1 Simple Step Towards Improved Customer Satisfaction for Web Hosts Most of your customers are not unreasonable sort of people. They understand that problems crop up and mistakes do happen. I don't know about you, but I know that I am a MUCH more reasonable customer when the company I am purchasing services or products from promptly communicates any problems that arise.
The web is all about communication, so you would assume that any company that makes web hosting its primary business should really understand this and put measures into place that allows for the most reliable and uninterrupted communication with their customers. We talked about this a bit in our last article and promised to give you some tips about methods we have implemented to increase our ability to communicate with our customers during emergencies.
Let's face it, there isn't a web host out there who hasn't experienced times where the server that their company web site is on has gone down. Sometimes only for a few minutes, but sometimes those minutes can turn into hours - or even days if a major piece of hardware has gone belly up on you. And in most cases, you don't dedicate an entire server to your domain - you have customers who also share that server. Customers who now are not only unable to gain access to THEIR domain, but can not reach yours either. They are effectively cut off from electronic communication with you. So what do they do? How can they find out what is going on with their web site, and more importantly, when it will be back online?
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0 Setup Fees 6011 26th Avenue N.W. Rochester , MN 55901 U.S.A. Phone: (507) 252-1290
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Multiple Domain Plan
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| Plan Details | |
| Plan: | Multiple Domain |
| Plan URL: | |
| Plan Type: | Shared |
| Platform: | Unix or Linux |
| Price Per Month: | 19.95 |
| Price Per Year: | 239.40 |
| Setup Fee: | No Set Up Fee |
| Non-Profit Discount: |  |
| Disk Space (MB): | 500 |
| Extra Disk Space: | $0.06 per MB |
| Bandwidth Allowed: | Unlimited |
| Extra Bandwidth: | $20.00 per GB |
| Backup Frequency: | Daily |
| Account Setup Time: | 1-6 hours |
| Minimum Contract: | No minimum |
| Money Back Guarantee: | 30 Day |
| Email Accounts: | 50 |
| Email Autoresponders: | 50 |
| Email Aliases: | |
| Web-Based Email: | |
| Account Features | |
| Databases Supported: | PHP3, MSQL, MySQL, Python |
| Server Component List: | Yes |
| Control Panel: | |
| FTP: | |
| FrontPage® Support: | |
| Telnet Account: | |
| SSH Support: | |
| SSI Support: | |
| ASP Support: | |
| Cold Fusion Support: | |
| PHP Support: | |
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| CGI Support: | |
| Perl Support: | |
| Shopping Cart: | |
| Merchant Account: | |
| Realtime Credit Card Processing: | |
| SSL: | |
| Adult Content Allowed: | |
| Free Domain Parking: | |
| Free Domain Registration: | |
| Private Servers: | |
| Raw Logs Available: | |
| Graphical Web Traffic Reports: | |
| Java Virtual Machine: | |
| Steaming Audio: | |
| Streaming Video: | |
| Network and Servers | |
| Connection Speed: | OC3 |
| Server Hardware: | Always Cutting Edge |
| Server Software: | Linux Red Hat |
| Sites per Server: | Load Balance Systems - Never more Than 200 |
| Technical Support | |
| Business Hours: | 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM CDT |
| Technical Support Hours: | 24 Hours |
| 24 Hour Technical Support: | |
| Tollfree Technical Support: | |
| Technical Support by Phone: | |
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| Manuals Available: | |
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Webfarms II: Balancing The Load. Okay, so you understand webfarms now. What's the magic that actually distributes the load, and how does it determine how the distribution is handled?
At ORCS Web we use the Foundry Server Iron products to perform our webfarm load-balancing. If one of them fails, the other instantly takes over (In our testing, it had sub-second fail-over!)
So what is this "Server Iron" thing? In simplest terms, it's a layer 4-7 switch. It has multiple network ports on it and can be used literally like other types of switches. But, it can also load-balancing and traffic distribution. A VIP (virtual IP) can be assigned to the SI (Server Iron) and it then handles all traffic sent to that address/VIP. Further configuration is done to tell the SI what to actually do with the traffic sent to the VIP address.
The traffic that hits the VIP on the Server Iron is of course redistributed to a number of server nodes so the client request can be satisfied - that's the whole point of a webfarm. If one or more server nodes are not responding, the switches are able to detect this and send all new requests to servers that are still online - making the failure of a server node almost transparent to the client.
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