Every successful business has its niche -  (a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fit). Marketing materials are carefully written to emphasize a business’s strengths and their competitor’s weaknesses. A great example that comes to mind was one brand of typesetter which was capable of producing point sizes in tenths of an inch (unique to that brand).

Another was capable of zooming horizontally independent of vertical - in one percent increments (great for Rx labels). When the time came to upgrade or renew leases, thousands of existing documents had been produced using their unique parameters. To maintain uniformity, all new bids had to confirm to those same standards – effectively locking that client into their brand. In document imaging, one brand of copier can produce banner advertisements. Another can direct print PDF documents without opening them first. My point? There is a niche unique to your industry. Have you identified your niche, and are you marketing what makes your products and services unique?

The niche doesn’t have to be technical in nature
A niche could be how fast you deliver, the quality of your work, the level of support you provide, your pre-sales advertising venues, and any number of other things – anything that sets you apart from your competition. In web hosting, most niches relate to more bang for the buck – in bandwidth, RAM, disk space, add-ons and so forth.

The Web Hosting Industry
The web hosting industry is fiercely competitive, just as in many other industries. Web hosting continues to be a mystery to most new entrepreneurs though, even as prospects are rapidly becoming more computer and Internet savvy.  My own grandchildren are extremely Internet savvy, but couldn’t tell you the difference between Linux and Windows, or ASP and PHP.  Most prospects understand the need for an online presence, but are lost when it comes to how to select a decent provider.

Branding
In terms of mass appeal, branding is paramount. Here again, an integral piece of branding is your niche.  I can think of a few web hosting providers who own their niche, not financially, but in the mindset of prospects, just as Kleenex and Xerox own their niche.  If I were to ask someone if they’ve heard of your company, would they be like, “Yeah, they’re highly recommended,” or “Never heard of them.”  Getting from Point ‘Unknown” to Point “Highly Recommended” requires more than competing with similar packages, which I see a lot of online. When prospects compare your website against all the other sites they’ve just visited, is there anything that definitively sets you apart?

I was talking to one of my friends a few weeks back - just before she was to give a business presentation about paper. I know – exciting stuff. Anyway, she was a little apprehensive, as a lot of us are just prior to addressing large groups of prospects.

This was a presentation to a local IAAP (administrative assistant professionals) meeting addressing how to keep costs down, new products, workplace wellness, and how her company could help them. I knew she’d be fine because she’s a pro.

After the presentation, she wrote, “I have to tell you, the “No matter what kind of job you have, we have the paper for it” and the toilet paper has been a big hit and icebreaker.  I’ve had to leave it for people who weren’t in – I’ve gotten phone calls from people that heard about it.  I tell them it’s the sample of the month and their smile for the day!

I don’t know if she used a story board to compile her main point of view, but she did have hand-outs that definitely broke the ice – the tension between her prospects and herself. And those hand-outs were relevant to her business.

She engaged her audience and made them part of the experience.

Involve your prospects in the process - A large part of giving successful business presentations is involving your prospects in the process – asking questions, looking for a show of hands or positive response. Get out from behind the podium and move about – be accessible, make periodic eye contact, pause for effect and emphasis – take command so that all eyes are upon you.

Pattern your presentation to resemble a conversation. Look at your audience as you would in normal conversation, pausing at the end of your points to allow your audience to process what you’ve just said.

My wife is an instructor and excellent communicator. She’s always telling me to touch my prospects senses of sight, smell, taste, feel and hearing. Appealing to their senses engages their emotions. Give your presentation so that your audience will see, smell, taste, feel and hear what you’re saying.

The presentation itself - In the body of your presentation, tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them. And know what you’re telling them – have it down cold, meaning don’t read – let your words flow naturally. And smile – be excited.

Way way back, in the ’80s, I had to give a four hour presentation to a prospect in a bid situation. I knew the content inside out, but dragged my wife into the living room the night before and rehearsed the entire presentation with her. I still believe that preparation helped me win the bid – for a whopping $152,000.00 (including service).

What to avoid - This is a touchy subject. Have you ever filmed yourself giving a presentation? You won’t believe it’s really you on the playback.

• Avoid fillers – ahs, uhs and extended silence.
• Avoid nervous habits like scratching your head.
• Avoid concentrating on one section of your audience – spread the wealth around.
• Avoid excessive hand gestures.
• And don’t turn your back on your audience.

Call to action - Every successful marketing campaign has a ‘call to action.” That could be an offer that’s exclusive to your presentation, or to a deadline set by upper management. Combining value and urgency drives sales campaigns. A  call to action can be as simple as moving the sale forward by setting up appointments, up to signing contracts for immediate discounts or freebies.

Revised Oct 21, 2011

Private versus Public Cloud Solutions
Let’s face it, there are BILLIONS of dollars invested in existing IT infrastructure. As more and more enterprise vendors step into the cloud arena, will business in general migrate to the public cloud or opt instead to keep much of their investment in legacy code and custom applications in-house via a private cloud?

The future of cloud computing is up in the air (pun intended)
At this point, we don’t really know how cloud technology is going to shake out. Even if cloud technology gets huge, there’s likely to be a split between private and public clouds for the foreseeable decade. I think as the industry matures, you’ll see commodity services migrate to the public cloud and mission-critical stuff linger in a private cloud.

OK, so what is cloud computing?
Essentially, cloud computing is simply another way of delivering computing resources to run websites and web applications. It allows clients to scale their operations, horizontally and vertically, based on the demands of their users, while ensuring that there are adequate resources to support their apps. You can think of it as technology services delivered on-demand.

Traditional web hosting services are offered in packages with set limits on disk space and data transfer, so as traffic fluctuates, data and transfer needs vary resulting in excess, unused capacity during lean times.

Who could benefit from Cloud Services?
Essentially, everyone could benefit from cloud technology. Businesses that experience seasonal spikes, especially eCommerce retailers, where 80+ percent of their business peaks during holiday seasons, are prime candidates for cloud services.Cloud computing offers those businesses enough services to meet their increased traffic demands, then the option to scale back after the holidays, aligning their operating costs with revenue.

Taking the lead from the BIG vendors
Nearly all of the BIG vendors, from Microsoft to HP and IBM to CISCO, are talking cloud, with most listing their top two priorities as virtualization and cloud computing (virtualization is a cloud enabler). Google and Amazon already host public clouds while vendors like EMC are promoting solutions that virtualize existing servers and storage (private cloud).

Types of private versus public cloud solutions
As the following graphic from Microsoft highlights, there are choices to both private and public cloud services. Of course, these are not all inclusive. In the following months, I’ll address different cloud scenarios, demystifying some of the confusion about what cloud services really offer

Keywords are words in the content of your website that are relevant to what prospects would be searching for in Google and Bing queries – leading them to your site. Long tailed keywords are three and four word keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever product or service you’re selling. I prefer to call them keywords, then keyword phrases, and finally – extended keyword phrases.

Why are long tailed keywords or extended keyword phrases important?
When prospects use extended keyword phrases in search queries, they tend to know exactly what they’re looking for, which makes it so much more likely that they’ll buy whatever you’re selling once they find your site.

An example – if your business sells exclusive hair products not found in the major chain stores, search queries for shampoo would lead prospects to millions of results – but probably none of them yours. The search query is simply too general.  And the catch here is that if that prospect is searching for shampoo, they’re probably not a good prospect for your product anyway. Using shampoo as a keyword in Google AdWords will probably cost you a ton in advertising dollars, with little return on your investment.

But if you sell Brocato hair products, a search query for Brocato Volumizing Tonic will rank much higher in the search engines, improving your visibility to the world – and in turn, increase your sales.

Taking extended keyword phrases one step further
To capture discriminating shoppers, you should be creating pages based on extended keyword phrases. If you’re a Salon, Car Repair Shop or Web Hosting Provider, there are hundreds of variations of extended keyword phrases that you could use to create unique pages. Each of these pages should have its own title, description meta tag, H1 header tag and content that emphasizes your product or service.

A word of caution
Don’t go overboard on extended keyword phrases or you may SPECIFIC yourself out of business. Of course, if you have 500 visitors to your site looking for shampoo versus 100 visitors searching for Brocato products, which would you prefer? Site analytics have to be matched to conversion ratios.

How do you know what extended keyword phrases to focus on?
The key here, really, is how to determine which extended keyword phrases have sufficient traffic for you to target. Research is paramount. Fortunately, there are tons of programs available. A recent search on Bing for Keyword Analysis Tools returned over 34 million results!

In today’s competitive global marketplace, it is essential to ensure that your customers can see you at any time, day or night. Even short outages impact your business.

System monitoring services provide everything from simple to very advanced server, network and website monitoring and reporting services with a fast, effective and automated method for checking a variety of services. Whether you are monitoring a single server or hundreds of servers distributed around the world, these packages make it easy to manage your monitoring configuration and view real-time monitoring data.

The number and types of services that monitoring packages track varies, but most offer at least three monitors that are checked in varying intervals (generally one to fifteen minutes).

These services and others should be a part of your disaster recovery and business continuity plan.

Advanced Solutions

If your business depends on your online presence, you need an advanced solution that monitors your entire online infrastructure. Today’s websites are becoming increasingly complex, incorporating dynamic content derived from multiple sources, backend web services, email, chat and other communication mechanisms.

There are lower end packages offered FREE, as well as advanced options that track your entire infrastructure.  Some of the services most commercial packages track are HTTP and HTTPS, POP and Secure POP, IMAP and Secure IMAP, SMTP and Secure SMTP, DNS, FTP, SSH, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server databases, RTSP streaming media, ICMP ping, and arbitrary TCP/IP ports.

Options

The types of options offered are generally shorter intervals between monitoring, the number of monitoring locations, alerts by email, additional monitors, web page content filtering, HTTP password protection monitoring, monthly reports, online statistics, a control panel, DNS monitoring, public statistics, ping monitoring, alert failure limit, custom time zones, error details, web server monitoring, POP3 and SMTP email server monitoring, FTP server monitoring, multiple alert contacts, XML/RSS statistics and a statistics download.

With some you can create user accounts with restricted access. With others you can follow 301 or 302 redirects and monitor the resulting web page.

How far back can monitoring statistics and reports be archived?

Free plans are typically only archived for a few months, but with most packages, detailed statistics can be archived forever.

What about failover?

With many packages, their monitoring infrastructure is architected to withstand failure of any component. If one monitoring node is inaccessible, checks begin immediately from a alternate node and continue until the original node returns to service so that your servers never go unmonitored.

Intelligent Services

Some packages can actually analyze your online presence and intelligently determine the services that need to be monitored. Even with the most basic of online businesses, there can be 15 or more critical services that can impact your business.

What is it you need to know and why?

You need to know the status of your network (network performance) and availability every single minute so you can react immediately to any service disruption. It’ s always better to know first before your clients starting calling with issues. Monitoring packages also help determine hosting company’s compliance with their Service Level Agreements.  (SLA)

False Positives

Are these packages failsafe? False positives have been a problem with some packages, but as global resources become more affordable, confirmation of service outages has become more reliable.

Other uses for monitoring packages

You can extract sales and marketing data about the quality of your infrastructure

Use the same tools to gain more knowledge about the infrastructure of your competitors.

Use as evidence with suppliers of your infrastructure.

As a manager

As a manager you may already have tools for monitoring your infrastructure from the inside, but these packages give insight to the end-user experience. You’ll not only be able to properly analyze the availability of your company’s services and estimate lost revenue, but you’ll also have the information you need to make demands on external network and service providers if they’re not living up to your expectations, or their SLAs.

What are some the packages available?

• NPG   Network Management and Monitoring
• Panopta
• Pingdom   Pingdom Web site monitoring for 100% uptime. Measure your downtime.
• AlertSite   Web Site Monitoring and Web Performance Management Solutions From AlertSite
• Internet Uptime Monitor   Internet Uptime Monitor – Monitoring Server Software for Your Website
• Hyperspin   Hyperspin Website Monitoring, Web Server Monitoring Service
• Site Uptime   SiteUptime – Website Monitoring Service
• Alertra   Alertra Website Monitoring Service
• Uptime Auditor   Uptime Auditor – Check if your website is online now!
• ezwebsitemonitoring   EZ Website Monitoring • Free Keyword Tracking & Uptime Checking
• ServerMojo   Remote server monitoring – check your dedicated or virtual server uptime and get notifications for free – servermojo.com!
• Nagios   Nagios – The Industry Standard in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
• Cacti   Cacti: The Complete RRDTool-based Graphing Solution
• Zenoss  Zenoss Open Source Server and Network Monitoring – Core and Enterprise
• PRTG   PRTG Network Monitor – intuitive network monitoring software
• MRTG   Network Admins’ favorite free tools – Scrutinizer and MRTG
• Hyperic   Systems Monitoring, Server Monitoring & Systems Management Software | Hyperic
• Webmetrics   Website Monitoring, Load Testing & Web Performance Management | Webmetrics

Is your in-house IT department prepared – for brown outs, black outs, personnel shortages, ISP issues, internal and external sabotage, equipment failures, new regulations (email retention) and a whole host of other issues?

Recently, an Internet forum with – thousands of members was hacked, and in the process the criminals deleted their backups, stole email and credit card information, then disseminated it across the Internet. Could this happen to your in-house network? Hackers are constantly on the prowl looking for openings to exploit internal networks as well. Is yours protected?

How would you as an owner know if your IT department was prepared? Do you have disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place? Are they routinely reviewed and updated? Do you strategize with your IT personnel, or do they basically run the show? If they said you needed to be PCI DSS compliant, would you know what they were talking about?

Managing IT for multiple departments requires some give and take - Is your IT department empowered to make smart decisions? Not all IT geeks are business savvy, so my question to you would be, “Do your departments talk to each other?” HR certainly has unique requirements, as do Sales, Customer Support and Admin. Do they operate in a vacuum or together as a cohesive unit? An appropriate amount of give and take between departments increases awareness of your business’s core focus and mission.

Run anti-spyware and anti-malware programs, and keep them up-to-date. I’ve installed Microsoft Security Essentials on all of my systems and it works great. Don’t mix anti-virus software on your system. This is a recipe for disaster. I had Malwarebytes and MSE on my Vista desktop and it constantly locked up. Once I removed MSE, no more lock ups.

Disable file indexing. Indexing extracts data from every file on your hard drive to create a searchable keyword index. The idea is sound – it allows you to search for words or phrases inside of documents, but it’s also VERY resource intensive.

Add additional memory. Memory executes in nanoseconds, while hard drives run in milliseconds, even at 15,000 rpm. Obviously, the more fast memory you have, the less often your system will have to access your slow hard drive. The same applies to CPU cache. A larger CPU cache adds another layer of speed to your system.

Not all systems use the same configuration of RAM modules. Check your motherboard manual or specs – find out the maximum RAM you can install and in what configuration.

Run a monthly disk cleanup. Temporary files can take up Gigabytes of space if allowed to accumulate over time – so schedule a monthly disk cleanup to delete these files. And even though a debate rages over rather to defragment large hard drives, in testing this has demonstrated performance boosts.

Streamline start up programs. Eliminate any programs you don’t really need from your start up routine.

Downsize programs via the Control Panel. Use the ADD/REMOVE Programs from within the control panel to delete programs you no longer need or use. Many of them run background processes that drain your systems resources. For example, if you’re using Windows Media 10 or 11, do you really need RealPlayer?

Perform Windows Updates regularly. Pay particular attention to critical and security updates.

Miscellaneous Stuff. Do you really need drivers for printers that are no longer attached to your desktop or on your network? Erase them. And do you really need 3000 fonts? Unless you’re a graphic artist, trim down the one’s you’ll never use.

Virtual private servers (VPS) – have historically offered some middle ground between shared web hosting services and dedicated hosting services, both in control and cost, but recently the gap in cost between virtual and dedicated servers has diminished … making upgrades from shared to dedicated web hosting very attractive.

A virtual private server separates you from – other customers on a physical web server, running on a copy of its own operating system, but it shares CPU and RAM resources of the physical web server with other VPSs running on that server.

A dedicated server, on the other hand, is – a physical web server leased and controlled by the end client, without sharing physical CPU and RAM resources with other sites. Its very much like owning your own server, without the huge capital asset investment.

Most hosts offer a mix of unmanaged versus managed services for dedicated servers. Unmanaged plans typically offer the basics – the hardware, operating system, control panel and Internet connection.

In a VPS, a single physical server is partitioned – so that it appears as multiple servers. The physical server boots normally, then runs a program to boot each VPS within a virtualization environment.

There are two kinds of virtualizations – software and hardware based. Software based environments share the same kernel and require the main node’s resources. In a web hosting environment, quota incrementing and decrementing in real time is possible without restarting the node. In a hardware based virtualization, real hardware resources are partitioned, eliminating burst or real time quota modification. This lends to a (potentially) more secure environment.

With a dedicated server, you have – more flexibility and control. Dedicated servers have historically been the server of choice for complex business or high end eCommerce sites, but have recently become very popular substitutes for VPS servers and less complex solutions.

Dedicated servers housed in data centers offer – redundant power sources, HVAC sytems, state of the art security and advanced performance services.

The bottom line: Moving websites from a shared environment to either a VPS or dedicated server is a significant event. Its a major upgrade in the IT infrastructure supporting your business. Whereas the move from shared to dedicated was historically cost-prohibitive, and VPS offered some middle ground, technology has rapidly evolved to narrow that gap.

Upgrading should be based on more than cost

Upgrading your IT technology, in this case to VPS or dedicated is now a business decision based on more than cost. It’s based on resources you control that will map your business success for years or decades.

With the price gap narrowing, dedicated services are rapidly becoming the plan of choice for business savvy entreprenuers.

Updated April 1 2011 – This is still HIGHLY relevant. See this story.

December 2009 – I just read an article this afternoon about the fastest growing security threat in the hosting industry. Apparently this threat has grown over a hundred fold in just the last year alone. What is it?

SQL Injection

Why have SQL injection attempts grown so dramatically? It was pointed out, and I agree, because the bad guys are using (very sophisticated) automated tools. More and more, we’re seeing attempts not only to be disruptive, rather to be focused on identity theft. Anyone remember Heartland Payment Systems and TJX?

Who is Susceptible?

Certainly, if you’re processing lots of credit cards, you need to guard against SQL injection, but even if you aren’t, this exploit needs to be addressed. I did a quick Google search for SQL injection prevention and stumbled upon an SQL Injection Cheat Sheet at http://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet. Since most SQL injection exploits are due to lax coding and poor application design practices, prevention measures like those outlined on this site can significantly minimize your risk of being compromised.

From Owasp.org

“SQL Injection flaws are introduced when software developers create dynamic database queries that include user supplied input. To avoid SQL injection flaws is simple. Developers need to either:
a) stop writing dynamic queries; and/or
b) prevent user supplied input which contains malicious SQL from affecting the logic of the executed query.”

Web design has become a hot topic recently (updated)

Everywhere you look, there’s advice on what works and what doesn’t work in web design (including coding for SEO). While the intent of websites is to convey information, the design of your site weighs heavily whether anyone will actually find and read your content. If you’re running ecommerce, design becomes critical.

Users spend most of their time on OTHER websites
Their experiences on other websites form their expectations for YOUR website. Take some time to research what others in your industry are posting. Your competitor may market inferior products and services, but still outsell you online. Why? The perceived value of their products and services may be enhanced because of the way they’re presented online.

What turns users OFF?

• Excessive use of flash
• Poor navigation
• Excessive use of animated GIFs
• Obtrusive background images
• Unreadable font and background color combinations
• Clutter
• Blinking or scrolling text
• Blatant keyword stuffing
• Irrelevant content based on their search query
• Broken links
• Splash pages with no important information
• Internal links that pop up in new windows
• Itty bitty type points
• No way back to the previous page
• No way back to the home page
• More than 2 or 3 consecutive words in ALL CAPS
• For ecommerce – NO PRICING
• Poor grammar
• Audio with no OFF option or auto loading
• Loooooooooooong paragraphs
• Embarrassing misspellings
• Slooooooooooooow page loading times

What turns users ON?
This ties directly to what users become accustomed to on other sites. You don’t have to spend thousands on design work – just enough to give you an edge or a niche. Of course, these help:

• Effective use of flash
• Fast page load times
• Appropriate amount of white space
• Relevant content based on search query
• For ecommerce – PRICING
• Inuitive navigation
• Unique theme with READABLE font and background color combinations
• Professionally written content
• Easy to get from Point “Search Query” to Point “Buy”

Recommendations

• If your plan is to make money from advertising, then go for a ratio of not less than 70-80% editorial to 20-30% advertising.
• Avoid pop up windows unless it’s for a feature like LiveChat.
• Compress your images to increase your load times.
• Don’t make any line of text longer than 500 pixels. Longer lines of text make it difficult for the viewer to scan back to the next line.
• Increase your leading (the space between lines) to at least 1.5. This will help readibility.
• Don’t underline words if they’re not hyperlinks, and do use color/descriptive words to highlight links.
• Test your links frequently to assure they’re functioning correctly.
• Don’t hotlink to other sites (other than your own).

Successful websites, in other words – sites that receive lots of relevant traffic, incorporate measured amounts of white space to:

• Ensure legibility & readability
• Enhance attractiveness & professional image, and
• Solidify brand awareness 

Cross Industry Tips
White space is any space that isn’t occupied by other visible elements. This can be the space between characters, words, lines, paragraphs, images and sections of your website. Whereas the direct mail industry leans to big, bold and in-your-face (minimal white space) because that’s what works for them, this strategy doesn’t transcend well to websites.

The newspaper industry has a term called “above the fold.” I used to be newspaper reporter (long ago), for a small weekly published in Pensacola, FL. In terms of value, everything on the front page was gold. Who wants their story buried 6 pages back? Websites share that dilemma as well. Everything displayed without scrolling attributes to first impressions.

Whitespace Balance
While a large part of the battle is just getting prospects to your site, the next battle is keeping them there. If you use too little white space, your site may appear cluttered, and too much white space, seem empty. White space is an important facet of a website’s design, as it compliments your site’s content, helping to emphasize your products or services.

White space helps navigation
Active white space, or white space that’s intentionally added, can help visitors to your site navigate easier, by providing structure for your navigation bar, content, header and footer. Content that is structured and follows a predictable pattern throughout your site helps visitors find the information that brought them to your site from search queries or other marketing strategies.

Passive white space, on the other hand is not so clearly defined. Some say it’s the product of poor layout design. Others contend it’s more about modifying space to improve the readability of your content – type family, letter spacing, line length and leading (space between the lines). These tie directly to readability and legibility.

Readability and Legibility
You can have the best, well thought out and researched content, but if it’s not easily readable, your visitors will move on to other sites. If your selection of color schemes – font versus background colors clash, your visitors will move on to other sites. If you write in long unbroken blocks of text, your visitors will …. you get the point!

An example – which is easier to read?

Hard copy newspapers are expected to have dense content, but they still need to be readable. Websites, on the other hand, need an industry specific blend or balance of white space. Generally, the more upscale your product is, the more white space is used to portray its value. Overlaying images of  products on your website with cluttered or in-your-face bold text diminishes the perception of its value.

How does white space brand your product or service?

My recommendation
First, research what your competitors are presenting online. Why? Because your visitors either just came from their site, or will visit their site after leaving yours. Comparison shopping on the Internet has never been easier. What will set your site apart, aside from your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? Optimizing your site for the right balance of white space may not seem important, but image or the perception of value is so much more important than it used to be. Selling on price alone rarely works long term. Branding your business image helps you own your niche in the industry.

I bought a memory enhancement program in the mid 90′s to correct for what I thought was memory leakage. I noticed my computer running slower and slower, even after defragging my huge (60MB+) hard drive. That technology has improved over the years, but memory leakage issues still persist.

Memory leakage can cause serious problems
While most memory leakage is quite small and doesn’t present any serious problem in and of itself, the accumulated effect of running programs for hours on end can compound problems, sometimes leading to disastrous results.

So what is memory leakage, exactly, and how can we resolve it?
My original understanding was that certain programs, when closed, did not release their allotted space in memory – thus reducing the amount of memory available to other problems. Memory leakage is so much more complex than that. A slight bug in one program might interact with some other program causing increased allocations of memory until some program crashes (not necessarily the program with the leak). As a consumer, how would you know where to begin to isolate the cause? I’m not a developer, as I suspect most of us aren’t. Debugging code is best suited for the programmer geeks. I started my quest for answers with searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia
In computer science, a memory leak is a particular type of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program where the program fails to release memory when no longer needed.

• From Google – over 3.4 million results
• From Bing – over 8.1 million results
• From Yahoo – over 10.6 million results

I don’t really have time to search through 22 million results, so I’ll highlight a few results here.

Some contributing causes of serious memory leaks

• Leaks inside the operating system itself
• Leaks in system critical drivers
• Leaks in embedded devices
• Leaks in programming languages
• Leaks where programs are able to request memory that hasn’t been released, even when the program terminates

Memory Managers
Most memory managers can recover memory that has become unreachable (if it’s unreachable it retains no value), but they normally cannot free memory that remains reachable. And it’s worth noting that there are levels of reach ability – with strong or weak references. Add to that, every system has a finite amount of memory anyway, so if a memory leak is not contained (possibly by a reboot), it will eventually cause problems.

A simple Google search for Memory Management Programs returned over 68 million results. Yipes! A word of caution – many of these programs are outdated and in fact, produce some overhead of their own.

If you have a recommended program, please share its strengths and weaknesses with us here.

Is your mission critical data backed up and protected?

A quick Google search for remote backup software returned 6,810,000 results. I’d say that’s significant. I think everyone agrees that mission critical data needs to be backed up, but how is debatable. In the hundreds of businesses I’ve serviced over the years, most in-house IT departments used DAT tapes. Very few actually physically removed those tapes from their premises every day. Even fewer remotely backed up their data. So maybe the better question to ask would be, “To what degree is your mission critical data backed up and protected?”

As an ex-RMA Manager (for a local networking firm), I witnessed quite a few defective DAT drives doing hard time on my shelves. I’ve also seen my share of managers scrambling to recover lost data following “unscheduled events” like virus contamination or hacks. Do you think it can’t happen to you? Keeping your fingers crossed isn’t the wisest strategy to ensure your business’s continued success.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are Important
I always recommend incorporating comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans, then periodically reviewing their effectiveness. One part of that plan should be remote offsite backups. Very often, incorporating a remote backup is as easy as downloading a software client onto your network server or personal computer. Many have setup wizards to walk you through the steps of connecting to the backup server, setting up your backup sets, creating a backup schedule and setting a secret encryption key. Typically, backup sets can be configured to run in a variety of ways – backing up data files at the end of the week or your My Documents folder multiple times per day.

Remote backups traveling across the Internet need to be encrypted so that you and only you have the ability to decrypt your data. I recommend programs that use DES, Triple-DES, Blowfish or Twofish algorithms for encryption.

Measuring the success of the data transfer is important. Look for programs with email notification of successful backups or backups with warnings (with log files attached).

Once your data is remotely backed up
Ok, you’ve backed up your data, but now have a need for one file, or an entire volume of data from two months ago. Is this possible? Simply answered – Yes. There are programs that allow instant access to any version of your data files, from the initial backup to the last incremental backup and EVERY version in between.

Locking down clients
Locking down clients simply refers to implementing procedures to protect critical backup sets from being accidentally changed or deleted, while flexible enough for administers to view and change those settings that control the level of usage each client is offered.

When to backup?
Most organizations schedule backups in the evening, during lulls in their business operations. Some programs allow you to run in silent modes (in the background) without displaying any Windows or Task Bar icons – allowing you to run backups throughout the day.

What if my backup gets interrupted?
Let’s say you start a backup and you lose power. Will the remote server retain the ongoing transfer, or bite the bullet? Features like event managers allow you to resume interrupted backups.

Does remote backup software offer file filters?
Most do offer file filters that allow you to include or exclude files from the backup selection, mostly via file extensions.

Just the tip of the iceberg
There are so many things that can and do go wrong in business every day. One thing is for sure – if you have hardware, particularly IT hardware, it will go down sooner or later. Power supplies fail, memory modules flake out, hard drives crash, DAT drives melt down – stuff happens. Some issues can be resolved in minutes or hours, but others may take days or weeks.

Backing up your mission critical data is – an integral ingredient to averting disaster, but just the tip of the iceberg in developing and managing a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan that will ensure your business’s continued success. Step back and ask yourself, “What if?” What if a disgruntled employee, possibly a sysadmin, corrupted your main servers, then disappeared? What if your building burnt to the ground? What if that DAT drive refuses to release last night’s tape – holding it hostage with a strangle hold on its recording heads? What if? What if?

RAID is NOT a back up solution!!

RAID is a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, designed by combining multiple disk drives into an array of disks. Why? To yield performance? Yes. To act as backup? No. Yet, many resellers still mistakenly believe a RAID solution sufficiently protects their data, and neglect to backup their mission critical data remotely or to tape. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of a RAID solution is the MTBF of an individual drive, divided by the number of drives in the array. You’re thinking, “Well, wait a second. This means that the MTBF becomes lower, not higher. How does that help?” Keep reading.

Disk arrays are designed to provide fault tolerance by redundantly storing information in a variety of methods.

RAID-0

RAID-0 is a striping solution. In level 0, data is split across the drives, resulting in higher data throughput.  Performance is enhanced, but the failure of any disk in the array results in data loss.  For improved performance in RAID0 solutions, synchronized spindles are recommended, especially when allocating small stripes. RAID0 solutions provide NO redundancy.

I would only recommend using RAID-O only if the data there is transient, as it WILL be eventually lost. Here especially, maintain remote offsite backups because of the increased risk.

RAID-1

RAID Level 1, on the other hand, does provide redundancy by writing data to two or more drives.  Reads tend to be faster, but writes slower as compared to a single drive, however if either drive fails, no data is lost. This is commonly called mirroring and only requires two drives.

If you have a failure of a single drive in a RAID1 array (either software or hardware) all you would have to is put a new drive in and tell the controller (or the software drivers) to rebuild the array. This is considered replacing a failed drive of an existing RAID array.

RAID1 is not economical past four hard drives. RAID1 OS disks are well worth their expense.

RAID-2

RAID Level 2 is intended for use with drives that don’t have built-in error detection. Unfortunately SCSI drives do support built-in error detection – not a good mix.

RAID-3

RAID Level 3 stripes data at a byte level across several drives, with parity stored on one of the drives.

RAID-4

RAID Level 4 stripes data (at a block level) across several drives, with parity stored on one drive. Parity facilitates recovery from any failed drive. Read times are the same as RAID0 and writes (even though relatively fast), require parity data to be updated each time.

RAID-5

The difference between 4 and 5 is that parity is spread across all drives in the array. Parity is no longer a bottleneck, but reads are slower than RAID-4.  You win some – you lose some.

As the disk count increases in a RAID-5 array, so does the storage efficiency. This is because there is one disk’s worth of redundancy (parity) per array. For example a 3-disk RAID-5 has one disk’s worth of parity and two disk’s worth of usable space, therefore the efficiency is 67%, i.e., 67% of the total disk space is available for user data.

Efficiency = (DiskCount-1) / DiskCount

A degraded RAID-5 is an array with a failed disk. If the user tries to read a block on the failed disk the RAID software will have to access all the other disks in the array to reconstruct that missing data. However if the user tries to read a block on one of the remaining good disks then nothing special happens. The data is simply read from the disk.

RAID -10

RAID10 is a combination of mirroring and striping. Each disk block is completely duplicated on its drives mirror.  If a drive in the RAID10 array dies, data is returned from its mirror drive in a single read with only minor performance reduction. What happens though when you lose the mirror drive during recovery? Ouch!

Still most hard drives failures are related to manufacturing defects, so one pro-active approach is to mirror each drive with one from a different manufacturer’s lot number.  I’m still reading a thread in one forum about massive simultaneous Seagate 1.5TB drive failures. Multiple simultaneous drive failures in any RAID array is not as uncommon as you may think. Think about this. Most companies buy the hard drives they install in servers from preferred vendors, and buy in volume to get discount pricing. If there’s a manufacturing defect in that lot of hard drives, the MTBF of each of those drives is very similar. When one drive fails, does it put a heavier load on the remaining drives in the array? Hard drives have moving parts, thus will eventually wear out. RAID cards do fail as well, but that’s very rare.

RAID arrays provide a buffer to swap drives without powering down, but it’s still very necessary to maintain offsite remote backup in case your server completely crashes. Years ago, I had a client bring in a server that had lightning damage – charred black components – DOA.  Minus a RAID array (in this case, the server was fried – LOL), you can still recover from backups. Downtime is the persuasive consideration, as your customers will notice, thus increasing the likelihood of churn. If your site gets hacked or you accidentally delete half your root partition, RAID will provide no protection.

The common (minimum) configurations are 2 drives in RAID-1 and 4 drives in RAID-10 as that is the most economical setup to get an array benefit. RAID-5 can be provisioned with 3 drives to give you a stripe and a parity drive.

Hardware versus Software RAID Solutions

Software RAID solutions occupy their hosts system memory and CPU resources (system dependent) – degrading overall server performance. Hardware RAID solutions allow the host server to execute user applications while the array adapter’s processor simultaneously executes the array functions.

What about fault tolerance?

Software based solutions generally require a separate boot drive, which is NOT included in the array. If the boot drive is in the array and it fails, the software array will not boot, as it must be read from the disk and executed from resident memory.

Hardware arrays are highly fault tolerant since its array logic is based in hardware, eliminating the need to boot from software.

Horror stories of multiple simultaneous drive failures in RAID arrays

I’ve seen threads pop up in forums, a little more frequently, about multiple simultaneous drive failures in RAID arrays. I recall an episode related to Seagate hard drives. Seagate’s SD1A firmware update, meant to fix problems with its Barracuda 7200.11 models, only managed to make things worse-bricking the drives of those who bothered to install it. They pulled their update pending validation. Barracuda owners who flashed their disks with the firmware found that after they rebooted, they’d receive a system disk failure error message. Backups, if they were stored on the same drive that was flashed, also became unavailable. Wait a moment! Who does backups on the same drive? I saw one analogy that went like this. It’s like installing seat belts in a car, but not allowing you to buckle them until you’ve been thrown through the windshield.

I’ve seen threads from quite a few furious OPs in various forums flaming their hosts because their mission critical data was lost forever because of multiple simultaneous drive failures in a RAID array on their server. When they picked their host, they were on the same forums asking for FREE this and FREE that – lowest cost – yet the data they intended to entrust to that host was mission critical to their business. This whole concept slays me. Your data is your business.

My recommendation

My preference is hot swappable hard drives – always have a hot spare, and if possible a second hot spare. Be sure to back up your data remotely and on tape. One hardcore statistic is that over 80% of companies that have lost their data go out of business within one year. Don’t allow yourself to be part of that statistic. Don’t rely solely on RAID array solutions to protect your data. Make them one part of a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Redundant solutions (remote and tape back ups) should be a vital component of that plan.

What are Raving Fans? According to Ken Blanchard, “Having raving fans means that you have achieved the kind of service excellence that turns a customer into a lifetime customer. A raving fan is an advocate of your products or services in the marketplace.” Ken and Sheldon Bowles co-authored “Raving Fans,” A Revoluntionary Approach to Customer Service. This book is so revoluntionary that one local business in Saint Louis required all of its employees, from sales to warehouse delivery, to read and pass a test about its content.

The core focus of their book is going that extra 1% in everything you do, to ensure each contact with every client is memorable.

If You Don’t Take Care of Your Customers, Someone Else Will
We’ve all heard this phrase before, because it’s so true. In contrast, according to Bain & Company, companies can boost profits as much as 255% by retaining merely 5% more of their existing customers.

In business, we’re all looking for that strategic advantage
Prospects and clients are demanding more than ever, expecting to get what they want, when they want it, and customized to their requirements – at the least expense possible. In the web hosting industry, many providers have resorted to offers of unlimited space and bandwidth at ridiculously low prices (an overselling marketing strategy) to give them a strategic advantage of perception. In the industry, we all realize that “unlimited” is not possible for space and bandwidth, but the perception to the general public is quite different. At odds to these offers are clauses in their respective Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policies that, in fact, prohibit certain types of services, or place ‘real” limits on their offers – but who reads TOS and AUP statements? At odds with the Raving Fans theory, their strategy is to get the prospect in the door, sell them, then deal with overages in space and bandwidth on the backside. It’s no wonder I see so many complaints in forums on the Internet from users who thought they were buying into a fabulous deal, only to have their ‘budget’ host terminate their services.

What is the better strategy?
Is it better to employ strategies to convert prospects at the cost of higher churn, or is it better to manage your prospects expectations, in a manner that makes sense to both their business and yours – that provides a solution to their needs?

Are cold leads or warm leads more profitable?
That’s an easy question to answer. I’m not aware of any sales rep who doesn’t prefer warm leads. Clients who have already bought into your services and products need to be your Raving Fans. They need to be your advocate in the industry. When you improve your client’s satisfaction, you drive repeat business.

Customer Support
Its simply not enough to receive a support ticket, fix the issue on your side, then close the ticket. Why? Support tickets are created by clients who have some issue with your product or service. That specific issue may be very minor or could be critical to their operation. When you’re working on a support ticket, do you make an assumption of revelance, or do you communicate with your client to gain a comprehensive understanding of the issue, from their point of view. Are you professional in those communications? Do you accept responsibility if the problem is on your end? Do you go that extra 1% to assure them that their business is important to you?

Do you want to boost your profit by retaining a larger percentage of your existing clients?
Yes?! It starts by creating a culture of ‘I Care.” I strongly recommend reading “Raving Fans.” Its a little quirky, but very insightful. What do you have to lose – except a few clients? We all want our businesses to boom, in spite of our current state of the nation. Align your business to ensure seamless customer service is delivered consistently. Manage your prospects expectations – don’t promise the world, then pull the rug from beneath their feet.  And empower your employees to know when and where they can make a difference.

I read a ton of articles, threads and posts from SEO experts everyday. Why? Because just like everyone else, I want to increase sales online. For years, SEO practitioners preached a mix of link this and content that, or touted banner advertisements or AdSense ads. Since the onset of search engines, techniques to outwit them to rank higher in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) have basically evolved beyond simply obtaining backlinks, providing lots of content or optimizing keywords and meta tags.

FREE versus Paid Traffic
Organic traffic is traffic you receive from free click-throughs in search engines (not sponsored) – the higher your site ranks, the more traffic you receive, thus higher revenues on the backside. Paid traffic would be traffic obtained via banner ads or programs like AdSense. Bottom line to increase profits – reduce overhead – increase productivity. So how do you make your website more productive without forking out a ton of money on paid advertising?

Google Algorithms Put to the Test
For years, I’ve been reading about how complex Google algorithms were. We’ve witnessed a number of cycles or shifts in how Google analyzes and ranks sites, but if you tie in Google’s history of acquisitions and free tools, their core emphasis (today) lies within three (3) PRIMARY variables – all driven by human activity. Much like Bing, they’ve transitioned from being a search engine to being a decision engine.

So What is this ‘FREE Traffic” Big Secret?
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen the phrase, “Content is King” or “Content is King Kong.” I’ve said this myself in a past life. The real KING today is Organic Search Traffic!! Think about this for a second. What does paid advertising get you – a position on a page with the expectation that being seen at the top of that page will result in a click through to your site.

Viewing Patterns Take Center Stage
Numerous studies have been conducted by leading SEO firms to determine viewing patterns and projected click through patterns over the years. Going back to the early 2000’s, banner advertising worked very well, drawing over a 30% click through rate. When banner advertising fell out of favor, the trend evolved to link building, but a ton of black hat SEO strategies forced Google to revise their algorithms.

So what do today’s viewing patterns tell us about paid ads?
Very simply that organic traffic is growing and paid is declining. Here’s a question for you – when you do a search query on Google, do you read the sponsored ads at the top of the page or the ads on the side bar? Studies have shown that those viewers who do read them is on the decline. Consider this – sponsored ads were only drawing 5% of the click throughs in their prime, and even less now. So where are the other 95% of the click throughs occurring? The answer is in Google’s organic listings – the FREE ones!! Banner Ads don’t even register and sponsored ads aren’t much better. Currently, paid listings that appear above the organic listings receive only 2 to 3 percent of the available clicks with those on the side receiving a paltry 1 to 2 percent. To verify this, you simply have to use Google’s own internal Traffic Estimator Tool.

Organic Traffic is KING
Not only is organic traffic FREE, but it also receives the majority of all traffic. The first organic listing receives over 40% of the available traffic, while the second, or number two, receives nearly 20%. Let’s say you’re running an AdWords campaign and you’re getting 1000 clicks per day (multiply those clicks by your cost per click – OUCH). Compare that to number one in Google’s organic listing at 40%. Your paid 1000 clicks translate to 8000 FREE organic clicks. And viewing patterns indicate the first ten organic search positions outperform even the number 1 paid ad on the same page. OK, you’re saying that you know it’s important to rank high in SERPS, so how is this a big secret?

What does Google look at today to rank organic listings?
While Google doesn’t divulge their algorithms publicly, they do post recommendations and guidance. We do know they look at content, which is essentially the domain name itself, certain meta tags and so. They still look at links, both inbound and outbound, assigning authority to those links. And this should be no surprise – they look at the human element – activity. This consists of traffic, RSS subscriptions, comments on blogs, updates to your site and so on.

How do today’s algorithms differ from years past?

I think we all remember PageRank. Up until about 2003, Google counted the number of inbound links to a site, applied a ranking score to each (based on quality), and the sites with the most quality inbound links ranked highest.

When Google introduced Adsense, a shift to content ensued. The focus was to create a ton of pages with content – then place Google’s ads on them. When visitors to those websites clicked thru on the ads, Google split the ad revenue with the site owners. What happened?  For a few years, content worked well, but the SERPS began to be overrun with spam. Another shift was incorporated to regain relevancy, going back to a more robust emphasis on links. This was quickly countered with SEO tactics like link wheels, irrelevant comments on do-follow blogs, robotic article rewrites that were posted everywhere linking back to a main website.  

Enter Google Caffeine
Essentially, Caffeine rewards activity and freshness, meaning more relevance is given to sites that routinely update their content. They still factor in link juice and volume of relevant content, but human activity (social media) is the prevailing trend across all industries.

Over the years, Google has invested heavily in technology that measures HUMAN ACTIVITY. Think about all the programs and businesses they’ve invested in, many that never turned one penny in profit. Why? As long as SEO practitioners could automate strategies to exploit Google’s algorithms, their rankings and AdSense revenue was diluted.

Going Forward
Consider this – with the addition of FeedBurner, Chrome, Google Analytics, Google’s Toolbar and on and on, user statistics are being sent to Google on a massive scale. With Caffeine, their algorithms have shifted once again – only now with primary emphasis on traffic. Note – avoid automated programs. Google has garnered a wealth of information about human trends and SEO tactics over the years, and can see through most attempts to exploit their services.

It’s best to create organic websites that are highly relevant to the service or products you offer, then create activity on that site by embracing social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc), incorporating a do-follow blog (moderating comments and disabling spam links), then tweak your site as needed.

If done properly, your website will not (realistically) leap to number one overnight, but will rise in Google’s rankings over the first 30 to 90 days. Back links and quality content are still important, but my recommendation is to emphasize ACTIVITY.

Of course you don’t know what you don’t know, but how important is it to know what you don’t know? Personally, I don’t know a lot about astrophysics, but that’s not really important to me. LOL. My wife and I own a hair salon, so understanding beauty products is essential. Knowing the difference between hi-lites and lo-lites, or how to apply color is a must.

Making assumptions
In most industries, vendors take knowledge for granted – and by that I mean they assume most clients know more than they really do. Here’s an example. Most of us have dealt with printers, specifically replacing toner cartridges, but how many of us understand toner yields – how many pages you can reasonably expect to print from that new cartridge. Vendors use terms like yields 250 pages at 6% coverage. They don’t tell you that if you use any shading whatsoever on your prints, coverage jumps over 12%, cutting the yield of that cartridge in half – to just 125 pages!

Not knowing what you don’t know could put your online business at risk
In web hosting, an awful lot of prospects buy on price. Hey, the economy is tough – we’re all trying to stretch our dollars. When a few of the larger providers started offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth on their shared webhosting plans, it raised some eyebrows because everyone in the industry knew unlimited was unrealistic. Of course, there were limitations on their unlimited plans, buried in their Terms and Conditions, but how many of us really read Terms and Conditions? In this instance, not knowing what you don’t know could put your online business at risk. 

Don’t have a clue?
In the web hosting industry, there are shared hosting plans, virtual plans, semi-dedicated, reseller plans, VPS, clouds, dedicated servers and colocation. If I asked my wife to tell me the difference between them, she’d be like, “What?” Most small business owners realize on some level that they need a website, but probably more than a few are just like my wife. They know they need an online presence, would love to sell their product or service online, but have no idea how to go about doing that – so they do what most of us do now. We search the Internet for info, and try to decipher what makes one provider, developer or vendor more appealing than the next.

Would not knowing what you don’t know hinder your ability to select a new vendor?
A common theme I hear from business owners is, “I have a website, and I need or want to make some changes, but the firm or person who designed my site went out of business and now I’m stuck and need help.” Would not knowing what you don’t know hinder your ability to select a new vendor? How would you know what questions to ask? If I were to tell you that your landing page size was 1.03 megabytes, could you relate that to return traffic or conversion ratios? If you reduced that page size to under 60 kilobytes, would that increase your sales?

We can’t be expected to know everything
Of course none of us can be expected to know everything. That’s why we leave certain things to the experts, like brain surgery. In web hosting, stuff like bandwidth and disk space are important, but so is the stability and expertise of the provider you host with. I’ve always heard that the measure of a great company is not so much what they offer, but how they respond under pressure or stress. How do they treat their customers? Companies that survive the test of time are those that understand the lifetime value of their clients.

What separates web hosting providers?
Aside from the obvious like plans and pricing, why would you select one web hosting provider over another? If I’m a growing mom and pop shop or even a small business with thousands of dollars tied into IT infrastructure and online marketing strategies, there is a common thread – the need to know what you don’t know.  I always recommend asking lots of questions in your search, but equally important are the questions your prospective provider asks you. Do they genuinely show an interest in your business, and offer solutions based on your specific requirements and growth projections, or do they simply offer packages. As you grow, can you upgrade your plan – for example from shared to dedicated? And is knowing that important? It’s important for your provider to know what you don’t know, and that they help by partnering to grow your business and theirs.

I recently attended a local Chamber of Commerce afterhours party where - one of the discussions turned to Social Media Marketing as a business tool. An interesting point was made that prospects, cross-industry, aren’t as open to direct sales calls, but would rather search the Internet for information related to potential purchases for everything from shoes, cars, homes and restaurants - to web hosting.

Do you write content for your website or blog? It only follows that if prospects (for your products or services) are keying in search queries to find relevant  information on the Internet, that you should be there. I guarantee this – your competition WILL be there.

Writer’s Block - Don’t know what to write about? Select anything you’re passionate about. What do you know about your product or service that could be beneficial to the reader? Very often, if you just start jotting down notes throughout the day, some topic will jump off the paper and hit you square in the middle of your forehead.  The real key here to just do it. There are NO excuses for NOT writing. All of us lead very busy lives, bombarded with demands on our time and energy.

Providing information relevant to the search query is paramount - First, pick a topic geared to providing information, either how-to or solutions based – the goal being to help / provide insight. Start with a topic in your specific niche, like “Website Design” or “Automotive Repair,” then create a title based on emotion, or anything that you think would draw a click through. Some examples would be, “Unlimited space and bandwidth = unlimited risks” or “Increasing the quality of  marketing campaigns.”

Keep your paragraphs short - I realize you’re excited about your stuff, but loooooooooooong paragraphs turn OFF most surfers. Break your content down into specific thoughts or steps, with one paragraph leading or flowing to the next. Try to compile some fashion of chronological order. Hopping around will only confuse the reader and cause them to lose focus.

Touch as many of the five senses as possible - Of the five senses, I mean sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing.  Obliviously, these won’t all apply to each article, but through a combination of graphics, and painting pictures with words, you’ll create mental images that will reinforce your call-to-action.

End with a recommendation -  Recommendations can be tips, cautions or proposed solutions. Prospects are searching the Web to alleviate some pain or issue, grow their company or enhance their lives. Try to stay positive.

I am a HUGE fan of cutting edge technology, so when I stumbled across this video http://www.wimp.com/sixthtechnology posted on a web hosting forum, I had to watch it – from start to finish (approximately 15 minutes).

Why?
Time after time, my jaw dropped as new innovations were presented, linking objects in the physical world to the digital world. The video started with a simple upgrade to a two roller mouse, enabling the user to mimic finger movements on his monitor. And it kept getting better – taking pictures by framing objects with his hands, making outbound calls via a projected keypad on his palm, projecting live weather information onto his newspaper map, and on and on.

I’m Excited
The future is here today, and I’m proud to share its contribution to innovative technology with articles that compliment the delivery of new ideas and broad vision.

From WordPress

“WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.”

“WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.).”

“WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product.”

Key Features

• Full standards compliance- We have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today’s browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Your web site is a beautiful thing, and you should demand nothing less.
• No rebuilding – Changes you make to your templates or entries are reflected immediately on your site, with no need for regenerating static pages.
• WordPress Pages- Pages allow you to manage non-blog content easily, so for example you could have a static “About” page that you manage through WordPress. For an idea of how powerful this is, the entire WordPress.org site could be run off WordPress alone. (We don’t for technical mirroring reasons.)
• WordPress Links– Links allows you to create, maintain, and update any number of blogrolls through your administration interface. This is much faster than calling an external blogroll manager.
• WordPress Themes- WordPress comes with a full theme system which makes designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine a piece of cake, and you can even have multiple themes with totally different looks that you switch with a single click. Have a new design every day.
• Cross-blog communication tools- WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards, and we are committed to supporting future standards as they develop.
• Comments- Visitors to your site can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site. You can enable or disable comments on a per-post basis.
• Spam protection- Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog, and there is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further.
• Full user registration- WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are also plugins that hide posts from lower level users.
• Password Protected Posts — You can give passwords to individual posts to hide them from the public. You can also have private posts which are viewable only by their author.
• Easy installation and upgrades— Installing WordPress and upgrading from previous versions and other software is a piece of cake. Try it and you’ll wonder why all web software isn’t this easy.
• Easy Importing— We currently have importers for Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and b2. Work on importers for Nucleus and pMachine are under way.
• XML-RPC interface— WordPress currently supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and finally the MovableType API. You can even use clients designed for other platforms like Zempt.
• Workflow — You can have types of users that can only post drafts, not publish to the front page.
• Typographical niceties —WordPress uses the Texturize engine to intelligently convert plain ASCII into typographically correct XHTML entities. This includes quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, em and en dashes, multiplication symbols, and ampersands.
• Intelligent text formatting — If you’ve dealt with systems that convert new lines to line breaks before you know why they have a bad name: if you have any sort of HTML they butcher it by putting tags after every new line indiscriminately, breaking your formatting and validation. Our function for this intelligently avoids places where you already have breaks and block-level HTML tags, so you can leave it on without worrying about it breaking your code.
• Multiple authors — WordPress’ highly advanced user system allows up to 10 levels of users, with different levels having different (and configurable) privileges with regard to publishing, editing, options, and other users.
• Bookmarklets— Cross-browser bookmarklets make it easy to publish to your blog or add links to your blogroll with a minimum of effort.
• Ping away— WordPress supports pinging Ping-O-Matic, which means maximum exposure for your blog to search engines. “

Promoting your business – some thought provoking questions

I just subscribed – to “Hello. My name is Scott.” He’s the guy with the nametag (never takes it off).  Scott Ginsberg is an internationally recognized expert on nametags and the authority on approachability. I was recently scanning through his library and came across a few thought provoking statements, which in turn raised some thought provoking questions. LOL

Scott contends that - it’s better to be heard about rather than be heard from, which makes sense, but it raises the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Advertising is played down as that focuses on ‘hearing from,’ but how do prospects hear about you without some facet of marketing, whether that consists of email broadcasting, direct mail, Internet forums, social networking, telemarketing or direct sales canvassing. We don’t all have walk-in businesses, and most small businesses start with zero customers, so word of mouth is a limited resource.

Earning ‘heard about’ status takes – time to gel. Great customer service certainly speeds the process. Empowering your employees to go that extra one percent in every contact or dealing they encounter with your prospects or clients encourages Raving Fans – those who will advocate your products and services for you (within their sphere of influence). Raving Fans turn the tide from “Heard From” to “Heard About.”

I read a thread a while back on a forum from an OP who wondered how much it would cost to build his own data center. A lot of variables come into play determining those costs. Certainly, just gaining approval to build a data center is one of those variables. How much expertise does your staff possess in the area of conceptualizing design and build-out? Is there a hard and fast template for architects? Are the people who are going to manage the new data center the same as those who will be building it? I’d heard it said that building a data center is a once in a lifetime undertaking. I suspect that’s generally true across the board.

How do you know what to ask or who to turn to for guidance?

How far out should you plan? When you figure that most data centers end-of-life cycle is 15-20 years, should you build out to year seven and continue building out as you grow? Or do you build out to year 15 to begin? Unfortunately, that question is normally answered by the amount of funding available.

Tier Level?

Most data centers are generally defined by their Tier Level, so much of the estimation of funds is directly tied to which Tier Level to build out to. Tier 4 data centers will cost significantly more than Tier 1 data centers. Tier 1 is the lowest rated Tier and is prone to downtime – and Tier 4 is the most robust, redundant, and functional.

Tier I: A single path for power and cooling distribution, without redundant components, providing 99.671% availability

Tier II: A single path for power and cooling distribution, with redundant components, providing 99.741% availability

Tier III: Multiple active power and cooling distribution paths but only one path active, redundant components, concurrently maintainable, providing 99.982% availability

Tier IV: Multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, redundant components, fault-tolerant, providing 99.995% availability

Energy Costs?

Consider how far we’ve come in the last 5 years with regard to energy footprints. How can anyone possibly predict the state of this industry in another 15 years? Thus, energy needs to be scalable. Will our racks become more dense? Will new processors and RAM modules consume massive energy, or just the opposite? What is today’s trend, and what looms on the horizon? Part of your business plan must be trend analysis.

Green Technologies?

What is Green? Does Green relate to carbon footprints? Would it pay to design Green, both in energy savings and marketability? A recent Google search for Green Data Centers turned up 288,000,000 results. Some green data centers are powered entirely through renewable wind energy – and designed to operate at approximately 60% lower energy utilization per square foot than comparable data centers of the same size. This translates directly into more computing power using less energy in a given building.

Who will actually build the data center?

Determining the engineering firm, construction company, their sub-contractors, etc. and working through the build out is a monumental undertaking. Murphy’s Law still prevails. What can go wrong, will go wrong.

Millions of dollars are at risk

A couple of years ago, a study determined the cost to build a 150,000 square foot data center with 150 employees averaged from $16-$17 million on the low end to $19-$22 million on the high end. The most expensive were obviously on the East and West coasts. The Midwest and Southeast came in on the low end.

What hardware configurations affect dedicated servers across the board?

Processor speed, cache and CPU Front Side Bus (FSB) are important. Size, speed, type of hard drives and RAID configuration are factors. The amount of RAM is significant as well. But what about the speed of that RAM? How important is it, really?

In comparing identical servers, certainly one with DDR-200 Mhz RAM will underperform today’s standard of 667Mhz DDR2 RAM. Slower memory speeds relate to diminished server performance. Be cautious when spec’ing out your server – even though the FSB may be 1333Mhz, the speed of the RAM may be significantly less. If the RAM speed isn’t listed in a prospective providers offer, simply ask.

When is RAM speed necessarily relevant?

You’ll primarily see a difference in very memory intensive operations. For most, the difference in speed won’t be noticeable. RAM speed accounts for only a few percentage points difference one way or another. In general, speeds limited due to RAM are more likely because you don’t have sufficient RAM, and not because the RAM is too slow.

What happens when your server pages out to disk?

Quite simply, memory runs in nanoseconds and hard drives in milliseconds – no comparison. Once your server starts paging out to disk, server performance will slow dramatically. Consequently, if you’re seeing speeds limited due to RAM it’s more likely you don’t have enough RAM, not because the RAM is too slow. Unless you’re a gamer or benchmark analyst, you probably won’t see much difference between 800Mhz or 1333Mhz RAM.

RAM Explained

ECC (Error Correction Code) versus non-ECC RAM 

ECC RAM will typically run a couple of percentage points slower in performance, but its advantage is increased error handling capability and system resilience. ECC will recover from single bit errors having additional ‘bits’ in order to detect and then correct any ‘parity’ errors in memory. In designing and building servers, select ECC RAM for improved stability.

Peak RAM Speed 

The number (400/533/667/800/1066) represents the raw peak transfer capacity of the memory chips used on the module. Higher speeds have the potential to move data faster, but often that’s accompanied by higher latencies. Frequent small memory access may be better served by lower latency RAM. Frequent large block transfers may be better served by higher peak transfer speeds (despite an increase in latency). 

Unbuffered versus Registered and Fully Buffered 

Unbuffered RAM will generally offer a slight performance boost over Registered or Fully Buffered. Registered and FB adds electrical buffering to the pathway which allows for more RAM to be added to a system but at the cost of increased latency. 

Registered RAM

Registered RAM has buffer chips that increase the amount of RAM a computer can have. You can never use registered memory in motherboards that require unbuffered memory or vice versa.

Both are generally found in server-type hardware, but unbuffered ECC works in desktop/gaming hardware.

Fully Buffered RAM

There’s also “fully buffered” RAM (“FBDIMM” or “FB-DIMM”) which is similar to registered RAM, but unlike normal registered RAM which only buffers the control and address lines, FBDIMMs also buffer the data lines. Similar to ECC (Error Checking and Correcting) memory, FB-DIMM modules perform error checking and correction as well as cyclic redundancy checks on data passing through them, thanks to their AMB chip. The AMBs in each memory channel co-ordinate their error checking efforts so that if a correction or retry is necessary, all the modules stay in sync.

Capacity is where FB-DIMM really does seem to have a clear-cut advantage over conventional memory. Where previously there was a hard 4GB memory limit, modern 64-bit processors can potentially address effectively unlimited amounts of memory at full speed.

Here is a breakup of what you need where:
- AMD socket 754: unbuffered DDR, ECC or non-ECC
- AMD socket 939: unbuffered DDR, ECC or non-ECC
- AMD socket 940: registered DDR, ECC
- AMD socket AM2: unbuffered DDR2, ECC or non-ECC
- AMD socket F: registered DDR2, ECC
- Intel socket 478: unbuffered DDR, ECC or non-ECC
- Intel socket 775 (Core2Duo etc.): unbuffered DDR2, ECC or non-ECC
- Intel Xeon Woodcrest (51×0) and Dempsey (50×0) socket 771: FBDIMM DDR2, ECC
- Previous generation Xeon socket 603/604: registered, can be DDR or DDR2 (depends on chipset/board), ECC
 
With AMD versus Intel CPUs 

In the AMD world, the CPU socket type determines whether you need registered or unbuffered RAM. In the Intel world, it is the chipset and hence the motherboard. That’s why some socket 603/604 boards require registered and some require unbuffered. Existing socket 771 chipsets all require FBDIMM.

Memory Interleaving 

This will typically increase overall performance a couple of percentage points. Interleaved memory allows the system to fetch concurrent banks of data from multiple DIMMs simultaneously. This helps to compensate for the latencies of main memory.

Certainly, there are benefits to colocation – physically locating your IT equipment (servers, switches, etc.) at a data center.  By leveraging data center facilities, you can save on capital expenditures, streamlining your budget.

In today’s marketplace, the effective management of capital is paramount to operating a viable business. Data is king. It grows exponentially with time. How do you justify the expense to build out new infrastructure or expand on existing infrastructure? What is the projected Return on your Investment (ROI)? Could that new infrastructure become obsolete with the advent of dynamic change in technology, or shifting organizational strategies – or a relocation of your business?

What are the major costs related to maintaining your own data center?

Surely, your IT budget will command much of the expense for facilities management, but the cost of cooling and power are quickly gaining ground, as power costs escalate.  How do you equate power now in your IT budget? Colocation could provide transparency to your data center expense, allowing your IT budget to more accurately reflect its overhead and power expense.

Colocation Responsibilities

Colocation clients purchase, manage and maintain their own equipment, including servers, switches, etc. The data center provides the facility, cabinet space, redundant power, BGP bandwidth, climate controlled environment and security. The amount of cabinet space you require will depend on how many racks you’ll need. Each rack can normally house 42U of rack space, where 1U of space equates to 1.75 inches in height.

Power

The majority of entry level and mid-range servers are configured with 120v plugs even though by design they will work with 120 or 208v. Larger towers and rack mounted servers tend to be configured with 208v.

Why 208v?

The primary reason is for power supply energy efficiency, which is a measurement of the amount of power lost between the input and output of a server’s power supply. You could expect a two to three percent increase in power supply efficiency by simply increasing the input voltage, resulting in a significant saving in power expense. Some have reported as high as a 30 percent increase in efficiency.

This energy savings is significant to any data center’s bottomline.

Can 120v be retrofitted to 208v? Absolutely. Whereas 120v has one hot, one neutral and one ground, 208v simply has 2 hot lines versus one.  Do your servers run 120v or 208v? Will most data centers customize their existing 120v to match your 208v requirements? Yes

Why is 208v more energy efficient?

For a given amount of power, as the voltage increases, less current is required. Conversely, as voltage decreases, more current is necessary to maintain the same amount of power.

Hosted where?

If you’re currently hosted in LA, NY or Chicago, you’re fully aware that the cost of power contributes heavily to the liability side of your balance sheet.  Power through Ameren UE in the Midwest is significantly less expensive, as much as half in some instances. If your cost was cut in half, let’s say from $20,000.00 to $10,000.00 monthly, would it matter if your servers were colocated in Chicago or St. Louis? These types of savings should surely make moving much more attractive!

The trend

The hosting industry is already seeing more and more relocations and outsourced applications, primarilyto reduce power expenses. During the next five years, it’s projected that one in four businesses will experience a significant business interuption. Couple that with the explosive growth of data. 161 Exabytes of data were created in 2006, which is approximately three million times the information of all the books ever written.  

Sample Data Center

First sample - has 1600Amp service @480 served through redundant Ameren UE (power utility) feeds protected by a pair of redundant 150kVA UPSs and a 1500 kW generator.

Cooling

Power consumption is directly related to the amount of heat dissipated into a data center. The level of heat expelled per rack has increased with new technologies, like quad core processors. How warm are your servers running now? Heat is definitely their enemy! Colocating that infrastructure into the data center’s climate controlled environment will minimize the risk of compromising your ability to deliver mission critical applications.

Sample Data Center

This data center is cooled by four Liebert 20 ton downflow CRAC units which are on a Glycol cooling loop with 200 tons of capacity.

Security

How safe is your data today? Does your cleaning lady have access to your server room? Is your credit card terminal in the same room as your servers? Do you even have a door to your server room? If you do, is there controlled access? Does your level of security meet your operational requirements? Can your business model support your current requirements? Is your current growth sustainable, or has your ROI turned upside down? If you’re hosted elsewhere now, do you really need biometrix hand scans and security guards posted behind bullet proof glass?

Security is of the utmost importance.  Data center closed circuit video surveillance systems normally monitor every entry point into the data center.

Bandwidth

How much bandwidth do you have at your business today? A T-1 at 1.54Mbps? Possibly two – load balanced? Or an ePort at 10Mbps? If at a data center now, what level of uplink ports are available? Conversely, how much bandwidth is available at your data centers and at what cost? Most data centers have multiple Tier 1 carrier connections on a BGP network with 10, 100Mbps and GigE uplink ports to provide flexibility, ensuring traffic is routed for redundancy (to protect against a single switch or router failure) and maximum network performance. Data center also facilitate cross connects to carriers of choice for individual or legacy network requirements.

Costs for bandwidth are customized to fit your requirements.

Bandwidth isn’t as straight-forward as you may think. For some it is the total amount of data, typically measured in Megabytes, Gigabytes or Terabytes, that may be downloaded or uploaded during a given month – also referred to as data transfer.

Straight data fees

If you use 10MB, you pay for 10MB. If you use 20GB, you pay for 20GB.  Typical bandwidth plans are based on metered, unmetered, burstable and 95th percentile billing.

Unmetered bandwidth

Unmetered bandwidth means that the maximum data transfer rate is capped at a specific speed, but the amount of data transfer at that speed is unlimited. The cost for unmetered bandwidth is based on a fixed monthly charge for bandwidth consumption payable at the beginning of a monthly cycle.

There are dedicated and shared unmetered bandwidth plans.

Dedicated or guaranteed unmetered plans offer bandwidth pipes available to you and you only, that you can max out at will. Most data centers offer burst options for overages on a 95^th percentile.

Shared unmetered plans means your data center shares your pipe with other customers. These types of plans typically provide a guaranteed minimum but not a guaranteed maximum.

When operating at a speed of 1.54Mbps, a VPS is capable of a maximum 30 day transfer total of (1.54 Megabits per second / 8 bits per byte = .1925 Megabytes per second * 60 seconds = 11.55 Megabytes per minute * 60 minutes = 693 Megabytes per hour * 24 hours = 16,632 Megabytes per day * 30 days = 498,960 Megabytes per month / 1024 bytes = 487 Gigabytes per month. If your requirements exceed 487GB monthly, 5/10/100Mbps plans are offered.

A 10mbps connection equates to about 3.3 Terabytes of bandwidth and 100Mbps to about 33.3 Terabytes.

Metered plans

The expense for metered bandwidth is calculated at the end of each monthly billing cycle. Metered essentially means your bandwidth usage is monitored and you’re responsible for any overages.

Small servers with low bandwidth usage are normally billed at a straight data transfer rate.

What is the 95^th Percentile?

 Another bandwidth plan uses the 95^th percentile method for computing bandwidth expense. For example, a 10Mbps plan billed at the 95^th relates to 10Mbps unmetered but the connection itself may be capable of 100Mbps. This enables your server to reach speeds up to 100Mbps (burstable). At the end of the monthly billing cycle, the top 5% of the speeds are removed, then the 10Mbps is subtracted, leaving any overages. In this case, if your server used 15Mbps over 95% monthly, you would incur an additional bandwidth expense of 5Mbps.

Consistent traffic with a couple days of bursting results in far less bandwidth expense than, let’s say 10 days of bursting each month. The difference can be as high as ten times more.

Colocation Pros:

If you’re in close geographical proximity to your data center, you can work on your own equipment (upgrades, etc.) avoiding the cost of outsourced parts and labor.

As you grow, savings from colocation grow as well.

As a rule, it’s generally less expensive when compared to unmanaged dedicated.

Your fixed assets show on your balance sheet, indicating higher net worth (important to banks and potential customers).

If you’re using accrual accounting, you’ll be able to show profitability on your income statement by spreading expenses over three to five years (depreciation).

In web hosting, a marketing rage in the past few years has been offers of unlimited space and bandwidth. The only thing I can think of offhand that is really unlimited – is time. What kind of servers are these sites being hosted on anyway? What’s the largest hard drive physically available? If I wanted bandwidth at 1129 Tbps, would that be possible?

There are real physical limits on bandwidth and space.

The bandwidth available to data centers in the Midwest is different than the bandwidth offered, for example, in NY, Dallas, LA and Chicago. Data centers have to pay upstream providers for the bandwidth they offer to their clients. Some upstream providers with varying latency on their network price out lower or higher than others. Data centers routinely offer a blend of 3, 4 or more providers through BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), but can offer a preferred network with failover to a blended network – significantly reducing the end client’s bandwidth cost.

Are unlimited plans at $3.99/Month realistic?

In one word – NO. I’ve yet to find one offer of unlimited space and bandwidth at any price that doesn’t have a corresponding TOS and AUP that addresses the specific bandwidth and space allowable. So why do so many hosts offer these packages? It’s all about perception of value – to the unsuspecting general public. The offer sounds fantastic, until you buy into the plan and get canceled by that provider for violating some clause of their TOS. I read threads every day of the week posted in forums on the Internet by unsuspecting clients – wondering why their account was canceled by host xxx?

Compare this to your own business.

Do you find that managing your prospects expectations works out best? That ‘never needs sharpening’ knife isn’t really going to last forever, is it? Here’s a simple question to ask any provider that offers unlimited space on their webserver. How large is the hard drive that I’ll be hosted on?  Unlimited? Not by a long shot!

Bandwidth explained 

Data transer is the total amount of data, typically measured in Megabytes, Gigabytes or Terabytes, that may be downloaded or uploaded during a given month. Bandwidth refers to the speed of that data transfer (or width of the pipe).

In a typical web hosting account, an entire website (with all of its files, databases and images) comprises that websites space (storage). If a website’s hosted plan allows 50GB in storage, and that site’s content takes up 2GB, then there is 48GB of storage left. If that same plan allows 200GB of data transfer per month, when you upload the site, the host subtracts that 2GB transfer leaving 198GB remaining. 

For simplicity, if 99 visitors viewed every page of your site monthly, they would each transfer 2GB of that bandwidth, leaving your account maxed out. The host would either then cap your account or charge you additional bandwidth fees for the 100th visitor, and so on. But this never happens, and the reality is that only certain pages are viewed – a small fraction of that 2GB. 

Obliviously, the more popular that site becomes, the more bandwidth it uses. Assuming the most popular content viewed is a menu, 50KB in size, downloaded 300 times daily, the transfer attributed to that menu would be 300 downloads x 50KB x 30 days per month = 450,000KB or 450MB (.45GB). 

Here’s the problem. More and more audio and video files are being placed on websites drawing thousands of visitors. A two minute video can easily consume 10MB of transfer. Take the same 300 downloads x 10MB x 30 days per month = 90,000MB or 90GB. Remember that 300 downloads in 30 days only averages 10 per day. What happens when that number reaches 100 per day or 1000? 

Some hosts feature straight data fees. If you use 10MB, you pay for 10MB. If you use 20GB, you pay for 20GB.  Typical bandwidth plans are based on metered, unmetered, burstable and 95th percentile billing. 

Unmetered bandwidth 

Unmetered bandwidth means that the maximum data transfer rate is capped at a specific speed, but the amount of data transfer at that speed is unlimited. The cost for unmetered bandwidth is normally based on a fixed monthly charge for bandwidth consumption payable at the beginning of a monthly cycle. 

There are dedicated and shared unmetered bandwidth plans. 

Dedicated or guaranteed unmetered plans offer bandwidth pipes available to you and you only, that you can max out at will. Some hosts offer burst options for overages on a 95^th percentile. 

Shared unmetered plans means the host shares your pipe with other customers. These types of plans typically provide a guaranteed minimum but not a guaranteed maximum. 

When operating at a speed of 1.54Mbps, a VPS is capable of a maximum 30 day transfer total of (1.54 Megabits per second / 8 bits per byte = .1925 Megabytes per second * 60 seconds = 11.55 Megabytes per minute * 60 minutes = 693 Megabytes per hour * 24 hours = 16,632 Megabytes per day * 30 days = 498,960 Megabytes per month / 1024 bytes = 487 Gigabytes per month. If your requirements exceed 487GB monthly, 5/10/100Mbps plans are normally offered. 

Ten (10Mbps) equates to about 3.3 Terabytes of bandwidth and 100Mbps to about 33.3 Terabytes. It goes without saying that a 100Mbps unmetered dedicated plan is quite a bit more expensive than a shared plan. The shared plan is less expensive, but your server is connected with other servers (2-6) at a switch that is normally connected to a 100Mbps switch port, or in some cases with other servers (10-20) connected to a 1Gbps port. 

Metered plans 

The expense for metered bandwidth is calculated at the end of each monthly billing cycle. Metered essentially means your bandwidth usage is monitored and you’re responsible for any overages. 

Small servers with low bandwidth usage are normally billed at a straight data transfer rate. 

Measuring on the 95^th Percentile 

Another bandwidth plan uses the 95^th percentile method for computing bandwidth expense. For example, a 10Mbps plan billed at the 95^th relates to 10Mbps unmetered but the connection itself may be capable of 100Mbps. This enables your server to reach speeds up to 100Mbps (burstable). At the end of the monthly billing cycle, the top 5% of the speeds are removed, then the 10Mbps is subtracted, leaving any overages.

Power requirements

Ok, we all know that power is a huge consideration in building out or maintaining a data center. A 1MW data center consumes 177 million kWH, worth approximately $17 million dollars over ten years, at $0.10 per kWH. So it should be no surprise that energy costs have become the second highest expense for data centers.

We’re already seeing more and more relocations and outsourced applications, primarily to reduce power expenses. During the next five years, it’s projected that one in four businesses will experience a significant business interuption. Couple that with the explosive growth of data. 161 Exabytes of data were created in 2006, which is approximately three million times the information of all the books ever written.  

Data center space

Going back a few years to the dot com boom and subsequent collapse, a lot of space suddenly became empty and available for pennies on the dollar. Millions of square feet of space that was built out to a specification of 100 watts per sqare foot was sold at bargain basement prices to enterprises seeking regulatory compliance. That space is long gone.

The subsequent advent of metered power started squeezing power margins, making reasonable return on investments even harder.

Thinking of relocating?

New data centers need 200 to 400 watts per sqare foot to be competitive. Unfortunately, local utilities are unable to deliver power in some markets, as the costs of producing that energy has quadrupled in the last few years. How do you combat unmanageable power expenses? Many companies are colocating to data centers in less expensive power areas, for example from the West or East coast to the Midwest. Many are seeing drops from $0.07 to $0.02 per kWH.

Other factors

Fluctuations in rack pricing follows suit, from $400 for low KW sites to over $1500 for high KW sites – not including power. Cooling those racks adds another dimension of expense. Data centers are increasingly offering shorter term contracts to leverage clients for pricing increases at renewal.

Consider this.

In the year 2000, there were approximately fifteen million servers. That grew in 2005 to twenty seven million servers installed worldwide, and it took approximately $100 Billion to manage them. It’s projected by the end of 2009, there will be thirty five million servers – that’s an increase of eight million servers in just four years! What will these eight million additional servers consume in power?  A single CPU processor can consume as much as 130 watts (more than most standard light fixtures), and each server itself consumes two to four times more power than five years ago. Older data centers were designed to support four kilowatts per rack, but current requirements can be as high as fifteen to twenty kilowatts per rack. Cooling all these servers adds an additional expense.

Utility load versus critical load

Data centers consume power for IT equipment (critical load) and to operate cooling and lighting (utility load). Most data centers consume equal amounts of power for each. Thus, a small data center with a 4MW feed would consume 2MW of that power before any IT equipment is accounted for. On the utility side, cooling consumes 25%, air movement 12%, electricity (transformer/UPS) 10% and lighting 3%. Larger data centers have the ability to improve this percentage.

What is the cost to build a new data center?

A tier I or tier II data center (20,000 square feet) can cost $15.4 million. A tier III or IV data center can cost $48.4 million.

What about other complications, such as lead times?

A typical lead time to build a top tier 200W per square foot data center is one year (75,000 sq ft and up). Consider lead times for a UPS, generators and PDUs. Add time for land acquisition, design, permits and build-out.

Are you seriously interested in joining the web hosting market? Don’t have a ton of money? Is your plan to start small and grow?

There’s always room in this industry for new web hosts

Consider this. Every week I bought a targeted list of 150-200 new businesses in my area. At least 80% of them did not have websites or hosting. Multiply how many times in how many places worldwide that this happens week in and week out. You’ll never run out of prospects.

It does take some investment in time and money, but it can be done and is being done by new entrepreneurs every day. The ones who survive are normally those who have enough financial resources to withstand their first year in business.

My Advice

I read a lot of threads comparing domain name services where the OPs focus is on price rather than stability. Realistically, unless you’re planning on registering hundreds or thousands of domain names, price should be a secondary consideration. Choose a domain registrar with a reputation for great service, then price.

Should you register your domain name with your reseller host? The general consensus is NO. Why not? Too many small hosting companies encounter problems with their original host, then decide to transition to a different host only to find their domain name locked in dispute. If you have your domain name with a different provider than your reseller host, then you can simply point your nameservers to the new host and you’re good to go.

I’d also suggest that you provision your domain name to auto-renew. Forums are full of horror stories of expired domain names held hostage or sold at auction.

Marketing Your Business

The first consideration should be the design of your website. Be sure it represents your niche. So many new web hosting providers use a cookie cutter approach that never gets noticed, and they post threads months later wondering why? I understand it’s difficult at times to see beyond your own work. Solicit opinions from others in the industry. There are literally hundreds or thousands of forums filled with entrepreneurs just like yourself who are willing to provide honest opinions of your design, and give thoughtful insight and recommendations. Why try to reinvent the wheel when so many are willing and able to freely help?

Another consideration is Search Engine Optimization

Volumes of information have been written about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and opinions on how to best approach this vary widely. Some will recommend starting by reading published books, but the general consensus is to follow the major search engines (current) advice because SEO evolves dynamically. What worked yesterday may not work today. What always worked and still works is relevant content and well designed code.  Use cascading style sheets, check for browser compatibility, track the keywords that surfers enter to find your site, then tweak your site as needed. Too many small web hosts pour hours of original effort into their sites, but never update anything but price (running sales). The primary enemy of sales is complacency. Google analytics and awstats are great starting places to analyze traffic to your site.

Are you marketing to a local audience?

One marketing strategy is to obtain a targeted list of newly formed businesses, normally at 10 cents per business – then direct mail them an offer and follow up with a phone call within three days (provided there is a phone number). Always leave a voicemail if you cannot reach them. Schedule follow up calls (up to 3 over the period of a couple of weeks), then if you’re still unable to reach them, consider a quarterly direct mail post card campaign. If you haven’t budgeted for an aggressive advertising campaign, growing your new business will be that much harder.

Personalize your initial direct mail offer with your picture, and sign it in blue ink. With each new client, immediately ask for referrals and testimonials. And be sure to send them personalized thank you cards.

If you’ve considered on-site sales, consider leaving personalized scratch pads, with your picture at the top left and contact info at the bottom. Scratch pads are relatively inexpensive and can be found on every desk worldwide with some company’s info displayed – why not have it be yours?

Another great on-site promotion was recommended to me by a very successful sales rep – she has prospects pick a card from a deck, then posts a winner for the matching card weekly on her website’s blog. They’ll absolutely remember you and likely visit your site, increasing your odds of making that sale.

Don’t just leave your business card or literature. Most likely, it’ll find its way to a circular recycling bin. Be unique in your approach. Set yourself aside from your competition. And smile.

Networking

So many entrepreneurs in this business opt to go it alone, or with the aid of one or two techs. Networking is a very necessary ingredient to jumpstart and sustain your business.

I recently attended a conference sponsored by Yellow Tie where the guest speaker mingled with the attendees minutes prior, then started by asking everyone he had talked to, to stand up – we’re talking twenty to thirty people he had never seen or met previously. He then proceeded to ask them to sit down if he remembered their name and association – and one-by-one he called out all but two. How many times do you meet a prospect, exchange cards, chat briefly, then five minutes later cannot remember their name? Networking is a learned skill perfected via practice.

Team up a web designer, or two or ten. Possibly a business consultant? I personally recall a sales rep that networked with an IT consulting firm that directed thousands of dollars her direction when their existing clienteles’s ISP went under. Lay the groundwork for your success by maximizing your connections in the industry.

Merchant Account

A recent Google search for Merchant Account Providers produced 744,000 results. Accepting credit cards is absolutely necessary, but through which merchant provider? My advice is to check with your bank or financial institution first to ask their recommendation. PayPal is a great starting point. Different gateways allow you to receive your funds on varying schedules.

Billing Software

Of course you’ll need some type of billing software, and here again, there are lots of options. Some are open source while most are commercially available. If you’re starting with a reseller plan from a web host, that plan probably includes pre-installed billing software. Be aware that open source software may have limited features as compared to a program such as WHMCS. Do you need all of the bells and whistles? As you grow, how easily could you transition from open source to WHMCS? If there are demos available, try them. Get a feel for what best works for you.

Should you offer Live Chat Support

If you have the time and resources to interact with your prospects online, live chat services can certainly help convert prospects to clients.

Control Panels

While cPanel is a very popular control panel offered by many web hosts as part of their package, DirectAdmin is a feature rich, fast and stable alternative.

What makes DirectAdmin different?

Ease of use. DirectAdmin is the easiest to use control panel, period.

Speed. DirectAdmin is programmed to be the fastest running control panel available.

Stability. DirectAdmin avoids downtime by automatically recovering from crashes.

Integrated Ticket Support System

With DirectAdmin’s integrated ticket support system, you’ll provide better customer service with less hassle. You have XX messages waiting is displayed every time you sign in — and you can set DirectAdmin to notify you of support requests by e-mail, ensuring that no request will be missed.  If you prefer to offer support in a different way, simply turn this feature off.

Live Updates

Server administrators can click the “licensing / updates” button to view the current license and version status.  There is no need to manually download, extract, and install — DirectAdmin performs all updates automatically.

Completely Customizable

DirectAdmin is designed to be as unique as your business.  Every aspect of the DirectAdmin interface can be changed, and new designs are easily imported through the “skins” menu. 

Automatic Recovery From Crashes

DirectAdmin TaskQueue ensures that all services are up, all of the time.  If something crashes, DirectAdmin will attempt to fix the problem by restarting the service.  If this fails, DirectAdmin will notify the server administrator immediately. 

All Licenses are Unlimited-Domain Licenses

There is no limit to the amount of domains or user accounts that can be hosted with DirectAdmin

Site-Helper.com — Helping you get the most out of DirectAdmin and your web site! has outstanding User Features

E-Mail Menu.  Users can create POP3 accounts, catch-all e-mail addresses, forwarders, mailing lists, autoresponders, and webmail.  Filters allow users to block mail by domain, keyword, and size.  Adult Filter is also available.

FTP Menu.  Users can create FTP accounts and set directory permissions for each account.  Anonymous FTP is also supported.

DNS Menu.  Users can can add and remove records, change MX settings, and anything else that goes with full DNS control.

Statistics Menu.  Users have available every possible statistic about their account.  More advanced options and Webalizer are also included. 

FrontPage Extensions.  Users can enable or disable Microsoft FrontPage Extensions at any time with the click of a button.

Subdomains Menu.  Users can list, create, delete, and get statistics on subdomains.

File Manager.  A user-friendly and fast alternative to FTP.  Includes every feature needed to build and maintain a web site. 

MySQL Databases.  Users can easily create, modify, and delete MySQL databases from this menu.

Site Backup.  Using this powerful tool, users can backup and restore only what they want to.  For example, account data but not web site files.

Error Pages.  Users can create custom messages and outputs for 401, 403, 404, and 500 error codes.

Directory Password Protection.  Users can password protect any directory with a username and password.

Advanced Tools.  Users can install SSL certificates, view sever information and installed perl modules, set cron jobs, mime types, and apache handlers, and enable site redirection and domain pointers.

It also has great Reseller Features

Create / List / Modify Accounts.  Account creation, listing, modification, and deletion is done quickly and easily.

User Packages.  Resellers can create predefined account packages using this feature.  When creating an account, the reseller simply chooses a package instead of manually setting each account feature.

Reseller Statistics.  Resellers are provided with a complete overview of their total usage.  Resellers may also sort data by users to quickly assess the overall situation.

Message All Users.  Resellers can quickly send a message to all their customers by using DirectAdmin’s built in ticket support system.

Import / Manage Skins.  With this menu option, resellers can quickly import and apply new skins with the click of a button.

IP Assignment.  Resellers can allocate IP address to their customers by using this menu option.

System / Services Information.  By clicking this feature, resellers have instant access to server status and system information.

Name Servers.  Resellers can create personalized nameservers for their customers from this menu.

Check out DirectAdmin’s Administrator Features

Create / Modify Admins and Resellers.  Admins can create resellers or extra admins quickly and easily with this feature.

Reseller Packages.  Admins can create predefined account packages using this feature.  When creating an account, the admin simply chooses a package instead of manually setting each account feature.

Show All Users.  This feature allows the admin to quickly view every single account on the system and sort this list in various ways.

DNS Administration.  This feature allows the admin to create, modify, or delete any DNS records on the server.

IP Manager.  This is where the admin sets the IP address available to the server.  The admin can also allocate IP address to resellers from this menu.

System / Services Info.  The admin can view, stop, start, and restart services from this menu.

Complete Usage Statistics.  This feature provides the admin with a complete overview of system usage.  Exact input and output from the server’s Ethernet card is also monitored.

Licensing / Updates.  The admin can view his or her license status and download the latest DirectAdmin security and software upgrades from this menu.

Need online help managing DirectAdmin?

Site-Helper.com is a great online resource for getting the most out of your DirectAdmin Web Control Panel.

Summary

Web hosting is a highly competitive industry, but there is certainly room for new entrepreneurs. Hopefully this helps you with some insight. Cheers

Ok, let’s face it. The Internet is game to – all sorts of intruders. I told my wife I found a Trojan Horse on her laptop and her response was, “What’s that?” Clearly, protecting your data from being compromised can be a daunting task. What firewall should you incorporate? Are software or hardware firewalls better? What exactly is packet filtering and why is it important? And how do I analyze my firewall logs? Is this something better left to professionals? 

Your primary consideration is – the worth of your data. If you lost it or it was compromised this minute, could you survive as a business entity? 

Let’s say you’ve done due diligence and installed – a high end firewall appliance. Is anyone on your staff certified to analyze that firewall’s logs? If not, do you outsource those logs? Are you provided analysis and recommendations? Are security risks shored up? Are you compliant? 

I’m constantly reading threads in forums – of compromised data, and OPs pleading for assistance after-the-fact. I was at a physician’s office a while back checking the security of her Wifi network, and while she was protected, at least a dozen other unprotected networks popped up. She had no clue she could compromise their networks as that was never her intention, but certainly it is the intention of (apparently) thousands of unscrupulous hacks on the Internet. 

Fortunately, there are firms that you can – turn to that make it their business to protect your business.

For any organization that conducts business over the Internet,  a vital first-line of defense:

• protects your information and systems from compromise
• helps ensure secure, ongoing communications between your Web site and customers
• reduces the costs and disruption of intrusion-initiated downtime
• extends your in-house capabilities

CLI versus GUI interfaces

What are some types of command line interfaces (CLI) for managing firewalls? PIX and Linux IPTables are popular examples. GUI based interfaces are more intuitive to the end user, so are presumably easier to use. They’re both designed to keep the malicious stuff out, while providing an enhanced more secure online experience.

Custom operating versus open source systems

Systems like the Cisco PIX run on a custom operating system where the source code is not available, and is updated via patches or new releases. Then there are open source systems which include Linux, OperBSD and Solaris 10.  Open source systems typically require more effort to maintain and secure your data, but patches to shore up vulnerabilities may get released faster. Closed source systems, properly configured and maintained by the user, eliminate many of the variables inherent in general operating systems, making it easier for the less experienced user to maintain.

Are you up to managing your own firewall with a CLI? (Command Line Interface)

Most firewalls require you to perform an initial configuration – things like your IP address, net mask, default gateway and possibly an administrative password, first in CLI even when using a GUI. CLIs require knowledge of the command set in your firewall appliance. For example, to config Linux’s NetFilter, you’ve have to use the IPTables CLI to set up configurations for Secure Shell (SSH), email and web traffic. What ports do you allow and which do you deny?

GUIs

There are GUIs for Linux’s IPTables firewall software. Some are web based (such as Webmin), and some are applications running on the Linux system itself (such as Firestarter). Firestarter provides a simple, easy-to-use interface for IPTables. Webmin provides a method by which the firewall can be managed through a web browser interface.

One significant benefit of a CLI over a GUI is that the CLI is available through Telnet and SSH sessions as well as connected directly to the serial port. This becomes important when considering how access to the firewall management interface will be controlled.

Management Access

Network devices such as firewalls, switches, routers and intrusion detection sensors should only be accessed  by trusted users who need to administer them. Unauthorized users, whether someone with malicious intent or not, may change the configuration or disable the device and thus compromise the security of your entire network and data.

Additional considerations must be made regarding how the firewall is accessed: Telnet, SSH, SNMP, FTP, TFTP, HTTP/HTTPS, or some proprietary management protocol.

HTTP versus HTTPS

HTTP is an unencrypted protocol that allows hackers to view communication between the client and the server. Although intruders may not necessarily be able to capture the password to your web server, they may be able to capture other information such as configuration information or possibly a valid cookie that would then allow the attacker to impersonate a legitimate user and gain access to the firewall’s administrative interface.

HTTPS uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology to encrypt communication between the client and the firewall web server. This makes it impossible for an attacker to eavesdrop on a management session or intercept any information that could be used to gain access to your firewall.

Analyzing Logs

Logging is also essential for maintaining and administering a firewall. Logging enables an administrator to see all traffic blocked by the firewall as well as troubleshoot the firewall configuration when a particular function, such as Network Address Translation (NAT), is not working as expected.

No matter how the firewall logs information, it is critical that the logged information be reviewed by an administrator or outsourced professional. You cannot set up a firewall appliance and walk away from it thinking your data will remain secure forever.

Vulnerabilities

A vulnerability is a defect that might result in the potential exploitation of the firewall by an attacker to cause either a denial-of-service (DoS) attack or to gain access to your firewall. Vulnerabilities are routinely caused by a misconfiguration of the firewall itself.

A vulnerability due to a misconfiguration of the firewall can range from allowing access to Remote Procedure Call (RPC) ports on systems behind the firewall to not setting an access password on the device itself.

Due Diligence
Special care must be taken when managing a firewall because it protects your data from the world. In many cases, it represents the only security device on your network.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

I cannot overemphasize the importance of remote backup even with a properly configured and maintained firewall.

Having said that, firewalls are an essential element in the defense and retention of your data. Your data is your business. If you are even remotely at loss how to configure, maintain and analyze your firewall logs, I wholly recommend outsourcing this service.

Reliability, Security, Flexibility and $$ Savings

Colocating minimizes downtime of mission-critical servers and applications. Can you afford to lose even one hour of revenue stream? What would it mean to YOUR organization in lost sales, opportunities and productivity? Or lost clients? Millions of dollars are lost every year to man-made & natural disasters with servers and applications hosted in-house. Whether your market is regional or global, statistics have shown an alarming percentage of organizations that have lost data go out of business within a year.

Scenario One: Imagine a large organization headquartered downtown in a major metropolitan area (St. Louis, Chicago, NY, LA, Atlanta, Miami … ) with branches scattered throughout its suburbs. They host their own servers and run Point-to-Point T-1s from each branch back downtown, plus another Point-to-Point T-1 from their HQ to a processing service out-of-state. Internet access is provided via an ISP to their Headquarters, then distributed to each branch. Let’s say they’re also hosting VoIP services.

Murphy’s Law kicks in, (if something can go wrong, it will go wrong). It’s late Spring and a thunderstorm rolls through causing widespread loss of power across the area for days, including at its Headquarters. Twelve of its sixteen branches still have power, but lack Internet access or phone services. Would this severely impact their operation? Would colocation help? Absolutely!

Do prolonged power outages happen every year? With regularity! I used to live in the Sunshine State of Florida (Pensacola & Miami) – plan on hurricane threats every year (up and down the Gulf and Eastern seaboard). The Midwest – tornadoes, thunderstorms and floods. California – mudslides, fires and earthquakes (and an occasional brown-out). Been there – done that.

Scenario two: You’ve started an immensely successful classic car dealership, where you showcase muscle cars on consignment, and historically ship a third of your inventory monthly via Internet orders worldwide. You’re on the fringe of a large metropolis, but the only connectivity to your dealership is a T-1 that seems to regularly choke, plus you endure an occasional power outage. Your Windows 2003 server is hosted in-house, but your website is on a dedicated server at a datacenter. Your website is always UP, but not your in-house connection. Someone in Australia is dying to own that ’57 Chevy you have on sale for $73,000.00 on your website, but you suffer delays in processing the order because your in-house servers are down. It seems like you’re constantly doing work-a-rounds. Does this severely impact your business? Would colocation help? Absolutely!

Scenario three: You’re a web developer – a good one. You’ve been designing websites since 1969 (in anticipation of the upcoming Internet). Your client base has matured to the point where you have enough clients to justify a dedicated server hosted at a reputable data center. You’ve been using a proprietary control panel with a discount host (shared IPs), but feel now is the time to step up to DirectAdmin on a managed Linux box (with static IPs for each site). Your old host has been pretty decent except for a few lapses of downtime. Recently you’ve begun to read some questionable posts about your host on forums that help force the issue. One post complained of her sites being hacked because (your) provider didn’t have the latest patches installed. It’s the second time one of her sites has been hacked and now (your) host is threatening to terminate her account (all 17 sites). For you, developing websites started out as an experiment, but over the years, it’s become your sole source of income. You start wondering how safe your sites are. If even one of your sites got hacked, would it severely impact your business? Would colocation help? Absolutely!

Scenario four: You manage streaming audio and video services, and need the absolute best possible speed. You desperately need economy of scale in bandwidth vs cost, as you’ve just launched a viral promotion that promises to triple your revenue within months. Bandwidth pricing is becoming cost prohibitive with your current provider, and you’re considering moving to a host that offers (economical) cross-connects. If your provider can’t economically support your anticipated bandwidth requirements, would that severely impact your promotion? Would colocation help? Absolutely!

Why Colocate?

Reliability – Downtime can be crippling. What if you lost your (_______) for only an hour?

• Web Server – would your clients stand by you or start shopping your competition?
• Centralized Point of Sales (POS) System – what if you couldn’t reconcile batched payments from 300 retail outlets nationwide?
• File Server – who needs access to accounting software, vendor or client records anyway?

Flexibility

Scale your services as you grow your business. Most data centers offer 10, 100 and Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) uplinks, with bandwidth as low as $5Mbps. 

Security

You have $$ thousands, possibly $$ millions, currently invested in data and technology infrastructure. Protect your investment from malicious attacks or theft by colocating at a secure data center. Data centers are protected 24/7/365 via physical security, monitored video surveillance cameras, controlled access (physical login, access card, and keyed access), plus smoke, temperature and moisture alarms. All visitors are cross-checked against client defined access lists. 

Cost Management and $$ Savings

The cost to build, secure and maintain an in-house data center can run into the thousands of dollars, often millions. The cost of power alone can amount to $$ tens of thousands of savings between LA, Chicago and NY versus Saint Louis. Layer on scaled bandwidth expense, multiple backup diesel fuel generators, 24/7/365 monitoring and it rapidly escalates beyond an expense most businesses desire to undertake. Plus, in-house skilled network engineers command sizeable compensation and benefits. Volumes have been written about the expense of replacing qualified IT staff, should they move on to higher paying jobs or just leave without explanation.