'Net Features : servers

Percona Offered by Big Hosting Companies

Michael Garrity — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:30:00 GMT

High performance is, obviously, the ultimate goal of any Web hosting company worth its salt. Perhaps that is why so many notable names in the hosting industry have been turning to Percona, the enterprise-level MySQL support, consulting, training and development services provider.

Basically, Percona works to make MySQL faster and more reliable for its clients, and as of late, it’s being seeing “rapid and increasing adoption” by hosting providers, some of which are pretty huge names, including RackSpace, Blue Host, HP, Joyent, Crucial Web Hosting and SpeedySparrow.

These providers are all making available to their customers the latest release of Percona’s enhanced drop-in replacement for MySQL, known as Percona Server version 5.5.28-29.1. In fact, Percona Server is actually one of the top three most deployed MySQL alternatives around, according to a report from 451 Research.

And it’s no surprise why, as Percona Server offers hosting providers advanced features that can speed up their searches and increase security, as well as giving administrators more control over their server environments. Plus, it’s a free, open source solution that provides breakthrough performance, scalability, features and instrumentation, in addition to self-tuning algorithms and support for high-performance hardware. Not too shabby.

Need To Know Server Response Code Ranges

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:19:00 GMT

You may know what a 404 server response code means, but what about the others? Discover what all 200, 300, 400 and 500 code ranges mean and start understanding the information within your analytics solution for the betterment of your Web enterprise. You just might find a problem that can be easily corrected, but you'll never know unless you look!

200-Level Codes (Success)
The two hundred range of server responses is reserved for successful responses. For example, the server response code 200 (OK) means the request was successful and information was returned. As you can imagine, this is the most commonly returned server response code.

300-Level Codes (Redirection)
The three-hundred level of codes indicates that further action from your browser is required. Two common codes (seen frequently in discussions about search engine optimization) are 300 and 301. A 301 response code means that the addressed source has moved permanently and all future requests should be made to the new URL. A 302 on the other hand means that the addressed resource has moved temporarily but future requests should continue to come to the original URL.

400-Level Codes (Client Error)
The four-hundred level codes indicate that some sort of error has happened. The most commonly seen 400-level response code is the 404, which means the resource (page) can not be found. There are many others 400-level codes however caused by client error. For example, a 410 code is more specific than 404 when a resource can't be found. If the server knows that the resource is no longer available and no forwarding address is known then 410 should be returned. But 400-level response codes can be very specific (and helpful). For example, the 401 response code indicates a request is unauthorized, meaning the request requires some form of authentication such as a user ID and/or password. Since many response codes can be modified, this might be an excellent opportunity to present a password reminder message or password reset feature.

500-Level Codes (Server Error)
The five-hundred level codes indicate cases where the server knows it has made an error or is not capable of answering the request. (Mostly it means an error in server-side software). In most cases the server should include some information explaining the error and say if the situation is temporary or permanent. For example, 503 (Service Unavailable) is a code returned when the server cannot respond due to temporary overloading or maintenance. Some users, for example, have limited accounts which can only handle so many requests per day or bytes send per period of time. When the limits are exceeded a 503 code may be returned.

NewServers API For Resellers

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:47:00 GMT

NewServers, a provider of dedicated utility servers with hourly billing, announced the launch of its reseller program featuring API access.

Comprised of multiple API features, volume discounts up to 20% and NOC level support access, the NewServers reseller program targets traditional hosting resellers, ISVs, web designers and application developers with higher volume and control needs. The API allows Resellers to integrate with NewServers' NOC automation to manage six key functions; adding a server, canceling a server, real-time available inventory list, active server information, current billing information, and server reboot control.

"Traditionally, the sales efforts of dedicated server resellers of all types have been inhibited by the long and inconsistent server provisioning and ticket resolution times of their provider," said JP Gagne, president of NewServers. "NewServers solves that problem with our API and NOC automation that extends self serve on-demand provisioning and canceling directly to the reseller. Couple that with NewServers' hourly billing model and resellers can manage their server costs completely in line with the revenue generated from resold servers," said Gagne.

Hosting: Server Virtualization & Going Green

Administrator — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:09:00 GMT

On the heels of Website Magazine's Green Hosting article in the February edition, web hosting provider ServInt introduced its new SuperVPS service - a virtual private server which can act as a replacement to traditional dedicated servers in an environmentally conscious way....(read more)

SE Ranking Problem - Slow Server

Administrator — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:49:00 GMT

I received a note from a reader yesterday afternoon inquiring about why her site was not ranking. As you can imagine we receive many emails like this each day and periodically I like to look under the hood an see what's going on. As you can imagine, not ranking (at least anywhere notable) is a common problem so several posts this week will address the issue of why your site may not be ranking well.

The result for this website? All in all it was a complete disaster. The code was chock full of third party javascript (thanks widget trend) and iframes, there was little proprietary content on the site itself, the meta information was a mess, and it had no inbound links. We'll discuss those issues later but what stood out the most for this site (at least to me) was that the site loaded too slow. Is that a problem? You bet. Here's why.

While search engines are not going to penalize sites that are on a slow server, there are indirect consequences. When search engine spiders notice that a site is unable to handle their request for information, they will simply leave and go elsewhere. The indirect consequence is that the slow loading site will not be completely crawled and will have fewer pages in the search engine indices.

I encourage all WM readers to test the performance of their websites (and web pages), mainly in terms of load times. InternetSupervision.com (a Website Magazine advertiser) has a helpful resource to check the performance and load time of websites.