Category Archives: Windows Hosting

As you begin the process of developing a web presence that can attract qualified visitors and convert them into customers, it is vitally important to choose the web hosting service that not only meets your immediate demands, but can also grow and evolve with your business. But did you know that before you consider shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) hosting, or a dedicated server solution, choosing a Windows web hosting service could actively create new opportunities for your business to grow?

Although Linux hosting solutions continue to dominate, more and more people are beginning to realize the incredible potential of a Windows web server, as well as the possibilities of application development using Windows-specific frameworks such as ASP .NET hosting. In fact, the margin between the number of Linux servers and Windows servers is narrowing by the day.

JaguarPC provides a range of Windows hosting solutions, at a price point that is surprisingly affordable considering the amount of proprietary software involved in Windows servers. With years of experience in Windows Server 2008 hosting, JaguarPC has the technical expertise necessary to ensure that your business achieves – and even surpasses – its goals.

Your online success depends on many factors, including the technical implementation of your website or web application, its design, the marketing strategies used to promote it, and the quality of the web hosting account. When it comes to web hosting, most people are faced with two main options – Windows hosting services and Linux hosting services.

The differences between Linux and Windows hosting are substantial, and choosing the right hosting solution is made more difficult by the fact that both operating systems have specific software ecosystems, comprised of applications, database servers, and web services that are designed to work optimally on either Windows Server or Linux.

To simplify the challenge of selecting a specific operating system for your shared hosting account, read JaguarPC’s recently published article, Benefit from the Latest Microsoft Web Technologies with a Windows Hosting Plan, which presents in detail the web technologies that require a Windows hosting plan to run properly – IIS, SQL Server, and the .NET Framework.

For most websites, shared web hosting is the ideal hosting solution, being accessible for beginners, but still offering enough features to satisfy the needs of advanced users. With shared hosting services, several websites are hosted on a single shared web server, which means the hardware and software resources are divided among several customers.

One of the first choices you will have to make when selecting a hosting plan is the decision between a Linux and a Windows hosting plan. Which one is better? The answer to this question is not easy, because both Linux and Windows have their strengths. One great advantage of the Windows servers is the compatibility with the powerful family of web development tools offered by Microsoft, as well as with open-source technologies, such as PHP or MySQL. Windows is the best solution if you are looking for versatility and Windows hosting plans can be used to host any type of website or application.

Is your website built using ASP or ASP.NET? Does your website use Microsoft Access, MSSQL, PHP or any Windows based email and applications? If you have a Microsoft Windows based website, your website functions and performs best with Windows web hosting. Sometimes, and especially when your business experiences significant increases in traffic and your website is running on a Windows shared web hosting plan, it may not perform as well as you need it to during those peak traffic times.

When shared Windows hosting does not give you the speed and reliability your business depends on, evaluate whether you are ready for Windows virtual private server hosting. A recently published JaguarPC article, Complete Functionality for Dynamic Windows Based Websites with Windows VPS Hosting, gives you an in-depth look at Windows VPS hosting. You will also learn the advantages of Windows virtual hosting and what to look for when choosing a Windows VPS host.

Many businesses find Windows virtual private server hosting the ideal solution for their growing websites and applications that are built using Microsoft Windows ASP and ASP.NET technologies. Virtual hosting gives website owners dedicated resources, root access, and increased security. Unfortunately, many websites that utilize Windows scripts and programs such as ASP and ASP.NET may experience decreased performance and functionality if they are not configured properly.

The diminished performance occurs with Windows websites and applications using virtual hosting solutions that are not configured to run ASP, ASP.NET, Windows Access and Windows MSSQL databases. In order to maximize performance including speed and response times from websites and applications developed using the Windows platform, ASP, ASP.NET, and Microsoft databases such MS Access and MSSQL, the Windows VPS host you choose needs to have the experience and knowledge it takes to properly configure Windows VPS hosting.

At JaguarPC we design our Windows VPS hosting plans to ensure performance, security, and provide plenty of room and support to help your business to grow. And we know how to fully configure and fine-tune Microsoft Windows based technologies for your websites and applications that run on Windows virtual private servers.

Leverage the power of a Windows virtual private server

As a Windows VPS host, JaguarPC provides complete support for Microsoft SQL and Microsoft Access databases. Both Standard and Enterprise Microsoft SQL editions are supported so you have the same VPS Windows security and performance for whatever platform you choose.

Another feature exclusively available with Windows virtual hosting is support for classic ASP and ASP.NET web pages and scripts. Website developers and website owners looking for complete website functionality, customization, and optimal performance use VPS Windows hosting when creating websites using the ASP and ASP.NET script frameworks.

VPS Windows hosting access from anywhere

The Windows VPS hosting solutions at JaguarPC give you full access to your website and online presence from any computer. The stable and easy-to-navigate Plesk control panel comes standard with all JaguarPC Windows VPS hosting plans. Plesk lets you control and manage your operating system, applications, and websites. Windows offers Remote Desktop Access, enabling Windows VPS users access to their websites, email accounts, and databases wherever they are, from anywhere on the planet – as long as they have Internet access and a favorite browser.

Experience JaguarPC VPS Windows hosting for yourself

The JaguarPC Windows virtual private server hosting plans give you the performance and security you expect with virtual hosting, built with specialized features for Windows. If you are looking for quality Windows VPS hosting that supports your website with maximum customization and functionality while putting you in complete control, contact a JaguarPC service representative today at 1-800-659-9585.

It’s critical that businesses complement their servers with an investment in a high-quality backup and storage solution.

By Greg Landis

Businesses of all sizes are increasing their use of the Internet on a daily basis. They are using the Internet to communicate, publish content and store and process data with the help of web-based applications. With all of this content and data being created and stored on servers, there is a corresponding need to ensure its safety. Hard drives can fail, servers can be hacked, human error can cause data to be deleted, and the data centers that house these servers could catch fire or become victim to natural disasters or even terrorist attacks. All of these are plausible scenarios that can threaten the integrity of the data stored on a server.

Because of these realities, it is absolutely critical that businesses complement their servers with an investment in a high-quality backup and storage solution. This will guarantee that mission-critical data and content is backed up regularly and protected against technical failure, human error or disaster. All types of organizations need this type of insurance. A single hard drive failure can result in the permanent loss of important content, contact information, sales records and financial data. Such a disaster would be a death sentence for any organization conducting business on the Internet. There are other good reasons to have a backup plan. With the right protection in place, customers can be free to experiment and push their servers to do more without having to worry about the negative ramifications. It also brings peace of mind that contributes positively to an organization’s operations.

Buy data protection from a hosting company

It makes a great deal of sense to buy storage and backup solutions from a hosting company. They already host the customer’s server and data protection is a logical extension to web hosting that can be integrated and run off the same network. Customers also benefit from a single bill for all their IT hosting services and by working with their hosting company, have a single point of contact, a high degree of familiarity and comfort and the ability to manage their environment from a single unified interface.

Customers should understand that backup and storage is typically not included with a standard dedicated server. It is usually purchased as an optional add-on service. However, a problem in the market is that many hosting companies are not aggressive about educating and selling customers about the importance of data protection. Even worse, many hosting companies do not even have an affordable, fully functional and easy to use solution. Customers that value their data and want backup and storage services should look for a hosting company that has the breadth and quality of services they are looking for.

JaguarPC’s Data LockBox

JaguarPC has been in the hosting business for over a decade and offers its customers Data LockBox, a backup and storage solution built on R1Soft’s industry-leading Continuous Data Protection (CDP) software. CDP enables customers to back up their servers by providing near real-time replication of their data. JaguarPC installs the CDP software on the customer’s server and it takes snapshots and duplicates the content and data onto a separate backup server. Because the data replication process is continuous, customers are able to restore their servers to a designated point in time in the event of hardware failure or disaster. CDP provides bare metal restore capabilities – bringing back the original state of the server, complete with the entire operating system, settings and data. No re-configuring or re-installation of the operating system is required.

Data LockBox brings a number of other features and capabilities to the table.
CDP backs up incrementally, copying only sectors of a disk that have changed since the previous backup. Combined with standard compression technology, this reduces storage utilization and CPU overhead significantly and enables the replication process to be completed within minutes. CDP also features full data encryption during transmission and in storage, ensuring robust levels of security. Other features include a MySQL database add-on, true database in-memory backup, event logs, reporting capabilities and support for both Windows and Linux-based virtual machines.

With Data LockBox, customers receive access to a web-based control panel, which allows them to manage their data protection capabilities and instantly restore content directly from the backup systems. Customer can also set backups to take place on an hourly basis. The level of control provided through the management tool gives customers that prefer to be hands-on the flexibility they are looking for and enables them to access their solution remotely and on a 24/7 basis.

Data LockBox supports servers running on both the Linux and Windows platforms and can be used to backup hosted servers, on-premise servers, office workstations and personal computers. JaguarPC also provides back up servers – powered with free versions of R1Soft – to other hosting companies on a white label basis.

JaguarPC has been in the backup and storage business for several years, having been one of R1Soft’s beta testers and original hosting partners. With a long history hosting for the SMB and enterprise community, and a strong technical grasp of storage technology, JaguarPC is uniquely positioned to meet the data protection needs of customers.

About JaguarPC

JaguarPC, founded in 1998, is an industry-leading provider of web hosting services to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies and non-profit organizations worldwide. Customers enjoy the flexibility of choosing from a full suite of hosting solutions, ranging from shared hosting and virtual private servers to dedicated hosting and managed hosting. JaguarPC also operates a reseller program, helping smaller organizations jump into the hosting business or augment their current offerings. Each JaguarPC hosting plan is backed by a world-class data center infrastructure and network, and supported by a rock solid customer service operation. With over a decade of experience, JaguarPC helps organizations realize their full potential by capturing the power of the Internet.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.jaguarpc.com.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

Im 32, a father of 3, and when I’m not shackled to a desk I enjoy spending time with the family, fishing, and playing guitar. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m very big on core values in every person we hire, and every project we take on. Core values such as honesty, integrity, and respect are often set aside in the modern world and particularly behind the veil of anonymity of the internet. I believe this is precisely the area where people should adhere to those values the most. If you do, a reference is as easy as saying “google me”.

Can you summarize your educational experience for us?

I graduated high school in 94 and joined the Airforce in 95 where I spent 7yrs learning and growing as a person. I took some college while in the USAF but eventually the demand and excitement of JaguarPC led me to exit the USAF and go at hosting full time.

What do you consider as your accomplishments up to this point?

That I’ve managed to keep a healthy marriage, raise 3 kids, and all while running a very demanding business for 10yrs. Hitting milestones such as 100, 500, 1000 servers has been exciting as well.

Any failures you’d like to tell us about?

Nobody grows as a company or person without some failure. More importantly though is the lessons you take away from the experience. One big failing in the past was letting my excitement get the better of us by not planning properly for our growth. There is no growth worth hurting a reputation built up by a decade of hard work. Now we work our hardest on preserving that ideal.

What is your primary occupation?

Whatever my staff, clients, and partners need from me. I wear the CEO title but the truth is that even with 75 people working for me I still enjoy getting involved in the daily activities where it all got started. Our company is all about reflecting that person touch.

How do you manage your time? Will you describe what you do on a daily and/or weekly basis?

Between my wife and my iPhone I’m able to stay on top of things pretty well most of the time. My week involves a lot of email between my staff, management meetings, networking with other professionals, going over reports from the various areas of our companies, and of course some daily interactions with clients on forums, instant messengers, and the phone.

Do you oversell?

We don’t, except for our shared hosting plans. None of our reseller, VPS, or hybrid plans have any features that are oversold. The shared technology we use and our vast experience lets us manage the shared environments so well that we simply never run into the tiny things some watch all the time like disk space. Simply put, we just can’t run out of disk space. Even as we speak all our clients could increase their usage immediately by 500% and it wouldn’t cause alarm. Like cell phone minutes and bandwidth, the prices of storage are so minute these days its hard to justify placing a limit and letting a 2tb system only collect dust while 80% of the space sits wasted. Overselling as a means of marketing actually is the best way we can tell clients “use more, if you don’t nobody will” . And our system is setup so you have to have 80% of an initial quota actually used before you request more, but you can request more as many times as you want and its automatically added.

Tell us about your control panel, is it based on cPanel and what makes it special?

In our shared environment we use cPanel exclusively, but for VPS, hybrid, and dedicated servers we offer and support a wide range of control panels and software. We have developed a proprietary platform that ties into our servers, billing, software, ips, staff, and pretty much our entire operation. I wouldn’t want to imagine running a company this size and complex without it.

As part of your managed services you propose monitoring, does that include proactive responses?

Yes. And we have some really exciting improvements coming to our operation in the next 30days that will improve that response greatly by adding new methods of alerts and new tools for clients and our staff to respond to those alerts.

You propose VPS solutions on JaguarPC and yet you operate wowvps.com too, why?

Wowvps.com was started off for two reasons; we didn’t want to mix our managed Virtuozzo offering in jaguarpc.com with the unmanaged xen VPS offering. And we wanted a fresh place to kickoff our VSControl software that took years to develop and perfect. We will begin offering the software to the public this year. Finally there is a xen based vps hosting control panel that hosts can rely on.

You have offices in multiple cities and you have also remote technicians all over the world, how do you manage them?

With our software, and my great management team. If I had to manage a staff this size on my own it would consume my day. I empower the managers of the various departments to give them a chance to really make a difference in peoples lives and in the companies growth.

Do you own your data centers?

Not yet. We run colo cages, racks, and other specialized agreements with facilities in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, the UK, and Singapore. We are expanding to other cities as well as currently planning our own facility.

You have a very active community, how did your business benefit from it?

It hasn’t stopped benefiting from it yet . Our clients are equally as awesome as our staff. Often clients are eager to learn things for themselves or just might be curious about something. When they take those issues to our community not only does it reduce our own support load, it builds a sense of community, adds content, and perpetuates itself.

What can we expect from JaguarPC in the future?

We love taking the lead and pushing boundaries of what defines a product. We were right out front pushing vps long before most even knew what it was. In fact I had to request from the owners of WHT to get vps categories and forums added many years ago. We plan to do more of the same and push the envelope of whats possible. This year is no exception, we have some great deals coming very soon made possible by a few unique partnerships we just finalized.

What does the future hold for Greg Landis?

Only God knows for certain but I’ll keep doing what I do best. Because its working for me. I do plan to continue pursuing our larger plans, building data centers, and diversifying Landis holdings in many other non-hosting related opportunities as well. So far I’ve been very fortunate and enjoy spreading it around. Ask me again in another 10yrs

Hey everyone,

Here are steps on how to install PHP 4.4.1 – again, this is only if client has Helm or doesn’t have a control panel.

Login to VPS and browse to http://www.php.net/downloads.php. Make sure to download PHP 4.4.1 zip package [8,082Kb] – 31 Oct 2005 and NOT the installer.

Then browse to http://www.caraveo.com/fastcgi/ and dowload ISAPI/NSAPI binaries (11/03/2002).

Extract php4.4.1 archive into C:PHP and then “php4ts.dll” (not cut/paste, just copy) to C:WindowsSystem32

Unzip the FastCGI binary and copy isapi_fcgi.dll into C:PHP

Then we need to add PATH for PHP, right-click My Computer, choose Properties – Advanced tab – Environment Variables – and double-click the Path variable in the list of System variables.

At the end of the string add this:

;C:PHP

IF THERE IS ANYTHING ELSE AFTER C HP DO NOT PUT THE ; IN FRONT OF C HP – IT CAN NOT LOOK AS ;;C:PHP

This is to configure PHP to work as ISAPI: (to have it as cgi, scroll down)

Open IIS, expand local computer and click on ‘Web Service Extensions’. Click on ‘Add a new Web service extension…’ and for the name type in: PHP ISAPI Extensions, click ‘Add…’ button and select isapi_fcgi.dll in C:PHP. Check ‘Set extension status to Allowed’ and click OK.

Now add .php extension: right-click on ‘Web Sites’ in IIS, then choose Properties and click on Home Directory tab. Click ‘Configuration’, Mappings, click ‘Add’. Browse to isapi_fcgi.dll in C:PHP, click OK, and enter “.php” (without quotes) in the ‘Extension field’. Select ‘Limit to’ button and enter: GET,POST,HEAD

Ok ok ok ok. Right-click on Websites again and choose Properties and then Home directory. Change the “Execute permissions” dropdown to “Scripts only”. Also make sure that the ‘Read’ is checked in permissions you’ll see above. Click OK and select all sites and click ok.

Open the registry (regedit) and do the following:

Locate and expand “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, right-click on “Software” and select “New”, “Key” and type “FASTCGI”.

Right-click on your new “FASTCGI” key and select “New, “Key” and type “.php”.

Right-click on “.php”, select “New”, “String Value” and type “AppPath”. Double-click on this new value and type “c:PHPphp.exe”.

Right-click on “.php”, select “New”, “String Value” and type “BindPath”. Double-click on this new value and type “php-fcgi”.

Rename C:PHPphp.ini-recommended to php.ini and move to C:Windows

Then open php.ini and locate extension_dir. Make it like this:

extension_dir = “C:PHPextensions”

Save and restart IIS.



This is to configure PHP to work as CGI:

Open IIS, expand local computer and click on ‘Web Service Extensions’. Click on ‘Add a new Web service extension…’ and for the name type in: PHP CGI Extensions, click ‘Add…’ button and select php.exe in C:PHP. Check ‘Set extension status to Allowed’ and click OK.

Now add .php extension: right-click on ‘Web Sites’ in IIS, then choose Properties and click on Home Directory tab. Click ‘Configuration’, Mappings, click ‘Add’. Browse to php.exe in C:PHP, click OK, and enter “.php” (without quotes) in the ‘Extension field’. Select ‘Limit to’ button and enter: GET,POST,HEAD

Ok ok ok ok. Right-click on Websites again and choose Properties and then Home directory. Change the “Execute permissions” dropdown to “Scripts only”. Also make sure that the ‘Read’ is checked in permissions you’ll see above. Click OK and select all sites and click ok.

Open the registry (regedit) and do the following:

Locate and expand “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, right-click on “Software” and select “New”, “Key” and type “FASTCGI”.

Right-click on your new “FASTCGI” key and select “New, “Key” and type “.php”.

Right-click on “.php”, select “New”, “String Value” and type “AppPath”. Double-click on this new value and type “c:PHPphp.exe”.

Right-click on “.php”, select “New”, “String Value” and type “BindPath”. Double-click on this new value and type “php-fcgi”.

Rename C:PHPphp.ini-recommended to php.ini and move to C:Windows

Then open php.ini and locate extension_dir. Make it like this:

extension_dir = “C:PHPextensions”

MAKE SURE THAT YOU DISABLE FORCE REDIRECT, OTHERWISE CGI WON’T WORK. To do so, find cgi.force_redirect and make it look like this:

cgi.force_redirect = 0

Save and restart IIS.

Create under c:Inetpubwwwroot and load it in IE like http://localhost/test.php for example. It should work.
————

Best regards,

Shane Bewick

Enjoy