I researched the new web hoster extensively before making my decision to move the website to the new hoster. That is probably the most important step in the process to ensure that the hoster has excellent customer support, servers and connections to the Internet. Wiredtree was all that and more and I learned during the server transfer that their 15 minute reaction time to customer support requests was not just a figure that they picked out of thin air.

I had to deal with customer support in a few occasions especially during server migration to ensure that everything went underway smoothly. Wiredtree was always prompt to response with a solid solution that solved my requests. They also contacted me after three months to find out if everything was as I expected it to be. Support is therefor excellent, cannot be better in my opinion. But what about the server and hardware?

I ordered one server upgrade in that time; A backup server to store backups of all the websites and databases that were on the server regularly. The performance of the server itself is great and capable of running Ghacks and a few minor websites without problems. The load average, cpu, swap file, hard drive and memory utilization of the server were much lower than on the old server. More importantly than that is the fact that the server never crashed under the load so that I did not have to get up late at night after receiving a SMS that the server was down to fix the problem.

The Wiredtree server is not as cheap as it can get but it is still a cheaper priced server especially compared to other web hosting companies who charge double or even more of the amount that I’m paying for a comparable server. The excellent hardware and connections of the dedicated server in combination with top notch customer support make Wiredtree the hosting company that I recommend to all my friends and colleagues. It cannot get much better than that. We (that’s Everton from Connected Internet and I) are for example hosting Windows 7 News on another Wiredtree server and had no complaints (only praise) there with the hardware or customer support there as well.

I will do another review in 4 or 8 months to see if they are keeping their high standard. I currently have no reason to believe they do not.

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That’s highly problematic and reduced the experience of many visitors that discovered the site for the first time. Ghacks will be up and running on the new server in less than eight hours if everything works out as planned. You will then be able to enjoy a better connection to the web server that will serve the website faster to your local computer system. It can take between 24-48 hours before all DNS servers have propagated the changes and are routing users to the new server and not the old one.

The worst case scenario is that something goes terribly wrong during migration which could mean a short, medium or long outage or even a transfer back to the old dedicated server for the time being until the problems have been sorted out.

There will be no more posts until the migration is completed. Comments that are posted today might not be taken over to the new website as well. If you want to contact me use the contact form on the top. Thanks for your patience and lets hope for the best!

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A lot of research should go into such a decision and that’s what I did. One tip that I would like to pass on is to take a look at the dedicated server forum over at Webhostingtalk. Web hosting companies post special offers in that forum that will give you benefits such as double bandwidth, server memory or discounts on the price.

My business partner and I moved our Windows 7 website recently from a hosting company in the UK to Wiredtree in the US using one of the discounts found in the forum to get a great managed server for a good price and absolute reliable and fast support.

I decided to do the same and order a managed server at Wiredtree. Here is what I got for the yearly price of $2315.8 (second year will be $199 less due to setup costs which would reduce the price of the server by $25 per month for its lifetime which means it pays of after eight months). I got a deal with double server memory, bandwidth and a discount of $70.

Intel Core i7
12GB DDR3
Primary Disk:250GB 7.2k RPM SATAII 16MB Cache

Plan is to add another server with a faster hard drive (raid I suppose) that will run the database eventually. The server is currently setup by the Wiredtree support team who will also handle the migration of the website. It could mean some downtime in the next days but the website will definitely benefit from the new server with speed improvements.

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You can think of web hosting as being divided into two types: virtual web hosting and dedicated web hosting. Virtual web hosting is often favored by small businesses because of its cost effectiveness. With virtual web hosting, you rent space alongside many other businesses on a server. While it sounds as if all the businesses are jumbled up on one piece of hardware, what is actually the case is that each client in a virtual web hosting environment has its own server resources blocked off from everybody else’s, including processor, memory, and disk space. This works well for businesses that don’t need a lot of disk space or bandwidth to operate their web site. It is also a great choice for clients who want to manage a number of separate web sites at a low cost.

The reason that this type of web hosting is so cost effective is that despite their unique functions, the web hosting requirements are very similar among small businesses. Hosting vendors who can offer nearly identical services to a large number of customers efficiently are able to multiply small profits by large numbers of customers.

Dedicated hosting is an option that midsize and large businesses may consider if they need the control and flexibility of having a server (or servers) dedicated to their website. This type of web hosting is expensive, but allows greater control over security, support, and maintenance. Web hosting vendors who offer dedicated hosting have redundant resources in their data center that can nearly eliminate downtime.

Dedicated hosting often means that your business can write and run custom scripts and applications, or just manage the web site and leave the upkeep of the network and hardware to the hosting company. You can buy a server and host the site yourself, but this is an expensive option and means you have to either know how to manage the hardware, software, and connectivity or you have to hire someone who does. Some businesses already have a dedicated IT staff and data center, and if this is the case, then it probably makes sense to buy and operate another server.

However, for companies without their own IT department and budget, renting a dedicated server from a hosting provider is the most cost effective option. There are many web hosting vendors who offer dedicated server packages. Once you know how much of a hands-on approach you’re willing to take, you can examine the offerings of several hosting vendors and see if their operations complement yours. Some vendors provide tools for creating and managing your site by providing a web based control panel that you can use to tweak your site. Some vendors let you use your own HTML authoring program and upload pages as you make them.

Web hosting vendors know they have to compete for your business, and most try to make your choice easy by offering services that are popular and packaging them together into specific web hosting plans. Most of the plans out there have you pay an upfront set-up fee, and then a monthly fee for your plan and any additional a la carte options (like extra storage or extra email accounts) you purchase.
There are so many web hosting vendors around that it can be overwhelming for a business to choose who they want to host their website. If you know your requirements, or can broadly estimate them, you can almost certainly find a web hosting vendor with a hosting package that is right for you and allows for your site to grow along with your business.

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A recent discussion over at the Donation Coder forum touched that subject. A user noticed that he was able to restore data from a dedicated server that was rented by someone else before. This can have some serious implications. Dedicated servers can hold all kinds of sensible data including user accounts, passwords, business databases, email addresses, personal information, photos, media and documents. Many of these can still be restored if the hard drives are not wiped correctly which obviously can be very problematic not only from a business point of view but also from a private view depending on the kind of data that has been stored on the hard drives of the dedicated server.

There are two possibilities to ensure that no third party will have access to the data stored on the server drives. Option A would be to purchase the hard drive from the web hosting company. Most will not have problems selling hard drives to their customers for a premium. This is actually a good option for most companies as it would mean that they will have physical access to the hard drive that has been in their dedicated server.

The second option is to wipe the hard drive of the dedicated server securely before the contract ends. The possible solutions are limited as the server has to be running to be able to remotely access it. One way to wipe a specific hard drive or partition of a dedicated server is to issue the following command:

shred -f -z -v -u /dev/sda

This will wipe /dev/sda, you might need to change that. The process will take some time obviously. The parameters mean the following:

• -f: force, changes permission levels to allow writing if necessary
• -z: zeroes, will overwrite the entire disk with zeroes in the end
• -v: verbose, display the progress
• -u: remove, truncates and remove file after overwriting

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The first step in finding a good dedicated server provider is to make a list. What exactly do you need? Do you want to run a Windows or Linux dedicated server? How much hard drive space and computer memory should the server have? What about the processor, how much bandwidth should be included, what networking interface should the server use? A few factors cannot be fully answered at this time but some can. If you plan to migrate a website you know the requirements of that website. You also know if it is a high traffic site or uses lots of system resources like computer memory, hard drive or processor at the old site.

Dedicated servers are usually a good choice if the current hosting situation, may it be a VPS or shared hosting account, limits the growth of the site or the user experience. Requirements like computer memory or cpu are harder to judge. High traffic sites benefit from lots of computer memory and a fast cpu but there is also chance for an overkill. Running a blog with 100 visitors a day does not justify a high end dedicated server with 16 Gigabytes of RAM and Intel Dual Harpertown processors. A very populated forum on the other hand would benefit highly from that setup.

The most important process in the selection of a dedicated server is the choice of the hosting provider. Quality and services differ widely and extensive research is suggested before making the selection. It is not enough to compare hardware and prices alone, other factors are of even bigger importance. What good is a dedicated server that is unreachable for most of the day because of overselling or poor infrastructure?

You can try and find an answer on so called hosting review websites but they usually are more interested in sending you to those dedicated server hosters that give them the biggest cut if you decide to order a server there. The best way to research potential dedicated server hosting companies is to search and post in webmaster forums. Not everything is golden and shiny in there and there have been cases that hosting companies have posted on such forums praising their own services but it usually results in a handful of dedicated server providers that are recommended.

Some webmaster forums where you can find such help and information are:

• Digitalpoint
• Web Hosting Talk
• Webmaster World

You can start by searching for general terms. These forums on the other hand can deliver great results for specific hosting companies as well. Once you got your list of suggested dedicated server providers you should perform a search on the Internet. Suggested search terms are “name of company” problems, “name of company” reviews and so on. This will give you more insight if the provider is as good as it should be.

Comparing Dedicated Servers

It is now time to compare the dedicated servers and services offered by the hosting providers that are still on the list. Prices range widely from about $100 to $600 and more depending on the setup and provider. Many providers do offer customization of the server hardware and software. It is possible to add additional computer memory, a better processor, increase free traffic limits or use a better connection to the Internet.

Ghacks for example has been running fine on a Debian 4 dedicated server with an AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core processor and 4 Gigabytes of computer memory. The hardware requirements do however largely depend on the site that has to be hosted there. One interesting option if you are unsure about the requirements would be to contact the hosting providers asking for their assistance. The email should include questions about:

• Suggestions on needed hardware
• If hardware upgrades are available after setup and the costs of those
• If special bargains are available. Bargains are usually servers that use slightly older hardware but it could also be new servers that they want to sell as soon as possible)

It is also a good idea to ask the same question in webmaster forums or other places with proficient users who can give you a good answer. Compare the results to get a better idea of what server you might need.

Many factors are important when comparing dedicated servers, some are:

• Raw hardware meaning cpu, ram, hard drive capacities
• Software that is included (e.g. Cpanel, firewalls)
• Services that are included (e.g. assistance in server migration)
• The connection speed of the server (usually 10 or 100 Mbit)
• The included traffic limit of the server (how many Gigabytes can be transferred without additional costs)
• Usage restrictions (which sites are not allowed)
• Contract period
• Server uptime
• Managed or not. Knowing Linux in and out is not the only skill needed to administrate a dedicated server but it is one of the most important ones. A managed server on the other hand usually comes with a web interface like Cpanel that takes lots of the burden away from the user.

Dedicated Server Providers

My research has revealed a few companies that get recommended more often than others, they are:

• The Planet
• Rackspace
• Hetzner (not managed but great prices, located in Germany)
• Wiredtree

Yes there are more out there but those four are definitely among the top. The most important step is research. You need to find a totally reliable dedicated server provider that is offering great network uptimes, hardware and services for a good price.

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This log files can become huge if you have a popular website. The current size of the Ghacks log file is 45 Gigabytes. If it continues growing in that pace the web server will run out of hard disk space pretty soon.

The first problem was to figure out how to backup the 45 Gigabyte file on the web server since I did not want to loose all the data stored within. The idea was born to compress the Apache web server log file first and then reduce it to a few Kilobytes with the echo command.

The Apache web server log files are stored in the /var/log/apache2 directory on the Debian dedicated server. The first command to issue would compress the contents of the apache2 directory into multiple tar files if the compressed file reaches a size maximum. This makes it easier to transfer files to another computer.

tar -cz directory | split -d -b 1024m - destination.tgz

Directory is the source directory where the Apache web server log files reside and destination.tgz is the name of the to be created compressed file. It is important to note that you might need to stop the Apache web server for the operation to succeed because the compression utility will stop if files get changed during procession.

The last thing that is to be done is to clear the original Apache web server log files in the log files directory. This can be done with the following command even if Apache is running.

echo " " > /var/log/apache2/filename.log

This simply overwrites the contents of the file. Please note again that some Linux distributions use another directory structure and that the log files can be located in another directory on the server.
This takes only a few seconds and the log file will be cleared from all contents afterwards.

Then it is just a matter of transferring the various compressed archives to another computer.

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This might sound confusing and difficulty at first but it is not. I use it to check that the http and mysql services are running on my servers. The http connection can be checked with a php script that they offer on their website. Just download and upload it to your web server and make them observe the path that links to the script.

Users get notified in numerous ways if a service fails. They can receive emails, SMS, instant messenger notifications and even phone calls depending on the subscribed plan.

Livewatch is offering one free plan that is good for observing one element of a server, for example the http connection. Each account is getting a certain amount of free SMS and phone calls per month. The free account gets one free SMS per month and unlimited email notifications while the Premium account receives 30 SMS, 15 phone calls and unlimited emails as well.

If you manage multiple servers or want to check on various services running on the server you could subscribe to a paid plan (like I did).

The intervals that are used to check the services are lower in the paid plans as well. The services on a free account are checked every 10 minutes and every 5 minutes if an error was found while the Gold premium services are checked every minute.

SMS are send into foreign countries as well (the service is based in Germany) but are charged double the amount of a single SMS which means that two SMS are subtracted for every single SMS that is send out.

Take a look at the in depth feature list that compares the free and premium accounts.

Here is the database php checker that I’m using in combination with regular expressions to make sure my database is up and running:


$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'enter database user';
$dbpass = 'enter database password;
$conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die ('Error');
$dbname = 'enter database name';
mysql_select_db($dbname);
if ($conn) {echo "ok";}
else {echo "fehler";}
?>

This simple script tries to connect to the MySQL database and prints ok if the connection was successful and Error if it was not. I’m using the regular expression /ok/ on the Livewatch website to check if ok is returned which means that the database is up. If ok is not returned the Livewatch service assumes the database is down and will notify me.

I recently had a chat with their excellent support and they offered a bonus for Ghacks readers. If you signup for an account you get an additional 50 cents in your account which is good for 3 SMS. (And no, this is not a referral link, I’m not getting anything if you signup for free or premium accounts. I just like the service very much)

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The Yahoo Server Monitor Widget is a nice to have widget that is displaying several information about a server on the user’s desktop. It is by far not a complete solution but it works quite nicely for the time the user is working on the PC.

The Server Monitor Widget displays information like CPU Load, Server Uptime, Hard Disk Space, Server Address and Cache which is nice for a quick overview. It pulls the data from the free phpSysInfo script that has to be installed on the server.

This script does not check specific services like MySQL and Email but it gives information if a server is up or down.

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This helps if I’m near a PC but not if I’m playing with my five year old nephew at the North Sea. One of my backup plans included the installation of a Symbian version of Putty on my Nokie N73 mobile phone. Putty is a Telnet and SSH client that can be used to quickly connect to servers and start commands and scripts there. It would take only a minute or so to connect to the server and restart a module, like ftp, MySQL or Apache, if one of them crashes.

It can also be used to analyze what went wrong providing the server did not crash completely and does not restart. All that is needed is the free software PuTTY for Symbian OS which can be installed on a Symbian OS compatible mobile phones also known as S60 third edition smartphones.

Ports for UIQ 1, UIQ 2 and UIQ 3 are available as well. It’s actually pretty cumbersome to work with Putty on a mobile phone that does not have a full QWERTY keyboard with additional keys like ESC which is why the mobile version of Putty offers a special send menu that provides access to those special characters.

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After making sure that the import was fine we had to check the websites if they were displaying correctly without errors on the new server as well. Finally we changed the IP address in the Nameserver from the old IP to the new one. Comments that had been written in the time between have been lost because those have been written to the database of the old server.

We are sorting out some remaining difficulties but the websites should display fine. If you do spot an error please let me know immediately so that I can fix it as soon as possible.

The new dedicated server runs smooth like a baby and I can only recommend the excellent webhoster Hetzner if you are looking for a low prices, high speed, great support rootserver.

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That is a huge improvement and things should run a lot smoother when the server transfer has finished. I hope you do recognize the change as well. The reason for this post is that you might experience small downtimes or other problems like failing database connections.

We try to keep them to a minimum but they can’t be ruled out completely. So, just in case. We are not dead, we are just moving to a new server. Have a nice day everyone.

Maybe you are wondering how much we pay for this new server. The new server actually has the price of the old one. It costs €59 – thats $88 – per month which is an incredible price if you ask me.

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