Category: Web Development and Hosting

The Advantages of Web Hosting with a VM

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As cloud hosting becomes viable for more and more companies, the decision comes down to benefits the organization will see from the platform. The decision should come at the application and service level. Cloud hosting provides customers virtual machines that provide a finite amount of resources for the cost. In this example, we will look at the advantages of virtualizing LA web hosting by moving it to the cloud.

Security – To get the benefits of virtualization, all sub services need to operate in their virtual machines. In the case of web hosting, the web server should run on its server while other services like DNS, SQL will run on other virtual machines. If and when there is a security breach of one VM, the others remain unaffected.

Migration – You can also migrate, update or upgrade one component without affecting any of the others. Let’s say you want to change from MySQL to Postgres, then all you need to do is bring up a new VM, set up the new database server. When the installation is complete, point the web server to the new database server and shutdown the old VM.

Backup – Keeping backups of applications and data is critical. With virtualization, you can take snapshots or backups of entire VM’s. Cloud hosting providers like Rack Alley have hundreds of servers around the world. You can create geographical redundancy by keeping backup VM’s in other countries.

Load – A sudden surge in traffic could cripple your entire website when all the systems are running on the same server. When you have individual VM’s, only the web server will take the hit. At that point, you can either increase resources or bring up additional VM’s to handle the load.

Three tips for preparing for colocation

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Written by Rack Alley

One of the reasons many organizations opt for LA colocation is growth. In house data centers and server rooms only have so much capacity. This capacity often falls behind requirements and this can affect the growth prospects of the company. In some cases, it can adversely affect outlook if service levels dip below customer expectations. Using a LA data center service provider allows an organization to let someone else handle power, cooling, networking, security has advantages to the bottom line. Here are some tips for preparing to make the move to a third party data center:

Sizing

Colocation, at its most basic level, is the rental of your provider’s infrastructure. While there are many other considerations, you want provision only as much space and resources as you need. It is wise to assume some growth, but any expansion can be undertaken later. Avoid under-provisioning in a bid to keep costs low.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is a resource that you should provision with care. There is no point in paying for too much bandwidth in anticipation of traffic spikes. The better move is to negotiate an allowance for bursts during peak load times. Even the burst can be limited to prevent cost overruns.

Business

Supporting a business requires careful coordination of IT decisions with the business side of the company. The primary reason we make infrastructure changes is to support the growth of the enterprise. The business side will provide valuable information such as regulatory requirements that should be part of the decision.

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Rack Alley is a provider of server hosting Los Angeles at their LA data center.

The basics of web hosting

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40Written by Rack Alley

In the most basic sense, web hosting is an intangible service. There are cheap web hosting companies that rely on its intangible nature to promote these plans over the more expensive alternatives. In order to better understand the various pricing schemes available and arrive at the best decision, it is important to know what goes into web hosting.

Servers

This is one of the biggest sources of expenditure. With the exception of cases like LA colocation, all servers, and related equipment are purchased and owned by the hosting company. In some cases, higher fees are due to the constant upgrade cycle. This is a good thing as faster servers mean better performance.

Data Centers

The servers will be located at one of the many data centers used by hosting companies. The cost of this is a part of the charges included. These large buildings are designed specifically to host thousands or tens of thousands of servers. Some host will allow region selection like an LA data center.

Software

With the exception of a few open source applications, most software that both runs and runs on servers are proprietary. This is another one of the major costs in hosting. The difference can be seen when comparing the cost of a Linux server and a windows one.

Internet

Web hosting companies purchase web hosting just any other normal organization would. The advantage is that since the connections are large, these costs savings filter down to the individual hosts. However, since the connections need to be distributed amongst thousands of customers, there are strict limits and charges for exceeding those limits.

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Rack Alley is a provider of colocation and server hosting Los Angeles at their LA data center.

What makes in hosting or colocation viable?

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2Written by Rack Alley

Moving servers to the cloud or data centers and shutting down internal server rooms seems to be how and where most organizations are heading. However, outsourcing all server hosting Los Angeles resources may not actually be a good idea in some instances. It all depends on where the organization in particular gets its competitive advantage. Here are some examples of what makes server hosting Los Angeles internally viable:

Saas and technology companies whose technology is their competitive advantage will want to keep their servers in house. For example in house hosting is usually only done by larger companies that rely on revenue from those websites. This is because risks will arise and need to be mitigated and it is easier to identify when it is in house.

Hosting and Iaas companies that sell on the fact that their la web hosting is more reliable than the competition will also want to keep everything in house. Especially since they develop that infrastructure in order to maintain that advantage. Some or most of that advantage is in the software to hardware interaction which makes in house more attractive.

Companies that require very specific hardware resources will also find that they will need to remain in-house. Most providers will provide hardware that is specific to their own reliability and testing and that may or may not overlap with these hardware requirements.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their Los Angeles data center .

 

The benefits of using a third party data center

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Written by Rack Alley

3One of the biggest jobs in the construction industry right now is to dismantle server rooms and data centers of individual organizations. The reason: everyone is moving their server farms to the cloud or third party data centers. There are many advantages over maintaining your own, and now that costs have come down drastically, it makes more sense to move all possible workloads to the cloud. Here are a few of those advantages:

Location

While you might be able to serve your customers from your in house data center, nothing will beat the performance of a data center that is local to your customer. Los angeles colocation provides significantly improved performance over serving those same customers from another location.

Infrastructure

Larger data centers will have significantly better power systems, backup power, cooling and network performance. Even internet bandwidth will be cheaper and faster. One of the biggest though is that you will get around the clock support and monitoring by staff.

Provisioning

The ability to bring up server resource almost instantly on demand can only really be appreciated when you need to do it. Even for something like los angeles web hosting, a simple selection, confirmation will have it ready for access in minutes. The same can be done for servers, virtual servers and even high performance computing.

Rack Alley is a provider of colocation services, including server hosting los angeles.

 

2 Simple Ways to Save a Webpage

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There are two simple ways by which you can save webpages as a single files. One of them is to save it as a PDF or a .mth/.mhtml file.

Before we proceed, it must be pointed out that while they will not look exactly as the webpage, they do come pretty close. Also, what must be kept in mind is that you’ll have lesser reading options when it comes to latter type of file as opposed to the PDF format.

Now, both these techniques will work in all popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer.

In particular, Chrome makes this task very simple where you have to hit Ctrl+P with the particular page loaded. Also, click ‘Change’ in the Destination section where you will find the Save as PDF option along with a list of printers.

As for Internet Explorer and Firefox, you can still pull the print menu but the only problem is that you don’t have a Save to PDF option. However, this can solved by getting a print-to-PDF program that will interface with Windows as a print driver. While there are a few options available, the Bullzip PDF Printer is free and quick to download.

Now for the MIME HTML (mhtml) format, Internet Explorer allows you to save it in this format with a simple Ctrl+S where you select .mht from the Save-as-Type pulldown menu.

Since Firefox and Chrome does not support this format, Firefox users can install the Mozilla Archive Format along with Faithful Save and MHT.

For Chrome, type “chrome://flags/” and hit Enter in the browser address field. Look for the option “Save as MHTML”. Now, hit Ctrl+S and select the .mht or mhtml format from the “Save as type” menu.

Things to know before choosing a data center

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Written by: Rack Alley

If you’re choosing a new data center, Los Angeles might have popped up in your list a few times. That’s no coincidence though. A lot of companies will choose an LA data center over others.

Los Angeles colocation

The prime reason for that is the colocation. Colocation is a simple concept; it means sharing your data center with other companies. Now you might think about security issues, but that’s all been taken good care of. The companies are properly isolated from each other. In fact, colocation is a very common practice.

Colocation also addresses the time issue. Usually, setting up a new data center takes a lot of time. This means that if a company wants a data center fast, they’re more likely to find a colocation one.

Los Angeles web hosting

But why choose Los Angeles in the first place. What if price was not an issue?

Los Angeles has grown over the years to become the city to go to for high quality data centers. It has direct access to a lot of high quality network service providers. This makes sure that your data travels in a fast and reliable way.

Los Angeles is also home to a wide network of content delivery networks. Content delivery networks, called CDN, ensures that users worldwide have fast access your website. This is achieved by having servers on strategic parts of the world. These servers will contain a copy of your data, so users closer to the CDN server will use that one.

3 Services That Will Help You Build a Website Easily

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There’s no arguing with having your own online presence in the form of a website despite being able to use Facebook, Tumblr or even Twitter.

The reason why this is so important is because you now have a website that is completely under your control.

Best part: it’s simple to do this as well.

So, here are 3 services that can help you build a website rather easily:

#1: WordPress.com

By using this service, you can easily reduce the amount of coding that might be necessary to especially if you use it via Automattic. Instead of using WordPress itself, Automattic helps you create a WordPress site by hosting it on their servers.

The first thing that you need to do is pick a theme and then start adding posts. The best part about WordPress is that you can create a landing page that visitors can see before they look at your posts.

#2: Tumblr

Tumblr is a blogging platform that is simple to use and which works for both mobiles and PCs. It’s the best option if you want to use your site for short posts, videos or images. Much like WordPress, Tumblr also offers a number of themes – most of which are free of cost but some which cost a few dollars. The only downside is that it gives you less control over your site than other platforms do.

#3: Pancake.io

Among the three options, this one requires you to know a bit about CSS, HTML and JS. There are two ways you can build a site: either by using Jekyll which is the static site generator or by simply uploading files to Dropbox. Between the two, the latter is the simplest option.

Don’t Neglect Data Center Customer Service

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By Rack Alley

It’s never an easy task being the person in charge of hiring on the LA data center that will be handling your company’s business. Obviously, a lot of responsibility is on your shoulders and making the wrong mistake could cost your company a lot of money and ultimately you your job.

So while you may have a long list of things you’re looking for in a server hosting Los Angeles company, don’t forget one of the most important parts: customer service.

LA colocation companies are everywhere and most of them offer all kinds of amazing services in packages that are sure to fit your company and meet your budgetary needs. That’s great! But unfortunately, many of them are missing the customer service component.

Although they’re taking care of a very big chunk of your company’s needs, that doesn’t mean you can just hand over your data to a company and forget about them. You’ll have questions along the way and want to check in. This is all for good reason. Any company that doesn’t respect this and support it should be immediately ruled out or fired.

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When your LA business needs a Los Angeles web hosting company they can rely on, look no further than Rack Alley. They have all the data center services you need, including the all important customer support and redundancy, at a price you can afford. Don’t end up paying for more than what you need with this option so close by.

Hosting Companies Provide Too Many Benefits to Ignore

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By Rack Alley

Running a company in the digital age is certainly no easy task. There are so many options to juggle in terms of optimizing your business. Of course, the majority of them just aren’t worth your time. However, working with the right LA web hosting company always is. So long as you do your homework to pick the best one possible, a hosting company provides far too many benefits to ignore.

One of the main benefits server hosting in Los Angeles gives you is that you don’t have to worry about the overhead that comes with handling this matter in-house. This means paying for the space you need to have all the necessary hardware as well as paying for the utilities necessary to keep them running. Of course, it’s also going to take some sizable paychecks to employ the experts you’ll need to oversee those machines.

Another benefit is that scalability becomes a constant option. Being able to increase or shrink your operation at a moment’s notice is a huge advantage in today’s market. If the economy is working against you, scale down to save money. A hosting company can help you do that at will. On the other hand, if you’re going after a large client, you might need to scale up your operation overnight. Again, an LA hosting company is your best friend.

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Rack Alley provides Los Angeles data center to companies all over the Southern California area. They also handle colocation services and basically anything to do with data centers.