FAQs on UK Dedicated servers offered by Webhosting.uk.com

1. Where are your servers located ?
Ans: All our servers are located in world-class Blue Square Data Centre based in Maidenhead which is 20 Miles West of London, UK.

2. What Brand of servers/Chassis do you use for the Servers ?
Ans: We use only branded Chassis from Dell and we use latest state of the art Intel CPU’s for our servers.

3. Which ISPs do you use for network connectivity of your Datacenter / Servers ?
Ans: Our network transit connections are currently to Level 3, Tiscali, and Deutsche Telekom. We also peer with approximately 150 ISPs at the peering points LINX, XChangePoint, and LoNAP.

4. What is the Datacenter Connectivity and uplink for each dedicated server ?
Ans: We have a total of 40,000mbits of network connectivity for all our Servers. We have 4 x 10 Gbps links for our datacenter. Each Server in our datacenter is setup on 100 Mbps, fully-switched port on an edge switch. Each edge switch is then in turn plugged into two separate aggregation switches at 1gbit, with failover redundancy allowing either 1gbit link to fail.

5. What are the RAM specifications ?
Ans: Our Servers are equipped with DDR2 ECC SDRAM.

6. What types of Hard drives (HDD) do you use and what is the speed of your drives ?
Ans: We use SATA drives on our servers as advertised on our website, all of our SATA hard drives have a speed of 7500 rpm. We also provide SAS drives on some of our high configuration servers. SAS drives have a speed of 10,000 rpm. You can contact our Sales Department through our helpdesk to get more information on the available configurations.

7. How many websites can I host on a dedicated server ?
Ans: There is no such limit you can host unlimited number of websites on your dedicated server however it is sensible not to overload a server with more websites than it can cope with. This is dependent on the specification of your server and the type of websites that you want to host on it. WebHosting UK entry level server will comfortably host around 500 average websites.

8. What Operating systems do you Support ?
Ans: We Support Debian 4.1, CentOS 5.2, Fedora Core 8, Fedora Core 9 and RHEL 5.x Linux Flavors on our Dedicated Linux Servers while for Windows Servers we offer Windows 2003 Standard, Windows 2003 Enterprise, Windows 2008 Datacenter and Windows 2008 Web edition only.

9. What is your uptime Guarantee for Dedicated Servers ?
Ans: We offer 100% network and power uptime guarantee on all our dedicated servers.

10. What control panels do you support on your dedicated servers ?
Ans: We offer cPanel/WHM & Plesk Control panel options on our dedicated Linux servers for additional pricing whilst on Windows we offer Plesk control panel options. You can install any other control panel as per your requirements but we won’t support those control panels. As a part of our managed service we will provide support for OS related problems only if the control panel is not purchased through Webhosting.UK.com .

11. Do you include a backup service with the dedicated web hosting server plans ?
Ans: We offer 20 GB remote backup space free of cost with all our dedicated servers. Once you sign up for the dedicated server, you will need to contact our support dept. on setup of your server to allow our system admins to login and setup the backup scripts.

12. Do you provide RAID 0 or RAID 1 with your servers ?
Ans: We do offer RAID 0 or RAID 1 hardware configuration with our servers. Both these RAID configurations need 2 Identical hard drives. RAID 0 doesn’t help in case of Hard Disk Drive failure, RAID 1 mirrors data on 2 identical drives which allows you to swap drives incase of failure of one server hard drive. In the event of a Hard Disk Drive failure on RAID 0, data will be lost. More information on RAID can be obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

13. Do you offer Load Balanced Servers ?
Ans: Yes. We do offer Load Balanced servers on Linux as well as on Windows platforms. We can setup a load balanced cluster using Cisco Load Balancing routers or by using windows load balancing feature which is inbuilt within the windows OS.

14. Do you offer MS Exchange Server ?
Ans: Yes. We do offer fully managed MS Exchange Server. We provide both MS Exchange 2003 and MS Exchange 2007 servers.

15. Do you offer Mirrored Servers ?
Ans: Yes. We do offer fully managed mirrored servers. We setup mirroring architecture on both the servers at no additional cost which effectively means you will only need to pay the applicable fees for the two servers. For Mirrored Servers you will have to consider two Dedicated Servers of similar configuration.

16. Do you offer unmetered dedicated servers ?
Ans: Yes. We provide unmetered bandwidth connection options with our Linux/Windows dedicated servers. dedicated servers. We offer 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps Unmetered bandwidth connection with the dedicated server.

17. Where are your Support staff based ?
Ans: Our support staff are based in three locations. Some staff members are based in the Datacenter and the rest of the staff members are based in our offices in London and Durham.

18. Is there any money back guarantee on Dedicated Servers ?
Ans: We offer 30 day money back guarantee only in case of hardware failure or if the hardware is not as per the advertised specifications. We don’t offer any refunds for software related problems as you should communicate with our support team or the accounts person in charge of your account to get those sorted.

How do Mirrored Servers work?

For Mirrored servers architecture, Web Hosting UK set-up 2 similar configuration servers in 2 different racks out of which one server is the master server and other is the slave server. After the implementation of mirroring, if for any reason, the master server fails, the slave server can immediately take its place without any downtime. We implement Mirroring Solution using FAM and RSYNC modules.

Failover Process:

Failover is a process in which the slave server stands in for master server in case the master server goes down. With the help of Failover, user and application requests that are directed to the failed master server are routed to the slave server.

Restoration process:

Restoration process involves copying replicated data from the slave server to its original location which is the master server. Data restoration process only requires selection of the source, target, and the appropriate replication set. Individual file selection or remembering the exact data location on the source is not required since that information is already maintained.

Restoration process comes into contention in case the data on the master server is lost due to a disk crash or when the most up-to-date data exists on the slave server due to failover. Because of the continued updates on the slave server, when the master server is ready to come back online, the two servers will no longer contain the same data. Restoration is the process of copying the up-to-date data from the slave server back to the master server when it comes back online.

We setup mirroring architecture on both the servers at no additional cost which effectively means you will only need to pay the applicable fees for the two servers. For Mirrored Servers you will have to consider two Dedicated Servers of similar configuration.

For more information about server mirroring, please contact our sales department.

What is a dedicated server ?

A Dedicated Server is where one customer rents or leases one or more dedicated servers for their own use. A Dedicated Server is dedicated only to a single user and it is setup according to the users preference. With dedicated server web hosting you don’t need to share your server RAM, hard disk space, bandwidth or a connection to the router. With Dedicated server you get your own hosting server for your website instead of having to share a server with others, which could accommodate several websites. In a dedicated server hosting environment, the client decides which Internet services – mail, Web, FTP, etc. fits their needs the best. A client can put hundreds or thousands of websites on a single dedicated server. The user has complete control of every single process the dedicated server will perform from choosing an operating system to accepting or installing 3rd party software for security, e-mail or whatever the user would need a 3rd party for.

The benefit of using dedicated server hosting is that your website performance will not be affected by high traffic websites that would have been sharing your servers bandwidth. Dedicated hosting is extremely flexible, and often fits the needs of the more sophisticated users. Dedicated servers can be used to manage emails and domains and a dedicated server can be used by a company so that employees can share and access files from wherever they can get internet access. Usually a dedicated server is used by the companies or individuals who run very high traffic sites and need a large amount of bandwidth and consistent performance.

What are the benefit of Dedicated Server Hosting?

1. You do not have to purchase or maintain your own equipment.
2. Better website performance b’coz you are not sharing the server resources such as processor power, memory and hard disk space with other web sites on the same server.
3. No chance of your website being affected by another website on the same box, as in shared web hosting environment.
4. As nobody else has access to the dedicated server you can be sure of having a much greater degree of security.
5. If you need to install customize or third party software/applications or configure the server to your own particular needs then often a dedicated server is the solution.
6. Dedicated Server has its own unique IP address.
7. You can upgrade the server resources like Memory, Disk Space, Bandwidth or Processors as the need arises.

Q. What does Webhosting UK dedicated server management include?

Ans: All our Linux/Windows dedicated servers are fully managed and come with full administrative access to give you complete control, as well as the ability to customize the server as per your needs. The key to our clients’ online business success is smooth and seamless functioning of their web server. Dedicated servers require constant monitoring, care and maintenance which is taken care of by our experienced System Administrators. They ensure that your web server is always available, has the latest security updates installed and technical issues if any are resolved as soon as possible.

Web Hosting UK Linux/Windows Dedicated Server management responsibilities include but are not limited to the following tasks:

• SSH Security and Configuration
• Optimization and Hardening
• Firewall Configuration
• Server Monitoring Process
• Linux Server Security
• Apache Tweaks
• Environmental security
• Security Audit
• Securing Binaries
• Firewall Configuration
• DNS recursion restriction
• Email scanning for viruses and spam
• RDP security
• Windows Server Security
• Scripting mail components
• Scripting Languages
• Image Upload components
• System Security
• Server Migration
• 3rd Party Software Installation
• WHM/CPanel and Plesk control panel Technical Issues
• Initial Server Setup
• Backend Server Software Upgrades
• Database administration
• Application monitoring and updates
• Intrusion detection
• Performance tuning

Please visit our fully managed dedicated server information pages to view our complete list of functions which are performed by our seasoned System Administrators to maintain your managed Linux/Windows dedicated server round the clock to ensure that it performs in a safe and secure manner 24×7x365.

Dedicated Server Management Overview:

• Linux Server Management
• Windows Server Management

Q. What is a ‘RAID’ server ? Why should I opt for RAID Servers?

Ans: RAID stands for ‘Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks’. It is a technique for using multiple hard disk drives to provide fault tolerance. Normally, Web Hosting UK use high quality hardware to configure dedicated server systems with 2 hard drives to use RAID 1 disk mirroring. RAID server mirroring guarantees optimal data integrity and instant access to your data. All data is written to both hard drives simultaneously. With RAID 1, if one of the drives fails the server can continue to run normally with just the remaining dedicated server hard drive. We can then schedule a mutually convenient time to replace the failed dedicated server hard drive, meaning minimal downtime for your server. Without RAID, a single hard drive failure could result in few days downtime in the worst case scenario that it was necessary to reinstall the operating system from scratch. The advantage of this type of RAID server configuration is that recovery takes less time, resources and tools – assuming that the mirrors functioning correctly when the failure occurred. Please note that on a RAID 1 system, the storage capacity is effectively halved i.e. a pair of 160 GB hard drives will give you 160 GB of storage space, not 320 GB. If you have more advanced requirements, we are also able to do custom RAID 5 systems with 3 or more hard drives.

Contact us through our Live Chat or call today to discuss raid dedicated server hosting solution with WebHosting UK on 0808-262-0855, or request a quote online.

Can I run a game server on VPS or Dedicated Server ?

For hosting game servers we recommend using a Dedicated Server, VPS hosting is not recommended for a game server since the processor power and memory allocations for a VPS are less compared to a single Physical dedicated server. If you wish to test the game server application on a VPS then you can consider our VPS Enterprise for a month but we do not provide support for game server web hosting on a VPS.

You can operate the dedicated server as a game server. We will provide you the dedicated server, and will install the operating system, if you would like to install game server software on it then you can of course do so. You have full access to the game server to install what you like. We do provide assistance with game server installations at no additional cost for Dedicated Server clients.

What is SQL Server Hosting ?

The phrase SQL server hosting can refer to a MySQL or MSSQL database software program that supports the Structured Query Language (SQL) or it could mean a dedicated database server with a version of SQL loaded on it. There are several versions or dialects of SQL as a software program, including MySQL, MS SQL (which also is called Microsoft SQL server) and PostrgreSQL. All of them use the standard SQL language as a base, but then add their own unique extensions to create a unique SQL server language.

SQL Server as Database Server

As a database server, SQL dedicated server, is among the most popular in use. A SQL server is relatively inexpensive compared to other database servers, such as Oracle, and is capable of handling most databases. Oracle still has an edge over SQL server in very large databases.

SQL server is growing very rapidly in client/server systems that use distributed databases. A SQL server can be used simultaneously by many users on a local area network or linked via the Internet.

WebHosting UK provides variety of Intel powered Dell SQL servers. We have expertise in setup and management of SQL Servers, particularly in complex clusters. SQL server web hosting database is much more dynamic than a web site, so we take care of the complete SQL server configuration and maintenance allowing you to focus on the management of your business-specific content.

For more information about SQL server hosting, please contact our sales department.

WebHosting UK Server Network Speed

Every individual dedicated server gets a 100 Mbps connection. A choice between 10 Mbps and 1 Gbps is also available for dedicated server customers. Our shared & reseller web hosting servers have a direct link to one of the many ethernet gigabit backbone connections within the datacenter facility. The semi-dedicated and vps hardware nodes are all connected to independent 100 Mbps lines. The whole Network Operations Center / Datacenter has multiple lines of 15 Gbps from almost every Tier 1 provider. This not only gives us redundancy, but it also acts as a good buffer in times of a sudden spurt in bandwidth requirements. Leaving aside any unforeseen circumstances or during times when we face nature’s fury, there are no problems of connectivity which you would have to put up with.

Q. What control panel choices do you offer on both Linux/Windows Dedicated Servers and what are the prices?

Ans: With our Dedicated Server hosting you get control panel options like cPanel and Plesk control panel.

Control Panel supported with Linux Dedicated Servers:

• cPanel/WHM
• Plesk Control Panel

Control Panel supported with Windows Dedicated Servers:

• Plesk Control Panel

Web Hosting UK provides all the latest versions of control panel with our Dedicated Servers:

• cPanel version 11.17.0
• WHM version 11.15.0
• Plesk Version 8.6.0

Control Panel Charges on Dedicated Server Hosting are as follows:

• cPanel/WHM – £ 20 / Month
• Plesk 30 Domains – £ 8 / Month
• Plesk 100 Domains – £ 15 / Month
• Plesk Unlimited domains – £ 20 / Month

Plesk Addons Available with Plesk Control Panel Only:-

• Plesk Power Pack – £ 15 / Month
• Dr. Web Anti Virus – £ 25 / Month