Oct
29
2009

NaviSite- The real cost of running a server In-house

by Sumeet Sabharwal

It’s not exactly news that running a web or application server in-house is an expensive proposition for any company, and especially for resource tight SMBs and startups. Hardware and software costs, hiring and/or training personnel to deploy and manage the server, and bandwidth are minimum requirements, and cutting corners in any of these areas courts disaster. Despite an intimidating high cost of entry, deploying an in-house server is still desirable for a number of reasons, most centered around security concerns or flexibility needs. Those advantages come with an element of risk, and businesses who don’t carefully consider the hidden costs in running a web or application server in-house could find any benefits negated in revenue draining budget shortfalls.

Hardware costs should be straightforward to identify, although deciding whether to purchase or lease is much less cut and dry. Purchasing hardware outright may cost less over time, but it also depreciates quickly and businesses can find themselves still paying off equipment that is losing performance ground to newer deployments. Leasing can offer more flexible options, but that typically comes at a premium price.
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Sep
15
2009

Small Business Strategies to Limit the Risk and Affects of Data Loss

by Sumeet Sabharwal

Preventing unplanned downtime and business failure.

Protecting your business data is more important than ever due to all the catastrophic, unforeseen events that can damage or destroy your data permanently. Customer data, accounts payable, invoices, email and historical communications and business applications are the backbone of your company. Without your business data, your business could not move forward on a day to day basis. Imagine not being able to access your business data for an hour, a day, a month or possibly forever. Now you can protect your small business from data loss, prevent unplanned downtime, and prevent business failure. NaviSite, a leading dedicated and managed hosting services company, shows you how vulnerable your data can be without the proper backup plan in place.

Please Click Here to access the complete White paper and Learn how you can protect your business and focus on what you do best

Sep
8
2009

Beyond the Hype – Data Center Ratings & Your IT

by William Toll

Data center ratings have become an increasingly popular marketing point for dedicated web and application hosting providers, but what do those ratings really mean, and how do they impact the success of your business? By understanding how data centers are evaluated and scored, you can make a more informed decision about your specific business needs and maximize the value of your IT costs.

Depending on your point of view, you may focus on certain data center features when reviewing managed hosting and colocation providers. Some businesses are concerned with connectivity, others with environmental features, or physical security, or routing protocols; it’s a long and diverse list. At the heart of every individual concern is an overriding one and it’s the same for every business- uptime. As anyone who has spent time reading and evaluating service level guarantees (SLAs) knows, there are a lot of ways uptime can be defined.

Data center ratings ideally provide a standardized, industry accepted means to fairly and objectively review data centers, so customers can cut through the marketing hype and truly understand the differences when making important business decisions. In practice however, this hasn’t fully been the case.
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Jun
1
2009

The Changing needs of SMBs

by Sumeet Sabharwal

The recent NaviSite case study with leading India media company Webchutney highlights the changing needs of managed dedicated hosting customers in a post Web 2.0 business environment. It’s something of a paradox, but when budget tightening is the norm, purchase decisions are motivated by more than simply price point. For Webchutney and for many other SMBs in similar positions, the difference maker is world class customer service.

While every business is unique, their requirements from a service provider are often quite similar. They want things to work, and when problems occur, they want quick resolutions. That second part is important. Hosting customers are much more sophisticated, they understand that when it comes to complex applications and server deployments, occasional issues are inevitable. As Webchutney COO Rahul Nanda put it, “Just about any host is going to work okay 95% of the time. How they respond when you are having problems is the key.”
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May
27
2009

Protecting your data with Managed Services

by William Toll

It’s not just a little ironic that the often quoted Murphy’s Law was coined long before data storage changed from boxes in a warehouse to zeroes and ones on a magnetic disc. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong is a truism in the IT arena. As anyone who has experienced the loss of critical files on a hard drive, memory stick, or even a phone number scrawled on a napkin can tell you- there’s nothing like that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know the information is well and truly gone.

As maddening as it can be to lose personal data, when it comes to your business it’s a mistake that could be catastrophic. As a result, data backup solutions are a multi-million dollar industry, and to be sure, there are many options to consider. From automated robotic tape rotation machines to software driven RAID disc arrays, there are solutions to fit any scenario. Unfortunately they also share a common weakness: unless your core business actually is data backup, managing your backup solution in house assumes responsibility for a complex process without the human resources it takes to do it correctly. That’s a complicated way of saying if you handle your own backups, chances are you’re going to run into Murphy’s Law, and it won’t be pretty.
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May
22
2009

NaviSite Dedicated Hosting client win due to its uncompromised Always There approach to support

by William Toll

NaviSite Dedicated Hosting recently added a new client, Webchutney, one of India’s leading full service digital media and interactive marketing selected NaviSite Dedicated Hosting as its managed dedicated server and virtual dedicated server host.

Webchutney had a very clear mission and their reason to look for a new hosting provider was the quality of service they were getting from their dedicated server hosting provider. Sporadic outages were frustrating, but even more troubling was the lack of professionalism and follow through on the part of the engineering and support staff. The servers were under powered by industry standards, and Webchutney had little visibility into what was going on from day to day. As COO Rahul Nanda summed it up, “We didn’t feel like we were in control.”
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May
13
2009

Tips to move your site to a New Hosting Provider

by Sumeet Sabharwal

There can be many reasons to move your website to a new host. Cost considerations, performance issues, scalability, maybe some combination of all of those things, or maybe it’s just because the new VP of Technology has a nephew on his wife’s side that needs a sale. Whatever the reason, one fact remains- changing a hosting provider is a daunting process for webmasters and IT managers. The good news is that with careful planning and execution, site migration can be a painless and easy process.

Measure twice, cut once
Whether you’re migrating a simple one server website or a complex multi server platform, the devil is in the details. That means not only a lot of the obvious information gathering (IP addresses, host names, DNS entries), it also means combing through every line of code to identify any reference to the current host that will break post migration, to detail any directory structure artifacts and other legacy inconsistencies, and to clean up those issues well in advance of any changes. Once you’re confident that the site is fully clear, lock it down to prevent any changes during the migration process. For complex sites with lots of moving parts this may take coordination with several departments, but it’s critical to draw a line in the sand at some point to prevent version management headaches.
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Apr
10
2009

Why NaviSite – Dedicated Hosting – Included Extras Keep You Secure

by William Toll

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure says the old adage, and that’s all too often true when it comes to your businesses critical servers. Unfortunately the reality of the day to day work life in the 21st century means that preventive are too often put on the backburner, until the pound of cure leads to the pounding headaches that come from a critical outage. If you’ve made the decision to outsource your server architecture, we believe that investment should be as secure as possible.
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Mar
27
2009

Why NaviSite Dedicated Hosting – Free Server Management

by Sumeet Sabharwal

The fact is, most small and medium sized businesses don’t have the personnel or capital resources to handle managing important server infrastructure. When you get a managed dedicated server from NaviSite, you haven’t just outsourced a piece of hardware. You also get end to end management at no additional charge. From OS management to ongoing maintenance to parts and upgrades, it’s all taken care of for you by our team of Always There support engineers.
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Nov
19
2008

Tis’ the season for NaviSite Dedicated Hosting’s Shared Load Balancer

by William Toll

NaviSite small business Dedicated Hosting customers know that this time of the year Internet traffic begins to pick up measurably. Ecommerce begins to soar as consumers begin researching and buying goods and services online. Financial and insurance firms experience an end of the year rush to prepare for the new year of taxes. Small businesses run end of year reports.

Given the explicit cost of attracting clicks and visitors, businesses need to make every visitor count! Every request to a dedicated server is important! Delays, time-outs and server slow-downs are not acceptable, this time of the year or any time of the year for that matter!

A Shared or Dedicated Load Balancer accepts the traffic and distributes it evenly between servers, ensuring access to your servers is available, even on peak days like big ecommerce day: “Black Friday”.

NaviSite has been providing enterprise class load balancing solutions for over a decade. Depending on their need and scale, our SMB dedicated server customers can opt for either our Shared or Dedicated Load Balancer solution. Our Shared Load Balancer solution is hardware based and configured in pairs with a high degree of redundancy, making it extremely suitable for high performance web sites or applications. A hardware load balancer is far superior to a software solution offered by the competition as the processing of requests is done on the highly tuned load balancer, not your servers. As most customers are looking to achieve server availability and performance in a simple, elegant way, we have architected the perfect shared solution. It’s almost – set and forget!

Our Shared Load Balancers are built using Citrix® NetScalers®, a purpose-built dedicated hardware application platform that provides an optimized traffic management solution, enabling increased Web application availability. We have enabled the Load Balancer to send traffic in a round robin configuration to the multiple servers our customers select. Additionally, the service features session persistence mechanisms to ensure a consistent experience. With the capability to support the bandwidth and connections that our customers need, and a reasonable price per server connected, we believe this is the best solution at the best price in the market.

The solution we deliver is completely managed in all aspects. We manage the network and the device. We create the profiles for your solution. You run your applications and manage your business. Your Website visitors and application users will appreciate your thoughtful planning and desire to provide the optimum experience.

NaviSite Dedicated Servers can be connected to our Dedicated or Shared Load Balancers for as little as $100 per server, per month. Call or click here to order a dedicated hosting package today.

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