VPS is more and more popular choice by webmaster for its unbeatable advantages over other hosting solutions. But how do you know if your server is brand new or secondhand product? Because more and more cheap VPS server service provided, it's necessary to identify what kind of server products we received.

Normally, a decent and high performance server always comes high costs because it's big investment to prepare all hardwares and virtualization platform. How is cheap vps server offered? it's either because of overselling on host server or simply secondhand products that're used by other clients before, they just load a new OS to offer you service. We have collected a list solutions to check what kind of server you work with.

Hardware specification

Most VPS server providers announce to have Raid 10 configured for host server to ensure the best security and performance. How do we know? We can do hdparm check over server disk I/O as below

hdparm install: yum install hdparm
Disk check: hdparm -t /dev/sda(your server disk device, it can be /dev/xvda or /dev/sda1 etc)

If it's Raid 10 disk, the reading speed should be above 100 MB/sec. If you can't get this speed, either your server is experiencing some problems or simply not Raid 10.

Http Load Testing

It's important to know how many concurrent connections your website can handle. There're lots of tools to use which is explained in website stress testing tools article. For simple and quick testing out, we highly suggest use webbench, a light weight but pretty powerful tool under linux. It can simulate 30000 requests to your site and report your server abilities.

download: http://home.tiscali.cz/~cz210552/webbench.html
Usage: webbench -c connections -t time URL
for example:
webbench -c 5000 -t 120 http://www.yoursite.com/

It will tell us the requests per second and data ammount. If you have multiple servers on hand, you can easily compare the http load abilities using this tool.

Overall Score testing

We highly suggest use UnixBench to get your VPS overall performance testing. The purpose of UnixBench is to provide a basic indicator of the performance of a Unix-like system. It will test your server overall performance based CPU, RAM, Hard disk and OS then provide a total score.

UnixBench documentation and downloads: https://code.google.com/p/byte-unixbench/

After above tests, you should have a basic understanding of your vps server configuration then determine if you should continue with the service. If you have ordered a enterprise vps server for business applications, it's necessary to do these tests because you're going to put your business there. Many server providers sell their space multiple times by the same configuration. That's the secret how they can still profitable via low price. If you do above tests on your hosting server, you will understand what kind products you received.

Shopping cart is the main purpose by more and more websites. Either you're operating a physical store or doing retailer, a website will always expand your business opportunity. You might have tried to search for a perfect shopping cart hosting plan. However, there's not a web hosting plan dedicated for shopping cart purpose. Hosting group can only optimize their hosting server as much as they can to work with those scripts. We have compiled a list of shopping cart hosting FAQs based our practice and user feedbacks.

What's shopping cart hosting?

Shopping cart hosting is a server service where you can install various cart softwares on your website. It's always provided under shared hosting plans.

How hard it is to install a shopping cart site?

Not really, most popular shopping cart softwares can be installed via one click installer in hosting control panel such as simplescripts, softaculous etc. These installers have great scripts library and updated frequently for new softwares.

Is windows server better for shopping cart management?

No. Actually most shopping cart softwares are developped under linux server environment via php/mysql technologies. Only few popular cart softwares programmed on windows server. Also, since over 80% users prefer to use linux, you get more advice on how to optimize your cart site.

What's the best shopping cart software?

There're over 100 shopping cart softwares on the web and new solutions being provided every few periods. You can check out the ecommerce hosting page for some most popular choice. Basically, if you prefer to windows solution, nopcommerce is by far the best one. If you need powerful enterprise solution on linux platform, magento is perfect one.

What're some rules in selecting a perfect shopping cart hosting plan?

Every hosting providers announce to be compatible with various shopping cart service. However it's hard to find a service where you can manage your store smoothly. Check the following when you're looking for a decent shopping cart hosting plan.

• Server/network specs. Hosting servers must be setup by up to date hardware configurations and software updates. DELL server is a must with RAID 10 disk array. SSD is best choice but not a must because of pricing. At least two data centers in the behind for guaranteed network availability. Generally, a small hosting group can not provide these facilities so you can filter a lot of providers at the beginning.
• Company Overall reputation. Always check how people talk about the company on internet and learn both advantages and weakness. If all you see is bad experience and various downtime complaints then you should avoid such service.
• Risk free opportunity. Check if you get opportunity to try out the service before you pay. In this way you can check side by side to learn if it will work with your requirements. Not too many hosting providers can offer this opportunity because they are not so confident to keep your business. Arvixe can offer up to 30 days try out service for one cent. Such offer smartly filtered those people who need completely free service and spammers, just people who really need long term service will sign up.
• Support availability. Support is top concern by most people nowadays because you always want someone to be available when you seek for help. Especially when you can't login to website or your hosting server is not connecting, a responsive support assistant is quite importnat.

Where do I get merchant account?

Merchant account is normally provided by your bank who can accept online transactions. Some shopping cart service also provide merchant account service with some fees. You can accept payment fastly by their solution.

Is there any fee included for online transaction?

Yes, it's always billed for every online transaction. The fees vary based different merchant service. You have to consult to the actual service provider.

What if I need to accept different currencies?

You just need a proper shopping cart software which is configured to deal with different currencies. Many softwares have bultin support for multiple currencies and can be scalable by new modules or plugins. Some leading shopping cart softwares like magento, opencart and oscommerce etc are all multi currencies compatible.

Your shopping cart is your online business center. You should take care of it seriously like your baby because it brings you profit. Find the right cart software and hosting plan to give it a nice home.

​VPS server is the best choice when you need to get guaranteed server resource or when you like to learn more about hosting server configuration. However, it's not cheap to get a secure and high performance vps. If you have tight budget on hand, it's necessary to reduce server investment as much as possible. We have collected a list of methods to save money for vps server hosting.

The cost of a vps server includes the following: Virtualization platform, Server OS, System management software and after sale service. Here we're going to introduce each point on how to reduce costs.

Virtualization platform. The most popular choice by vps hosting providers are XEN and OpenVZ. From technical point of view, XEN is better choice because it more professional in maintaining a stable system. However the XEN server is licensed product and not cheap to purchase. On the other hand, OpenVZ is completely open sourced software that can be downloaded by everyone for free. The direct effect is on server costs. XEN VPS is always more expensive than OpenVZ VPS for the same system configuration.

You will need to evaluate what your purpose is for VPS server, if performance and availability is extremely expected, XEN VPS is better choice. If you just want to save investment for practice purpose, OpenVZ is good enough.

Server OS. Unless you have been Microsoft developer who requires windows server system to work with, we highly suggest choose linux OS because its first choice by over 80% users. The high cost for windows is not just because its licensed OS but also most system softwares like sql server and mail server etc. But you get all of those for free under linux platform. Because not so many people prefer to windows server, it costs more for ISP to maintain a healthy environment. If you're not scripting ASP or .net and don't have to get a GUI for server management, linux should be your primary consideration to reduce server costs.

System Software. The primary system software we need to consider would be hosting control panel. There're lots of control panel softwares to choose from. cpanel is always provided as primary choice for additional fees. But there do have multiple good and free solutions. We have introduced a list of popular free hosting control panel softwares in the past. If you need the same powerful management from cpanel, we highly suggest install Kloxo which is recognized free cpanel alternative. If you need simple and security choice, ISPConfig should serve you well.

Except for control panel software, most others are provided for free on linux server. Unless you have to use some commercial solutions, you can always make full use of open sourced service and reduce the overal server costs as much as possible.

After sale service. Various after sale service is offered by server providers like dedicated IP address, backup storage, extra bandwidth etc. You must have a good plan to select the proper server so you don't have to purchase those additional resources after some time. Normally, it costs more when you purchase those services separately, if you select the proper plan which has all those pre-configured, you pay much less.

Another point in reducing cost is to search out potential server providers in United States. This area has the fastest internet connection and competitive business market. Especially for hosting products, you really can't find better price with the same level service. If you don't have to use a local server service, US hosting should be your primary consideration either for better price or better performance.

It's important to find a good VPS service for guaranteed performance. But it's important too to reduce the investment. The above points are generated by our personal experience from multiple vps hosting providers in the past 5 years. Follow the ones that suitable with your needs and comment on if you would like to add more.

Reseller is playing an important role from web hosting industry. When you want to start your own hosting business, reseller is the fastest solution. However, not every reseller strictly follow game rules. Many resellers oversell the limited server space heavily and bring failures to clients web service. Because of this, it's always good to deal with the actual server hosting provider for guaranteed performance. But how could we identify a reseller from actual hosting service? There're several ways we can work out.

Asking
The most direct method. There're several things you can ask to identify their service like the following

• If they're reseller. If you have such doubt, ask them directly. If they're confident about their service, they will give you answer with no hesitation. They don't have to pretend to be a physical server provider in order to get your business. They grow up by offering outstanding server performance and customer support.
• If they can provide reseller plan. Normally, a reseller web hosting provider does not offer reseller option to clients. It's pretty complicated to manage such alpha reseller service so most reseller hosting does not offer this feature to avoid potential problems.
• DC/Server configuration. Ask if they have any video or picture to show their daily maintenance or work in DC. Ask some technical questions about network protection and server setup etc. Resellers do not have access to such facilities so most probably they're not willing to answer. Instead, an end server provider knows everything in details because that's their own properties, they must understand what/how they're doing.

IP Reverse Lookup

The most efficient and technical solution. Just go ahead to ping out the hosting website to get its IP address. Then resolve the IP owner from DNS look up. Normally, a registered IP will keep a record in database which is searchable from lots of online tools like Ultratools. Just enter into the website IP address then it will return the actual company information including full name, Address and contact details etc. Some tools will even tell the IP ranges that're assigned to a group. It's quite useful when you would like to make further investigation to this company.

Obviously, there're multiple extra play arounds to make the identification. As long as you want to, you will get various ideas to proceed. Reseller hosting is not bad at all from technical configuration and it provides people good opportunity to start their own business. The problem is it's being abused by lots of unethical providers. Those people just want to be profitable but think less for end user. Because of this, they bring no actual value to clients and they ruined the overall reputation of reseller service.

What kind of reseller hosting can we trust? Those few bucks per month service with unlimited sub accounts are definitely to be avoid. A decent reseller hosting plan must provide exact resource amount limits so every customer can get guarnateed performance. However for those reseller service configured on VPS, the host company does not have any control for anything. For reseller hosting from VPS server, we recommend to check out this article for identification.

It's important to know what you're going to purchase and how it's organized. Personally, we don't recommend to sign up with reseller hosting unless it's fully trusted by your investigation. We can reduce lots of potential problems by registering with the physical service provider.