When choosing a web host, there’s a lot to take into consideration. Do you need shared hosting, a virtual private server (VPS) hosting plan, or a fully-fledged dedicated server? Perhaps you are about to launch your business into “the cloud” with a cloud hosting service? Whatever kind of hosting you are looking for, one thing is for sure – your website is no good to anybody if it is inaccessible or offline.
Increasingly, web hosting providers make claims to offer so-called high availability, introducing service level agreements (SLAs) to guarantee that your web presence is consistently online. But what does high availability really mean? And if a web host promises high availability, high redundancy hosting, what is the tangible impact of this on your capability to serve customers?
High Availability Hosting On High Redundancy Networks
In order to remain connected to the Internet – and accessible to your potential customers – your server needs a range of different things. It needs a connection via a router, power, cooling, and much more. Should any one of these vital resources fail within a data center environment, your web presence could quickly disappear, possibly for days on end. In the meantime, you can do nothing but watch as your customers turn to your competitors.
When a web hosting provider or data center claims to offer high availability hosting, sometimes referred to as HA, this is achieved by the introduction of additional equipment to cover against possible failure or malfunction. Any network that is to remain accessible should be built with this superfluous, redundant equipment – not being used for the majority of the time, but able to handle traffic and serve content if primary hardware fails.
By ensuring high redundancy across a network, you can be confident that your website is consistently accessible – and that your customers are always happy.
Cloud Hosting – Fully Redundant By Definition
When it comes to high availability, it would be easy to assume that a server that was online 99% of the time would be enough. However, when you do the math, if your web presence is unavailable just 1% of the time, that is 2 hours of downtime a week and 2 hours worth of potential sales that you could be losing week in and week out. As a result, you should always be aware of how many 9s your web hosting provider can offer. The difference between 99% and 99.99% may not seem much, but can have a significant impact upon your business. The best web hosting services offer four nines – 99.99% – or more.
For true high availability hosting, take your business to the cloud.
Growing incredibly popular over the last couple of years, cloud hosting solutions means your entire web hosting account is stored in a virtualized container upon a hardware server. As a result, you can take advantage of allocated, quickly scalable system resources, without full expenditure on a dedicated server hosting plan.
However, the most impressive element of cloud hosting is a full-redundancy system, where empty, easily accessible hardware servers are stored within the network. In the event of hardware failure, your entire hosting account can be moved to a backup server in an instant.
This guarantees High Availability hosting with as much as 99.999% uptime – that’s a staggering five-nines rating that, in a worst case scenario, is just 6 seconds of downtime in an entire week!
Get The High Availability Web Hosting You Need From GlowHost
From shared hosting services within a highly redundant Atlanta, GA data center to cloud hosting solutions with near-infallible uptime, GlowHost is proud to offer robust and dependable web hosting plans to suit all demands and all budgets. Whatever the scale of your business, attract new customers and increase revenue with a responsive and reliable web hosting plan from GlowHost.
Every GlowHost hosting solution includes feature-packed email capabilities, an easy to use cPanel control panel, a minimum 99.9% uptime guarantee and an unrivalled 60-day money back guarantee as standard. After your order, GlowHost maintains 24/7/365 technical support, designed to make managing your website as effortless as possible.
To find out more about GlowHost’s high redundancy, high availability web hosting solutions or full redundancy cloud hosting services, call 1-888-293-4678 or visit www.glowhost.com today.