HostEase Hosting Blog

Million thanks for your loyalty to HostEase.com. As a customer to HostEase, you may know that we provide our reliable hosting solution through Softlayer Data Center. In order to improve the server performance, SoftLayer is going to carry out scheduled maintenance between 05:00 AM and 09:00 AM, July 3, 2010 GMT.

They will perform maintenance on circuits which provide connectivity from BBR01.SR01.DAL01 to BBR01.EQ01.DAL01 on the public network and BBR01.SR01.DAL01 to MBR01.DAL01 on the private network.

Therefore, the following services will be modified during the maintenance:
Dallas, TX (DAL01) to Seattle, WA (SEA01) private and public network connectivity
Dallas, TX (DAL01) to Washington, DC (WDC01) private and public network connectivity
BBR01.SR01.DAL01 to BBR01.EQ01.DAL01 global backbone network connectivity (public / private)
DAR01.DAL01 and DAR02.DAL01 to BBR01.SR01.DAL01 global backbone network connectivity (public / private)

It will require 4 hours to complete the maintenance process. You are likely to see routing anomalies, packet-loss, and increased latency on both the public and private networks.

Your patience and understanding are appreciated during this time. Of course, if you have any connectivity problems after that time frame, please feel free to submit a ticket to us. We apologize for the inconvenience caused and expect for your continued patronage.

Tags: Server maintenance

There are different reasons that make you determine to move your website. You may simply find a much cheaper solution for your website. Or, you are not satisfied with your current web host for different reasons, or your website grow to such an extent that your current provider cannot meets your need anymore. Whatever the reason is, you need to switch your hosting provider. Following are some steps involved in transferring your web site.

1. Backup your website files
Your precious website is composed of different files. You need to make sure you have backed up all these files before any other actions. Simply with your FTP account, you will be allowed to copy the files from your old host to a safe place on your local PC. Note: If your website is consist of dynamic content then you are required to backup your database as well. It is very easy to accomplish this, first login into the Cpanel，then, in the backups option select “Download a MySQL Database Backup”.

2. Change your domain name server
After you have purchase a new server for your website, you will be provided with the numeric URL for the primary name and secondary name serve in the form of ns1.nameserver.net and dns1.nameserver.net. Then, you will need to contact your domain register agency to change the DNS information to your new hosts DNS information. This is called DNS Propagation and it takes 24 to 72 hours. You can check the result by any domain name search facility such as whois.net.

3. Upload all files to your new web server
After you have confirmed that your domain name has been transferred, it is time to upload all your website files to your new server. You are required to make some change and update some setting to your websites. For instance, inactive password protection, check CGI/PHP versions, etc. Keep in mind that you will need to set up the related service, such as email accounts as well.

4. Test your website on the new server
You need to check whether all function well on the new server, if all goes well then you can cancel your old hosting account.

5. Some tips for you.
For majority of online business owners consider transferring as a nerve-racking task, I would be very glad to address some tips here for you to follow.

a)If you are running a forum or any other kind of dynamic element on your website, it is strongly recommended that you close your old site completely during the DNS propagation process or else it will be hard for you to back up your website.

b)Choose a low-traffic period to make the move. You can judge by your website statistics to figure out the lowest traffic 48 hours to start the transferring.

c)Make a notice to your website audience and the hosting provider as well about the transferring.

d)Do not cancel your old web hosting account for at least another week or two to ensure that all things are running properly.

Finally, hope you can enjoy your new home for your website. If you are shopping for new server for your website, go for hostease. They are providing solid and affordable web hosting solution with user-friendly control panel and various ecommerce carts integrated.

Tags: transfer, web site

Softlayer Data Center is one advantage of our HostEase. We make our servers locate in Softlayer Data Center. HostEase just employs high-quality hardware equipment in the datacenter to provide a wide variety of services for the customers. SoftLayer Data Center is well-known in America. SoftLayer provides global, on-demand data center and hosting services from facilities across the U.S. It can take advantage of best-in-class connectivity and technology to innovate industry leading. It also gets automated solutions that empower enterprises with complete access, control, security, and scalability.

SoftLayer was founded in 2005. As a powerful strength in web hosting industry in the United States, It likes a dark horse full of vigor. There are a lot of good remarks about it in many hosting forums so that customer satisfaction is very high.

By the end of December 2007, following the SoftLayer data center in Dallas, United States established the second data center in Seattle- the world’s third largest Internet Data Center. The third data center was built in Washington DC In May 2008.

SoftLayer servers come with one of the industry’s most complete set of standard features and services at no additional cost. 10G optical fiber was adopted to connect various data centers which integrated through proprietary automated tools. SoftLayer data centers have a lot of advantages, such as 40G bandwidth to the rack, 100% Cisco network, redundant backbones, Cisco ASA hardware firewall, virus and spam filtering and server 10/100/1000Mbps port access options.

They provide high-performance web hosting with affordable price. What they offer can cater to those people who are very satisfied with all things in accordance with foreign customers comment on their best services .What’s more; many clients from China enjoy the fast speed to visit the websites easily.

SoftLayer data centers can offer dual-processor single-core server, dual-processor multi-core servers, quad-processor multi-core servers, equipped with powerful hard-proof facilities. The industry’s management and data transfer via VPN over dedicated carriers segregated from public network.

SoftLayer’s innovative infrastructure, solutions, and automation capabilities provide unique advantages for virtualized solutions and a truly virtual data center so that it is very promising and prosperous.

Tags: hardware equipment, hostease, Softlayer data center

The popularity of the Internet has been of deep penetration into every aspect of our lives. The boom of the Internet brings up online games, search engines, e-commerce, IDC, etc, which makes our life more comfortable. I really can not imagine what our lives and work would be without Internet.

The great increase of the number of small enterprises and the development of the e-commerce makes people realize the benefit of site promotion on the Internet. Then people all want to get a maximum publicity through their websites. Some of them choose buying shared hosting or renting a server to manage the sites, while some companies opt to buy a server directly. As we are talking about shared hosting and server, we have to say something on the stability and security of the server which were considered to be the most important.

As we all know, website is a perfect promotional platform. In addition to its own characteristics site and product features, the stability and security of the server are also the key on a website’s survival and development. The first impression of a website is very important to save customers because a bad impression would hardly to be changed. Also, a website which was in a long-term instability would have a negative impact on the company’s business. Only a website on a stable server can continue the running, and bring the company a further promotion.

The server’s stability is the most basic requirement for any website, especially for e-commerce sites. But why are problems always happen? There are several reasons below,

1.Information incomplete. Incomplete signal received or unstable signal propagation are the reasons may cause Information incomplete.

2.Information blocked. It comes from limitative bandwidth, and the maximum limit on service response requests at the same time.

3.Environment of the datacenter. Such as ventilation conditions, fire conditions and air conditioning, etc. These external factors are also likely to affect the stability of the server. HostEase is cooperating with SoftLayer on the datacenter in Dallas and Seattle, so the configuration and the environment could be very trusted.

4.Hackers’ attack. There are more and more hackers right now, so the servers should be equipped with a high-performance firewall and antivirus software.

5.Hardware failure. Such as hard disk failure and network card failure, etc. So we should have backup of the files.

6.Safety management failures. Such as fire, hardware damage caused by artificial factors.

7.Force majeure. Such as war, earthquake and flood, etc.

In general, hosting company will be able to have their duty removed only when the loss of the customer was caused by force majeure. But once the claim for loss happens, the amount is always quite large. So, before you are about to hosting and renting the servers, make sure you have examined all aspects of the server quality.

Tags: hostease, Server, server downtime