Author Archive: Tim Nelson
Website Uptime and Downtime Explained
February 11, 2014
When consumers are shopping for a website, email or specialized host, they’ll see uptime listed as a feature or perk. A lot of web hosts advertise their server availability as a way to lure in new customers. Uptimes of 95% or greater are typical for many hosts. This percentage refers to the amount of time that websites on the host’s servers are connected to the Internet, meaning that a customer’s website and other associated services — including email — are available to access.
To calculate percentages, companies compare the amount of time that their servers are accessible to the total amount of time in a specific period. Monthly measurements periods are common. Hosting customers can also use those numbers to determine the maximum amount of unavailability their website will experience during a given period. This is calculated by multiplying the number of minutes in the time period — a month in this case — by the server unavailability percentage and dividing by 100.
In the sample of 99.% time up, the equations is as follows:
43200 x .1/100 = 43.2
Thus, your website or email would not be available to edit or visit for just under 45 minutes per month, assuming that your host provides accurate percentages about how frequently their servers go down. However, your website might not go down at all.
As long as the configuration and connection work, a server should be up. All the websites and other services on that server should work if they are not experiencing specific issues. Some website owners extend the definition of server to time that their websites are unavailable specifically. While the server may be functioning correctly, a website might be down because of a script issue, maintenance or even a Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. If you’ve recently purchased a new domain or are moving between hosts, this could cause your site to be down for up to 72 hours.
The causes of website unavailability fall into several basic categories: configuration errors, hardware failure, hackers, natural disasters and maintenance. A good host monitors servers and fixes issues as soon as they arise. Hosts who keep redundant backups can also minimize downtime for your website. Many hosts offer a guarantee, often called a service level agreement, or SLA. If your website does go down more frequently or for longer than their advertised percentage, you may qualify for your money back.
Pauses in website accessibility can be minor, but they might also be serious if you sell items or serve ads on your website and require this revenue for your company. The longer your website is down, the longer you’re without this source of revenue. If it’s your only source of revenue, choosing a host that has the maximum amount of proven uptime is definitely essential!
Increasing Server Performance And Functionality
February 11, 2014
Enhancing overall server performance can help make sure that everyone in an office stays productive throughout the day. No one wants to work with server technology that’s laggy and has other issues. Network managers should take the time to revamp the performance that they get from their servers. Many businesses should consider purchasing all new servers for their office from time to time. This is an important investment that should not be ignored by anyone in charge of managing server operations. But there are some departments and teams that don’t have the budget to update their server technology regularly. They will undoubtedly be looking in to how they can use cost effective methods of getting more out of the tech that they have already.
Performance can actually be improved if the computers connected have improved hardware as well. Office managers should try to make sure that their team is equipped with high speed disk drives and CPUs. They may want to monitor performance on a few office computers to check to see if this is the case. This will give managers a clear picture of the performance that they are generating from the entire network. They may even want to talk to their employees about how they feel the system is working. They will likely be able to provide some valuable insight in to what should be improved over time. If you’re trying to increase the performance of your company website, sometimes it’s best to start with a baseline. There are a number of sites where you can check this. Neustar has a speedtest located here: http://www.neustar.biz/resources/tools/free-website-performance-test, and Dotcom-Monitor has one located here: dotcom-monitor.com/WebTools/website-speed-test.aspx
Enhancing the web performance in an office is often a top priority for many mangers as well. This is owing to the fact that employees are increasingly reliant on web connections to provide services and complete projects. Office managers should check in to changing up the network protocol that has been set up on site. Managers may also be able to switch up memory cards that they use, which will provide a boost to configurations. They should continually monitor the web connection that they are getting from these different types of changes. They should try to make these changes incrementally, since this will let them know what works as well. This will help direct all office managers across the departments in a company to follow suit.
If an office is using SQL servers, there are a few extra tricks that they might be able to use going forward. Slow I/O stats may actually be a main culprit for poor performance from the server network. If managers have their IT staff continually monitor I/O stats and other server performance issues, they should be able to increase performance and avoid other networking issues.
Metrics and Statistics: What You Should be Monitoring on Your Website
June 5, 2013
If you’ve spent a lot of time designing, coding, and generally laboring over your website but you aren’t monitoring your metrics and statistics, you’re losing out! What are you losing out on exactly? A lot of things. You could be losing out on money, new visitors/subscribers, all sorts of things really. Let take a look at this situation a little closer and get more granular on the idea of keeping track of various website stats.
First of all, you need to understand that the landscape has changed in terms of the data set that you should be monitoring. Years ago, it was enough to just monitor uptime and make sure that your site was online. Now, things have changed and there are social metrics, applications, and other digital anomalies that you need to be watching. At a very basic level, you need to be monitoring your uptime and website speed. Beyond that though, if you have a website where you’re selling something or using a digital shopping cart, you’ll need to have some sort of web app monitoring in place in order to make sure that they are functioning properly and you aren’t losing visitors. Even having a simple registration form where you capture user data is something that you can be monitoring to make sure that you aren’t missing out on potential leads.
All this talk about monitoring this and that raises questions about how this is done; there are actually a few different ways that you can accomplish this. First of all, you can install scripts on your server and use those to monitor metrics, but the problem with self hosted scripts is that if the server goes down, these scripts will be basically useless. The best solution is to use remote monitoring, and there are two ways you can go about that: free and paid. There are some free services where you can monitor a small amount of factors like basic uptime and some user metrics for free, for one site or sometimes one page. If you’ve spent a lot of time and money on your site, it’s often a better choice to pay for something a bit more robust. If you have public-facing apps on your site, you should have a service or protocol in place for monitoring web applications for down time; remember, it’s not enough to simply monitor the uptime/downtime of your site because users today will be just as unhappy if specific elements of your site don’t work properly as they would be if the entire site was down. Most of the top web monitoring services offer free trials so you can test out their services, and also offer customizable plans to suit your needs. This means that you don’t have to pay for an extensive monitoring plan if you only have a few metrics that you want to monitor. Keep these points in mind, and consider what you can gain if you start monitoring your website more closely, and even more importantly, consider what you have to lose.
How to Improve Your Coding Skills
May 7, 2013
There are many people working in the field of web development today that are unsure of how they can enhance their skills in order to make themselves more marketable to an employer. Many of these people simply went to school in order to get a degree and then started immediately working in the field. Although this is a good way to gain experience, it should be well known that any type of programming requires periodic education in order to be on top of the latest trends and technologies. Some programmers are unsure of how they can get the education that they want in order to stand out from the crowd. They may think that more schooling is the answer, but there are other methods. Books and web-based tutorials are two of the most important tools for improving your programming skills.
First, there are a plethora of books available that can teach programmers about the newest, and best, ways to develop web pages. Many of these books are available online at various online marketplaces. This means that it has never been easier than right now for a person that is interested in furthering their education to order a book online, and have it shipped to them so that they can start learning all of the new techniques that will give them an edge over the competition.
Second, there are many websites that are dedicated to helping people learn how to code. Many of these websites have online tutorials that act as a virtual classroom which allows a programmer to walk through each and every step of coding a specific part of a web page until they are well versed in it. Many of these websites are totally free to visit and learn from. This is becoming one of the most popular means of learning by professional programmers and hobbyists. Many of these websites also have video tutorials that will help in aiding a person that is looking to hone their programming skills, or that may want to try to learn a new skill set to add to their programming arsenal. There are also forums that are online that are dedicated to allowing programmers to get together and share their experiences, and insight, so that other less experienced programmers can learn as well as contribute.
There are new web development techniques popping up every month, and it is important for anyone in this field to make sure that they know how to implement the newest programming methods. By keeping on top of things, and staying educated and informed, you can ensure that your programming skills are both current and marketable.
Why Service Level Agreements are Important
April 29, 2013
What is a Service Level Agreement?
- Makes Customer Commitments Clear:
One of the main advantages is that an SLA will make the commitments that a company makes to a customer very clear, thus ensuring that the customer service that is provided is satisfactory, keeping the customers loyal. It will focus the company and make sure that any internal processes will be constantly striving to meet these commitments. - Creates Performance Indicators:
Another advantage is that an SLA will make the performance indicators very clear. These indicators are essentially benchmarks that need to be met in order for a company to find its customer service satisfactory. By using an SLA, the indicators will be set so that they are both clear and measurable, making it easier to tell if a company has met them. - Sets Clear Penalties Should Expectations Not Be Met:
Another reason why SLAs are important is because they set very obvious penalties if the expectations of the customer or the company should not be met. For example, an Internet provider will not charge a customer for any days in which Internet service was not available and efforts will be made to immediately solve the problem. If the customer does not pay the requisite amount of money, then the services will be shut off.
By using an SLA, it is possible to clearly define the parameters of a relationship between a service provider and customer, ensuring that the services are received and paid for smoothly. It’s important to note that if you don’t have some type of SLA management setup in place, you may not be able to make a valid claim against your web host because you might not be able to prove when your site was down, and when it was up. In this situation, you might have to go off of their metrics, which may not line up with how much your site was actually down. While this isn’t required, it’s certainly something to think about in terms of running a website and holding a web host accountable.