Web Hosting Panel : web hosting panel week 5 2012

FireHost Expands to Europe

Michael Garrity — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:08:00 GMT

Secure cloud hosting company FireHost is expanding, and it has set its sights on Europe, officially announcing that its secure hosting services are now available at data centers in London and Amsterdam.

Now European businesses and companies with a presence on the continent have access to FireHost's award-winning services with the security of knowing that their data, websites and applications are being hosted nearby and under European data protection legislation jurisdiction. Until now, all FireHost services were run out of data centers in Texas and Arizona in the United States, despite the fact that it worked with companies in 22 different countries.

But thanks to demand from European businesses and "increasing requirements to keep data within the European Union," FireHost decided to make the big move.

Information and pricing for companies based-in or operating in Europe can be found on the FireHost U.K. website here.

Hostnet Implements Email Filtering Service

Michael Garrity — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:22:00 GMT

Web hosting provider and domain name registrar extraordinaire Hostnet has teamed up with email security provider SpamExperts to introduce a filtering service for inbound and outbound emails on its network.

SpamExperts allows Web hosts to quell the amount of spam and viruses coming through their network, which helps prevent the company from being blacklisted and improves email backup and compliance services via email archiving. The company claims to have 99.98 percent filtering accuracy.

Hostnet will deploy SpamExperts' local cloud product on its virtual hardware instead of on the hosted cloud running the SpamExperts network. The platform will be managed and monitored by SpamExperts, who will also provide updates to the email security software.

This isn't the first time that a hosting company has enlisted SpamExperts' services. The company has also integrated with or provided plugins for cPanel, Plesk and Parallels Automation. Now, its email filtering service will be available to Hostnet's impressive client base of over 500,000 registered domain names and 100,000 subscriptions.

WordPress Hosts Introduce New Features

Michael Garrity — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:10:00 GMT

Attention anyone who runs a WordPress-based website: Three Web hosting companies that work with WordPress sites have launched new features to enhance their hosting capabilities.

First, Nexcess, which offers a variety of hosting options in addition to WordPress hosting, has unveiled a new line of enterprise managed server clusters distinctly optimized for WordPress sites. This follows another recent launch by the company of new WordPress hosting solutions in the United Kingdom.

These new enterprise clusters will be based on the exact same technology that Nexcess currently uses to run its WordPress-optimized blog platform hosting environment, and will give website owners options for performance optimization, scalability, reliability and the opportunity for higher system resource availability in cases of unpredictable blog traffic patterns.

In other WordPress hosting news, specialized hosting provider WP Engine is bringing out a new tool that lets customers restore their websites to a recent working state in the case of unintentional errors that may break the site.

Since WP Engine works pretty much exclusively with the WordPress content management system platform, it has been able to develop a solution that alleviates the problem of occasional "hiccups" that come with installing a variety of plugins to increase and improve the functionality of a website. This solution is called Restore Checkpoints.

Restore Checkpoints will create a new "checkpoint" of a WordPress website at 3 am every morning, so that if something happens to the site, it will be returned to the exact state it was in earlier that day. There will be a list of different backlogged checkpoints within a user's control panel, so they will be able to restore their website to any day in the past, as well.

Checkpoints can also be created by website-owners manually at any time.

Finally, WordPress hosting provider Lightning Base just launched version 2.0 of its hosting software. The new release will feature greater compatibility for "diverse WordPress setups" and makes for easier self-management, with plans starting at lower price points (the lowest is under $10 a month).

Store On-Premise Data in the Cloud with AWS Storage Gateway

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:02:00 GMT

The online and offline worlds are becoming increasingly linked, and Amazon wants to continue to drive that connection with the release of AWS Storage Gateway, a tool designed to connect on-premise software appliances with their corresponding cloud storage services.

This new service will make cloud products more readily accessible to people working almost exclusively with on-premises IT. Customer data centers will be backed up in AWS's S3 storage as EBS snapshots for full recovery on on-premise hardware in the future. These files will also be available as Amazon EBS volumes, "enabling you to easily mirror data between your on-premises and Amazon EC2-based applications."

"Gateways" will run in a data center and support as much as 12 volumes and 12TB of storage.

Eventually, a range of technologies will be supported by the Storage Gateway; however, the service will only use VM image for VMware ESXi 4.1 at launch.

Current AWS users will be able to test out a free trial of Storage Gateway. After that, it will run at $125 a month, with additional rates for EBS snapshot storage and outbound data transfer.

Check out the AWS blog for more information on AWS Storage Gateway, including a fun chart and video.

"Cool" New Server Rack Technology from Fujitsu

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:11:00 GMT

Fujitsu is claiming, based on a recent test, that its PRIMERGY CX1000 Cloud eXtension server rack technology could possibly have Web hosting and telecommunications applications because of its demonstrated scale-out potential.

The data center hardware manufacturer says that the tests were performed by communications software platform developer Open-Xchange, who provide a popular service among Web hosting providers, to analyze the capacity capabilities of the technology. What they found was that just one 19 inch PRIMERGY CX1000 server rack could support as many as 1.5 million concurrent users.

Fujitsu claims that the PRIMERGY CX1000 will cut power and cooling costs by as much as 20 percent when compared to standard rack server assembly, which makes sense, since apparently the server was built "to deliver as much computing power as possible" per square foot by fitting 38 server nodes into a industry-standard-sized rack.

A big part of PRIMERGY CX1000 is the "Cool-Central" feature built into the server's framework that eliminates the need for a "hot aisle" -- this saves on both cooling and floor space because the servers can be racked up right next to one another.

Designed to provide service to millions of users and help companies stay profitbale, Fujitsu's PRIMERGY CX1000 server rack saves big money on power and cooling costs and helps event he most limited data resource centers get the most out of their technology.

Buy and Sell Cloud Service Solutions in the VMware Marketplace

Michael Garrity — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:24:00 GMT

Evaluating and selecting cloud service solutions just got simpler thanks to VMware launching the VMware Solution Exchange, a new online virtualization and cloud solutions marketplace.

With a community over over 2000 technology partners, who, combined, have created well over 3500 applications and 6000 infrastructure products compatibile with VMware, it seems like a natural move to open a marketplace. VMware Solution Exchange will be avaible to all of these partners and developers who "integrate, interoperate or complement VMware's product portfolio," so that they can congregate in a single online location to buy and sell solutions.

In the marketplace, customers will be able to use search tools, engage with multimedia content and network with other partners and developers. Those selling solutions will be able to show off their creations with product overviews, downloadable trial offers and, of course, YouTube videos, among other types of marketing content.

And, in the true spirit of democracy, buyers will be able to rate (on a five-star system) and review their solution purchases.

VMware also shared some other big news: The general release of the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite to help users deliver IT "as a service" through automated operations of virtual and cloud environments.