Category Archives:
Tutorial & Guides

Every hosting company can announce to provide unlimited databases but no one can guarantee unlimited concurrent connections. Why is that? This article provides side by side reviews of database concurrent connections and guide on how to use it properly. We'll also guide on how to fix the popular errors caused by concurrent connection limits.

About Database Concurrent Connections

Concurrent connection refers to the number of concurrent open connections to database. We can think in this way to understand this theory, for example there're 100 people opened phpmyadmin on their computers and all of them connected to the same database, here the database concurrent connections are 100. Concurrent connection can be opened manually via database tools or from script connections.

As we know, each connection will use up some server resources. Hence if the number of connections increase then more server resources will be used. If all databases being connected like this on hosting server then performance can not be guaranteed. That's why every hosting provider set a reasonable limit of database concurrent connections.

But please note the limitation is only for mysql database not mssql. There's no such limitation for mssql database.

How to configure Mysql concurrent connection limit?

Mysql concurrent connection limit can be setup during installation. You can also make the change after setup. Take windows server mysql setup. The installer will guide to configure each parameter. Concurrent connection is specified from the last step as showed below

You can also ignore it directly to have mysql running first then define all parameters based your requirements. All mysql configuration is stored in my.ini file from installation directory. For linux server, the file is provided as my.cnf which is normally located at /etc/my.cnf. In this file there's a parameter called "max_connections". You can give the appropriate number based your requirement.

What's the limitation on hosting server? We personally have been working with 10 hosting providers. From our examination, most providers offer 10 or 15 connections per database. One hosting service provides up to 20.

How many concurrent connections we need?

Because concurrent connection is strictly limited and it seems so little, how many we need exactly to power our website? Actually, if our website is programmed properly, we need very few connections to database. A single connection will handle most tasks. What we need to understand is the number of database concurrent connection is not the same as website visits. Your website might be browsed by 1000 users concurrently but it might doesn't require database connection at all. Database connection is opened when your website has to read/write data from/to database such as artice editing, user registration etc. You don't have to open multiple connections to complete those tasks.

But please remember to close the connection after use. Or else it will be always opened there so after you opened connection multiple times the concurrent connections will be huge. Once you reached the server limits, you will get database connection failed error such as "Error establishing a database connection". In order to fix this error, you must contact server admin and run "flush hosts" command to clear out the connections.

In order to operate a healthy database driven website, it's very important to choose a well coded platform no matter if you use cms software or program by yourself. Always remember to close connection after use it. Normally, a popular cms software is pretty reliable because many users have used the platform so the project team could find various bugs then apply fixes quickly.

When you have planned to start a successful hosting company, it means you're going to serve a large portion clients on your servers. There're simply too many things to consider and data center facility is always the primary one. So our today's topic is, should you rent server space from ISP or build up your own data center? Which option is the best to power your business?

If you have done a bit research, you should have found there're various advantages for both options referring to investment, management and performance etc.. Here we carry out both advantages and disadvantages

Renting Server Space

It might be the primary choice for most start up hosting companies. You just need to submit the payment to ISP then you can get a portion of the data center to install your servers. All other resources such as security protection, power supply and cooling etc are prepared by ISP. You just need to focus on your business and leave all rest to your ISP. So basically we get following advantages in list

• Quick setup. You don't have to find a good place to construct the buildings and apply various hardware/software facilities to meet up with the business requirement. Using available resources will help start your business quickly with no waiting.
• Easy management. You just need to take care of your limited servers and don't need to worry about other stuff. In this way you can even setup your office beside the data center for quick response to any outage.
• Low cost. You just pay server rack renting and bandwidth fees. Any other expense will be supported by ISP management team. It's quite important for budget control from your business beginning because you need to invest multiple projects.

As we see, renting data center space brings us great convenience and advantage to start our hosting business. The most important is we don't have to deal with anything about the DC setup so the lowest cost is guaranteed. For start up company, cost control is very important since you must focus on business promotion. The best example from the industry is Hostgator which is just started from bedroom. Till present they still don't have their own data center space but renting from softlayer group.

Self build Data Center

Although we can easily rent data center space from lots of providers, many of us still want to get control for everything because we don't want to rely on outside resources for our business. Thus to build our own data center is a good choice if cost is not a big problem. Using our own data center space will bring us unbeatable advantages such as the following

• Better security. You have full control of every single setup so you can apply the best solutions based your experience. If you rent space from other ISP provider you can just accept the existing configuration. From your own data center, you don't get any limitation.
• Better scalability. No matter how your business grows you always have sufficient resource to deal with. You can customize the system in any way you like in order to ensure the max availability and performance.
• Better profit. Normally, after your data center is setup you will get lots of free space. You can sell to other people with good price to make full use of the facilities.

Building the company own data center is always the choice of big groups who have powerful financial support. Although it requires big investment from the beginning, there're lots of unbeatable features with the setup. Many popular hosting groups have their own data centers to ensure the best performance and availability. Some groups even setup multiple data centers from different locations to speed up their server connectivities.

Idealy, it's the best if a hosting company could setup their own data center because they can get full control of all equipment. When there's any outage, they can respond quickly for maintenance and reduce down time as much as possible. But that doesn't mean a hosting service without their own data center is bad. Instead, there're many reputable data center providers that're trusted by lots of hosting service. You just need to pick up the right provider. After your business grow up and you have sufficient financial support, it's highly suggested setup your own data center space.

VPS is considered an upgrade option of shared hosting when you need more than a shared server can offer. Especially when you need better performance on your business site, VPS is always suggested by most professionals. Is VPS server really working better than shared hosting? What we should know about before makeing the final decision? We're going to reveal the secret and check when you really need a VPS service.

Ideally, a vps server is allocated with dedicated resource from host server and it can be only used by your applications. But it's not always working like this in real world. There're simply too many virtualization solutions that will result in different quality servers. For example, many server providers create vps using OpenVZ. Being an open sourced platform, OpenVZ is widely installed for quick virtual server setup. However, the problem with this software is it can be over sold easily. Unlike most other commercial solutions that are strictly limited by license, server providers can easily edit the openvz kernel then create more than limited numbers vps instance.

Another weak point of openvz is about performance. All VPS servers share the same hardware resources. Especially on CPU and network load, as long as one server uses more then the rest servers can only get limited resources to share. Means if there's one server overloading, then all vps servers will be affected on the same host server.

As about shared hosting server, it's always extremely optimized via leading configurations by hosting group. Because there're lots of clients on a single server, they know the importance to maintain a healthy server environment so they have tried almost everything they can to setup a powerful and reliable hosting server. There's also daily backup and live monitoring applied to ensure its performance and security. Generally speaking, a well maintained share hosting server has more than required hardware resources so even after you overloaded the limits you are still safe. As about website performance, you can't really tell if it will be better on vps unless you have purchased a high standard server.

When do you have to get a vps server?

There're many reasons you select vps option, but you have to use a vps for below conditions

• You need to install something that's not possible under shared hosting environment.
• You need to test website compatibility and debug lively on production server environment.
• You need better security protection and aovid the crowd shared environment.
• You need quick problem fix when your website down and don't want to wait for hosting help.

There're more reasons to sign up vps. But you must evaluate the most important point and check if it's worth the try. The biggest advantage is you have full control of all server services so you can configure everything as you like, you do not receive this support from a shared hosting.

How to select the right VPS service?

As explained from above, different vps platform will generate different performance. If you're going to host a busy web application that requires high reliability, it's quite important to select the right server plan. Technically, openvz is not suggested unless you just sign up for practice purpose. For business website, XEN, KVM and virtuozzo are perfect choice. If you need windows vps server, hyper-v should be primarily considered because its provided by microsoft itself. Moreover, budget vps service is not suggested either for business site no matter how good it's advertised. For good and reputable vps service, this top 5 vps hosting list is good source to follow.

Best alternative choice of VPS

After you outgrew a shared server you have lots of choice to go instead using VPS server. Many hosting companies provide a service similar to VPS called "Business hosting" or enterprise hosting. It's still on shared server but just shared by much few clients. The actual server performance is much better than a average vps. The big advantage with this service is you don't have to maintain the server by yourself. It's still operated by hosting support team so you can sleep well at midnight.

For high performance and security business hosting solutions, we highly suggest check out arvixe who can provide both windows and linux plans with leading features. The arvixe business hosting might be a little expensive comparing to their budged shared hosting service, but you get what you pay. The extra fees generate 10 times more value and simplified your web hosting experience.

Check out arvixe business hosting details from http://www.arvixe.com

VPS or dedicated server will always be considered when you website grows up. Dedicated server absolutely wins from technical view. But what's exactly good for either product? We have generated a list of comparison between vps and dedicated server with both pros and cons to help with your quick selection.

In order to understand the difference and relationship between the two products, we will focus on following essential points that are mostly concerned by people: server structure, performance, security and costs.

Server structure

A dedicated server is composed by physical hardware resources such as hard drives, RAM card, CPU and power source etc. You have full control of the physical server with complete access to all its resources. As long as the server is setup by your requirements, you can make full use of all available facilities.

VPS is different. While a dedicated server is completely configured on physical hardwares, vps is just created by virtualization softwares like openvz and hyper-v etc. Everything is virtualized from existing server resources. Unlike a dedicated server where you can touch the server hardware directly by hand, everything from vps is non-touchable, you can only see its configuration from virtualization platform.

Performance

A dedicated server has its own physical resources and always can be added in case there's need. No matter how you utilize the resource, you'll not be affected by other people.

A vps server performance completely depends the host server configuration. For example if it has 8GB RAM installed, then the max amound to allocate to vps can never by pass this limit. Because there're always multiple vps instance created on host server, all vps servers are sharing the same dedicated resources. When any of the vps instance uses more, there's less resource left for others. Some critical resources like disk I/O and network bandwidth is strictly limited by host server abilities. If all vps servers are generating big amounts traffic during peak times this can cause some performance degradation or even down time.

Security

For those who require extremely high security protection, dedicated server is absolutely perfect choice. Because everything will be stored on your dedicated server and only you have root access to it. Unless your physical server is stolen from data center space, everything can be secured properly via existing security tactics. The 100% physical resource isolation feature greatly reduced potential security issues that're common from other systems.

VPS is great too but absolutely not so powerful as dedicated server. Because it's virtualized from host server resources by software. Server administrators have full access to every vps. As long as the host server is hacked, all vps platforms are actually dead. Even there's no such hacking issue, you don't wish host support to access your server space either in case you keep something really great in the space.

We had a client who sells commercial dotnetnuke skins and modules before, he tried shared and vps but he always found his property being compromised by other people. He then switched to dedicated server and no such issue happened. I can't say if it's the problem of host company or just because of a powerful hacker. But a dedicated server solved the problem perfectly.

Costs

Dedicated server is much more expensive than vps for all its advantages. No matter what kind of dedicated server you would like to deal with, it will always cost you more than vps solutions because you get all dedicated resource. VPS is affordable choice before you have to use a dedicated server. You get a full functional server system as well with allocated resources.

Here's a table list view between vps and dedicated server

Although VPS is not so powerful as a dedicated server, it's good service to practise your server management skills before you work with a dedicated version. A VPS is configured full functional like a dedicated server so you can learn server services side by side. Also, with the fast tech development, most server products are going cloud. Most cloud servers are actually created as VPS with flexible resource and performance. When you evaluate if to work with a vps or dedicated server, make sure to check about your future growth and needs.

Working with the right hosting service means half success of your website. You can search out a list tips on how to find the best web hosting service because it's placed everywhere. While we're looking for something really good, how can we avoid the bad ones? Besides those named out companies, we also concluded following tips about how to avoid a bad web hosting service based our editorial experience.

Technologies blow off

Such hosting providers always blow off their technologies for server/network management. They announce to provide the best server and protection like TBs ddos attack protection. They always use some very professional word terms to describe service just like their server is nuclear powered. They open lots of threads on every internet forums and always trying to approve they're number one. However, they can't show up a decent list of happy clients. How can you trust their blow off words?

Less customer caring

Such issue always happen from those big groups who just focus on business expanding. They manage a big business with powerful financial support. They don't care about your small paying for the service. If you send out complaints, they might ask you to leave directly. What you see on their company blog or forum is all about data center setup or new technology application. They are also very active in acquiring other business to grow up fast. They're so busy in their business and don't have time to improve customer service.

It's very common for those big brands, especially for those who manages multiple sub brands. They often migrate people from one system to another for good reason. In case you face problems for hosting account, they just like playing balls between new and old supports.

Brave policies

They create very cheap hosting plans and state clearly what they support. For example they state the service is only suitable for small site purpose and don't provide support for anything else. No matter how customers complain, they just send out their policy with no more explanation. They seem to tell people their products are just for hobby purpose and couldn't be used for long. Their people are even doing so ugly, how can we trust their service?

Why such service can still be alive in the business? Because they're cheap. Cheap is always a big concern when people looking for potential hosting service. Because of this, they can design such brave policies and force customer to accept it. In case you're not satisfied and close account, they don't loose too much because they're accepting more new clients.

All above hosting providers have one same point, just blow off and don't do something needful. They also try everything they can to attack competitors and have fun with it. If there's something hot they will join in and finally they even confused what they're doing. They might be profitable for some time because they can always catch the money point, but they can never last for long.

What we suggest for reader based above situation?

As we see, the hosting industry is pretty complex especially it's your first time to loggon. But definitely you shouldn't be convinced by what they say. You might feel its professionality by some new word terms in your sight, but you should focus on what you need from the beginning and not be misguided by their beatiful words. Most of the time what you need is an honest service even their products are not so powerful. So knowing your needs is always important during the entire process in looking for server plans

Magento commerce is great shopping cart software to help with enterprise ecommerce solutions. It's famous for powerful management over products and the entire selling process. But when you look for decent magento hosting suggestion, most people will tell you to check out vps or dedicated server hosting. Why is that? Isn't shared hosting good enough to support magento scripts?

The answer is absolutely no. Let's see what advantages we can get from vps server first

• Root access. VPS is performing the same as a dedicated server that comes with its own OS and disk drive. VPS user receives full root access for any side configuration. If your magento site requires some special server end setup, you don't have to seek help from hosting support because you can fully handle it by yourself. Using vps simply brings us convenience.
• Better performance. VPS is only used by yourself so your website performance won't be affected by other users. For those ecommerce applications with extremely high uptime and loading speed, vps should be the primary consideration if dedicated server is not in consideration yet. Besides the dedicated server resource from vps server, you can also apply various optimization tactics to make it working perfect with your website script. You do not receive such support via shared server environment.
• Easy maintenance. In case something goes wrong on website or server, you can apply urgent maintenance and make sure your website is always online. You don't have to always contact hosting support for most problems fixing. Especially when your site down on peak time, you can't wait long for a simple fix because you're loosing business.

As we see, those VPS advantages are not included from shared server. Especially when you're under development process, you might require various modification on server settings. VPS will support your requirements side by side.

But we should also note the purpose of magento software. It has a complex structure with almost every side consideration for online cart. It also gives developers second development opportunity to fulfill your local needs. Because of this, magento commerce is some kind heavy weight comparing to all exisitng shopping cart solutions like oscommerce, opencart and xcart etc. Most magento applications are setup for enterprise carts that generate huge daily traffic. Because of this, shared server will not work.

Can we install magento commerce on shared server? Absolutely no problem at all based the software system requirements. It's actually included from most auto installer like softaculous and simplescripts. Just few clicks to get it running on your website. You can also use it as normal for simple store setup. The problem is you can not make full use of the available features on shared server. If you try to make it full functional with heavy transaction, other people on same server will start to complain.

Basically, if you want to maintain a large shopping cart site for your enterprise, magento is perfect choice based its design structures. But you will need a vps or higher server solutions to make it working properly. If you just want to maintain a simple store site, you don't need magernto at all for it's complexity. Instead, you have wide choice over lots of popular platforms like opencart, zencart etc. These softwares provide simplicity and user friendly structures to simplify your work greatly.