When do you need a Managed Server?
Managed Hosting is an excellent solution for mid to high level hosting needs. Designed to host busy e-commerce sites and dynamic, database driven Web pages, Managed Hosting offers small and large business owners a fast, powerful, reliable and professionally maintained Web presence. If you have a need for a dedicated server, and don’t have the IT resources, expertise, or time to manage your own servers, then Managed Hosting is for you.

What are the advantages of Manged Server Hosting?
Managed Hosting offers many enticing features such as:

What should be my main concerns when searching for a Managed Hosting Provider?
First, you need to determine whether or not your website is large enough to justify the cost of such an endeavor. That aside, the most common concerns are:

• The cost
• Security of Data and Equipment
• Bandwidth Availability
• The knowledge and integrity of the web hosting provider
• Technical support from the web hosting provider
• Uptime
• Site and Data Backups

What are some good questions to ask a Managed Hosting Provider before I sign up?
Some good questions to ask your prospective hosts are:

• What brand computers do you use?
• What kind of connection to the Internet do you have?
• What hours is your management staff available for problems and issues?
• How often do you backup the servers?
• In the case of a loss, how quickly can you restore from a backup and get me back up and running?
• What software typically is installed on my machine?
• Are there any software packages that you wont manage?

Web servers are the backbone of the web, since they are responsible for serving up every web page you see. Most people take the Internet for granted. It takes a lot of work to do something as simple as display a web page. When you clicked on the link to view this article, a series of smaller operations commenced which, while each is small on their own, all fit together to bring you this brilliantly written composition. But how did it work? What actually had to happen to make this text appear in your web browser?

Why don’t we break down what happens when you use a web browser. First, you select a URL to go to, either by typing it into the browser, or clicking a link in an email or webpage. For example, lets assume you go to http://www.jamsoft.biz/about.asp to find more information about the author of this article. You type that into your browser and “abracadabra”, the page appears on your screen.

What actually occurs to bring that page to your screen is a little complicated. I will explain it in two steps, first giving you a brief explanation before giving a more detailed explanation in addition.

For starters, when you typed in the website above, your web browser broke the URL into three different pieces.

The first part is the protocol that the web server should communicate with. In this example, the protocol is “http”. This tells the web browser that you wish to communicate with a web server on port 80, which is the port reserved for web page communications.

The second part of the URL is the server address. In our example, the server address is www.jamsoft.biz . This tells the web browser which server it needs to contact in order to retrieve the information you are looking for. The web browser communicates with a domain name server (DNS) to find out the IP Address for the website. All communications on the Internet use IP Addresses for communications. The website names that we know and love were invented just to make it easier for us to find the websites we need. Imagine if the only way to surf the Internet required that we remember IP Addresses for each site that we visit frequently.

The third part of the URL is the resource you want to see. In our case, we are looking for the page “about.asp”.

The web browser, having found the IP Address it needs by communicating with the name server, then sends a request directly to the web server, using port 80, asking for the file “about.asp”. The web server sends the html for this page back to your web browser, which reads the HTML tags and formats them for viewing on your screen. If there are additional files needed in order to show the web page (like some images, for example) the web browser makes additional requests for each of these. It is not uncommon for a single web page request to trigger 5 or more separate file requests from a web server.

That is a quick explanation of how a web browser communicates with a web server to display the pages you view on the web. While this explanation is complete by itself, a little extra understanding never hurt anyone. To this point, I would like to discuss protocols and IP Addresses in more detail.

As I mentioned, the first part of a URL is usually the protocol that you would like to communicate. The protocol is the special set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate. The protocol in this case tells us two things. First, part of the protocol definition is which port communications are going to take place on. All Internet communications take place on different ports, and each port typically handles one kind of protocol. For example, HTTP (hypertext protocol) uses port 80 to communicate, whereas FTP (file transfer protocol) communicates on port 21. The second thing the protocol determines is the actual format of the communications. Each protocol has a different purpose, and the communication format is different for each of these specific protocols. The protocol part of a URL tells your web browser what port to communicate on and how the communication is to be formatted.

When describing the process above, I mentioned that all communications on the Internet use IP Addresses to work but I didn’t describe what exactly an IP Address is.

An IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each of the four numbers can be from 0 to 255, an example would be 192.168.0.5 . The IP address identifies a sender or receiver of information across the Internet. When you request an HTML page or send e-mail the Internet Protocol part of TCP/IP includes your IP address in the message (actually, in each of the packets if more than one is required) and sends it to the IP address of the server to which you wish to communicate. The recipient can see the IP address of the Web page requestor or the e-mail sender and can respond by sending another message using the IP address it received. Each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique IP Address for the purposes of communication.

By using the protocol and the IP Address specified by the first two parts of the URL, your web browser is able to request the information specified in the third part from the correct web server. This is the foundation that the World Wide Web is built on.

Let’s first start with what the difference between a hosting provider and a reseller is. An actual web host provider is selling services from servers that it owns and maintains. Typically, they manage the machines, networks, DNS, and the actual uplinks to the Internet backbone. When you call a true hosting provider for support, they handle it directly.

A reseller, on the other hand, is merely a merchant who sells the services provided by the actual provider. This is not to say that the reseller does or cannot offer their own services, like web design services for example, in addition to the hosting services. Resellers do not own the servers, or manage the network, or any of the truly technical stuff that the actual provider does. When you call a reseller for support issues, most of the technical problems are relayed to the actual host. In essence, the reseller functions in a similar fashion as a retailer, reselling goods provided by someone else at a profit.

Now, the question to ask yourself, is how does this affect you? Truth is, in most cases, it doesn’t matter. So long as you are getting the services you need, at a price you are happy with, why would it matter if you were getting it directly from the provider or from a reseller? Too bad it can’t always be that simple.

If you have a high traffic website, or if you wish to purchase a dedicated or co-location account, it may be worth your while to ensure that you are working with an actual hosting provider. This ensures that your account can receive the highest level of attention possible, since all agreements and issues are addressed directly with the people who are responsible for the work, instead of thru intermediaries who may or may not communicate your needs effectively. Now, this is not always the case. Some hosting resellers are well equipped to handle even the most demanding of needs. But overall, for those with an overpowering need for the highest quality relationship, working directly with a hosting provider is your best course of action.

Now, the actual process of discovering whether or not your prospective web host is a reseller or an actual provider is not always as simple. Most resellers don’t come right out and tell you that they merely resell someone else’s offering. Here are a few ways that you might try if you need to determine for yourself.

1) Check the WHOIS directory

2) Visit a domain registrar, such as Network Solutions to see if the name servers of the hosts domains match their domain name. If they are different, chances are that they are a reseller.

3) Run a tracert – Tracert is a utility that will show a path of all computers that are hit in order to access a certain machine. The data returned by this utility can be a little confusing, so it is not suggested for beginners.

4) Visit hosting resources – There are many resources available on the Internet in regards to information about host providers. You can find reviews and information on many hosts in these places. Also help are site that have open discussion forums, such as http://forums.devshed.com/f12/s, where you can review information and even ask questions about specific hosts.

5) Call and ask – If all else fails, why not just contact the host and ask them directly. If for some reason, you cannot get a direct answer to the question, it is safe to assume that they are probably a reseller.

In summation, there are a few methods you can use to determine whether a host is a reseller or not. Most owners of small to medium sized websites can get their needs met quite adequately by hosting providers and resellers alike. If you feel that it is essential to have your site hosted by the actual provider, or even if you are just curious to know for sure, it should be easy to determine the facts about any potential hosts by using the methods described above. ]]> http://thehostdir.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=254 0 http://thehostdir.com/blog/?p=251 http://thehostdir.com/blog/?p=251#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:40:02 +0000 TheHost Admin http://thehostdir.com/blog/?p=251 The web hosting industry is one of the most competitive industries on the Internet today. Web hosts are constantly thinking of new advertising campaigns in the hope of attracting more interest to their company; and, hence to attract more customers. While this is an important goal for any web host it is just as important to recognize and value the customers you already have.

Put your customer needs first.
Acknowledge your customers’ feedback and then do something about it; make sure there is a place on your web site or in your control panel for customers to make remarks or offer suggestions about your services or products. Use these suggestions to improve your company. Even if you receive negative feedback, use this feedback positively; it’s better to fix customer concerns as soon as possible to benefit your company’s success in the long run.

Provide staff management training.
Web hosts can say they have reliable staff and offer support around the clock. Though behind the scenes the story is very different; try to accomplish what you preach, it is no use to anyone having staff with bad organizational skills and poor communication skills. Having a clear vision of your company’s goals, providing regular training and being involved with your staff, will contribute greatly to efficiently managing your business.

Offer fast and reliable support.
If there is something going critically wrong with a web site, customers can’t be sitting around for days waiting to get their problems solved. Any critical support requests should be answered in just a matter of an hour or two; and, any other requests should be responded to in no more than 24 hours. Hosts should be offering around the clock support, especially if their market is global.

Reliable support is also crucial.
The most common complaint that people have with their web hosting companies is that, sure they get their support requests answered fast but, their host has either not fixed their problem properly or they have no idea what the support team are talking about, too technical. Many people don’t understand all the terminology of website hosting, support staff needs to be trained in good communication skills too.

When receiving a support request it is much better to make sure the client’s problem has been fixed properly, make sure your support staff test everything they fix! Not only will you find that you will be receiving less support requests, but your clients will be a lot happier also. One advantage to happy clients is more referrals!

Give your customers freedom.
Many people tend to sign up with a web host who will offer a discount if you sign a yearly contract with them. However most people who do this get ‘stuck’; if they are unhappy with their web host they will lose a large proportion of their fee if they cancel their contract. One way to keep your clients happy is to give them the option of paying monthly; this way your customers will have the freedom to change their account packages at any time.

Your clients should be given freedom to administer their own accounts. A good way to provide this is to ensure your clients have their own customizable control panel. This is true freedom, where a client can administer every key aspect of their account from: viewing their account details and billing details; to, for example, interactively adding a new web site, ftp logins, mail accounts, and new users.

Keep your customers well informed.
Let your customers know about any thing that could possibly affect their websites. Keep your customers informed on issues such as general maintenance, for example: when, and how often, backups are done on the servers; these are a crucial necessity to keeping servers running well, but clients have to be told this. If there is a customer issue that may take a while to fix, it is much better to inform them of the issue and let them know you will get back to them as soon as possible. Customers shouldn’t feel like they are left out in the cold, wondering why it is taking so long to fix their problem.

A web host who doesn’t recognize the importance of providing good service to their customers will quickly loose their customers and will fade out very quickly. Customers need to feel as though they can trust their web hosts. They need to know that the hard work they put into developing their web site will be complemented by having a great web host; one that is concerned with providing the best service for ALL their customers.

Remember the more happy customers you have the more successful your web hosting company will be, and the more growth you will see.

On a dedicated server you will install only software and applications you want to use, while on a shared hosting server you will find a host of other software and applications installed for other users.

By the very nature of the account, a dedicated server: reduces your dependency on the web host; and bypasses time delays and possible expenses incurred from these. With dedicated server hosting you can provide instant support to your own clients whenever required, which is not possible if you are on a shared server. A reliable and fast support service is vital for your own business growth just like the stability and reliability you wish for your own website. In business, reliability is reflected through word-of-mouth as one of the most effective promotional activities.

For people with clients, such as Graphic Designers and Web Designers a dedicated server is invaluable. A dedicated server will bring extra income into the studio, not just as a hosting facility, but, as a designer knows only too well, for the extra ‘bread and butter’ income value. If you have 24hour access to your own dedicated server then you can adjust, correct or update a clients website in minutes, allowing you to keep the dollar back in your studio and not in someone else’s. Ready availability results in reduced labor costs for the client, but higher studio-income frequency for the designer. Hence you will see the return of all your regular offline clients, bringing their web work with them.

The need for a dedicated server to your average shared server user is realized when stats tell you: how quickly people left your site because it was taking too much time to download; or how many daily visitors you are down by, because your site was not up. The true negative is the worry of how many lost visitors could have been your future paying-customers. The loss could easily equal the value of the upgrade to a Dedicated Server!

For a business, a website that is quickly downloadable and up all the time gives the visitor encouragement that your service is just as reliable, hence you will be more likely to make a sale. It will also enhance the company’s image and encourage existing customers to refer your service to others. This will result in more sales for less promotion.

So what do you need to be a successful Web site hosting reseller?

Multiple domain hosting – To become a Web hosting reseller, the first step is to get yourself a multiple domain account. For example, if you take out an account that allows up to 6 websites (or domains), you can use one of the domains for development of your own site; and, still have 5 domains to allocate to your clients sites. All you need to do is pay your regular fee to your Web host; then, you can charge your clients what ever you like.

Control Panel – It is preferable to have full administrative control over your client’s web sites. Make sure that, not only does your Web host provide you with a control panel that includes full administrative facilities to easily manage your multiple account, but that your host provides your clients with their own control panel too. Most importantly your web host should give you the facility to ‘hide your Web hosts identity’ so clients are unaware that you are offering a third party service. Ensure that you can customize your clients control panel to suit your own requirements.

Terms and conditions – Terms and conditions are essential when offering any service, ensure that all your clients have a copy of your terms and conditions. Many resellers forget to create their own terms and conditions, as they are often very time-consuming to write. If you ask a Web host you will find that some of them will either let you copy theirs or they will just supply you with terms and conditions specifically written for this purpose.

Fast and reliable support – Fast and reliable, service and support, is essential, from your Web hosting company. If something happens to your client’s web site it is important to be able to get the problem solved as soon as possible. You don’t want clients being unhappy with your hosting services, as this will reflect badly on your other services too.

Reselling can be a very profitable side business if you find the right host. It may take up some of your time, however, if you put the time and effort into providing a little bit extra in your services, not only will your clients be a lot happier you will have a rewarding total Web services business.

To understand why you need a domain name you first need to know how a domain name works.

A domain name is an addressing construct, used for finding and identifying computers on the Internet. Computers use Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses, which are a series of numbers used to identify each other on the Internet; however, many people find it hard to remember IP Addresses. Because of this, domain names were developed so that easily remembered names and phrases could be used to identify entities in the Internet instead of using an IP Address.

For example, the domain name M6.net identifies the company M6.net. When a user types the domain name M6.net in their browser or sends an email to M6.net, the Domain Name System (DNS) will translate the domain name into IP numbers. These are then used by the Internet to connect the user to M6.net’s web presence.

What should I use as a domain name?

You can use a word or phrase as a domain name. When thinking of a domain name, think of catchy words or phrases that are easy to remember and that will bring more traffic to your site. Try to use a domain name that is relevant to your web site. If your web site is a business site, it is a good idea to use the companies name as the domain name or if your site is a personal site try to think of a domain name that is related to the topic of your web site.

Also try to keep your domain name as short as possible, around 5 to 20 characters is fine. The shorter the domain name the easier it will be to remember.

One thing to keep in mind is assumed spelling issues; if you think up a ‘clever’ domain name such as 1luv4u.com, One Love For You (dating service), people may type in oneloveforyou.com believing this is the domain name; or oneluv4u.com, or 1love4you.com etc. This leads to brand problems. In this case the ‘oneloveforyou.com’ name would be best. Another unfortunate example: Flo Office Supplies ? flooffice.com?

How do I acquire a domain name?

There are two main ways you can get a domain name. You can either register your domain name yourself or you can get your web host or ISP (Internet Service Provider) to register it for you.

To register a domain name yourself you will need to choose a Registrar. A Registrar is an ICANN accredited domain registration company. There are hundreds of Registrars on the Internet nowadays. The market is becoming increasingly competitive; which means that you can purchase domains names for a low yearly fee.

Most web hosting companies will offer domain registration services to their clients. When you register a domain name through a web host they will register your domain name for you through their own approved registrar. An advantage to having your web host register your domain name for you is that, they have probably done this process many times before; they have all the necessary information ready at hand. This process will save you time and, as long as you give the ?correct? domain name desired, there will be no unfamiliar dealings with Registrars.

Why should I keep my domain name registered?

If you loose your domain name you can loose your whole online identity.

Because you can only register a domain name for a year or so, you will need to make sure that you renew it before the expiry date. Once your domain name expires you will no longer own that domain name. Your Registrar will then own it and be able to sell your domain name to the highest bidder. To make sure you don’t lose your domain name you will need to make sure you renew your domain name at least two weeks before it expires.

Also make sure that your information is registered properly, especially if you didn’t register your domain name yourself. Ensure that your information is displayed as the registrant, administrative and billing contacts; most importantly make sure that the email addresses for these contacts are ACTIVE. When you receive any information about your domain name, such as renewals, price changes, etc? an email will be sent to this email address. If you can’t receive any mail from the email addresses listed under the domain names contact then you are at risk of not receiving important notifications about your domain names, which could result in loosing your domain name.

People often miss the importance of having their own unique domain name for their web sites. A domain name represents you, your company and your online presence; as does a ?business card?. If you don’t have your own domain name you won’t be able to promote your own online identity and web site on the World Wide Web.

But now that you’ve made that decision, what do you do? Where do you even start when it comes to creating a new business for this purpose? I hope to provide you with guidelines that can help you to achieve your goals.

The first thing to do is decide on what it is you wish to offer. Some resellers just want to offer hosting solutions for a cheap price hoping that they can make money on quantity. Alternatively, other resellers are design firms who have decided to offer hosting to augment their design offerings as well as open the door for additional customers. There are many reasons for becoming a reseller, and a multitude of options that can be offered to your customers. It is a very good idea to know who your prospective customer is before you even get started.

In addition to deciding on what it is you wish to offer, the next step is to consider how you want to offer it. Many resellers offer different flavors of reseller hosting. Here are a couple of the more common varieties:

• Agent Partners – This is when you become a “partner” with a web host, and resell their services. It is your job to find the customers, and when they sign up they become customers of your web host. You earn a recurring commission on the services they purchase. It is well known that you are not the actual hosting provider, just a partner.

• Private Label – If you would like your customers to believe that you are the actual provider, or do not wish for them to know whose services you resell then this is the option for you. The actual provider will supply you with the information you need and the appropriate tools to transparently offer their services as your own. It is not common knowledge that you are a reseller or whose services you resell.

Once you have decided who you will cater to and what kind of image you would like to portray, the next step would be to begin to research hosting providers who can accommodate your wishes. For example, if you wish to offer services for ASP developers, you will need to find a hosting provider who offers windows-based hosting and who can offer the reseller program you desire.

Selecting a provider may not be as simple as it sounds. There are many hosts available to choose from, some better than others. It is highly recommended that you find some references from the ones that match your intentions, to help narrow down your selection.

Once you have selected a provider you need to decide what you want your website to consist of. If you are skilled in web design, then you have an edge in this arena. Most do not, however, and need to employ web designers to build their site for them.

By becoming familiar with the options available by your provider, and by researching other web reseller’s websites, you can build a site map of how your web site should be architected. If you will be having a web design firm handle creation of the website for you, this is imperative if you would like receive an all-inclusive quote.

Be sure you know what it is you want from your designer. Some of them will offer services such as logo design and banner ad creation, as well. Ask for example work and references. It is also helpful if your designer has experience with web hosting sites. First impressions are everything when it comes to web hosting customers, so this is very important. You want to make sure to select a firm that can deliver what it is you need, with professional quality and at a fair price.

Once your site it created, your final step is advertising. You can have a professionally designed website and outstanding hosting plans to sell, but without proper advertising your potential customers will never know you exist. There are many ways to advertise on the internet. These include submitting your website to search engines, doing direct advertising with select web sites, and banner advertising with different exchanges. You will need to weigh the benefits of each along with your budget.

By following the above guidelines, you should be well on your way to a constructive and profitable web hosting venture. This is not to say that these guidelines are a sure-fire way to become an instant success. Any successful business requires effort and dedication. But by taking these guidelines and applying the right amount of good old-fashioned hard work and determination, you have the makings of lucrative venture.

In the process however I started understanding the container concept and it became apparent that this is more than just a tool to create little servers. The way I see it container can replace dedicated servers in many situations in a data center and do a better job than dedicated. You can actually give the customer more horsepower and better hosting than selling them a small dedicated box. (Of course big customers will still need their own server.)

I don’t own a data center business myself but I have a friend who does and I colo several servers there. He has several racks of some old Celeron boxes with 512 mgs of ram and one or two 80 gig drives depending on if the customer has any concept of backups, which most of them don’t. I’m looking at the racks of Celerons and P4s thinking that each rack could be consolidated into a single modern server and that the customers would actually have a better server than the one they are on now. And the cost saving is tremendous.

Advantages of container

Most small dedicated servers are a waste of resources. People buy bigger servers than they need and the excess capacity is wasted. These servers take both space and power which is expensive in a data center and you have hardware costs associated with each server that you have to recoup. People often don’t do any backups so after several years the hard drive fails and they lose everything. And it’s your fault for not backing them up in the first place.

Imagine a rack of 16 Celeron boxes with 80 gig drives being replaced by a Dual Core Athlox X2 with 8 gigs of ram and 4 500gb SATA 2 drives running in a raid 10 configuration. (Writing this in Feb of 2007 for future historians who will read this and laugh at the old days when computers had just gigabytes.) The above server would cost about $2000 to build and only take 2U of space and use far less power than the 16 machines that are being replaced.

Note that I’m suggesting in this example only a 16 to 1 consolidation. Everyone has the same amount of ram. In reality the consolidation is many times higher because most of those using the Celerons are not using all the memory. Many are using only 1/5 of what they have and a lot of that is used by the individual kernels running. In OpenVZ there is one kernel for everyone.

Note also that many of these servers have idle time where the processor is doing nothing and they have lots of extra hard drive space that isn’t being used. By consolidating these systems the free resources are combined allowing you to run many more logical servers that each have more resources than the individual servers.

On a dedicated computer the user is stuck with an old slow 32 bit processor, a limited amount of ram, and an old slow hard drive with no backups. In a container that same user is running on a shared dual core 64 bit CPU sharing 8 gigs of ram with fast modern large hard drives with raid backup. That is a significant improvement over having their own dedicated box. So this is a better deal for the customer.

Administration Advantages

If a customer needs you to fix something on their dedicated server you have to either know the root password or take the server down and boot from a rescue CD to get in and fix it. You also can’t access the customer’s files without logging in to their server as root. In a container you as host can enter their server at any time without a password. (Keeping the host environment very secure of course.) That allows you to do maintenance without having to look up the person’s root password.

Ease of Setup

Setup couldn’t be easier as compared to building a dedicated server. All you have to do is type a few commands and the new virtual server is ready to go. You can have the customer running while you are still on the phone taking the order. A dedicated box requires setup, installation, and often has to be scheduled. This involves cost and time. container is ready instantly and easily. Any distro you want with all the latest updates installed. When a customer places an order they want it now. With container you can deliver it now.

Backup Advantages

Additionally you can access the customers files directly from the host environment. This allows you to run rsync scripts to back up all the virtual servers to external storage or backup servers without the customer being aware that you are doing sophisticated backups. Then when the customer calls you up in a panic and says, “I totally screwed up my server and deleted a bunch of files by accident. Can you get it back?” You can magically restore their lost data and you are forever their hero.

IP Allocation Advantages

Tired of allocating 4 IP addresses just to give the customer 1 usable? Or giving them 8 so they have 5 usable and most of them only use one? How inefficient is that? With OpenVZ you can allocate IP addresses individually so that if a customer only needs one IP then they get only 1 IP. But if they need 9 IP addresses you can give them exactly 9 of them. They can call you up and say I need one more IP and you can give it to them in seconds. On a dedicated server if you gave them a /29 vlan and they are using all 5 IPs and they need another one – that is a huge hassle.

Disk Space Allocation

On dedicated servers you have to install a big hard drive that is mostly wasted. If the customer wants backups then it’s two hard drives. In OpenVZ you just allocate space in the raid array based on what the customer actually needs and they only use the space that they use rather than what’s allocated. The “allocation” is really just a software limit and that is a line in a text file that you can instantly change the moment the customer needs more space. On a dedicatd box if the customer needs a bigger drive then it’s a trip to the data center with a new drive and a few hours time to copy everything over and replacing the drive, not to mention the down time.

Memory Upgrades

Memory upgrades are as easy as hard drive upgrades. Just one command than the user has more ram. But what if the server is full and you don’t have any more ram? No problem. Just copy the user’s container (virtual environment) over to another physical server with rsync and start them up there. In only a few minutes you’ve migrated them to a new box and they are up and running.

Migration

Suppose a customer just needs a bigger server. Migration is easy in the container environment because the container is consistent between servers. You just copy over the files and start it up. You don’t have to build a new server, install an OS, copy it all over, and then mess with it for an hour getting everything to work.

Emergency Procedures

Let’s say that a server fries. With container and good backups you have more options. You can copy the backup of the container onto another server and restore it as of the last (nightly) backup. (I’m a backup freak – but it pays.) That gets the customers up instantly if they need that while a tech can go down there and fix the server with less pressure. This give you more options when bad things happen.

Load Balancing

OpenVZ allows you to migrate servers live from one physical server to another. I haven’t yet done that but I have done a shutdown, copy, and restart of the container on another server and it’s so easy to do that. So suppose you have a server that’s a little crowded and some user starts hogging some resources. No problem. You just move a few users to another box and problem solved. This could probably be done automatically with some well configured cluster and I would love it if someone wrote a wiki page telling us how to do it.

Protecting your Customers

Since you are managing the host system you can create IP filters and port blocking policies that help keep users from exploiting you or keep hackers from exploiting your users. Instead of a separate box that is all theirs you have them in a more managed shell allowing you to keep the inexperienced out of trouble. This provides them with a service that watched it more closely allowing them to do their own thing, but keeping you closer by to keep them out of trouble.

Cost

The cost savings are rather obvious. An entire rack compressed into one or two computers. Picture the space and power savings. The greenhouse gas not being generated by the power you’re not using. The number of computers that you are not buying. The hours you are saving in setup time and administrative time. When it comes to saving money this is definitely a winner. You can take that extra money and pass some on to customers and keep some extra for yourself.

The Down Side

Any time you add another layer then you have another layer of things that can go wrong. It takes some learning to understand the process and there is the possibility that one person can screw up the system for everyone. As virtualization develops it will get better. OpenVZ is very stable in that it is far less intrusive than other virtualization methods. It is limited to Linux only so BSD and Windows users will have to do something else.

Conclusion

I believe that container represents the future of computing. The space, power, and cost savings are too great to ignore. I see data centers that are massive clusters running tens of thousands of logical servers that transparently migrate around the physical resources and are up 100% of the time. Customers no longer will have to deal with issues of backups the way they have to now, and it will simplify the hosting process. I think that every data center should be looking into virtualization technology now with the idea that you are going to be doing this and it’s time to at least start thinking about it and exploring it with an eye towards the future.

I have to say that my view of container has radically changed and that I now see this as a solution not just for people wanting little servers but for most everyone who is looking for dedicated service. container is a different way of looking at the computing world and it takes some significant mental adjustment and education to grasp the big picture.

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