HostingZoom Blog

If you run an online business or any other website that needs to have a high degree of reliability and stability, you know how disastrous having significant downtime or having to roll back your data can be. It can lead to everything from lost sales to maintenance costs to loss of important records, and the best way to prevent system failure of this kind is to make sure the hosting company you sign up with provides failover hosting. Here, we’ll take a quick look at how failover works, and why it is important to any website that needs to keep its data stable and intact at all times.

Failover hosting essentially consists of two separate servers that have a “heartbeat” cable running between them. The main server, which normally hosts the website and stores data, sends electronic signals to the secondary server. Should the main server fail, these signals will cease, thus causing the secondary server to immediately take over the task of hosting the website. Each server is updated simultaneously, so that they always have the same type of data. This is called redundancy, and it is used to keep one server from getting ahead of the other and thus losing track of data.

Failover hosting can have a number of other benefits and features. Occasionally, there is a third server called a “spare parts” server, which is used to decrease downtime while failback is being performed. Failback refers to the process of restoring the original server to its normal capacity after it has failed. The second server may also be able to send a page to a technician or support center in order to get someone on the scene quickly to failback the original machine. Using failover in your hosting service is an excellent way to cut down on the amount of time your site is down during maintenance or technical problems, and will ensure that you don’t lose any important information in the case of any technical problems.

There are a lot of things that you will want to avoid losing, particularly if you run a business online, and failover hosting is simply the best way to prevent that. There are several ways to use failover, as it might be automated or be initiated by a human technician, but in the end it serves as the only way to not only back up data but increase overall downtime.

Some of those other guys don’t like supporting their customers. They like taking your money, but when it comes to customer service, they’re simply not there for the handoff.

Well, at HostingZoom, that’s not a problem, because we firmly believe in supporting our clients. That’s why we offer several different methods of support.

You can submit a traditional trouble ticket, or you can chat with a support technician. You can also get support over the telephone, or on our customer forums. Whatever method is best for you, we’ll give you the top-notch, quality support that you deserve as our client.

Why is support important? If your website is down, or if you’re having problems with the service, then you’re probably not happy. We don’t like our clients to be unhappy, and just as importantly, we like to know about problems, so we can fix them right away. More than likely, if there’s some sort of network issue, we’re already aware of it, and already working on it, but we never mind hearing from our clients, and we appreciate people letting us know about issues, so that we can respond to them promptly.

At HostingZoom, you never have to worry about being left in the dark, because we offer several methods of support. Some guys only offer e-mail support, and still others offer none at all. That’s simply not how we do business here.

One of the things that comes with our hosting packages is the Cpanel software.

What is it? It’s a control panel software, which makes server administration literally a matter of clicking a button or two. With Cpanel, you can quickly administer your website in all aspects, from setting up e-mail addresses to managing your files if you don’t have an FTP program handy.

The control panel environment is completely icon-based, which means that you log in to the program by way of yoursite.com/cpanel, and then click the icon that represents the option you want. The software is extremely easy to use, and is industry standard.

Need to check your website’s stats? You can do that. Need to ban a user’s IP address? Yup. You can even set up hotlink protection, which will prevent users from directly linking to graphical files on your site, thereby depleting your bandwidth. With Cpanel, you’ll have complete and total control over your website.

Whether you’re a beginner or expert user, Cpanel is the perfect solution for your website, because it makes administration easy, eliminating the need to log in via SSH and administer your SQL databases via the command line.

When you’re using Cpanel, you can concentrate more on developing your website, and less on actually administering it.

If you’ve looked at our homepage, you’ve probably seen a service that touts “clustered failover technology”.  What’s the big deal?

Our ;Clustered Failover Web Hosting offers an advantage over many of those other guys: your website won’t go down due to a sudden burst of traffic. 

Basically, your website can still be on a shared account, but it will be hosted on clustered servers.  This will allow for traffic to be routed to the next available server, which results in maximum uptime for your site.  All your data is copied across the cluster instantly, and that includes blogs and message boards. Here’s an example: when you update your blog, and moments later you get hit with a high amount of visitors, your website will be sitting pretty and serving up, because your update will have been instantly copied across the cluster network, meaning that no matter what server your visitor is routed to, they will see your updated blog.

The problem with most hosting plans is this: your site is typically hosted on one server.  If another website on that server gets a sudden burst of traffic, your site may go down with it.  Or, if that server experiences a technical malfunction of some sort, your website will likewise go down. But that won’t happen with us.  And just so you know, this technology is not just limited to our shared hosting packages.  As your needs grow, HostingZoom can meet them all.

So if you’re on a budget, but still require maximum uptime, then HostingZoom is the place for you.  Regardless of what service you purchase, when you combine our reliable service with our caring staff, you’re the winner!