Resource intensive websites often come about as a result of high demand and popularity. A resource intensive website requires a high specification dedicated server if it is to remain available because a hosting environment capable of dealing with the loads experienced is a necessity. Bodhost offers a range of dedicated servers to cater to businesses of all sizes; with dual core dedicated servers aimed at small businesses and servers that featuring dual processors for the most resource intensive of applications. Whilst choosing a high specification dedicated server from the outset might be one way of playing it safe, you will find that you are lumped with large allocations of resources that you aren’t using and therefore you’re wasting money. Choosing Bodhost for dedicated server hosting will give you access to a sales team that will work with you to fully evaluate your requirements in order to deliver a solution that is tailored specifically to your needs.

Hardware

The hardware offered by Bodhost dedicated servers has to be the primary reason for choosing us for the hosting of your resource intensive websites. As well as offering servers based around multiple processors for improved performance, we can also offer you a range of RAM allocations to boost the speed at which your server works along with a range of storage options. Performance and reliability are the factors that underpin a website and if these are neglected then uptime could be affected and therefore your visitor count. Whilst disk-based hard drives can provide capacity, opting for an SSD (Solid State Drive) can improve the read/write times for data on your server and allow for data to be accessed quicker; if capacity is something that you require then combining disk drives with an enterprise storage device such as a SAN (Storage Area Network) can offer this along with the performance that you are seeking.

Support and monitoring

Having a high specification dedicated server in place for the hosting of your resource intensive website will provide you with the appropriate platform for reliable hosting. However, your platform will need to be maintained on a regular basis to ensure that it remains stable and secure against any potential threats. Bodhost has a 24×7 support team that will monitor your dedicated servers around the clock so that they can take action when any issues are discovered without the need for any intervention on your behalf. Furthermore, Bodhost support is provided free of charge to all of our customers; you will be paying prices associated with unmanaged dedicated servers, but will be receiving a fully managed service based around premium hardware.

Practices to reduce IT operating costs: This blog post shows how a company can reduce costs of its IT operations and improve the efficiency of IT resources by optimizing its main infrastructure and adopting the best practices in the operations of servers. The practices described are effective to reduce operating costs and free up resources (human and financial) they offer and add value to the company and its customers.

Introduction

Even in the best of times, IT managers face multiple challenges; providing excellent services 24×7 with limited budget makes things a little bit difficult to manage. Studies by different analysts indicate that about 80% of the companies IT budget usually devoted to the operations and maintenance. This leaves only 20% for IT innovation which is yet one factor increasing the values of the companies. In these uncertain economic times, with tight budgets, this ratio may change in favor of the operations and maintenance, which reduces the share for the improvement of services for the companies.

Microsoft solutions can help data center managers to improve the effectiveness of the main infrastructure of the organization, thus it can free human and financial resources for new IT innovations.

Infrastructure Optimization

Working with Microsoft and its partners, organizations can better plan and execute their investments, get ability to define the appropriate level of server optimization and reduce costs of server operations. To facilitate their task, Microsoft has developed the optimal model of core infrastructure. With this model, the company can learn from its current position in terms of IT efficiency, can determine how to improve and how to optimize its IT infrastructure.

Optimization model of the main infrastructure

Microsoft has developed this model to define the level of efficiency so IT organizations can achieve the goals of better management of their IT infrastructure. Four levels of operational efficiency have been identified: basic, standardized, rationalized, and dynamic. These four levels correspond to the technological capabilities and describe the effectiveness of services in specific scenarios. Processing from one level to another, the company can gain efficiency and reduce operating costs and maintenance.

To better evaluate the level of optimization of the existing infrastructure and categorize areas for improvement, infrastructure optimization model covers different areas: identity management and access rights, administration of workstations, servers and devices, network security, protection and data recovery, security administration. This post focuses on practices in each of these sectors to identify and measure their impact on system availability and operating costs in different scenarios servers.

Recommended Practices for Core Infrastructure

The identification and adoption of best practices for optimizing infrastructure means to reduce operating costs, improved IT service levels and agility. Studies have shown that there is a close relationship between the adoption of recommended practices and benefits. For example, these practices reduce the number of calls to the support of users, and therefore reduce the cost per user. This post describes a relationship less well known, which is between the adoption of best practices for servers and resulting benefits (improved system availability and lower costs) in the main scenarios of servers.

Server infrastructure scenarios

The study focuses on six scenarios essential to business operations:

These scenarios are analyzed from the point of view of the optimization of the main infrastructure; practices analyzed in this study corresponded to the administration and operation of each server scenario, not activities related to the specific scenario. Although the practices described below are common to three or more scenarios, they induce different effects on personnel costs and the availability of the architecture in the scenario studied.

Collaboration:

The collaboration scenario includes practices in the administration of enterprise and Web content, research and document storage, document workflows, social networks and monitoring projects.

Collaboration: Benefits of Core Infrastructure Optimization

Companies manage collaboration servers for streamlined optimization to avoid those disadvantages that occur at the basic level. By automating the management of clustered servers and other routine tasks, modernized organizations have reduced costs and time spent by the server.

Management tools of core infrastructure based on rules for protective maintenance and standardized practices to improve systems availability in enterprises at a standardized level. Companies have efficient tools in further reducing the impact of system downtime by automatically deploying patches and operating server clusters with fail-over and automatic recovery.

Collaboration: Best Practices

In this scenario, the application of best practices has greatly reduced the cost of computer operation. Collaboration is a server scenario among the most recent. Nevertheless, companies clearly see the benefits of adoption of recommended practices in this area, and adopt quickly.

The practical impact: 47% of participants in the survey that use clustered servers spend less than $24,000 in IT costs through server. Much of this difference is due to the efficiency gains achieved in the management of databases collaboration within this deployment model. Recommended practices for the commissioning, patching and deployment machines have also been the source of significant saving in the cost of IT labor.

Practices widely adopted: The use of alert thresholds for the basic performance parameters, regular maintenance of the operating system and the use of standardized images have reduced the cost of IT labor in the range 15,000 to 18,000 dollars per server. These practices improve efficiency through automation, monitoring, rule-based standardized maintenance practices.

The practices adopted less often: Five practices (integration of automated management of incidents, integration with databases, predictive maintenance, automatic integration in systems management, automated deployment and integration to store metadata and identification centralized) are rarely adopted. However, the adoption of these practices leads to lower costs.

IT labor from 11,000 to $17,000 per server. These practices reflect the capacity of automatic tracking systems, deployment and incident response identifying the major problems and the main causes, with minimal intervention from the IT department.

Data Management:

The scenario includes data management practices that affect server file shares and databases in the infrastructure.

Data Management: Benefits of Core Infrastructure Optimization

In a company where infrastructure optimization level reached for streamlined data management servers, operating costs fall by 63% server and each administrator manages about 3 times more servers over firms located at basic. Automated processes of Virtualization deployment and simplify server security contribute to the work of staff in a reduction of costs and improved performance time server.

The availability of data in companies that are at a standardized level of optimization is greater than the availability in companies located in the basic level. On the other hand, data availability with streamlined business was slightly lower than Standardized business. This difference is due to the fact that the practices of the Rationalized level are implemented for other objectives such as profitability or agility.

Data Management: Best Practices

In this scenario you will find two trends: the clear advantage that represents Virtualization systems management data, and the low rate of adoption of automated management practices despite their advantages.

Practical Impact: Server Virtualization enables organizations to reduce their fleet equipment, surfaces and premises costs of system administration. These savings reach $2,300 per server per year in labor costs for computer companies adopting the practices of Virtualization. Automation also plays an important role. By adopting the creation, conversion and management of virtual servers, it becomes possible to allocate resources dynamically, which improves the utilization of materials, reduce the number of systems and reduces power consumption and other costs.

Practices widely adopted: In this scenario, according to participants in this study, two widely adopted practices brought value. Standardizing the process of adding, moving or changing data management servers can ensure that only proven and effective procedures are used to perform these routine tasks. This practice, which helps IT departments to eliminate repetitive tasks and downtime, reduced 1,400 dollars per year costs of IT labor. Thresholds basic parameters, a practice performance monitoring based on rules, reduced from 700 dollars per server annual cost of IT labor.

The practices adopted less often: Only 17% of study participants have implemented automated management systems, database driven predictive maintenance. They obtained a reduction in labor costs of $1,100 computers per server per year compared to other companies. The savings are based on the application of rules and predefined actions triggered by system events and monitoring tools and automated management.

Identity and access

Identity and access incorporate practices that apply in the administration server identities and access rights. Access management and identity includes support for LDAP servers.

Identity and access: Benefits of Core Infrastructure Optimization

In this scenario, organizations practicing streamlined operations show significant differences in terms of labor costs per user per computer server.

Server availability is almost the same levels between standardized and streamlined. Indeed, in this scenario, improvements in availability are mostly due to the combination of more efficient processes, and tools. The features that support these practices reduce downtime of servers when administrators engage in troubleshooting, change materials, and provide network maintenance.

Identity and access: Best Practices

After installation, the servers managing identities and access rights require relatively little maintenance and management. Therefore, the operating costs are low and the impact of the implementation of best practices is limited. However, some features such as authentication, automated commissioning or integration into central store metadata identities constitute themselves recommended practices of infrastructure optimization. As a result, the adoption of best practices for this scenario has a positive effect on other scenarios.

Practical impact: Clustering of servers provides redundancy and recovery that reduce the risk of stopping server identities and access rights. Features such as automatic commissioning reduces response time and IT staff.

Practices widely adopted: Four practices widely adopted (failover servers standardization, new images of the operating system, standardization of images and maintenance of operating systems) simplify the routine tasks. These practices reduce the number of different configurations to manage. They reduce the cost of IT labor of 140 to $200 per server.

The practices adopted less often: Practices and automated deployment of automatic management of incidents contributing to cost savings, but their adoption rate remains low (below 30%). These practices reduce the workload and costs of staff by providing automatic responses upon detection problem. They are also able to automate deployments using scripts thoroughly tested.

E-mail

This scenario includes the practices required to manage server software for email and to ensure the quality and responsiveness of email services.

Content delivery networks are large networks of servers distributed around the Internet with the sole intention of serving the content of third parties to end-users. This content can take the form of website media including graphics and sounds, downloadable items such as software and documents, live streaming services and social networks. CDNs are most beneficial to organisations running websites where the average visitor is demanding large amounts of data because CDN networks are specially optimised to cope with these large data requests; furthermore, outsourcing CDN services to external suppliers gives organisations a chance to reduce their hosting bills. Rather than having the servers on which a CDN runs based in a single data centre, these servers are often distributed throughout multiple data centres for improved performance and redundancy. If there is an issue with one data centre that is impacting the CDN for example, the servers in other data centres can meet the shortfall in power until the situation is rectified. In terms of performance, distributing the CDN around the world means that users from different parts of the globe can be served content from the server that geographically closest to them so that they aren’t faced with slow access speeds.

Content

A CDN can be used to deliver any type of content. Whether you are simply looking to remove the burden of hosting any form of media from your existing hosting infrastructure or are looking for a high-capacity solution to handle the downloads of your applications, a professional CDN from Bodhost can provide you with the resources required to sustain this. Delivering content can be one of the most resource intensive processes faced by a website and by outsourcing this to an external network, you will be removing a lot of stress from your infrastructure and freeing it up to focus on the processes involved with serving your website. Further to that, costs will be greatly reduced because you won’t have to constantly monitor your network to ensure that the capacity is there to cope with any increase in demand – all of this is usually taken care of by your CDN provider.

Bodhost CDN Networks

Bodhost offers a range of dedicated servers that can provide the basis for even the most complicated of CDNs. Our experienced sales and support teams will be able to work with you to deliver a tailored solution that best reflects your CDN requirements whilst also considering your budget. As well as requiring high specification servers to power the backend of the CDN, there will also be a need for large storage allocations and bandwidth because of the nature of a CDN. Whilst your network provider can sort the issue of bandwidth, you will want to consider additional devices other than the hard drives in your servers to meet your storage arrangements. Storage Area Networks (SANs) are used by hosting companies to deliver large storage allocations because as well as meeting the capacity needs of a CDN, they also bring performance and redundancy benefits that can help to give your CDN greater legitimacy.

As a conclusion, through its multitude of dedicated server plans, Bodhost does support Content Delivery Networks. Our sales and support teams will be able to work with you to develop a CDN that is fitting to your needs and contains the capacity necessary to serve your content.

Server mirroring is a method of backup that can be used to ensure that if your primary server fails, there will be another server available to fulfill the role of the server that has crashed. Server mirroring solution works by ensuring that the two servers are in constant synchronisation so that the failover server always has a copy of all the data hosted on the primary machine; this means that in the event that the secondary server has to take up the role of the primary server, when the automatic switchover occurs you won’t notice any difference because the most recent copies of all of your data will be accessible. There are a number of different ways in which server mirroring can be implemented; for example, if you are going to be utilising two servers on the same site then technologies such as RSync that will synchronise your data across the local network will meet your requirements, whilst Cross Platform Disaster Recovery solutions will be more beneficial for scenarios where hosting the backup environment elsewhere is necessary.

Local server mirroring

Server mirroring as a process utilises two servers that are hosted in the same data centre, are of the same specifications and are running the same platform. One server is setup to be the master server that is responsible for serving users normally, whilst the second is setup to be a slave server that can fulfill the role of the master server if it crashes.

The data hosted on the master server is always kept in constant synchronisation with the slave server so that if the slave does come into play, users are able to continue working using the same files. If the slave server does happen to be used and changes are made to files hosted on this server, these changes will be automatically sychronised to the master server when it becomes available.

Some features and benefits of using server mirroring include:

• Safe from hardware failure – because you have two separate servers running that will always be identical in terms of the data that they are hosting, even if the primary server does fail then the slave server will be able to pick up the slack whilst you repair the primary server, therefore downtime isn’t an issue that is introduced here.
• Affordable – comparable alternatives to Bodhost’s server mirroring solution can be very expensive, but we aim to keep costs low so that we can deliver you a solution that fulfills your needs and allows you remain within your budget.
• High performance – both servers will need to be of a similar specification in order for the server mirroring configuration to work and also because it is important for you to be confident that the slave server can cope with your regular traffic loads – Bodhost offers a range of high-performance dedicated servers that you can configure to meet your requirements, including high specification servers for the most demanding of scenarios.

Cross Platform Disaster Recovery using eNlight

Cross Platform Disaster Recovery (DR) is similar to server mirroring, but rather than utilising a physical server on the same site, a virtual environment is utilised as a secondary location. The biggest benefit of using this over traditional server mirroring is that if there is an issue that is affecting the data centre as a whole, the secondary location will be able to take up the role of providing your services as it is going to be a secondary data centre where the chances of being impacted by the same issues as the primary site are very low. Some of the benefits and features of Cross Platform DR include:

• Low-cost – as a Cloud platform, eNlight is able to reduce expenditure on server mirroring and DR configurations by removing the need to mirror your server infrastructure machine-for-machine at the secondary location, instead providing you with an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform on which you can mirror your existing configuration at a fraction of the cost.
• No platform limitations – eNlight is an x86-based cloud hosting platform that can support a number of different environments, meaning that there is no pre-requisites for the platform that you are using at your primary site because it can all be synchronised to work on the eNlight platform – there shouldn’t be many noticeable differences in performance when your services are running off the eNlight Cloud when compared to your primary site configuration.
• Scalability – in the eNlight Cloud you can begin with VMs that are paired with resource allocations capable of running the environments at a stable level whilst they aren’t being used. In the event that the backup environment does need to be used and you aren’t able to predict demand, you can enable auto-scaling, a feature that will automatically scale the resources of your DR environment to meet demand; you have full control over the amount that you are billed using this method and can place caps on the resource levels allocated this way.

Coupon Code > bodHOSTMirroring – 10.00% One Time Discount

To order and receive a quote for Server Mirroring Solution, kindly get in touch with our Sales Department at sales@bodhost.com or call us on 866 662 0909 or initiate a Live Chat session via our website.

What is AutoDJ?

The AutoDJ often known as a Content Delivery System which is used for SHOUTcast servers, allows you to have your Internet Radio Online 24 hours a day without the need for a speaker constantly making issue. This way, your radio will be available for listeners when the other radio broadcasters are not transmitting live music.

The operation of this system is pretty basic, so it will certainly be clarified with your explanation.

When you subscribe to their service, you will receive an email with all the details required to configure and start broadcasting its radio online. You will also receive the access to the data of the FTP server so you can send music to your dedicated server to use the same with AutoDJ.

The AutoDJ will work as a playback system of on-demand content. Once you send the songs to the server, you can set playlists of songs that later it will be automatically streamed by AutoDJ software to the server of your radio so that listeners of this radio will continue to listen music in the absence of a DJ, announcer or even if you switch off your PC overnight.

At any time you can activate and deactivate the AutoDJ through the control panel to perform broadcast in real time via your computer.

Since, the SHOUTcast software function is to stream media files over the Internet, it consumes huge resources, hence the best suitable and preferred solution for hosting a SHOUTcast software would be a high-end dedicated server or the auto-scalable cloud server.

With a dedicated server hosting solution, you will get dedicated resources which will meet your requirements, but you will be charged for the whole server resources whether use it or not. Whereas, if you choose the auto-scalable cloud server to host SHOUTcast, you can scale the RAM up to 64GB and other resources as per your requirements and you will charged only for what you use.