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Labels: free web hosting no ads | free web hosting review | free web hosting reviews
Customer Loyalty for Web Hosts
Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST
Loyal customers are the foundation of almost every business. Going the extra mile to provide outstanding customer service is the first step to customer loyalty. But there is more.
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Upgrade To APACHE 2.0 Web Server
Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST
This quick tutorial will show you how to upgrade your existing Apache installation to the latest version (2.2.0 as the time of writing this tutorial).
Crucial Paradigm Sydney Xen VPS Review
Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:48:43 +1000
(Disclaimer: Aaron W. from Crucial Paradigm emailed me early last week asking for a review on their re-launched Xen VPS plans. So here we go — a review on their Xen VPS after playing with one for a few days.)
Crucial Paradigm is a web hosting/web design company in Sydney, Australia that have both Australian and US based operations (just realised that their office is around 400 metres to where I work). They have been in business for 5 years now, and early this year they launched their virtual dedicated servers service, providing fully managed Xen VPS hosted at the Equinix data centre in Sydney (which is on the same road where I live!)
They have recently re-launched their Xen VPS service. Instead of being fully managed, Crucial Paradigm is now offering them unmanaged with full-management option at extra A$50/month. That has driven down the cost of their base packages. The VPS I am testing now, which is the cheapest on their plan page, has
All that for AUD$29/month, which makes it one of the cheapest virtual dedicated server plans in Australia. I know 10GB of data transfer per month is nothing and some sites can zap through that in a day. AUD$3.50 per excessive GB of transfer is not particular cheap either — but then again this is Australia we are talking about, unfortunately.
You can sign up a Xen VPS account from the plan page, which is integrated with their WHMCS hosting billing system (why oh why do you want a domain name for unmanaged VPS service?!) Anyway, signing up is a breeze after putting in example.com
. I think all sign ups are manually provisioned so there is no instant VPS deployment (although I think WHMCS does have HyperVM provisioning module). My VPS was deployed within an hour anyway as Crucial Paradigm has staff on support 24/7. Pretty good so far.
Note that at the point of signing up, you can choose from a list of available Linux distributions — CentOS 4/5, Debian 3/4, Ubuntu 7.10/8.04, Gentoo 2006 and Fedora Core 6. You can also choose a control panel, some with extra cost — cPanel, DirectAdmin and LxAdmin. More about this later — but for a start I chose a Debian 4 template.
According to Crucial Paradigm’s VPS page, they have pretty impressive physical hardware running the dom0. At the time of writing they are deploying new VPS onto hardware with the following spec:
- 2 x Xeon Quad Core 5410 (8 x 2.33Ghz, 24MB Cache)
- 32GB DDR2 FB-DIMM RAM
- 8+ Enterprise Drives RAID-10
- Dual Redundant Power Supplies
While the physical server has access to 8 CPU cores, the low-end 256MB VPS I’ve got has only access to one according to /proc/cpuinfo
. I think higher plans might have access to more cores. It is not a big issue for me as the bottleneck of most websites is usually not on CPU (if the scripts and database have been tuned properly). Disk I/O performance is usually more critical.
I used methods detailed in this LinuxInsignt article to measure the linear read and seek performance of the hard disk (tested at 9:30pm on Sunday):
# hdparm -tT /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads: 23060 MB in 2.00 seconds = 11555.72 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 948 MB in 3.01 seconds = 315.39 MB/sec
# seeker /dev/sda1
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15, http://www.linuxinsight.com/how_fast_is_your_disk.html
Benchmarking /dev/sda1 25000MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 141 seeks/second, 7.05 ms random access time
Result is pretty good. However I do personally find “performance testing” under the VPS environment is a bit less than useful because it all depends on how much resource your neighbours are using at the same time. Take disk read test for example, the result is different everytime, although it is usually between 200MB/sec to 315MB/sec.
I am happy to say that Crucial Paradigm is offering a very solid virtual dedicated server.
Crucial Paradigm’s Xen VPS is connected to a 100mbps port with pretty good connectivity. First of all it peers with PIPE networks which means pretty good speed for many broadband users in NSW. I also get quick downloads from inter-state mirrors. For example 3.5MB/sec from mirror.aarnet.edu.au in Queensland.
Best of all, it has very sweet latency for NSW users. 20ms average from my ADSL-connected home to my testing VPS, consider the first hoop is already 18 milliseconds!
There are now over 30+ hosting companies providing virtual private/dedicated servers in Australia. The question is — what sets Crucial Paradigm apart?
Xen VPS. You’ll find most Australian VPS providers go with Virtuozzo-based service, and those that use Xen are few, although Xen itself is free (whereas Virtuozzo costs). I have nothing against Parallels but I do personally prefer Xen as it is more dedicated-like.
Check my previous article on Xen vs. OpenVZ on why I prefer one rather than the other.
Affordable entry cost. What attracts me first to VPS is its price tag — it costs way less than a full brown dedicated server and yet it feels and behaves like one. Looking at the list of providers in Australia, not many of them can offer you a VPS for less than AUD$30 per month, so that Aussie Linux geeks can have a “cheap root” somewhere Down Under.
Crucial Paradigm, GPLHost, and Labyrinth Data are the only ones I can find so far. Interestingly they are all Xen providers. Crucial Paradigm and Labyrinth Data’s low-end plans are pretty much on-par. CP’s one has more memory and offers plans scale all the way to 4GB RAM, but LD’s has more disk space, free WAIX traffic, etc.
HyperVM VPS Management. I won’t say HyperVM is revolutionary, but it is indeed unique amongst Australian VPS providers. If you check out the VPS hosting offers section at WHT, you will find around 1/2 of the new providers are using HyperVM and OpenVZ. The reason is simple — you don’t have to code your own VPS management suite and at 50 cents/VPS/month it is probably the most economical solution for new providers.
HyperVM is actually not too bad. I do prefer custom panels from SliceHost and Linode and found HyperVM too cluttered (icons everywhere giving you too much information). However it is powerful and it gives customers everything to shoot themselves in the foot. You can manage multiple nodes from a single installation.
Why there’s no other Australian providers offering HyperVM-based solution is really beyond me. At least Crucial Paradigm is taking the lead here.
Another point related to HyperVM is LxAdmin, LxLabs’ light weight web hosting control panel that is free with HyperVM-powered VPS, that I have reviewed here. LxAdmin has evolved since I last reviewed it last June. Instead of 100 free domains you now only get to host 40 domains, but it has also added a lot more functionality that makes it a more complete end-to-end web hosting package. It even integrates with WHMCS that Crucial Paradigm says is “free” on their plan page.
Why am I bringing LxAdmin up? In fact after a few hours my Debian VPS was up, I wiped it clean and installed CentOS 5 + LxAdmin template. The LxAdmin template has everything you need to get web hosting up and running — web server, DNS server, mail server, IMAP server, control panel, etc. Basically you can start hosting your sites or your clients’ sites straight away — why needs cPanel and DirectAdmin? You might swap out Lighttpd for Apache though for compatibility, and 256MB RAM is more than sufficient to run Apache + LxAdmin.
This is again something I have been wondering, as due to abundant budget VPS over there in US, LxAdmin/Host-In-A-Box has raised in popularity due to its cost and memory usage. No one in Australia seems to care about it but I am glad that Crucial Paradigm brought it in as the low-cost solution to run your own small hosting shop.
After playing around with a testing VPS for a few days, I can say that Crucial Paradigm has launched some very solid Xen VPS packages. While VPS providers are getting crowded in Australia, Crucial Paradigm managed to differentiate itself from the competitions by providing a low entry-level price tag plus a powerful server management control panel (HyperVM). By offering a free web hosting control panel (LxAdmin) and a free billing system (WHMCS), I think this VPS will be very appealing to small hosting shops or web design/publishing shops.
Will I host with Crucial Paradigm? Maybe, but definitely not at this stage. Bandwidth in Australia is still way too expensive. Unless you are a big bandwidth buyer, you usually have to pay $3-$4 per gigabyte transferred. Crucial Paradigm also lacks a community feeling on its site — where do their customers hang out?! I guess most individual/small business customers won’t care, but as a developer I do look out for signs of forums and active blogs to see how lively the community is (which usually reflects how good the service is).
All the best to Aaron and team.
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Verio Launches VPS Hosting Plans
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST
June 3, 2008 -- ( <http://www.thewhir.com> WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Managed hosting provider Verio announced Tuesday it has launched new virtual private server hosting plans targeting resellers and small-to-medium sized businesses that have outgrown their current shared hosting solutions.
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Also, in order for your visitor to easily access your site by name, you will need a domain name such as yourname.com.
Godaddy Coupons Codes
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:05:00 -0600
Godaddy coupon codes updated almost daily. You can also check for some domain names tips and how to use godaddy coupons. Also includes some videos about godaddy.
Ixwebhosting unlimited web space
Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:39:59 +0000
It might not make sense on the price time hearing this, unlimited web space on your ixwebhosting plan. Ixwebhosting had upgraded their shared hosting plans, and now all three hosting packages come with unlimited web space: expert plan, business plus, unlimited pro.
Not only unlimited web space, its also unlimited monthly bandwidth. Previously, only the highest ...]
Sometimes you will be given a dedicated server or a VPS and you won't know exactly which flavor or distribution of Linux it is running.
One way that your password can easily land in the wrong hands is when you use words only without any numbers or signs. Sophisticated spyware can these days detect words used in passwords remotely. This is why it is important to make every effort to ensure that the passwords you use are secure. Ideally they should also not be too short. At least 8 characters or more is recommended.
Selling your web host business - Act I
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:31:00 -0400
First we will start with an alert---because timing can be everything.
Marbles… One of the most important parts of any transaction is how many marbles you get to keep. If you are considering selling your company in 2008, 2009 or 2010 please run down (not just trott, put off til' tomorrow...I said RUN) to your tax accountant. If it would be a stock sale, which frankly you really don’t know today, you could be in trouble.
Why? The Bush tax reductions will soon start to evaporate, specifically the long term capital gain treatment which expires December 31, 2008 ---- yes a short 10 months away. In a stock transaction it could cost you another 5% in taxes.
Well it is only 5% some people may say. Yes but it takes almost 7% to make that up after paying taxes on the incremental amount you need to cover the poor timing.
So if you are considering selling in 2008 you should start earlier than later. And if you are considering 2009 ---- think again.
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Google Adwords Guide I
Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST
What do you need to know about Adwords? Adwords is a way to spend a lot of money on advertising very very fast. BUT - Adwords is also a way to spend marketing money very selective to a targeted audience.
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