The advantages of cheap domain hosting

Defination of cheap domain hosting

Next time when you look for forum hosting or vps hosting, make sure you check out hostican web hosting at the first place.

Tyan S5372 i5000VS

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:27:13 -0400

The latest buzz in the datacenter & server markets these days can be summed up as: Woodcrest.

Woodcrest is Intel's code-name for their newest Dual Core Xeon processor - which boasts two CPU cores on 1 chip, 4MB of shared cache, a claim of 40% better performance with a 40% reduction in power used. Wow. To every datacenter-centered person that is a dream come true. With the rising power & cooling costs, increasing performance and reducing power is essential.

With the latest reviews on hardware websites showing that these new chips blow away the competition in almost every area, we decided to use the new Woodcrest processor in a new reseller web hosting server that we're bringing online.

The first job was finding a Woodcrest process that would provide enough power & not bankrupt us (some of these Woodcrest CPUs are in the $1000 arena!)... we chose the Intel 5130 Dual Core Xeon. Then the going got tough.

MotherBoard
All of the Woodcrest motherboards that we could find were in the $300 - $500 range. We chose the Tyan S5372 i5000VS dual Woodcrest motherboard - it looked like a good choice.

RAM
Of course the new Woodcrest CPUs & motherboards require FB-DIMM DDR2 (that is Latin for: expensive)... loading the machine 4 with 4G of RAM was a tad expensive...

CASE
We use 2U cases from an excellent provider called ServerCase.com
Luckily we keep spare cases because they ship from California and it can take up to a week to get a case to us on the East Coast.

THE RESULTS
Thanks to 3 day shipping methods, our parts were delivered very quickly. We started to build the server and ran into 3 issues:
Problem 1) The new motherboards screw holes didn't line up with the 2U ATX case from ServerCase.com .. .there were 3 brackets coming up from the bottom of the case for screws, but there were no holes on the motherboard. Needless to say that is bad.... what to do? We don't want to wait to buy another case and delay the building process.
Solution: We used a drill to drill through the bottom of the case and remove the 3 offending metal brackets

Problem 2) The motherboard requires a EPS12V / SSI (24 + 8) power supply - our spares were all 24 + 4... damn. There's no way around this, we zip back over to ServerCase.com and order 2x (always need a spare, right?) I-Star Dual xeon power supplies & that is resolved

Problem 3) The 2U case requires special mounting brackets for a Dual Xeon motherboard... back to ServerCase.com to order the correct parts.

Hooray... uh oh?
Finally at this point everything looks good! The server is built (running very cool - Intel delivered on their low-power promise!), harddrives are installed, RAID card works, RAM is recognized, and life is good in server land.... right? Well, the last step is to go into the bios and change the "After Power Failure" setting to "Turn On"... this will allow us to reboot the server using our APC remote control strips. We go into the BIOS, change the setting, save the settings & restart.

We then pull out the power and plug it back in but the "After Power Failure" setting doesn't work! That is an essential feature for a remote controlled server. Panicking, we rush to Tyan's website to check for BIOS updates. Phew! There have already been 2 updates for this BIOS so surely they must have fixed the issue. We flash the BIOS to the latest 1.3 version and test it and it still doesn't work.
note about the motherboard flashing: Tyan says that it is required to boot into MSDOS with no HIMEM loaded but give no details on how to do this. It took us an hour or two of consulting people and websites to finally figure it out... thanks for the great instructions Tyan]

So the next step is to call Tyan's technical support (emailing their support was a maze of getting the proper subject and that was just plain old confusing).... to their credit they picked up right away and were very helpful. They setup the motherboard in their labs and tested it out and verified that the feature worked for them. Hmm... their official response is that the power supply that we're using is not supported. We pay $35 to do an RMA (over night, thankfully) in hopes that we somehow have a defective motherboard. The new motherboard arrives the next day from California and the problem still persists.

Now, I would accept the "unsupported power supply" theory, except when we use the CLEAR CMOS jumper on the motherboard to clear the BIOS settings, the next time we plug the power in, the system turns on automatically. That's right. If you clear the BIOS settings via the Jumper on the motherboard and plug the power back in, it will automatically turn on - but after that, even if you change the setting in the BIOS to "Turn On", it will not turn on!. That tells us that the motherboard & power supply together are in-fact physically capable of turning on after the power is plugged back in, it is simply a bug somewhere (either in hardware or software) that won't let it happen with our 'unsupported power supply'. Hopefully someone from Tyan will read this and look into this further.
FYI: The power supply that we're using is an I-Star TC-2U40 (400W Quiet 20/24+8+4pin power supply)]

update - 9/30/2006 - Tyan issued bios version 1.04, we had hoped that this would address the problem, but it did not.

Follow-Up & Results
Aside from the lack of ability to turn on after a power failure, the server is running very well - temperatures are low, performance is high & there has been no weird behavior or freezing. we fully tested the CPU & RAM before-hand to ensure that there were no problems with these parts]

That is why the better option is to build up your own list, which with the right online marketing tactics and strategy should not be too difficult to do. Once you have built a fairly huge list (which can be done quite quickly) you can then sell your hosting service to them even as you put up your web site to run the hosting service.

KH3.us - Free Web hosting, Ads Free, 50GB, 10TB, Cpanel…







cheap domain hosting Items For Viewing



General Impression

IX Web Hosting has been in business since 1999 and has recently made a
remarkable appearance with the opening of their new data center in Hopkinsville,
KY.

With a highly professional website and very attractive hosting plans, they have
managed to be added to the list of companies that web-hosting-top.com is
reviewing. As the months passed by, IX WebHosting continuously improved its
performance in both reliability and customer service, resulting in extremely
quick loading websites and high customer satisfaction and consequently mastered
to be rated by our review team.



With over 170.000 domains hosted is more then obvious their value!





Price & Cost Effectiveness

IX Web Hosting's plans give you an excellent value. Regardless of your needs,
their plans allow you to save money right away - but the savings are even
greater if you need to host multiple domain names. Their billing cycles run from
quarterly, semi-annual to annual and 2-year billing cycles, the choice is yours
on most plans. The longer the billing cycle, the higher the discount that is
provided.



When hosting more than one domain name (multiple domain names or sub domains),
you can host them all on a single plan (Expert Plan and higher). You will save a
great deal of money since there are no fees at all for adding, removing, or
changing hosted domains and subdomains. You can manage it in real-time via the
control panel.



There was not a single billing issue with any of our anonymous test accounts, we
have always been treated with great respect and fairness. There were no over- or
unexpected extra on any of our hosting accounts. What is more important - when
we requested a refund for 2 accounts, we were granted a full refund without
questions asked. 100% money-back - including setup fees. An impressive approach
towards customer satisfaction.



They will help you with CGI scripts, upload problems, even if you don't know how
to use FrontPage - we were assisted kindly via telephone and their Live Chat
service. This is an important aspect for a web master maintaining multiple
websites, as for a busy website, there is a constant need to change your site's
content and scripts used. Where else can you get 200,000MB web space for
$3.95/mo, or unlimited disk space with multi domain hosting for $12.95/mo,
paired with a zero-risk 100% money back guarantee.





Reliability

During our extensive hosting experience with IX Web Hosting, we have had hardly
any server outages. It would be a lie to say none of our 23 anonymous test
accounts have never been down - however, the uptime track record for our test
accounts is impressive.



The question is not IF downtime happens, the question is when it happens and how
quickly your hosting company can resolve the problem. Quick problem resolution
is a must, so your site will be back online in no time.



Our overall reliability experience with IX Web Hosting is positive. They claim
to provide 99.9% uptime for all hosted accounts and they have a guarantee on
their website proving their track record. We had 100% uptime for the majority of
hosted accounts, however - 2 out of 23 accounts only had an uptime of 99.2% due
to a server glitch. The glitch was resolved quickly (within 90 minutes), however
the uptime amount of these two accounts did not reach 99.9% this month. After
inquiring with their billing department, we have been reimbursed for the
downtime that occurred with two free months of hosting service. We found this to
be an adequate compensation for 60 minutes of downtime.





Data Center (toured)

As the title indicates, we have personally visited and "examined" IX Web
Hosting's data center. The importance of doing that is obvious. You might have
heard of the "story" that 80% or more of the web hosts are just resellers, and
another 10% are just co-locating in some other data center, without direct
physical access to the machines. Unfortunately, that story is plain reality. We
have personally verified that IX Web Hosting's data center facility actually
exists by paying them a visit in Hopkinsville, KY. As the 16th data center we
visited, it was a rather pleasant surprise that they actually HAVE the equipment
they list on their website, as well as the security mechanisms, firewalls and
CISCO state of the art routers.



IX Web Hosting currently employs five redundant fiber-optic loops to connect
their data center. The fiber-optic connectivity is provided by Bell South,AT&T,
Verizon and 2x bandwidth is redundantly served by Qwest Communications. They are
currently busy upgrading their connectivity for future expansion.





Customer Service

In my entire career as professional web master, I have never seen more
responsive and technically sound support staff. I am thoroughly impressed by the
technical skills of the IX Web Hosting customer care team.



Regardless of which artificially created problem I have prompted them with,
everything was resolved within 24 hours: PASIV FTP issues, CGI scripts with
programming errors, PHP coding issues, ASP ODBC database connectivity, MSSQL
Enterprise Manager troubles, domain-lock and expiration tricks - we were not
able to fool them.



The support provided can be rated as above excellent, especially the 24 / 7 LIVE
CHAT feature. We have submitted a total of 450 support requests so far in the
past several months, and on 400 requests the response has immediately solved our
problem. The other tickets had to be reworked to send more details to the
technician. We called in via Live Chat at 3am and 5am EST several times and our
requests were answered promptly and courteously. Unlike other hosts, IX Web
Hosting is providing It is a true 24 / 7 chat service.





Control Panel

The basis of their control panel is H-Sphere, however IX Web Hosting's
programmer staff have modified it heavily. Both LINUX and WINDOWS hosting based
accounts are provided and the control panel functions flawlessly with accounts
on both platforms. The control panel they provide allows you to add, remove and
manage your domain names, subdomains, FTP accounts, email accounts, mailing
lists, auto responders, email aliases, MIME Types, Apache Indexes, PHP / ASP
configuration, mySQL, PostgreSQL and MSSQL databases, SQL database users,
cancelling and resuming your subscription and reporting trouble tickets from one
interface. In addition to the comprehensive functionality listed above, they
also offer an online file manager, an web design program called Site Studio as
well as Web Mail. All these features along with the senseful customizations IX
Web Hosting's programming department has applied to the control panel software
have made us rate this category with an astounding 100%.

You will find now a brand new billing system, outstanding from all points of
view.



The usage of the control panel it's self is very fast and reliable. The
administration of your whole account is very user-friendly and IX Web Hosting
provides an extensive customer guide with detailed explanations on how to use
your hosting account.



Contact Information and Support



Phone

24/7 sales and support available.

+1-270-707-2051 International

+1-800-385-0450



Click Here to go to ixwebhosting
website.


We had put all our efforts to produce some respectable reading matter on cheap domain hosting. We sure do wish it's respectable enough for you.
#






cnet web hosting reviews
compare web hosting
cpanel hosting
asp web hosting | asp web hosting review | asp web hosting reviews