Scalable Cloud Servers Free Trial

You’ve been thinking about moving away from in-house physical servers to cloud servers. It’s the amount of grief involved in making the move and the potential cost that has you spooked. You don’t really need a supercomputer to run your business. You’d just like to have the advantages of elasticity and pay as you go pricing. Is that a reasonable thing to ask?

You bet it is! Before you get into a contract with one of the larger cloud services companies, have a look at scalable cloud servers perfect for small and medium business applications, as well as larger corporations. This particular service offers per second billing, the ability to pay only for what you use, free setup, no contract commitments and... there’s a free trial available.

Talk about low risk. Here’s your opportunity to get into cloud computing without a lot of fuss and bother and without committing to something that you’re not sure will work for you. There’s no big learning curve involved, either. These Windows and Linux cloud servers work like physical servers you are already familiar with. Have you spent years running your servers using cPanel and WHM? You can still manage them using CPanel/WHM. You’ll be able to turn up cPanel/WHM-ready cloud servers in a matter of seconds. That’s a lot faster than you could install the software if you were sitting right next to a server in your facility.

What sort of features are available with these scalable cloud servers? You’ll get full root/administrative access and the ability to build, test and deploy servers instantly. Your data is backed up nightly. This is not an oversold service, like some VPS (Virtual Private Servers). You get guaranteed CPU cycles and can burst higher when more cycles are available. If you wish to control your cloud servers programmatically, you can use the RESTful API that is available to control cloud servers.

The company that offers these cloud servers, Atlantic.Net, operates state of the art SSAE 16 (SOC 1) Type II (formerly SAS 70) certified data centers. They are secure, fireproof and climate controlled with multiple direct connections to the Internet. Backup power ensures that your servers will always be running. This is no idle claim. The SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a 100% Uptime SLA that includes 100% network uptime, 100% hardware replacement and 100% infrastructure uptime, all with money back guarantees. The cloud itself is designed for high throughput and low latency, running at 40 Gigabits per second. There are multiple nationwide data centers located in New York, Chicago, Orlando, Dallas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

You are probably wondering about pricing. It starts at 1.3 cents per hour or $9.49 a month for the smallest server with 256 MB RAM, 10 GB disk, a 2.4 GHz Xeon processor and a 10 Mbps network connection. It goes up from there, of course. The largest server has 16 GB of RAM, 4 x 2.4 GHz Xeon processors 750 GB of disk storage and a 70 Mbps network connection.

Cloud servers offer the benefits of owning your own server without the commitment of buying the hardware, maintaining it, paying for power and environmental controls, upgrading software and then going out to buy more when you run out of capacity. You know that can take days or weeks instead of the seconds it takes to turn up another cloud server.

Are you at least curious if cloud services are a better approach than the legacy techniques of operating in-house physical servers? Get a free trial of scalable cloud servers and give it a try before you make a final decision. Remember, even after you order one or more cloud servers, you can shut them down at any time and pay only for what you’ve used to date. It’s like having a massive data center all to yourself without having to pay for the infrastructure.

Cloud Hosting vs VPS

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are a hosting solution for web sites that have grown beyond shared hosting service but don’t quite require the expense and support that comes with running a completely private server. Now there is another choice that lets you scale up and down rapidly and lets you pay only for what you use.

That answer is cloud server hosting. We’re hearing a lot of buzz about cloud computing versus running your own data center. Many companies never got to the point of investing in an full-fledged in-house data center. They don’t even get to the point of installing a rack in the back room with a few servers for web hosting, email and the like. Why? Because outsourcing all that to hosting services has become too attractive.

The smallest companies, like those run by independent professionals, small retailers, design firms and others, most likely begin with a customized template site offered by a local web services company that also provides the hosting. As they grow beyond the “brochure” site stage or want to get into their own design and hosting, they sign up with one of the low cost hosting services you find online, such as HostGator. When you’re paying less than $4 a month for a hosting plan, there’s not much incentive to do it all yourself

How can companies offer hosting for so little and still make money? The low cost hosting plans are all in the category of shared hosting. The control panel gives you the illusion that you have a server all to yourself. Not by a long shot. There can be dozens or even hundreds of other websites that you are unaware of all on that same server. Your only indication that others are using resources is that the site may run slower at times. If you use too many resources, you hosting company may contact you to say you’ve outgrown the shared hosting plan and need to move up to a virtual private server.

What’s a virtual private server? It’s the intermediate step between shared hosting and having a dedicated server all to yourself. A dedicated server gives you a complete machine with processor, memory and disk storage all under your control. It also means you have to pay for and manage an expensive resource. If you don’t need all those those resources, they just go to waste. If you need more, you have to contract for a larger dedicated server or a cluster of servers. That gets very pricey very fast.

VPS hosting takes advantage of virtualization software. A physical server is logically partitioned into a number of virtual servers. Each one looks and acts like a stand-alone physical server. Only you and your hosting service know that you are running a virtual server rather than a private one. The cost is much less because the physical hardware is being shared among multiple virtual private servers.

Virtual private servers not only give you more resources, but you’ll also get full root access so you can install whatever software you want and customize it to your heart’s content. You still have the limitation of sharing a physical machine and the difficulty of scaling up or down if your requirements change.

Enter cloud hosting. The idea behind cloud computing is that someone else has created a gigantic pool of resources that includes processors, RAM memory, hard drives and bandwidth. Rather than sell you a fixed chunk of this pool, they rent access to it. The same virtualization principles that you have with virtual private hosting apply, but the resource pool is nearly infinitely deep. That means you can easily scale to meet your current needs and ramp up or down later on if things change.

Cloud hosting servers are available with your choice of Linux or Windows operating systems, guaranteed commitment of CPU cycles, RAM and hard disk space, hardware redundancy for high reliability, full root/administrative access, dedicated IP address, automatic nightly data backups, and the ability to add familiar control panels such as cPanel and WHM. For all this you pay by the hour for what you use and there is no commitment, contracts or setup fees. If you don’t need one or more servers, just cancel them without penalty.

What type of hosting works best for your company? Most organizations will do well to compare VPS, collocated private servers and cloud hosting options. Get prices and features to decide the best solution for your business.

Cloud Hosting With a Free Trial

You’ve been keeping an eye on the cloud computing phenomena for a long time. You’re thinking that it might be something that could benefit your business. Still, you're reluctant to put forth the cost, effort and commitment to give it a try. Now there’s an opportunity that might be just what you need. It’s a free trial of cloud hosting to get you started.

One easy way to get your toe into cloud services is to start with cloud hosting. Why cloud hosting? It’s a logical upgrade for a operation that has outgrown shared hosting solutions and is looking at VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and dedicated servers. The beauty of the cloud is that it offers you a flexibility and cost advantage over competing ways to host your web sites.

VPS and dedicated web servers are popular because you don’t need to make capital purchases and provide support and connectivity they way you do with running your own data center. They are one step up from the intermediate solution of colocation hosting, where you move your equipment to a public data center. The limitation of VPS and dedicated servers is that you pay a monthly fee for a bundle of resources. If you find that you have over or underestimated your requirements, you can generally upgrade or downgrade over the course of days, weeks or months.

Getting the resources right is a tricky proposition. If you order too little in the way of disk space, processing or bandwidth, you can find yourself watching hopelessly as a huge surge of viral traffic gets stopped cold by your overloaded website. The potential loss of sales can be far in excess of your monthly hosting fees. So what do you do? Take your chances or over-provision? Having all the resources you need will protect against traffic surges, but the rest of the time you are just paying to watch the disks spin.

Worse, yet, is having the type of site with wide variations in traffic and sales. You may find that your needs follow a seasonal, weekly or even daily pattern. Or perhaps no pattern at all. That’s especially true if you are a startup with the next killer app, but you don’t really know when it is going to take off or to what extent.

These are the kind of problems that cloud hosting is designed for. The cloud is a virtual environment with massive resources hidden just out of sight. If you need another server, you don’t wait for a technician to come around with a screwdriver and mount another one in your rack. You simply go to your control panel and deploy one or more in a matter of seconds. Things getting too quiet? Cancel your excess capacity and you won’t be paying for it anymore.

Atlantic.net has been providing hosting solutions since 1994 and operates a SAS 70 Type II platform that can handle large as well as modest requirements. They are making a splash in the cloud services field by setting up a system that makes it easy for just about anyone to get into cloud hosting quickly and easily.

You have your choice of Windows or Linux servers that can be deployed in less than a minute. Scale up or down in seconds, not next month. Flexible hourly billing starts at just 1.5 cents per hour and you pay only for what you use. There’s an API to control cloud servers programmability and you can add cPanel and WHM control panels to any cloud server for easy and familiar administration.

What’s your commitment level? There are no commitments, contracts or setup fees. You can cancel your servers at any time. Your data is backed-up nightly and the self-healing redundant infrastructure with automatic failover ensures availability. In fact, this cloud service comes with a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Does this sound like the kind of hosting that would work well for your company? Well, don’t go sign any contracts or make any commitments elsewhere until you give cloud hosting a try for free. You’ll wonder why you didn’t head to the cloud sooner.

UK Domains and Web Hosting

Network Solutions, one of the largest domain registrars and web hosting services companies in the world, now offers a complete array of services especially for users in the United Kingdom. These include not just .co.uk domain names, but web hosting, e-commerce email hosting, SSL security certificates and custom design and marketing services. It’s everything you need to be successful whether you are targeting visitors from the UK or operating a worldwide enterprise.

While .uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the United Kingdom, you can’t register .uk domains the way you register a .com or .net. Instead, you need to register one of the approved second-level domains. The most popular of these is .co.uk which is intended for commercial use but available for general registration. Of course, you are free to use the more general .com, .net and .org domains.

By the way, you can also register a .eu domain if you would rather be identified with the European Union. Unlike the unrestricted availability of the .co.uk domain, as a registrant you must be located within the EU to register a .eu domain name.

Once you have a domain name, you’ll want hosting to put that name to use. Most users want web hosting, but it is possible to skip the website and just have email hosting for a very low cost. You pay by the number of mailboxes you want. Then you have a choice of whether to pickup your email using the email program on your computer that downloads the messages, or to keep everything in the cloud and access your messages from anywhere using webmail. Spam and virus protection are included.

Network Solutions UK also offers a business email service to host your domain name. It works like the personal email solution, but includes more storage and the ability to sync email, contacts, calendars and tasks so you can work remotely and the ability to share calendars and collaborate on group projects.

Web hosting comes in a range of sizes to accommodate every user from those just starting out to major enterprises. The most popular packages are shared hosting, where you and a number of other clients share the same server. Of course, your files are kept separate in your own account. It’s the sharing of computing resources that keeps this service low cost.

For most hosting needs, shared hosting is the way to go. You get a lot for your money. Most plans are general hosting packages that include buckets of monthly bandwidth and disk storage. There are also specialized hosting options that include Hosting for WordPress that is designed specifically for bloggers and SharePoint hosting that is specifically designed to work with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) collaboration for small businesses.

You can generally add e-commerce capability to any general hosting package. Network Solutions UK has gone a step further by creating specialized CommerceSpace packages for online stores. You get customizable storefront templates that you can edit online or using web design software such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage. You have the ability to accept PayPal and Google Check payments and can add a merchant account to accept credit cards. The packages are priced by the maximum number of products from 25 to 100,000. A domain name is included with an annual purchase.

A step up from shared hosting is VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting. Intended for more demanding uses, these virtual servers give you root access to install whatever software you want, including different operating systems. You have a guaranteed amount of RAM and ample amounts of storage and bandwidth. VPS has become popular because it offers the flexibility of a dedicated server at a lower cost through virtualization than shared physical computing resources.

One additional type of hosting you should consider is mobile website hosting. More and more traffic and commerce is moving to smartphones. How does your website work on the small screen of a mobile phone? Not so well? You may benefit from a mobile-specific website with a .mobi extension. The advantage of a mobile site is that it is optimized for mobile screens and loads much faster than a full website. The user interface features the familiar icon appearance.

Are you interested in hosting to support your UK business, or are you conducting business internationally and want to focus on UK customers? If so, learn more about UK Domains and Web Hosting from Network Solutions.

Note: Map of the United Kingdom courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Namecheap Is That And More

Namecheap promotes themselves as cheap domain names registration, but they also offer a complete suite of services for anyone who wants to build and host their own website. All of their services are low cost, keeping with the “cheap” moniker.

Namecheap made quite a splash when they stepped up to the plate after the GoDaddy elephant fail. Bob Parsons’ loss was Namecheap’s gain. He made a buffoon of himself and alienated thousands of (former) customers. Namecheap raised over $20,000 to Save the Elephants in Africa, while they helped disgusted domain name owners transfer their names at a discount.

Pretty classy move for a company that bills itself as “cheap.” It’s actually a good title for the organization, as so many people looking to put up and run websites want to minimize their costs. If it’s a personal blog or website, you really can’t afford to be running private dedicated servers or paying outlandish fees for hosting or domains. Those hosting bills come due every month and even domain names renew yearly. The initial expense is just the start of it.

There are also the ups and extras to beware of. Some companies lure you in with a low price and then nickel and dime you to death with services you really need to operate. Namecheap is better than most at give you a feature-rich service for the stated price. For instance, with each domain name you register at the nominal $9.98 per year (.com) fee, you get the expected URL and email forwarding, DNS service and registrar lock. You also get Dynamic DNS support. But Namecheap also includes WhoisGuard Privacy Protect, a feature that many other domain registrars feel justified in charging extra for.

Privacy Protect keeps your personal information from showing up in the public Whois registry. Instead, anyone who tries to check you out in this service will see the address and phone number for Namecheap instead of you. If they want to write you, they must use a coded email that forwards to your real email. They’ll never see your actual email address so they can’t scrape it to send you spam. This services is free for a year with all new domain name purchases and transfers.

If you bought a domain name, then you probably want to do something with it. You could just forward it to refer through to your blog or Twitter account. You don’t need a hosting account to do that or to forward email from your domain name to your current email account. You can do that with the domain name settings. What if you’d like to actually have POP email for your computer using your domain name? Namecheap offers an email only hosting package for just $1.25 a month. You get 10 spam protected email addresses, 2,000 MB of storage, unlimited email aliases and autoresponders, Webmail and both POP3 and IMAP support.

The next step up is to have some actual web page hosting space. For starters you can get a basic $2.55 a month package that includes 5 GB of disk space, 250 GB of bandwidth, the ability to host 2 domains and 30 subdomains, 5 FTP users, 50 POP3 email accounts, 15 MySQL databases and support for PHP and CGI. I remember when that used to be fairly impressive specs for a business account at at least 10x the price. This is quite a bargain for the individual or smaller business.

Namecheap has a variety of basic shared hosting services with progressively more disk space and bandwidth. Their business hosting starts at $24.17 a month and is limited to 50 users per server to improve performance for e-commerce and other demanding applications. This account includes support for unlimited domains, subdomains and email accounts. It’s whatever you can load into 100 GB of disk. The Elite package at $40 per month includes more bandwidth and a free dedicated IP address.

I’m a fan of reseller accounts and Namecheap has an impressive set of packages starting at $16.95 a month. The beauty of reseller hosting is that you can resell hosting accounts to make money or use them all yourself if you have many domains and websites. You get a Web Host Manager to control everything plus each account has its own control panel. That keeps one site from affecting another, just like you’d have with separate hosting services.

For larger companies, Namecheap has both Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. VPS is based on virtualization. There are actually many virtual servers running on the actual hardware, but you deal only with one that can be independently rebooted. You get root access, a dedicated IP, DNS hosting, SSH access and free setup. You certainly don’t get that from every hosting company. Namecheap VPS is priced starting at $17.58 a month with choice of operating systems and 24/7 server monitoring.

The ultimate is dedicated hosting, of course. Unless you have a uniquely demanding application or are running a large enterprise operation, you probably won’t be looking in this league. Even so, having a dual core Intel-based server all to yourself starts at just $109 per month with 6 dedicated IP addresses. No long term commitments, either. You can go month to month with a rolling contract.

Are you looking for new domains and hosting or just steamed that you’re paying way more than you need to? You should take a look at all you get from Namecheap domain names and web hosting services.