UK Dedicated Server | VPS Hosing | Dedicated Server Hosting » Windows Plesk Hosting http://digitalmissives.com A blog that reviews News and quality articles about UK Dedicated Servers Hosting, VPS Hosting, Web Hosting, SEO and much more. Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:57:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Firewall: Protect Your Network http://digitalmissives.com/firewall-protect-your-network/ http://digitalmissives.com/firewall-protect-your-network/#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:39:58 +0000 http://digitalmissives.com/firewall-protect-your-network/ A firewall is a secure and trusted hardware/software application which is used to block unwanted logical ports and manage unwanted traffic. In simple words firewall is a barrier to  keep destructive forces away from your server which may be loading your server. A firewall is useful if you don’t want eternal users to access a particular host or service.
it useful to filter packets based on source’s IP address.
Its used securing your data and server from being get hacked.
Its most common use is to prevent denial of service attack, you can prevent certain level of DDOS attacks for your server..

You can consider firewall as a program or a device which can monitor, control all data transfer between any internal network with whole internet, A firewall ensures that all data communication in both directions is accordingly to security rules set.
Firewall technologies are configurable thus you can limit communication by direction, IP address, protocol, ports, or numerous other combination. There can be communication failure if data communication is not as per the rule set for all outgoing and incoming requests.  If you have access to the firewall of you server , you can configure it to enable the ports, protocols, and addresses that may optimize data communication.
As for security reasons you can configure your firewall to allow only TCP traffic which may cause the user to see frequent buffering of clips. User experience of the presentation is compromised; greater latency and startup times affect the time needed to view the clip, and delivery of the clip requires more total bandwidth.

General types of Firewall :

Desktop Firewall :

Allmost all operating system have built-in firewall applications which is responsible for protecting standalone machine, This type of firewall is designed to protect a single desktop computer and is of a great protection mechanism if the network firewall is compromised.

Software Firewall :

As the name suggest it’s a software application which can be installed on a server which is capable of preventing unwanted data communication. Many webmaster don’t prefer software firewall as most secure. This type of firewall is often used as an application firewall which means that the firewall is optimized to protect applications such as web application and email servers. All Software firewalls have built-in complex filters to inspect the content of the network traffic. This type of firewall is usually (but not always) behind hardware firewalls.

Hardware Firewall :

A hardware firewall is a dedicated hardware device which is installed on your system/server. These firewalls consist of network routers with additional firewall capabilities. Usually hardware firewalls are designed to handle heavy network traffic sites. Hardware firewalls are often placed on the perimeter of the network to filter the internet noise and only allow pre-determined traffic into the network.

Many-a-times hardware firewalls are used in conjunction with software firewalls thus hardware firewall filters out the traffic and the software firewall inspects the network traffic thus you get pure traffic and unwanted traffic can be blocked easily. If in case hardware firewalls are bombarded with bogus network traffic her comes the role of hardware firewall they drop this unwanted traffic and will only let in the right traffic for your network/server thus hardware firewall not only protects the software firewall but also allows the software firewall only to inspect proper network traffic thus such hardware and software firewall combination will surely optimizes the network throughput.

]]> http://digitalmissives.com/firewall-protect-your-network/feed/ 0 Understainding RAID structure http://digitalmissives.com/raid-basics/ http://digitalmissives.com/raid-basics/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:50:23 +0000 http://digitalmissives.com/raid-basics/


RAID i.e. Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a mechanism which enhances the speed, storage capacity & reliability of your webserver using more than one hard disk instead of the traditional single hard disk solutions. In essence, RAID actually works in such a way which allows the multiple hard drives present on the machine to be combined and used as one big hard drive with different levels of benefits and also covers your risk of data loss. The higher your RAID level, the better risk coverage you get. Completely subjective to your need for data safety and redundancy, you can use several variations of RAID depending on your budget. RAID solutions are available starting from as low as $40.00 to a few thousand $$. There is no such thing called as the best RAID combination or implementation. What RAID levels you need is completely dependent on the applications, processes and softwares which run off the server.

Previously, RAID could be implemented and coupled with only the high end and most expensive server configurations. Now-a-days. with the advancement in technology and the vast amount of research which has been done on RAID, affordable yet effective RAID controllers have been made which can be easily procured and used. There are different RAID levels which exist.

Software Raid 0
This is not something we should be recommending but you will be asked about it. With Raid 0 you take two hard drives and turn them into 1 big HDD. This improves the storage space and performance but there is NO fault tolerance. If one of these drives were to fail, all data would be lost. There would be no option for recovery. If a client asks you about this, make it very clear that you do NOT recommend it.

Hardware Raid 1
This is an option for 2 hard drives and is highly recommended. Raid 1 offers a slight performance increase and also allows for any 1 of the drives to fail without the server crashing or data being lost. The main benefit of raid 1 is the cost. It’s relatively cheap to implement and can be offered to clients with a low budget. If a client was to have 2×250 GB hard drives in Raid 1, Only 250 GB would be available.

Hardware Raid 5
Raid 5 is slightly different from Raid 1 and Raid 10. Whereas Raid 1 and Raid 10 offer a slight performance increase, Raid 5 offers a much greater performance increase. Raid 5 contains a minimum of 3 hard drives. At any one time, any one drive can fail and the server will keep on working. If more than 1 drive fails, all data is lost. You may get people looking for game servers asking about Raid 5. If a client was to have 3×250 GB HDD in Raid 5, 500 GB would be available.

Hardware Raid 10
A Raid 10 array contains a minimum of 4 hard drives. In this configuration the drives are paired up and the data is mirrored. In theory, the server could sustain two hard drive failures and the server will keep on running. However, the server can not sustain two hard drive losses on the same mirrored pair. As an example, let’s say a server has HD0, HD1, HD2, and HD3. Four separate drives. In this example we will say that HD0 and HD1 are mirrored and HD2 and HD3 are mirrored. If HD0 and HD2 were to fail, the server would carry on running without data loss. If HD0 and HD1 fail, all data stored on HD0 and HD1 would be lost. Modern raid controllers are very efficient. At the first sign of any fault, on any drive, it will automatically declare it as faulty and will request the drive be replaced. Raid 10 doesn’t offer the same performance level as Raid 5, but is more reliable. This is highly recommended for clients with a high uptime requirement. If a client was to have 4×250 GB hard drives, 500 GB would be available.

Setup times for RAID depends on the level which one chose. Normally it takes between 24 to 48 hours, wherein the higher you go on the levels, the more time it takes for the setup to be done.

]]> http://digitalmissives.com/raid-basics/feed/ 0 Plesk : File Manager http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-file-manager/ http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-file-manager/#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:20:42 +0000 http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-file-manager/ File Manager usign Plesk control panel :
Plesk provides you file manager tool usign which you can manage edit/view all of your data files stored onto your website hosting account. Plesk File manager allows you to manage files from open directories [ available for all] and also files from password protected directories [ private directories] easily.
Most basic difference between file manager feature and web directories features is that using web directories you are allows to manage only files and directories within your web space that are directly accessible by all computers [ open directories ].
Using file manager you can use different icons so as to differentiate between file and directory. You can easily add/remove files, directories within ‘parent’or ‘main’ directory which you have setup for your website. Plesk File manager also have a built in calculator using which you can calculate sizes of certain files or directories automatically which may not have been displayed in your Plesk File Manager,this tool will help you for certain reason if you wish to move or copy files or directories within other directories you can easily do so, this will ensure flexibility for moving files and directories within your website hosting account.


Thus using this feature you can easily manage file which are to be displayed and which are to be kept hidden for your visitors, this feature seems to be of great use for your website. If you wish to prevent certain directories to be accessible for whole world then you can move it under that particular directory. Thus you can easily manage your private data or
can remove required content from your website which you no longer want to display for your visitors to see.

]]> http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-file-manager/feed/ 0 All about Domain names http://digitalmissives.com/domain-name-registration/ http://digitalmissives.com/domain-name-registration/#comments Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:14:56 +0000 http://digitalmissives.com/domain-name-registration/ Changing Domain registrar :
Few years ago you were having just a single domain registration company the “Network Solutions, Inc” and no other choice for booking a domain name for your website, but today there are well over a hundred different domain registrars with their respective level of support and service, as well as the price.
So if you are not satisfied with your current registrar service you can move your domain from him any time you want.
Does domain transfer cost ?
Actually it depends upon the domain registrar. Most registrar will transfer your domain for free whereas few may charge a few dollars ($5 to $20 or more). So better to check it our regarding domain transfer cost, if any, with your domain registrar.
When you need to transfer domains ?
If you are not satified with the level of service and support with your current domain registrar then you may need to find someone better with good service. but there is no guarantee that this new registrar will be more active then previous. You can transfer any domain extensions with any domain registrant, there won’t be any change in ownership of this transfered domain only it would  be registered under different domain registry.

Reasons when your domain may not get transferred :
- If the domain is having some Legal dispute.
- Domain owner is in dispute or unknown.
- Domain has only beed with registrar for 60 days
- registrar refuses to transfer for some reason.

]]> http://digitalmissives.com/domain-name-registration/feed/ 0 Plesk Control Panel Database Management http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-managing-databases/ http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-managing-databases/#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:44:58 +0000 http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-managing-databases/ Plesk gives you the knowledge to create MySQL databases in both its Linux and Windows hosting platform ; if you acquire the needed add-ons then it can also enter to PostgreSQL and MSSQL servers to create both types of database; PostgreSQL is exclusive ordinarily pioneer on Linux, and MSSQL is for Windows hosting exclusive. 3rd lot web supported database hold panels are collective into Plesk and Plesk automatically logs you in to the material one when you requisite to deal a database over the cyberspace from a location that might bump to not be your own computer; in the circumstance of MySQL databases, PHPMyAdmin is supplied to allot you to deal any MySQL databases that you might  hosted within your shared Plesk website hosting record – if you are hosted on the Windows platform and are utilizing Microsoft SQL databases then ASP.NET Enterprise Handler is supplied to consent you to vista and command any MSSQL databases that you hump hosted low your relationship. In most cases you leave be using a database along with a dynamic web advisable as store it within the database so that it can be easily accessed again. Plesk also gives you the knowledge to create users so that the databases you create can be accessed by the scripts that you score created within your web type; without these database users, scripts and additional programs that you need to use to way your database or databases won’t be usable since they won’t be competent to way the database. Since Plesk gives you the knowledge to make quaternary databases under some divers database platforms, it gives you the knowledge to computer more contrary web applications in a classify of  server side scripting languages so that the applications that you do create can easily interact with the databases that you have  created within your shared Plesk website hosting accounting.

]]> http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-managing-databases/feed/ 0 Plesk Control Panel http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-control-panel/ http://digitalmissives.com/plesk-control-panel/#comments Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:35:36 +0000 http://digitalmissives.com/?p=3 Usually cPanel comes with Linux Hosting whereas you get Plesk as control panel if you opt for Windows dedicated server hosting. Plesk is most popular control panel widely used with Windows dedicated servers hosting plans.
Using Plesk you can manage all your hosting issues such including creating new accounts, mail, managing your account resources easily. Today you can even use Plesk on linux platform hence such compatibility with both platforms will help user if they want to move from one hosting platform to another they won’t endup having a new control panel for managing their new hosting account.

Using Plesk you can easily manage all hosting related issues, you can monitor your bandwidth consumption, diskspace usage, DNS entries, creating new emails and hosting accounts. You can easily protect your images from being hotlink so as to avoid yoru bandwidth being get ’stolen’ by other sites who links to your images/files of your site. If you require to change few PHP setting which are required for your websites to run smoothly then you can do it using your Plesk control panel. for some reason you need to restrict access to certain directories for your site which can be easily done through your Plesk control panel feature. You can also set scheduled task for your websites for automated updates for your site.
You can also manage your databases using Plesk, such as MySQL, MSSQL, MS Access etc…
Managing SSL certificate is also one of the important feature which is provided by Plesk control panel so that you can secure your site and can get trust of your clients.

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