What is Cloud Computing?
Is best described as Spreading your infrastructure needs and requirements across traditional technologies and hardware using virtualisation technologies to provide a higher level of redundancy and availability than was previously achievable at a vastly reduced price.

What is Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)?
Companies no longer rely on hardware vendors for their hardware needs. By outsourcing to a IaaS provider they can easily scale up and down their hardware requirements, without incurring the expense of buying or managing their own hardware.

What is Cloud Storage?
Is the term used when you store your companies data or personal data across the internet onto a cloud infrastructure. As your data is stored across multiple SAN storage devices and not in a single physical location this is referred to as cloud storage.

What are Application Stacks?
Application stacks are a pre-bundled selection of software which allow users to quickly deploy or configure a server by installing all the necessary software or operating system via a one-click install.

What is SAN Storage?
Storage Area Network devices are the large highly redundant and highly reliable servers that sit at the back end of all cloud computing infrastructures and provide the large amount of storage space needed in a typical cloud computing set up

What is a Node?
Used when referring to a physical server within a cloud infrastructure. A node does not contain any customer data and is only utilised for its CPU and RAM

What is Self healing architecture ?
When a node or SAN storage array fails there are additional nodes and SANs which quickly and automatically take the load ensuring continued, uninterrupted service.

What is Failover?
It means that when a node or server fails there is another one in place to immediately take the load and continue serving your webpages or application without interruption.

What is Multi-homed?
Is a process used to increase the reliability and redundancy of the network connection to the hardware, as it removes any single point of failure by bringing multiple internet connections into the platform.

What is Software as a Service (SaaS)?
This is where companies are using software that is not installed on their actual PC , but rather connecting over the internet to access the likes of google docs, email, company intranets and communication tools such as VOIP and messenger services, these are hosted by third partner providers and companies pay for access to the online tools as they need them.

What is Virtualization?
Is taken traditional hardware technology and better utilizing it to get maximum use of it and reduce the costs of deploying additional servers/ this is done by software providing a complete simulation of the underlying hardware, and allowing you to deploy multiple virtual server on a single physical hardware server

What is Os Virtualization?
Is where the virtualization technology sits on the operating system level of the server and allows for multiple isolated user-space instances.The restriction on this type of virtualization is that the multiple virtual machines all have to run on the same operating machine as the overall physical machine.

What is Para-Virtualization?
Allows the virtualization software to sit on the actual hardware level of the server , giving a far greater level of control to each of the virtual machine , users can modify their virtual servers down to a kernel level and install whatever operating system they like, this is what dediserve uses.

What is Virtual KVM Acces?
Is the level of access you receive to your para virtualized virtual server, allowing for you to perform functions such as hard reboots as well as complete power downs

Are we missing anything? Anything you would like to know, feel free to ask and we will add it to the list.

We’d also like to remind you that LiveChat and Email support have been available 24/7/365 since October, including every day of the holidays – we’re here to help!

We’re delighted to annouce we have now rolled out another excellent product on our cloud platform – Cloud Datacentre.

What is a Cloud Datacentre?

Basically instead of buying cloud machines as a single instance, you can now for a fixed monthly price, buy a pool of resources to be used how and when you like. Our default cloud DC starts with 10GB Ram, 10 Cores , and 250GB of Fiber channel SAN Storage.

Examples for SME’s could include deploying a SugarCRM template , Asterik PBX for phone Systems, Magento for your shopping Cart , WordPress template server for your Blog , a PHPbb Forum for your site, all running on their own servers, all managed via a single interface and all for a fixed monthly fee.

Check out our selection of templates for more idea’s on what you can do with your cloud machines – http://www.dediserve.com/cloud-machines-templates.html

Also from our web based control panel interface you can now deploy as many machines as you like, running whatever operating system or template that you like. Upgrade/downgrade the machines at any time. Monitor CPU usage, network traffic, emergency console in if there is  any issues.

With the dediserve cloud datacentre, you can run your own private cloud.

Consolidate dedicated servers, colocated infrastructure, VPS and shared hosting as well as in-house application servers and testing environments to a single, flexible, cost effective private cloud.

With access to a comprehensive management interface you can create, edit and destroy cloud machines, on demand, from your dedicated pool of resources.

Talk to us Today about the solution that best fits your business.

Not a day goes by that we don’t get asked ‘What is cloud computing?’ – as well as lots of other questions!

In short, there are lots and lots of definitions, but the simplest one we like of the general term is;

“Technology delivered as a service over the internet”.

This covers everything from SAAS (software as a service) like Facebook, Google Apps, Salesforce, to IAAS or Infrastructure as a Service (like the service provided by Dediserve) and lots of things in between.

We define ‘our’ Cloud Service as;

“low-cost, enterprise cloud infrastructure as a platform for secure, compliant IT services and applications”

In other words, we’ve taken over ten years experience in building hosting platforms for websites, ecommerce, applications and data, as well as more than three years experience in building and running an enterprise cloud platform, and applied it to a low cost, super easy to use solution that small business can readily adopt and run with. Leave the complexity, need to change how you work and unpredictable costs at the door, we’re all about easy!

Here’s a few more things we’ve been asked in the last few months!

Where is my data stored? What about privacy and data protection?
Dediserve are based in Ireland and the UK and all data is safely stored in Dublin, Ireland,home to ebay, amazon, google and more. By being an Irish company and holding our data in Ireland in the EU, you can be assured of complete privacy of your data, without being subject to the Patriot acts or similar US or UK based legislation. We are registered with the Data Protection commission.

Isn’t cloud computing billing hard to predict? Will my bills fluctuate?
No. Dediserve are all about simplifying the cloud experience for small business. With our cloud platform you pay a simple fixed amount every month, but can still flex up and down any time you require, the change is simply reflected in your next bill. Complete control, complete predictability, complete visibility. Never stress about your next cloud bill again!

Is dedicated hosting or colocation cheaper in the long run?
Dediserve cloud hosting is designed to be more cost effective than any alternative. With no capital expenditure or maintenance to worry about, no charges for power, cooling, connectivity, transit and everything you need including for a simple, low monthly fee, you can realise significant savings by migrating your dedicated servers, collocated infrastructure, virtual servers and even shared hosting accounts to the dediserve cloud.

Is this very technical or hard to use?
Our easy to use control panels have been designed specifically with small business users in mind. We have API’s and more ‘complicated’ cloud stuff for the techies, but you can do absolutely everything you need via an extremely simple, yet powerful, web interface. Backed up by our 24/7 availability and friendly support, you don’t have to be technical to make the savings in the cloud!

Do I have to contract for an extended period to get these prices?
Absolutely not. Dediserve is all about simplicity. We believe our services, service and price to be good enough to retain your business month after month. There are no contracts, no commitments beyond what you pay for each month and you can change or leave at any time. Unlike other cloud solutions, we don’t lock you in, or put your data in propriety  formats to lock you in technically either.

Are the resources guaranteed? I have a ‘Burstable’ VPS at the moment?
We use the industry leading Xen virtualisation platform, the most common platform in cloud environments. With Xen, there is no overselling, so when we allocate 1GB of ram to a customer, we can’t sell that ram to anyone else. This means that you get exactly what you are paying for, and those resources are guaranteed to you at all times. There is no contention nor competition for resources on the server, ensuring at all times a predictable performance level from your cloud machine.

Have another question? We’re on livechat, at the end of the phone or email around the clock. We’re also happy to meet you, at our place or yours, and have a conversation around how moving to dediserve can save you a significant amount of your IT and hosting budget, while hugely improving the service you receive.

One of the Most important aspects of any Web based solutions provider is monitoring what’s actually happening with your machines and what your customers are currently viewing, a key aspect of this is being able to monitor the traffic levels into your machine, to ensure accurate monitoring you need to ideally host these machines offsite on a completely different network to your hosted machines in order to get a third eye view on how things look.

So if you have your hosted servers currently with another provider , have a look at Dediserves current solutions which all make excellent third party monitoring servers. Below i have listed the five most powerful opensource monitoring tools which all run easily on dediserves servers.

1. MRTG - The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is primarily designed to monitor and graph traffic on network links. It is written in Perl, generates HTML with PNG image graphs, updated at configurable intervals. One of the best features is that it creates daily, weekly, and monthly graphs as well. You can monitor any SNMP variable you choose. MRTG is one of the most popular tools  for network monitoring and is used widely in industry.

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Were happy to announce that we have launched the new www.dediserve.com website. The new website contains more details on our infrastructure as well as the services we offer including our popular templates sections.

An Overview to a pre-installed application stack templates – which we are adding to all the time.

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I suppose the first thing to clear up,the technologies and techniques currently being used in cloud computing are not new.Virtualization has been around for some years and is an integral part of all cloud based solutions. Most people would agree that there is nothing more to cloud computing than a simple re-packaging of existing technologies.

However if we ignore the current hype surrounding the term it’s become clear that cloud computing represents a complete shift in how computational resources are used and will be used going forward.One of the biggest benefits from this shift is “scalability”, In particular the ‘elastic’ nature of cloud scalability – the ability to effectively scale up infinitely but also to scale down as demand decreases.

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Below is a recent interview given to Adrian Weckler From the Sunday Business Post entitled  – Dummies Guide To Virtualisation.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4izU5LQQMw

One of the most important aspects of managing your linux virtual server , is to know what exactly your server is up to at any one time.

Being on top of this allows you to tweak your server for better performance dynamically before your load times start to suffer.

You should look out for issues Including:

• Storage bottlenecks
• CPU and Memory Bottlenecks
• Network Bottlenecks

All these have the ability to slow down and undermine the performance of your server. Below i will provide some free/opensource monitoring tools you can use to access this information via the command line on your linux server.

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For anyone who runs a website or is looking a running one, there comes a time when you need to decide what hosting package you are going to need.
Getting the hosting set-up wrong at the start can lead to a whole host of issues and problems as your site grows.Whilst shared hosting is fine for most early stage websites , what works for most users in the long-term is virtual private servers.

Basically what a Virtual private server allows, is instead of having to share your hosting space with other users , you can get root access to your own server which allows it to be more customizable for your needs, allowing you to make whatever changes needed to improve your website without affecting anyone else or having to verify it with your shared hosting provider before you install any software you might need. (more…)