Archive for May, 2011
Top 5 Silver Bullets for Managed Hosting
Businesses today have multiple pressures to tackle, global constituencies to integrate, and changing business needs to manage. In such a scenario, most organizations are considering managed hosting as a solution to reduce the IT pressures and focus on their core business outcomes.
Whether it is managed servers, applications, network, databases, or other IT components underpinning key business processes, a managed hosting provider offers cost advantage and business efficiencies to all kinds of businesses. By choosing managed hosting, start-ups and mid-sized companies save on getting expensive in-house infrastructure and resources to manage their IT environment and achieve the scalability to expand based on changing needs, whereas large enterprises achieve tighter alignment of IT with business with access to 24×7 expertise to support their vast IT operations and global customer base.
Here are top 5 reasons why managed hosting scores over building and maintaining the IT systems and infrastructure in-house:
Optimum use of IT resources: IT resources are costly, so it is a good idea to use them for strategic activities than engaging them in mundane day-to-day maintenance tasks. The managed hosting service frees up the IT staff members to provide greater value to the organization than focusing on non-critical IT tasks. Moreover the managed hosting provider is better equipped to handle these tasks. Lower, predictable cost of ownership: Typically, internally hosted and managed systems include multiple costs like huge capital expenditures, operating costs, unexpected costs in case of system failures, maintenance and repair costs, personnel costs, and many more. By opting for managed hosting or managed hosting solutions, organizations save on huge upfront capital costs and reduce their operating costs significantly, as the managed hosting provider takes care of all the management and infrastructure-related expenses – all for a predictable monthly fee that can be budgeted for in advance. High-performance, High-availability SLAs: Managed hosting providers continually invest to better their infrastructure and adopt newer technologies to offers their customer greater value. Their state-of-the-art data centers enable them to offer higher levels of security, performance and availability, which means businesses have “always on” systems with no security threats. Access to best expertise round the clock: Many small and mid-sized businesses have the need for an enterprise class solution but cannot afford to develop one owing to high personnel costs and limited access to required technical expertise. With managed hosting solution, companies get access to vast expertise to meet their specific needs such as migrations, upgrades, integration, etc. for which they do not have skilled resources in-house. Most managed hosting providers offer 24×7 support to their customers, with their teams working as an extension of customer’s IT department, which makes it easier for organizations to reach out to the required skill sets anywhere, anytime. Quick time to value: A managed hosting provider has “been there and done that,” and with a pre-tested, pre-configured infrastructure and solutions, they can deploy systems quickly. Their ability to scale the solution to align it with changing customer needs enables customers to realize greater value from their IT environment in no time.
For more information about managed hosting solutions and their benefits, please visit NaviSite Inc.
Keep Hackers From Your Joomla Admin
It is becoming more popular for hackers to try to brute force attack your Joomla administrator to gain access to your administrator. Using this method they bombard your admin form with thousands of usernames/password until they find the right combination. Since Joomla doesn’t let you choose the admin username when installing they already know the username, this makes it twice as easy. If you want to add additional security, and who doesn’t, it is fortunately very easy.
#1: Change the admin username
The first thing to do is change the default admin username. First login to your control panel (often cPanel) and go to your database editor (normally phpMyAdmin), then select the Joomla database and browse to the jos_users table. The original user is user id 62, so edit that entry. Pick a username other than “admin”. Doing just this step will stop almost any chance of being hacked since most will just try the default username.
#2: Choose a better admin password
Now you’ll need to have an admin password that is difficult to guess. You’ll want to have at least 8 characters with a mix of lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers and special characters.
#3: Use .htaccess protection
With .htaccess protection there will be 2 logins needed to get into your Joomla admin. BuyHTTP’s Joomla hosting accounts are protected by a firewall that automatically blocks would-be hackers after 5 failed login attempts. .htaccess protection can be enabled by logging in to cPanel (or your hosts control panel) and clicking the Password Protect a Directory button. You can then select the “public_html/administrator” directory to protect, and add users who you want to be able to login.
These few, easy steps will exponentially increase the security of your Joomla installation.
Key Benefits of Linux Hosting
Linux is a large base of Web hosting development. It has been used as a conventional service in this world of increasingly open source phenomenon. Linux has a lot of popularity throughout the world. Technical support seems as an easier, faster processing and cost effectiveness makes this operating system more flexible than its nearest rival. So let us take a quick look at the important benefits and features of using Linux Hosting.
The most important feature of Linux hosting is its flexibility, and as an open source platform it is really important. Linux actually works in all kinds of systems throughout. Flexibility gives it an advantage in this expanding marketplace where business entrepreneurs want to use facilitates in their own ways. In addition, this type of software is specially built to use resources without spending many bucks on software licensing so it is just profitable deal.
Linux Hosting offers necessary resources for computing which gives Linux many advantages such as cost effectiveness and extensibility at the same time. Significantly it is effective, the platform loads quickly and works faster as much similar to other hosting platform. Thus, in some ways, Linux gives more stability and actually takes less CPU power to operate functions. Therefore, most people who have a good knowledge of technology prefer Linux platform. These people can obtain uninterrupted services, without any doubt of system crash at the beginning of business.
Linux hosting is mainly supported by a community of prospective members of open source developers. This simply means that you can set several applications from a database file with the most effective advanced technology, which is specially developed to access a system in user friendly manner.
At the end, open source nature of this platform gives this operating system extra layer of popularity. The faster processing time allow this system to run on all types of computing machines. The cheap cost and flexibility provide the top notch quality features in this increasingly expanding marketplace where users need to access features in their own ways. Therefore using Linux hosting is beneficial for all kinds of manners.