A question we often get asked is, “What is the difference between your VPS plans and your SDX (Semi-Dedicated) plans?”

Semi-Dedicated
Our SDX plan is basically one shared hosting account on a powerful server. What’s different compared to our standard shared hosting plan is that there far fewer accounts on our SDX servers. So you have more resources available to you. For example, if you have a fairly busy forum not suitable for regular shared hosting, you would want to purchase our Semi-Dedicated hosting plan.

SDX is not intended to be used to resell hosting since it is still a basic shared account. It’s intended for those who still want a shared hosting environment that packs a bit more punch. Our SDX plans are also good for a video share website.

VPS
A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is sort of like having a dedicated server in terms of customization abilities but without the extra cost (because it’s still a shared hosting environment). Our VPS plan offers full root or administrator access and you have full control over the settings and software on the server. Think of a VPS plan as having a partition on a large server.

You would have a choice of which OS (operating system) you wish to have installed. The choices are:

• CentOS (most popular)
• Debian
• Fedora Core
• Suse
• Windows<

You can also choose which version of MySQL, PHP, mail, etc. you want installed. (You cannot do this with Semi-Dedicated.) In addition, you get the choice on which control panel you’d like to use to administer your VPS. The choices are:

• cPanel
• Direct Admin
• Interworx
• Plesk

SDX plans come with cPanel only.

A VPS account can be used to resell hosting if you desire. In a nutshell, VPS plans allow you to completely customize the Virtual Private Server to suit your hosting needs.

This is also discussed in the JaguarPC Forums in this thread: VPS vs Semi dedicated

Both are powerful hosting solutions and JaguarPC provides both options at very reasonable prices. Check out these current specials:

• SDX Specials
• JaguarPC Free Control Panel’s Super Ram Bonus’s (VPS)

We’ve had a few customers asking how ‘Green’ JaguarPC Web Hosting is or if we have plans on ‘going green‘.

It’s tough to answer exactly how green JaguarPC is but I can tell you this:

JaguarPC promotes recycling. Personally I will never throw away paper, aluminum, cardboard, plastic, etc. We use our recycling service faithfully.

Our data center does the following to help:

• Use dry coolers to heat generator rooms and reverse flow hot water from the Data Center to heat staff areas. This means a gas/electric heating system is unnecessary.
• Pumps and cooling units have devices that use only as much power needed to cool the water based on how hot the water is. This lowers electricity usage as much as 40%.
• A well supplies the cooling towers which eliminates the use of chlorine. (Chlorine produces dioxins.) This also eliminates the use of electricity to pump the water to the data center from the treatment facility which will save a huge amount of energy and chemicals being consumed.
• Generators use 5% biodiesel
• Planted enough trees so it’s near carbon neutral.

Every little bit helps and we will continue to research and implement environmentally-friendly alternatives wherever possible.

Get ‘em while they’re hot!

VPS Special: JaguarPC’s 2nd Month Free 50% More Space/Ram 15% Off for Life + Plan Bonus’s

Coupon Code: “BigBoxes08”

Every JaguarPC Managed VPS Hosting plan includes:
+ Quad core Nodes with at LEAST 12gb registered ECC ram
+ Large RAID10 drive arrays – great I/O disk performance
+ Full root/adminstrator access
+ JagPC Fully Managed Support + 24×7
+ 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
+ FREE Daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
+ FREE Moving assitance and data transfer for moves
+ Choice of OS: CentOS, Debian, Fedora Core, Suse.
+SPECIAL Extra 50% FREE: Diskspace for life on every plan
+SPECIAL Extra 50% FREE: Ram for life on every plan
+SPECIAL 15% OFF for Lifeon every plan
+SPECIAL FREE Plesk10 domain control panel on every plan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reseller Special: Resellers – 25% Off Disk / Bandwidth Upgrades Free Clientexec / Fantastico / RVSkin

Coupon Code: “SuperSlam08”

Every JaguarPC cPanel Reseller Hosting plan includes:
+ Host Unlimited Accounts
+ Quad core Nodes packed with registered ECC ram
+ Large RAID10 drive arrays – great I/O disk performance
+ 24×7 Support
+ 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
+ FREE IP’s (3)
+ FREE WHM/Cpanel with Fantastico
+ FREE Daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
+ FREE Moving assitance and data transfer for moves
+ FREE Enom.com domain registrar account, sell domains under your own brand
+SPECIAL 25% OFF for Life on every plan
+SPECIAL FREE Rvskin see rvskin.com for details
+SPECIAL FREE ClientExec client billing and management software

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shared Special: Shared/ SDX ENDLESS DISK SPACE!! $5.07 per month!

Coupon Code: endless2008sdx

Every plan includes:
+ Large Premium bandwidth limits
+ Fully RAID redundant disk space
+ Extremely powerful Multi-Core Multiprocesser Servers
+ Abundant high quality ram
+ 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
+ Daily backups utilizing large NAS Raid appliances powered by R1Soft Enterprise CDP software – Complimentary moving assitance and data transfer for moves

This special adds:
+ 15% Lifetime discount
+ FREE Cpanel with Fantastico

ORDER NOW: https://secure.jaguarpc.com/order/

I just thought I’d share this little tidbit of fun I just had with my cable internet provider. Here’s a bit of the back story:

Last night my husband logged into his laptop and it came up with a big yellow/blue screen saying he had spyware. There was no link, just big giant letters saying he was infected with spyware. There was no way out of it. He tried everything and finally gave up, formatted it, and re-installed Windows. Our kids were the last to use that computer so it’s safe to assume they are the culprits.

Today I had trouble using my cable provider’s SMTP services. This isn’t uncommon. They sometimes limit the number of connections so I didn’t think twice. An hour later it was still an issue. Then I noticed I had received an email from them stating they had to take action because our IP was used to send spam. Hm.. Laptop had a virus last night and today we’re told our IP was used to send spam. Coincidence? I think not.

Here’s the conversation I then had with my cable provider via phone:

cable guy: we can fix this, you just need to change your port. Open up Outlook and…
me: I don’t use Outlook, I use Thunderbird.
cable guy: oh well I am not familiar with Thunderbird, Hm, let me find my notes.
me: I am familiar with it, Just tell me the port please.
cable guy: 587.
me: OK port changed to 587, anything else?
cable guy: Yeah you need to authenticate with the server. If you let me find my notes on Thunderbird I’ll tell you how to do that.
me: I just need to check incoming mail first and that will authenticate.
cable guy: Um, no I don’t think that works. Hold on while I find my notes on Thunderbird.
me: I’m quite familiar with Thunderbird so don’t worry there. But I’ll just check incoming (I check incoming.)
me: Yep, that worked. I can send email again. Thanks.
cable guy: Wait, you can do that? Just check incoming first to authenticate?
me: ...

(Sidenote: If I had known that all I needed to do was switch ports I wouldn’t have needed to even call them.)

I was really surprised the cable guy didn’t know that checking incoming email will authenticate you with the server so you can then send email. It should be his job to know this. It’s not quite as obvious to the end user (and in fact our own customers here at JaguarPC may not know this), so he should have been telling ME that. Not me telling him.

But there you have it folks. If you check incoming email before sending, you will be authenticated!

HOUSTON, TX. April 4, 2008 – JaguarPC, a leading provider of end-to-end web hosting solutions for over a decade, today announced the “Endless Disk Space” promotion that gives clients continuous free upgrades as needed when they reach 80% capacity. Shared hosting clients begin with 50 GB of disk space and semi-dedicated hosting clients start with 100 GB. As soon as 80% capacity is reached, customers can instantly add more with one click from the control panel. When their new capacity approaches 80%, once again they can increase their disk space.

In contrast to misleading industry promotions with unlimited or grossly inflated resources with their hosting packages and bury the conditions for account termination in small-print terms of service, the JaguarPC promotion is straightforward and meant to bring transparency to the battle of disk space.

“The industry has gotten a bit crazy recently with ridiculous numbers being thrown around and hosts knowing full well they wouldn’t be able to handle the load if all their customers took them up on the offer,” says Greg Landis, president of JaguarPC. “We stepped back and asked ourselves what is the right thing to do for our customers? Why don’t we give them peace of mind without making these over the top promises? In essence, Endless Disk Space simply means you will have capacity that always grows with your needs.”

JaguarPC’s new web site includes a community forum, updated web hosting and company blog, user-friendly control panel and the nixcore client management software.

In addition, JaguarPC has made a number of changes:

• Semi-dedicated accounts now have a failover hosting option to provide greater redundancy and peace of mind
• New dedicated server plans have been rolled out
• All reseller plans have had their disk space and bandwidth doubled while keeping the same prices, retroactive for all existing clients

For more information about Endless Disk Space, go to www.jaguarpc.com/shared-hosting.

About JaguarPC

JaguarPC, based in Houston Texas, provides high-quality Internet hosting solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies, prominent individuals and non-profit organizations worldwide. JaguarPC’s core portfolio comprises information technology and business hosting services, as well as programming services. JaguarPC’s complementary subsidiary business is Devpond software, a web software company. Learn more at www.JaguarPC.com.

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Media Contact: Edward@FirecrackerPR.com, 949-500-6422, www.FirecrackerPR.com

MySQL provides cluserting but not fail over for end user. So here at JaguarPC Web Hosting labs we tested MySQL fail over cluserting. To setup MySQL clustering a minimum of 3 computers are required. However recommended number is 4 or more. And to setup a failover mysql cluster, we add one more machine making it 5. There are 3 parts in a MySQL Cluster:

Data: 2 or more nodes act as data. In MySQL 5.0, the data sits in memory, while in 5.1 data can go on disk as well (5.1 is release candidate). For our testing we use 2 data nodes. When one of the node dies, the other will serve the data.

Management: One machine is used for cluster management. Once the cluster is started and this machine goes down, the cluster can continue to work. So this is not critical for our fail over setup.

SQL:: 2 test machines were setup as SQL nodes in failover with a single “floating IP”. When one died, the “floating IP” moved to the second machine using arp spoofing. MySQL client would connect to SQL node using that floating IP, so for the client MySQL Server remains up and running when one of the SQL nodes die. This part of the setup is JaguarPC’s own making and is available through Dedicated Server Hosting offer.

The rough diagram for this whole setup is as follows:

MySQL client -> [ 2 SQL nodes fail-over ] -> [ 2 data nodes ]

RAM Requirement for Data Node: Since MySQL 5.0 uses RAM to hold the data in data nodes, you can use the following formula for obtaining a rough estimate of how much RAM is needed for each data node in the cluster:

(SizeofDatabase × NumberOfReplicas × 1.1 ) / NumberOfDataNodes

Say our database size is 10 GB, and we make 2 replicas and host it on 4 nodes, then we need about 6GB RAM in each node. If we store our 10GB with 2 replicas in 6 nodes, then we need 4GB RAM in each node. You get the idea.

More will be posted later about this topic.

My website was working for years on the old host but now it does not work on new host. Why? This is one of annoyances that come up because some people fail to realize that there are just too many variables at function here. For a website to operate, there are many building blocks, e.g. Web Server, Scripting Language, Database. And not only that, there are zillions of verions of these tools. If your site code was designed in the last century, it is possible that it will not work in the 21st century. No wait, if it was designed last year with the tool that was developed 5 years ago, it may not work today. Confused?

A static website that is composed of HTML/css/js is served by a web server as it is to the browser which renders and displays it to the client. However if your site is dynamic and is coded in a certain language (e.g. php or perl) that code has to run on the server to make web pages. That code may be written in a certain version of langauge which may be a mismatch between your old host and new host (or your old server and new server). As a responsible website owner you should be aware of what are the pre-requisites of your site code. Not only that, you need to regularly update the code to newest version of tools and make it compatible with them. If your site code has not changed since years, chances are that you are risking your entire hosting account and site, as many bugs that were unknown before may have been released in public. And those known exploits can used by script kiddies to hack your site remotely.

In short, a website owner needs to keep his code upto-date so that (1) it works on newest technologies and server tools (2) it is not open for remote exploits and abuse.

As a starting point, for a Linux Shared Hosting, you should be aware that PHP4 is phasing out and PHP5 is the future. MySQL4 database is also being replaced with MySQL5. So you need to learn how to update the code or get in touch with the developer/vendor of your web application to make it compatible.

Roundcube is a webmail interface which uses ajax extensively to give it a “desktop” like feel. According to a recent post on cPanel forums it is being internally tested for integrating it into cPanel. This would be a good alternative to horde which has a history of problems, and squirrelmail which looks ugly to non-geeks.

In the wee hours of the morning the time changed again. Time changes twice a year, and the change is called “Day Light Savings” in the US. There are a few states in the US that are smart enough not to fool with the clock, but not many. I know Arizona is one. I think there are a couple more.

I think at least a few countries around the world also use “Day Light Savings Time”. Not sure who they all are but I’m fairly certain that Great Britain does.

Supposedly fooling with the clock saves money. Your not supposed to use as much energy during the months that DLS is in effect.

I have never figured that out. How is changing the clock by one hour going to save utility cost? In the spiring when we are on “Day Light Savings”, you get an extra hour of day light at the end of the day. You get an extra hour of darkness at the beginning of the day. Either way you are going to need your lights on for the same amount of time. The only difference is what time of day you have your lights on.

Personally I think the whole purpose of “Day Light Savings” is to give golfers more time to play golf at least in the US.

Just sharing a personal experience that happened somewhere around 8:30 PM CST. So give or take it was a couple of hours ago. The weather has been crappy all day but there were no indications that what happened would happen.

Like I do most of the time I was setting at my desk working. In fact I was actually working to update some pages on Condells which I don’t do to often.

Here is what happened.

My office is small. I set about 4 feet from an outside wall that has a large window. While I was working there was a loud bang like an explosion. Simultaneously there was a flash of light that appeared to be right in my office. Frankly the way the flash of light appeared it scared the crap out of me.

Only one circuit breaker tripped. Of course it was the one for my office. Fortunately I have a good battery and surge protector that deals with sudden power loss or surges of electricity like lightning can cause. My PC was shut down went off in spite of the battery but as far as I can tell there was no damage done.

The bang or explosion was so powerful, that some spray cans were knocked off a shelf in the bathroom. The TV in my bedroom was knocked off the wall shelf it set on. Right now it looks like it will have to be replaced. The TV in my office is fine so it was probably the fall that did it.

In my office the phone lines were fried. I have 3 incoming lines and nothing worked. On investigating I discovered the outside lines coming into the office were fine. The problem only related to the lines and couplers inside the office.

The electrical surge the lightning caused was so great some of the inside lines burned apart. At least 4 couplers were literally blown apart.

Once I had determined that the outside lines were working, I was able to get one inside line going so I could connect to the Internet. I’ll get everything restored tomorrow but I was only able to scrape up enough parts to get one line working tonight. Since I’m so addicted to life on-line I had to bet back on-line if possible.

If you have read this far I want to tie this incident into search engines, and search engine spam.

If your a search engine spammer (known as a black hat), you may be cruising along just fine. You think all your tactics are working just fine. Suddenly your sites drop off the search index. What happened?

Like a flash of lightning the search engines suddenly come down on your tactics that have previously worked.