Category Archives: Linux Servers

19 Nov

SoftSys Hosting Black Friday 2020 Deals You Cannot Miss

Black Friday Hosting Deals

This Black Friday we’re going all in! We’re offering a 90% discount on selected VPS servers + 1 Month free on Acronis Backup or Acronis Cyber Protect.

SoftSys Hosting Black Friday – 90% OFF x 1 Month With Self-Managed VPS Servers

Get a high-performance Linux VPS or Windows VPS for less than $1 during your first month of service.

Save 90% on the first month of a monthly based service, when ordering a new VPS server in our US (Denver/Chicago), Singapore, or UK datacenters (Linux).

All our Linux VPS servers include root SSH access.

All Windows VPS servers include full administrative RDP access and a free SolidCP Control Panel.

Get 90% OFF on Your New VPS server. Use coupon code: BF2020

Applicable services:

GET WINDOWS VPS DEAL
GET LINUX VPS DEAL

Terms of Use:

  • New and current customers are eligible for this promotion
  • The promotion code can be applied ONCE per account
  • The promotion code must be entered at the time of placing the order. Discounts will NOT be applied after the purchase
  • The 90% discount will be applied to the FIRST order of a monthly-based service! It is not an ongoing discount. After the promotion ends, the services will renew at the regular price.
  • The discounted price applies only to NEW servers in the listed datacenter locations and cannot be applied retroactively to existing servers or servers in the process of being migrated.
  • Offer expires 12/01/2020 at 11:59PM EST

SoftSys Hosting Black Friday – FREE x 1 Month Enterprise Backup/Data Recovery Service + Cybersecurity Solutions

More often than not you can find yourself in a situation in which you need to restore your data from a backup. Some of the most common situations that we’ve run into over the years are:

  • Human Error (#1 reason) – Human error (accidental deletion of files, overwrites, loss of access, etc.) is the most common situation in which users might require a restore from backup.
  • Corrupt Database – bad updates, file corruption, missing files, etc.
  • Security Incidents – malware, ransomware, brute-force attacks, etc.
  • Software Updates Gone Wrong – updating applications and software can often time break a fast website and a restore from backup will be required.
  • Hardware Failure – incorrect drive information, outages, the drive does not power on, file corruption, etc.
  • Physical Disasters – hurricane, fire, flood, etc.

Any of these situations can result in a permanent loss of data if you don’t have a backup. We have partnered with Acronis to deliver a reliable and easy-to-use backup solution and cybersecurity solution.

Protect Your Critical Data With Acronis Cyber Backup or Acronis Cyber Protect. Activate 1 Month FREE!

Applicable services:

GET THIS DEAL

Terms of Use:

  • New and current customers are eligible for this promotion
  • The promotion code can be applied ONCE per account
  • The promotion code must be entered at the time of placing the order. Discounts will NOT be applied after the purchase
  • The promotion applies to the FIRST order of a monthly-based service! It is not an ongoing discount. After the promotion ends, the services will renew at the regular price.
  • The discounted price applies only to newly purchased Acronis services and cannot be applied retroactively to existing services.
  • Offer expires 12/01/2020 at 11:59PM EST

MORE SOFTSYS HOSTING DEALS

50% OFF x 3 Months With Fully Managed Linux and Windows VPS Servers

New customers can save 50% on the first 3 months of service when ordering a new monthly based managed VPS server. Use coupon code: 50OFF_3Mon

Applicable services:

Managed Hosting Benefits

  • Fully Managed Service Level
  • Peace of Mind with 24×7 Proactive Server Monitoring
  • Full Control with RDP/SSH Access
  • Service Flexibility with Custom Software Installation
  • Host Unlimited Websites/Databases
GET MANAGED WINDOWS
GET MANAGED LINUX

Terms of Use:

  • Only new customers are eligible for this promotion
  • The promotion code can be applied ONCE per account
  • The promotion code must be entered at the time of placing the order. Discounts will NOT be applied after the purchase
  • The 50% discount will be applied to the FIRST 3 MONTHS of monthly-based service! It is not an ongoing discount. After the promotion ends, the services will renew at the regular price.
  • The discounted price applies only to NEW servers in the following datacenter locations: US (5), Canada, UK, Germany, Ireland, France, India, Singapore, Australia, Tokyo & S Korea
  • The discounted price cannot be applied retroactively to existing servers or servers in the process of being migrated.

Secure, High Performance Shared Windows Hosting – Start as Low as $1

Save 90% on the first month of service when ordering a new monthly-based WordPress Hosting server. Use coupon code: WP90OFF

WordPress Hosting Benefits

  • Managed WordPress hosting at very accessible pricing
  • Increased speed and high-performance WordPress with Free LiteSpeed Caching Plugin
  • Advanced protection from DoS and hacking attempts with free IDS/IPS/WAF
  • Protect your WordPress website from hackers with on-demand & real-time malware scanning/quarantine
  • Get peace of mind for your WordPress website with free included backups
  • Expecting higher traffic? Get free on-demand resource increase for up to 24 hours
GET THIS DEAL

90% OFF x 1 Month High Performance Shared Linux Hosting

Save 90% on the first month of service when ordering a new monthly-based Linux Cloud Hosting server. Use coupon code: GET90OFF

Linux Cloud Hosting Benefits

  • Increased speed with fast SSD Storage
  • Support for popular apps: WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla, WooCommerce
  • High-performance with Free LiteSpeed Caching Plugin
  • Advanced protection from DoS and hacking attempts with free IDS/IPS/WAF
  • Protect your website from hackers with next-gen on-demand & real-time malware scanning/quarantine
  • Free included backups
  • On-demand resource increase for up to 24 hours
GET THIS DEAL

Secure, High Performance Shared Windows Hosting – Start as Low as $1

Get a secure, high-performance Windows Hosting for as low as $1 during your first month of service. Use coupon code: 1DOLLAR

Windows Hosting Benefits

  • Increased speed with fast SSD Storage
  • Support for popular apps: DotNetNuke, nopCommcerce, Umbraco CMS
  • Protect your website from hackers with built-in Ransomware and Malware Protection
  • Free included backups
GET THIS DEAL

Do you need help finding the best hosting solution for your needs? Contact sales@softsyshosting.com or call +1-862-214-2255 (x3)

12 Nov

Hosting Infrastructure Required To Feel Confident During Holiday Traffic Splash

Imagine, hundreds of users are rushing to your website at the same time to purchase products which you actively marketed for this holiday. Your ads are now running, you are getting visitors more than you calculated or more than your server can handle. So what is going to happen with this sudden traffic spike?

Prepare for the Worst or If You Want Peace, Prepare for War

Online website performance

You should be always prepared for the worst (means best for your business) during this holiday shopping fest. Because the year 2020 proved to be one of the toughest years so far. But this might be the good opportunity for your online business because people will hesitate to go out in malls during this Covid-19 pandemic and you may expect getting more online traffic than ever before. In that case you should be prepared to avoid 2 major disasters. So how are you going to be prepared?

Check your Website Performance

You can check the current performance of your website easily with the online tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Open PageSpeed Insights, enter the URL of your website and hit the Analyze button. This test will show you result for both mobile and desktop versions of your website. And you will get the detailed audit of your website code and receive suggestions on how to optimize it. But still if you don’t have enough computing power to run your website easily during this traffic spike, you may get time-out errors and your customers will flow away without making any purchases.

Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)

The best way to cope with the traffic load on your website is not follow all traffic to your single web hosting server. CDN can do it very effectively by storing the cached content of your website on multiple CDN servers located around the globe. But you will have to implement CDN before the traffic starts hitting your website because it will be very difficult to implement the CDN once your website is under heavy traffic load.

Opt for the Scalable Hosting Solution

Scalable Hosting

The most straightforward way to deal with increased traffic is to upgrade your hosting account. For example, if you are using shared hosting you can go with VPS which will give you isolated resources like RAM, CPU and storage at a more affordable price if compare to dedicated solutions. You should contact your web hosting provider before your customers start contacting you. And if you are a Softsys Hosting client then you can directly get in touch with our support team and we will provide you the most suitable VPS plans or you can choose on your own from our extensive range of cloud-based Windows VPS, Linux VPS or Special eCommerce (nopCommerce, Magento) and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Umbraco) hosting solutions.

21 Oct

Increase the Security of Your Linux Servers With BitNinja Server Security

We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with BitNinja to bring you the ultimate server protection against WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal infections. 

The BitNinja server security solution has been around since 2014. It started as an in-house project when its CEO George Egri wanted to protect their own hosting company against malicious threats and cyberattacks. Today the company protects over 20.000 servers worldwide and their WAF has blocked over 40 million HTTP attacks.  

What Is BitNinja and How Can It Take Your Server Security to the Next Level?  

Security breaches can put your business at risk. Stolen databases, password hacks, malware, SQL injections, malicious scripts that can change your user’s passwords and gain access to your user’s accounts, you name it!   

Today’s digital world is full of security threats that can impact your business’ revenue and reputation.   

BitNinja server security helps you maintain a successful business by taking 100% responsibility of keeping your Linux server clean.  

“We were in search of an enterprise-grade security tool to provide all-round protection to our customers’ business servers. BitNinja turned out to be the perfect partner to help us address the ever-growing security vulnerabilities and hacks. We tune and tweak BitNinja based on our customers’ specific requirements and we are happy to say it has provided 100% protection! We are beyond excited to have partnered with BitNinja!” Ruchir Shastri, President & Founder @ SoftSys Hosting 

BitNinja Will Significantly Increase the Security of Your Websites! 

Here’s how BitNinja can help: it’s an all-in-one security solution that provides one of the BEST server security defenses available on the market today!  It’s supported on all popular Linux distributions (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) and requires zero changes to your server.  

Backed by machine learning technology that adapts to the latest threats, BitNinja combines a set of integrated defense modules into a single security suite that provides complete protection at the application layer, prevents your server from becoming part of a botnet, and protects you from incoming and outgoing DoS and DDoS attacks.  

Being a layered security system, BitNinja blocks server attacks at any threat level automatically, allowing you to protect your websites from unforeseen security threats and focusing on growing your business.   

Server Security

Easy to install and use BitNinja offers the following benefits:  

  • Improves your server’s load. 
  • Reduces spam. 
  • Protects your web application. 
  • Scans your web files for malware. 
  • Protects yourself from viruses (including email-based viruses). 
  • Detects and blocks port-scans. 
  • Protects yourself from Distributed Blacklists such as DNSBL. 
  • Proactively monitors malicious scripts & more. 

Protect Your Business and Customers from Security Breaches. Get Started with BitNinja Server Security Solution Today!

Achieve system stability and reduce the server load by activating the BitNinja proactive security defense shield and fixing your IP reputation for good.

The BitNinja security solution is available to SoftSys Hosting customers who own a Linux based VPS (fully managed or unmanaged) or a Linux-based dedicated server.  

The service can be added to a new or existing VPS account for as low as $16 USD per month. To help you get started we offer a 7-day free trial with full functionality. During this period, you can test it and see doing its magic. To get started with your free trial, please contact us at sales@softsyshosting.com.

Once the service is activated, our team will install BitNinja on your server and provide you access to a dedicated dashboard where you can configure and manage your server’s security.

Secure Linux Server

If you’re not a SoftSys Hosting customer, and want to protect your business from hacks, data theft, IP blacklisting & more get in touch with us as well.

We’d love to help keep your business secure and profitable!

05 Sep

Ways To Battle cPanel Price Increase

cPanel has surprised a lot of us (partners and customers) with their announcement of massive price increase lately. There was a lot of speculation that they will be reversing this sudden and exorbitant increase in costs. However, this hasn’t been the case and they have pretty much confirmed that the new pricing is to stay.

We, at Softsys, have been evaluating and speaking with cPanel to minimize the impact of price change on our customers. As of now, you (our customers) have below options:

  • Move to another control panel- DirectAdmin to keep your costs at same level as cPanel (DirectAdmin unlimited domains is $15/m). There is migration path available from cPanel to DirectAdmin and it has been tested to be working fine and smoothly.
  • Move to another control panel- Plesk – however, the only concern is that Plesk is owned by same company as cPanel – Oakley Capital. Hence, it is just matter of time that we’ll see similar price change in Plesk too.
  • Move to new discounted cPanel Pricing from Softsys – We have worked out below special pricing for cPanel based on # of accounts that you host along with a special “Plus Plan” if you are having up to 50 cPanel accounts. Please review the pricing table below – pricing is based on your server (cloud or dedicated) and your service level (self managed or fully managed):

 

  • If you are a Self Managed Softsys Customer, upgrade to Fully Managed Cloud VPS or Dedicated server for deeper pricing benefits. With our fully managed services, we bundle several services so that our customers can keep their hands (and minds) clean from server management tasks. Our bundled managed services include, free daily backups, free setup, ongoing pro-active server management, 24/7 monitoring, regular pro-active security audits, 24/7 priority support, hardening and securing the server, managed OS updates and patches, one-on-one scheduling or management tasks (at your preferred time slot), discounted software bundles (like cPanel price above) and much more.

If you have any queries or if you’d like to upgrade your self-managed services to fully managed or if you’d like to move from cPanel to DirectAdmin or from another provider to Softsys, get in touch and we’ll help you the best we can.

18 Mar

3 Keys To Successful Data Backups

IDC estimates that by 2020 business transactions on the Internet business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) will reach 450 billion per day. Is your company among the millions worldwide handling consumer or corporate data collected online? If so, protecting that data should be your top priority.

Look at your data as an investment – you’ve dedicated time, resources, and money to collecting, storing, and analyzing data to grow your business. But, if the worst happens, how will you recover that investment?

That’s why, if your data is important and key for your business, you must have robust data backup plan. Outsourcing this to cloud backup providers like Softsys Hosting ensures that your data is safe from disaster and accessible whenever you need it.

We help make sure that your data backups are…

Comprehensive

Most industry professionals recommend that you store your data in at least three places, on two storage types, with one copy stored off-site. Don’t trust something as precious as your data to anyone other than true professionals. Our cloud backup services provide a second copy of your data to ensure that nothing gets lost in translation and our professional teams monitor each backup to avoid any mistakes.

Our cloud offerings also give you a secondary type of storage – and one that is separate from your physical location and therefore lower risk for natural disasters such as fire, water, etc.

Consistent

Data backups tend to be a topic of conversation only once something has gone wrong. Don’t make the mistake of neglecting your backup routine until you need it. Daily backups help make sure that all of your data is secure in the event of a disaster. This is especially true for businesses where colleagues are constantly adding or updating data. Ask yourself, what period of time are you comfortable losing as a result of a loss event? Most businesses can’t afford to lose more than a day’s worth of data.

If daily backups sound daunting, let us handle them automatically so that you have peace of mind knowing that your data is protected.

Recoverable

What benefit does a data backup offer if the data isn’t usable? Our professionals monitor and manage backups so that your data is in a good recoverable state when you need it. This management lessons the recovery time – or time needed to return to normal operations after a disaster event.

Backup and Restore

At Softsys Hosting, we know that when your systems are down, your company is losing money. Therefore, we work to make sure that you are up and running as soon as possible – typically within a few hours.

Forty percent of companies that do not have proper backup or disaster recovery plans in place do not survive a disaster. In short, your company depends on your data. Work with us to determine and implement a data backup solution that fits your company’s needs and let us do the heavy lifting to monitor and execute the backups – leaving you to do what you do best.

28 Jun

A Few Signs That You’ve Outgrown Your Web Hosting Account

 

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most common web hosting type. It’s super easy to setup and costs much less compared to VPS or dedicated hosting. No wonder, site owners choose shared hosting services as their first web hosting option and eventually switch to bigger options.

When your website gains the popularity and starts receiving a significant amount of traffic, your hosting plan should also grow with it to accommodate growing business needs. At this stage, it’s vital to track the increasing traffic inflow, evaluate the current resource, and be prepared to take them to the next level.

Sometimes it is difficult to know when it is high time to make this move from one hosting type to another, but there are several indicators that point when this switch becomes inevitable. In this post we will outline several signs that you’ve outgrown your current web hosting account.

Slow Website Performance Especially During Peak Times

Does your site perform slow lately? If yes, it could be that your website exceeds the hosting resource limit and your application is just running out of juice. The fact is that shared hosting is capable to meet  hosting requirements of the basic sites. That being said, when you’re hosted on a shared server, the server resources, such as CPU, RAM, bandwidth, and disk are shared evenly amongst all the websites on that server. It’s quite possible that some resource hungry websites may chew up more resources than others causing the rest to experience slow performance. Obviously, sluggish performance annoys visitors and eventually you may lose their loyalty and sales.

Fortunately, this dilemma can be fixed easily spending only a few dollars extra each month. You can simply upgrade to a VPS hosting plan which enables you to scale up or down depending on your website needs.

Indeed, VPS is a better choice as you don’t need to compete with other clients for resources since allocated resources are dedicated to your VPS only. Additionally, VPS can be customized in terms of server resources allocation. There might be some extra monthly costs, like a control panel license, OS licensing, or managed services in case you don’t have basic server administration skills.

Frequent Downtime

With the shared hosting plan, your server resources (disk space, bandwidth, CPU time, memory) are shared with several hundreds or probably thousands of other websites.

In case one of those websites start acquiring excessive resources, then all of the other websites hosted on the same server will start to run slower or might even crash due to the overload on the server.

If you face frequent downtime with your existing hosting package, you should consider moving to a more stable solution like a VPS or dedicated server.

Increase In Traffic

Your basic hosting package is ideal to cater to websites with relatively low traffic (approximately 2000 visits a day). If you are anticipating more seasonal traffic in coming weeks or your site traffic is increasing day by day you should immediately consider the next hosting option: either VPS or dedicated server. As we know shared hosting always comes with certain limitations, in case your site becomes too huge to get handled it might ending up in a website downtime. So before it gets too late, it’s’ better to switch to the next option.

Poor Load Times

Heavy websites process a number of PHP requests with multiple complex SQL queries running in the background. Such websites demand dedicated resources to run optimally, and when allocated resources are inadequate its loading time increases. If your site’s loading time is high, you should switch to VPS or dedicated hosting where you don’t share, but maintain your own hosting environment.

You Want To Run Custom Software

Sometimes you want to run some custom software on the web server where your website is hosted. Obviously, your web hosts won’t allow you to install that particular software for you only since it may impact other customers as well. Sometimes, you want complete control over your hosting account to perform more advanced actions, such as installing desired software, or setting elevated permissions whenever you want to. Some custom applications require higher privileges compared to that typical shared hosting can offer you.

In this case, you’ll require an advanced hosting alternative where you can get administrative access to your web server. An example of this is when instead of IIS you want Tomcat Apache to run Java web applications.

Your Site Needs More Security

Although shared servers are equipped with firewalls and decent security software, still your project is at risk as your neighbour website may leave some security holes open and yours might get hacked as well.

dedicated server hosting

With a dedicated server account, you get isolated and secure hosting environment along with your own set of resources preventing you from data hacks or getting blacklisted on RBLs.

That being said, if you are processing any sort of sensitive information like credit cards you may not want to share a server with anyone.

21 Nov

What Dedicated Server To Choose If You Don’t Want To Compromise On Performance?

You’ll require a dedicated server, either when your shared or VPS hosting account is no longer capable to meet current hosting needs, or you’re planning to launch a brand new project which demands higher server resources. In either cases, you don’t want to compromise with the server performance, right?

Choosing a dedicated server with the best performance is actually difficult, when there are significant options available in the market. It’s indeed an important decision so you just can’t head to any other web host and order a generic dedicated server. So this guide will explain some basic principles how you can choose a dedicated server with the best performance without spending a fortune.

Processors

The desktop-grade processors like Intel’s Core i5 or i7 are adequate for many small businesses with just basic requirements. However, to deploy a huge CPU processing, definitely you’ll need business-grade processors like Intel’s Xeon series CPUs.

These processors produce great processing power due to their Hyper-Threading architecture, multiple cores, bigger L3 caches and ability to handle intensive loads, which make them more suitable for server environment.

Also, Xeon series CPUs support ECC (Error-Correcting Code) memory, which can detect and correct most common data-corruption even before it takes place, ensuring the data integrity and stability of the system.

To get the best out of your high performance dedicated server, we’d suggest you to go with the Xeon E7 v6 family – the latest generation of high-end processors with improved performance and efficiency. Though you may still find v5 and v4 Xeon servers available in the market, and they are quite capable to deliver decent performance till date. You can also get the latest generation of low-end Xeon chips like E3 and E5, typically used in entry-level servers.

If you are an AMD fan, then you can go with its business-grade processors launched under

Opteron family, ranging from the entry-level 3000 series to powerful 6000 series.

Memory

For the entry-level servers, RAM typically ranges from 8GB to 64GB, which can be further expanded from 128 to 512 GB for high-end servers. These memory modules come in different types and speeds, which are dependent upon the processor and motherboard. For example, 2,400MHz ECC DDR4 memory is the standard for most entry-level Xeon-based servers.

However, RAM speed has far less impact on overall performance of a dedicated server, so it’s okay if you go with lower MHz memory modules. Also, your server must have capability to upgrade the RAM for the future expansion, so you don’t have to migrate to another server.

Storage Type

While configuring the server, you can choose between solid state drives (SSD) or a traditional option of hard disk drives (HDD). HDDs feature a spinning platter and a read/write arm that uses magnetism to store data. SSDs don’t have moving parts and keep information in flash microchips. For these characteristics, SSDs are much faster and more expensive.

For the best performance, we’d suggest mounting all SSDs on the server or go at least with the hybrid option for better performance. With the hybrid option, operating system is installed on SSDs, and standard HDDs are used to store files.

The hybrid option does not deliver the performance like all SSD setup, but it can be considered as a good compromise between performance and price.

RAID

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is vital for any multi-disk dedicated server as it increases the performance and reliability of data storage. The most common types of RAID are:

  1. RAID 0: It stripes data across multiple drives to improve the performance, though one of the drives fail all the data will be lost.
  2. RAID 1: It mirrors/copies the same data on 2 drives, so if one of the drives fail there’s  still a complete and usable copy of the data on the other drive.
  3. RAID 5: It requires at least 3 drives. It stripes the data and adds “parity data” so that any one of the drives fails, it can be replaced with the new drive promptly without losing the data.
  4. RAID 10: It’s the combination of the striping and mirroring.
  5. RAID 50: It’s the combination of the striping and parity.

Many entry-level servers come with RAID 0 or 1 with limited options, but it’s better to go at least with the RAID 5 or RAID 10. For the Windows-based dedicated servers, hardware RAID is more common, wherein its advantages are better realized. In contrast, software RAID is more popular in open-source systems, wherein its low-cost makes it an attractive option.

Traffic & Bandwidth

Traffic or “data transfer”, is the volume of data transmitted between your server and the web over a certain period of time (monthly in most cases). It is measured usually in gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB). So if you buy a server with 100TB traffic limit, that means there’s a limit of 100TB of data that can be passed between your server and web during the month.

Bandwidth is described as a data transfer rate of a dedicated server, or the amount of data network is capable to transmit over a given period of time. It is measured in Megabits per second (Mbps) and sometimes Gigabits per second (Gbps). Dedicated server bandwidth typically ranges between 100 Mbps and 10Gbps, with 1 Gbps a common bandwidth for high performance dedicated servers.

Some providers offer dedicated server with unmetered traffic, but unmetered does not mean unlimited. In fact unmetered plans often restrict the amount of data you can send-receive because data is transferred at a very low speed.

Conclusion

We hope going through this post you’d have a better idea as how to choose the best dedicated server without compromising on performance. Since, there are plenty of good options available in the market, we recommend to do your own research before purchase. In case, you still have questions or would like to get a professional advice, you can always contact our expert sales team.

13 Sep

When Does It Make Sense Choosing Fully Managed Or Self-Managed Dedicated Hosting?

Professional Dedicated Server Hosting

 

 

With a wide variety of hosting options available today, such as shared, VPS and dedicated servers, choosing the right hosting option for your business can be both crucial and confusing.

If you are planning to build an enterprise application boosting the revenue and profits to your online business, a dedicated server could be a good choice. In some circumstances, dedicated hosting may even be an obvious option, like if you are about to launch some busy site anticipating millions of hits per day.

But choosing the right dedicated option may not be as simple as you thought. There are two basic types of dedicated servers differentiated by how servers are managed, namely managed and self-managed/unmanaged dedicated hosting services.

What Is Fully Managed Dedicated Server?

With fully managed dedicated servers, your hosting provider takes care of all your server related issues so you don’t have to worry about the technicalities behind running the server.

Your web host is also responsible for the complex and time-consuming server management process. Server experts monitor your equipment 24/7/365 ensuring it is running smoothly. In addition, hosting companies may also offer various other services like backups, scanning, and removal of malware, performance monitoring and more.

Benefits Of Fully Managed Dedicated Server

Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring allows you take precautionary actions before disaster strikes. For example, your host will notify you when your site is about to having used all of its available resources, like disk, RAM or bandwidth. Thus, you’ll have enough time to contact your web host and resolve an issue before it’s too late.

Software Updates

Software updates are very important for the server as they keep your system healthy and secure. Many web hosts will take care all of this for you so you won’t have to update any of it on your own.

Server Security & Scanning

Server security is the pioneer priority for any online business. Security scanning exposes the multitude of possible issues with your server and enables you to clean them up. Fully managed servers are constantly checked by the web host for loopholes on the site as well as malware, spyware, and suspicious traffic patterns.

Data Protection

Your host takes backup of your data on a regular basis ensuring that after a crash or some other error, no data will be completely lost and could be restored quickly.

Managed Technical Support

With the managed dedicated hosting option you get 24/7/365 technical assistance. You can enjoy the peace of mind knowing that you’ll get a helping hand whenever you are in need.

When You Should Opt For Fully Managed Dedicated Hosting Services?

  • If you are not a technical person and you don’t know anything about hosting, managed dedicated hosting would be the perfect choice for you.
  • You are a tech savvy and know how to manage a dedicated server, but you don’t have at such time or you want to focus on your core business. In that case, fully managed dedicated servers would be an ideal option.
  • You know the technical know how of web hosting but you want the web hosting experts to handle everything for you to avoid mistakes and to ensure that everything is getting handled the proper way.
  • Business critical websites like an online eCommerce store must function with the maximum efficiency. You’ll need expert assistance right away in case of any issue with your website/server, otherwise, your business will be affected.
  • You rather often require server customizations like complex service and software setup, integrations, etc.

What Is Self-Managed (Unmanaged) Dedicated Hosting?

Dedicated server hosting with a little or no management assistance is known as unmanaged or self-managed dedicated hosting. With unmanaged dedicated hosting, you get a server with only an operating system installed.

This means that you’ll have to install any necessary software on your own like LAMP stack. Your web host is only responsible for the availability of a functional physical server.

When Should You Choose Self-Managed Dedicated Hosting Services?

  • If you are tech savvy and you hold the good experience in managing servers then you can consider self-managed dedicated servers.
  • If you prefer the higher levels of freedom managing your server or you want to control every aspect of a server then you can go with self-managed dedicated hosting.
  • The cost of an unmanaged server is always less than that of a fully managed server, so if you are short of funds then self-managed dedicated hosting can be the most deliberate choice.
  • If you don’t want to rely on anyone else to make changes to your server or your website then choosing unmanaged dedicated hosting is the best thing to do.

Conclusion

For hosting newbies, managing a server is not only time-consuming, but also a complex thing. With a managed dedicated hosting, you can use your valuable time on more productive business tasks.

06 Jul

SSD Or HDD Powered Servers – What Technology To Choose

SSD Or HDD Powered Servers – What Technology Do I Require?

Till quite recently it was mostly only possible to buy servers with a hard drive for storage. A few very ultraportable devices came with an SSD or Solid State Drive. The traditional HDD (hard disk drive) is a non-volatile storage on which information remains present even after power to the unit has been switched off. A hard drive is made up of a platter (made out of metal), which has a magnetic coating on which data can be stored.

The SSD on the other hand can do everything that a HDD can do but data is stored on flash memory chips (interconnected) that continue to store data even when power to them is switched off. Here is a brief look at the difference between SSD and HDD powered servers and what technology do you require for your specific needs.

Price

Essentially, an SSD and a HDD perform similar functions, which are to boot up your system and store information. However, each differs in many ways. For example, SSDs are more expensive than HDDs. The former costs about five times as much per GB. Typically, a HDD costs between four and five cents per GB as compared to 25 cents per GB for an SSD.

Storage

Secondly, whereas a modern HDD has a base storage capacity of about 500 GB the SSD only has about 128 GB of storage space. However, this lack of storage capacity is offset when one considers the speed at which the SSD works. A computer with an SSD will boot in under 60 seconds and often in a matter of seconds. A HDD server on the other hand could boot much slower.

Speed

HDDs are good at storing vast amounts of information. SSDs on the other hand are quicker but they generally do not have the same amount of storage capacity as HDDs. However, the good news is that SSDs do not have moving parts – unlike a HDD. This means that if you use your server roughly you could end up facing issues if you are using a HDD powered server. There are no such problems with SSD powered dedicated servers.

Availability

HDDs are easy to buy. They are readily available though in recent times SSDs have started to prevail over HDDs. Even so, most people prefer HDD powered servers over SSD powered ones. The good news is that more and more SSD lines are being offered now.

Size

HDDs can’t be extremely small because they have to use spinning platters. There are no such limitations in the case of SSDs, which means that in the coming years they may become even smaller than they already are.

Noise

HDDs emit some noise when in operation. SSDs on the other hand make no noise since they do not use any mechanical parts. Also, an SSD does not have to use electricity to spin any platter, as is the case with HDDs. This means that SSD powered servers are less costly to run.

The bottom line is that when it comes to deciding on a particular technology you need to keep in mind that HDD dedicated servers are more budget friendly options. They are also widely available. SSD powered servers on the other hand are great if you need ultimate speed that no other HDD will provide you with.

28 Mar

Web Hosting Security For VPS & Dedicated Servers

Most customers opting for a new server or running existing servers are ignorant of securing their servers so as to avoid attackers from:

1) Hacking the servers.
2) Using email servers for spamming.
3) Stealing their important and confidential data.
4) And much more.

We are seeing increasing number of incidents whereby hackers install ransomware on servers and demand hundreds or thousands of dollars to provide owners with the decrypting key. This is threatening for just about any business. Let us review a few security measures that can be enforced to keep your VPS or dedicated servers secure:

Server Security

Install Latest OS & Software Updates / Patches Regularly

Many vulnerabilities stem from within the server – either through software installed on the server, operating system or outdated CMS that you are using. Hence, it is extremely important that you keep your operating system updated at all times with latest patches. Also, software installed on the VPS or dedicated server must be updated to latest versions so that it addresses all vulnerabilities. If software is not receiving regular security updates, your business server might be vulnerable and hence it’d be required to look out for similar software from competitor. There are numerous instances whereby customer websites are built on popular CMS like WordPress, Joomla, vBulletin, Umbraco, etc. but after initial setup, they are never updated. This is disastrous as can lead to severe issues for your business websites. All popular CMS receive constant updates and they must be applied on regular basis. The same applies to plugins and theme that you use in your CMS as well.

Install a Firewall with Intrusion Prevention System

Firewall With IPS & IDS

 

Having a firewall sitting in front of your servers will ensure that all traffic passes through the firewall: this ensures that you have finer control over the traffic that should be filtered before it enters your servers. You can only allow traffic on required ports to your dedicated server or VPS and block everything else in your firewall. Furthermore, it is important to have Intrusion Detection & Intrusion Prevention system in firewall which works on commercial rulesets (constantly updated to fight against latest vulnerabilities) – IDS analyses the traffic pattern, matches against the rulesets and allows / blocks the traffic by creating appropriate firewall rules on the go. A robust firewall system provides complete web hosting security from DDoS attacks along with known & emerging exploits / vulnerabilities. You can find more details about Softsys Hosting Network Security Tools in our related section.

Install Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware Scanner

To avoid your hosting system from getting infected, it is necessary that you have a commercial level anti-malware and anti-virus engine installed in your server which will provide real-time protection from viruses / malware entering your server. In addition, you should also setup a “Full System Scan” by these engines at once every week so as to ensure that your system is completely secure and safe. You should also look out for engines that provide protection from ransomware as well. We have customers using MalwareBytes successfully with complete protection around-the-clock and our technical support staff is well versed to configure it appropriately for our customers.

DDoS Protection

DDoS Protected Hosting

 

DDoS attacks are quite frequent and cause your services to become inaccessible by saturating the network with massive amount of traffic from hundreds or thousands of IP addresses. If your website / service is inaccessible, it will directly affect your business and hence it is necessary to have DDoS web hosting protection enabled at network level. DDoS mitigation engine is self learning which studies the traffic pattern and detects all malicious traffic so that it can be dropped before it enters your server or data center. Hence, you are completely certain that the traffic entering your server or data center is completely clean and filtered by DDoS scrubbing systems in place. You can find more details about Softsys DDoS protection system in our related section.

Regular Security Audit

Securing your server initially on setup is a must for any VPS or dedicated hosting unit – however, it is equally important that there is regular security audit of servers so as to ensure that they remain safe and secure. Hence, you should always have expert hands which will secure your operating system, secure your email servers to ensure that it is not setup to allow anonymous email sending (protection from spammers), standard and critical services are setup on non-default ports, firewall is at optimal setup, etc. An efficient managed server service provider should be able to help you with these features. You can view the details of Softsys Hosting managed server plans with advanced web hosting security in our related section.