compliance with PCI or HIPAA.

A couple of points about those kinds of serious compliance issues. For one thing, the amount of resources required to be compliant would be outlandishly expensive to maintain at a local level. The sheer amount of encryption, guaranteed uptime, security measures, and more is best handled by a third party. Secondly, you’d need to find a highly specialized hosting company that is explicitly in business to provide compliant hosting. If you’re in the medical field handling EMRs, these kinds of general database hosting conservations don’t necessarily apply.

For the vast majority of business owners, they don’t need to worry about serious compliance issues. They just need to make sure their database is reliably online. Even then, local solutions are more expensive and unreliable than having your database hosted with a third party.

Is a VPS enough?

For the average business with a MySQL database that is either powering their WordPress installation or is the backbone of their e-commerce product offerings, yes, a VPS is probably powerful enough. A dedicated server really only comes into play if you were running an unusually large database that needs as many resources as possible. Or, you’re trying to run a demanding website alongside a large database on the same hardware. But, on average, a VPS will be powerful enough to meet your needs.

Interestingly, there are some who feel that at a certain point you’d be better served to split your website and database off onto two different VPSes. Some people obviously opt for this setup. For the typical business owner that probably isn’t necessarily and may offer needless complications. But, for the sake of providing information, let’s quickly look at the pros and cons of this setup.

The argument in favor of keeping the two separate but finding some way to link them is that the resources required to keep both operating at a high performing level won’t interfere with one another. So, if your site requires all the broadband, CPU power, and storage space it can get due to high traffic and complexity, not having to share all of those hardware resources with an equally demanding database would on paper benefit both sides of the operation. There is also a perceived security benefit where if a website gets compromised, for example, the database would remain untouched and recovery wouldn’t be as difficult comparatively.

Sounds reasonable enough, but the downsides are paying for two VPSes, having to worry about maintaining both, and worrying about the infrastructure and linking the two servers to one another. However, since this is such a common practice, you may find yourself in a situation where using two VPSes makes sense. In the early days of your business, this probably isn’t necessary.

Why managed hosting?

What you will want to look for is managed hosting. Managed hosting is a great feature to have when dealing with databases because it takes some of the IT concerns off you and your team. There are many benefits to managed hosting. Convenience is a leading one. You’re already worried about fulfilling your customers’ needs. Do you really want to spend time monitoring the server to ensure your database is online? Do you want to set aside one of your employees to do that? Probably not. It’s better to play to your strengths. With managed hosting, you get uptime monitoring, some security assistance, automatic backups, and peace of mind knowing that your hosting company is keeping an eye out for you.

Uptime and databases

Finally, you need a hosting solution that will keep your database connected and online as consistently as possible. That’s why it’s important to partner with a host that offers a service level agreement that guarantees 99.9% uptime. This is beneficial to every part of your business. Whether it’s your website or a business critical database, being online as close to always as possible is imperative to your success. Downtime of every kind costs businesses billions of dollars a year cumulatively. If you can’t be reached, you can’t sell anything. If your site can’t populate products or handle credit cards, that’s money going out the door. This also ties back into managed hosting. With a managed host, you can minimize downtime because any system abnormalities will be noticed. If you manage your own hosting environment, you’re responsible for finding the fixes to get back online.

Conclusion

When it comes to keeping your business running, you need solutions you can be confident in. After all, you’re essentially trusting another company to help keep yours functioning. That’s not something that should be taken lightly. At KnownHost, we take that responsibility seriously. That’s why we offer powerful hardware and expert customer service that you can rely on. If you’re looking for a managed VPS to power your website and database, contact us today. We’ll help you find the hosting solution you need to power your online business.

What Can You Do with a Virtual Server?

April 13, 2017 Jerry Leave a comment

This article describes what a virtual private server (VPS) is and how it relates to other major technology concepts: virtual private networks, the virtual machine (VM), shared hosting, and dedicated hosting. We then look at especially compelling reasons to use a VPS and a few of the most prominent ways that one can be used.

Virtual Private Network vs. Virtual Private Server
Getting to Know the Virtual Server
Strong Reasons for Adopting a VPS
Typical Uses of a VPS
Managed vs. Unmanaged

Virtual Private Network vs. Virtual Private Server

Two major concepts that have closely aligned names are the virtual private network (VPN) and the virtual private server (VPS). While both are virtualized and centered on privacy and security, that’s about as far as the similarity goes.

VPN: This technology allows you to securely use the internet and connect to private networks (such as a company’s internal one). All traffic is passed through an encrypted tunnel, and each device uses a remote, proxy server – concealing your IP address, what you do, and where you are.

VPS: The virtual private server is an advanced, secure way to divide the resources of a physical server (the main host) within a data center. A hosting provider creates VPSs by slicing up one piece of hardware into multiple, independently operating instances.

Getting to Know the Virtual Server

Perhaps the best way to approach the virtual private server is the idea of a virtual machine. A VM allows you to run an emulation of a computer within your computer, drawing on the resources of the physical one – disk space, RAM, CPU, etc. This tactic allows you to run an entirely separate operating system (OS) solely for the purposes of the VM, even if its type and version of OS are identical to what’s on your hardware.

Because you only are using a portion of the resources for the VM, you can have several of them running on one computer or server, as is common with hosting services. A hosting provider that offers VPS hosting has a vast number of physical servers that each contain multiple virtual machines. While demarcation and intrusion prevention within the physical machine is not a huge concern on your own PC, VPS hosts must have security safeguards in place to ensure isolation of each customer’s server. That’s why the terminology virtual private server is used – to denote the attention paid to privacy and the server programs that are typically loaded onto this type of VM.

Strong Reasons for Adopting a VPS

Shared hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated hosting are the three main alternatives to a VPS.

Shared hosting: With shared hosting, your site is stored and served from the same physical machine as many other customers – possibly hundreds of them. All domains are drawing from the same CPU, RAM, and other resources. This type of hosting is the lowest-priced option. However, your site’s speed and reliability suffer from other users, and you don’t get root access.

Cloud hosting: This type of hosting is slightly more expensive than shared hosting (similarly priced to VPS hosting). Rather than using a single server to store and load your site, a cloud system distributes resources across many different computers for faster response times. However, this model typically doesn’t give you root access, and its distributed structure presents fundamental security challenges.

Dedicated hosting: This format means that an entire physical server is used solely for your site and applications. While you do have all the resources reserved for your own purposes, a dedicated server is substantially more expensive than shared hosting.

The primary reasons that someone will choose a VPS are performance, flexibility, error-proof sandbox, and security. Let’s look at each of those factors:

– Performance – When you switch to a VPS, you will get guaranteed resources. That means traffic spikes on other domains stored on the physical server won’t slow down your site.
– Flexibility – A VPS can be considered your own remote computer. While the primary purpose of a VPS for most hosting customers is to serve websites, you can perform any functions on your VPS (within the hosting provider’s guidelines) as you can on a PC.
– Error-proof sandbox – Virtual private servers give you “do-over” potential because they exist within a virtual sandbox. Damaging a virtual server won’t impact the operating system running on the hardware itself. “The VPS can be rebooted or reinstalled without much issue except maybe for lost data (so always keep backups),” notes Joel Lee of MakeUseOf. “On a dedicated host, a mistake could cause permanent damage.”
– Security – Other users within the physical server can’t hack your virtual sandbox and access your VPS through the relatively simple means they can on a shared server.

Typical Uses of a VPS

Above, we got a basic sense of what a VPS is and factors that make it attractive. Now, let’s look at some of the ways that this route is useful to people on a day-to-day basis:

Serving a website

The main reason that someone signs up for a VPS is that they need a server through which to run their site. When you adopt one, you should notice that your site is performing better than it was on a shared account (because of the guaranteed allotment of resources). Also, the full root access gives you better control. You are able to install and get rid of whatever programs you want.

Example: You can use a VPS to run your e-commerce platform (Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, etc.). With the stronger resources of a VPS over shared hosting, you have a competitive advantage over many other sites in terms of stability, speed, and general user experience.

Hosting a server or business files

Sometimes people will use a VPS to run a Minecraft server or host Mumble for private chatting. Businesses will often use it to host media or other files.

Testing

Virtual servers are a cost-effective way to test anything before you bring it live. That includes new environments, operating systems, applications, frameworks, or anything else.

Torrents

You can use a VPS for torrenting, in which case the machine is called a seedbox. By moving your torrent activity to a VPS, you clear out that bandwidth on your local system and designate a 24/7 machine for that purpose.

Backups

You can also use a VPS for the storage of key files. That’s something that customers will often do if there is extra space available beyond what they need for their primary purposes. Assuming that it’s leftover space, you are able to effectively get free file storage in this way – and it’s within a private environment, so your security is strong.

Managed vs. Unmanaged

One final key consideration when you look into a virtual private server is whether you want to get an unmanaged or managed VPS plan.

If you are unsure which way to go and perhaps don’t feel technically confident with a VPS, “it is recommended that you go with a managed VPS solution,” advises Creativeoverflow. “[I]t is better to go ahead with a specialist hosting company that can manage the technical aspects of your VPS solution.”

*****

Are you considering a virtual private server to run your website or for any other purpose? At KnownHost, our hosting packages – all of which are managed based on our 15+ years of experience – offer great speed, incredible support, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Compare managed VPS plans.

Why is Shared Hosting Like Taking the Bus on the Information Superhighway?

March 12, 2017March 12, 2017 Jerry Leave a comment

Public transportation allows people who can’t afford cars to get where they need to be, and it means you can sit down and read rather than having to focus on the road. In other words, it’s cheap and easy. Those are positive aspects of a vehicle that is structured to fit many people. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a wise idea to put your business website on the bus.

What’s the “bus ride” for web hosting? The similarly cheap and easy solution is shared hosting. While shared hosting is the most affordable and accessible type of hosting, it suffers in the same way a trip on public transportation can: security and speed. Let’s look at those two issues in detail.

Sharing a Ride Makes You Vulnerable

Security is kind of a boring topic to many people, so it’s critical to know why this issue generally deserves greater attention. Even back in 2013, the National Cyber Security Alliance found that:

– 20% of small businesses get hacked or digitally assaulted every year; and

– Of firms that do get targeted, 3 in 5 are bankrupt half a year later.

Those statistics are disturbing certainly, but how relevant are they to your situation? Some small businesses are more likely to be attacked than others. Bear this in mind, though: attackers will sometimes go after certain industries, but the key factor in why companies get hacked is not related to industry or value; rather, it’s simply the presence of vulnerability.

“Most small business owners still don’t get security, don’t think it’s an issue, and are pretty defenseless,” explained Think Security First consultant Neal O’Farrell. Owners and managers of SMBs often think that a hacker would have to select their company out of tens of millions of others, he said, “not realizing that the attacks are automated and focused on discovering vulnerabilities.”

What are the biggest security concerns related to taking the “information superhighway bus” that is shared hosting? As the numerous visitors and internal users of sites share the resources of one server, it makes sense that would be an environment in which there would be greater security risks, both from outside the server and within it. Think about it this way: the server itself is under greater threat based on the number of sites running on it.

“No matter how you try to institute security measures with a shared hosting environment,” noted Web Hosting Provider List, “the fact is that, it is plainly not possible to ensure a 100 percent airtight protection.”

The sites on a shared server are positioned on different domains and obviously have disparate login credentials, but they are using the same operating system as other users and typically even share an IP address. Sharing resources cuts the costs of these hosting plans, so they look attractive to startups, nonprofits, and others on shoestring budgets. However, the sharing of resources in this manner means a greater likelihood that your data or services will be compromised. Major security issues with shared hosting include:

– An attacker can use reverse IP lookup to get a list of all the sites on a shared hosting server. This method is fast and simple, actually: you can find the information through free services (example tool), the Dig command on Linux (Dig –x <ip address> +short), a search engine (Search Query: ip: <IP Address>), or using a script to automate it.

– The behavior of other users that share your IP will impact your online reputation and the continuing strength of your domain. If another site sharing the IP gets blacklisted for spam, your site will get blocked as well.

– A hacker can enumerate the CMS installations on the shared server. This tactic is often used because CMS software like WordPress includes the name and version information in the HTML. A vulnerability scanner such as WPScan can be used to gather data on the site, including a list of its plugins, themes, TimThumbs, and usernames. “An example attack would be to bruteforce the admin account of WordPress using a list of commonly used passwords,” explained a report by c0d3inj3cT for the InfoSec Institute. If you don’t have a captcha set up on your admin login page, it could actually be compromised by WPScan using brute force.

– Using a shared server puts you at greater risk of malware attacks. Malicious script can be uploaded to other sites, which in turn means that your site can be quickly compromised. The malware may occur because one of the other sites is vulnerable. It provides a channel through which the intruder can steal data.

– Customers may have PHP, Perl or shell accounts that make it possible to hit the other sites on the server with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

– Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks may target another site that shares your IP address. In this case, you are hit with a DDoS attack essentially as collateral damage of an effort to hit someone else.

-DDoS malware could be loaded onto the server, which could put the hacker in control of the entire server for launching attacks.

You Can’t Step on the Gas

Taking the bus of shared hosting isn’t just a security concern. It can also significantly slow down your site and dampen the growth of your business. When other riders on the bus have needs, the driver meets them. Just consider the stop-request cord: in this manner, every rider on the bus has a democratic ability to grind it to a halt. You see the same ability of individuals to slow down the ride on shared hosting – with resources handed out “first come, first serve” to all sites, which can lead to slow loading on your site when another site peaks.

Security is an issue on shared servers because, basically, there are too many accounts without enough isolated designation of resources; and the same is true of the slow speed that can occur in these environments.

Speed is one of the primary arguments many experts mention when they advocate for VPS over shared hosting. Speed and other benefits of the virtual private server are all related in some way to the isolation and pre-allocation of resources that VPS plans allow – versus the “first come, first serve” nature of shared hosting.

On a VPS, it doesn’t matter what another customer might be doing on the server; your speed is guaranteed. If you have two CPUs dedicated for your use, then those CPUs will always be there for you to use. The allotment of RAM for which you pay within a VPS are always set aside for you, no matter what other tasks might be running on the physical hardware.

Ajeet Khurana of The Balance noted that on shared hosting plans, the performance of a website will fluctuate throughout the day based on how much activity is shared by all the businesses using it. “This never happens on VPS services,” he said. “Your resources are dedicated to your… website.”

Getting into the Fast Lane with Managed VPS

Do you want to improve the security and speed of your website without having to worry about managing the server yourself? At KnownHost, we offer ultra-high VPS performance with unparalleled support by professionals. See our fully managed VPS plans.

Tear Down: The Specs to Look for When Choosing a Server

February 18, 2017 Jerry Leave a comment

You’ve been tasked with finding a hosting solution for your project. Typically, you’re looking for a way to get a website online. But, there are other reasons why you would need access to a server. Maybe you’re running proprietary software or a web app. Maybe you’re an avid online gamer who wants to set up a server for dedicated multiplayer. There are many reasons beyond having a website that a person would be interested in signing up for a hosting plan. Regardless of the reason you’re shopping around for a host, it’s important to know what your specific needs are.

Whether you opt for a VPS or a dedicated server, it’s important to look at the specs on the hardware. While there are certainly tiers when it comes to overall horsepower of a hosting solution, each specific category will have its own specs to peruse. Yes, a VPS is faster than shared hosting and dedicated servers are the fastest of all, but you can get dedicated servers at higher and lower relative speeds.

At the end of the day, servers are computers just like the ones you use at home or at work. They have the same components with the same functionality. However, the specs you’d look for when building your own gaming PC differ from the specs you need for a server. It’s not an exact match. You’ll notice pretty significant capacity differences that you wouldn’t even dream of using on a home machine. That’s because performing a task like hosting a website is significantly different than running an entire operating system with an assortment of applications and sufficient space for storing all of your data.

Let’s do a virtual tear down of server hardware and examine the major specifications prospective customers should take note of when looking to sign up for a hosting plan.

CPU

Just like when shopping for personal computers, it’s important to start with the processor since it’s “the brain” of the machine. There are two main manufacturers of processors that you’ll find in nearly every machine: Intel and AMD. Some simpler devices like netbooks use ARM processors, but they haven’t really been adopted for server technology due to their overall low power. Some servers have attempted to use them but the market seems to be highly niche, if not fading away.

The two major players have their supporters and detractors. In discussions of PCs this is much more pronounced because there are positives and negatives to both, especially when it comes to high-performance systems and wanting to control costs. With servers, however, it’s generally accepted that Intel is the way to go. This is because, from a performance standpoint, Intel is faster. Intel processors have quicker read and write speeds from memory on a per-core basis. Many of the offerings you see will advertise sixteen cores.

When you get to dedicated servers, you’ll begin to see processor choices that more closely resemble the processors you’d find in a high-performance home machine. Most will be familiar with Intel’s i7 processor which is generally considered the top tier for the typical consumer machine. Beyond that is their Xeon line which you’ll find in the most specialized machines designed for maximum performance.

Most people shopping for hosting won’t have to worry too much about the processor if they’re only looking to host a website because they’ll be opting for a VPS and won’t need that kind of CPU power. Taxing use cases like heavy software will probably benefit from a dedicated server with at least an i7.

RAM

If the processor is the brain, the RAM dictates how many different processes the brain can juggle at the same time. It is memory, after all. Choosing the appropriate RAM for your server is when you’ll notice a fairly big difference in comparison to shopping for RAM for a personal computer. While most people will tell you four gigabytes of RAM is the absolute minimum a desktop or laptop should have (and realistically, it’s more like eight gigabytes these days) the same doesn’t hold true for your server.

The bare minimum your hosting solution would need is about 512 megabytes but realistically you want to opt for one gigabyte or more. A standard VPS plan starts at the one gigabyte mark and would be fine for simple sites with average levels of traffic. Also keep in mind here that you are using a portion of a machine rather than a whole machine. You’ll notice this difference when you start shopping for dedicated servers and see they start with sixteen gigabytes of RAM.

Multiple factors go into having to figure out how much RAM you need. While a definitive calculation is difficult to make, you of course want to opt for more if you can afford it. Here are some variables you’ll want to be aware of.

Traffic: The higher the anticipated traffic, the more RAM you’ll need to keep up with demand.

Content Management System: Popular CMSes like WordPress and Drupal need at least one gigabyte of RAM, though two certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Control panels: Software like cPanel will count towards what uses up your alloted RAM.

Scripting languages and databases: Running PHP (like in WordPress) and SQL databases will require higher amounts of RAM.

Applications: Just like on any computer, the more applications running simultaneously on the device, the more RAM needed to keep them working.

Storage

Finally, let’s look at storage. Like with your own machine, you have a choice between standard hard drives and SSDs. A managed SSD VPS is often a popular choice because you’re getting a significant speed boost by using an SSD. Solid state drives have a few advantages over their spinning hard drive counterparts. For the purpose of a server though, the speed boost is your primary concern. Aspects like greater durability are nice, but that’s really your hosting company’s concern.

As for how much storage you need, the answer might surprise you. If you see a plan that offers thirty gigabytes of space, you might be taken aback. Your smartphone has more storage than that. But, you can’t think of hosting like a personal device. If you’re hosting a simple site, all that’s taking up space are text files and visual assets. They don’t add up to much at all. Now, if you’re hosting your email on your server too, you’ll quickly run out of space.

Essentially, you need to be aware of what you actually need to keep on your server. Does your site require huge databases? Will you be hosting multimedia? Taking an inventory of your assets before launch will save you a headache down the road.

Conclusion

We’ve broken down the major components of what makes a server run. However, every situation is unique and you may need more guidance on what monthly plan, exactly, would best suit your needs. You may still be on the fence between a VPS or dedicated server. Would an SSD really be necessary? If you still have questions about what server to choose or you’re ready to get started setting your hosting environment up, contact the team at KnownHost today. Our experienced staff is always here to help.