Q. Linux Semi-Dedicated hosting or Windows Semi-Dedicated Hosting? I have no idea can anybody help or explain in simple terms, what the advantages and disadvantages of each are?

Ans. If you don’t know which platform you need, then most likely you do not require Windows hosting and you should select one of our Linux web hosting plans. Your choice of server platforms should be influenced by the use to which you intend to put it. The majority of web features including PHP, MySQL, POP3 etc run fine on both Windows as well as Linux platforms.

If you intend to develop your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft’s owned technologies then you should opt for Windows Semi-Dedicated plan.

You would need to use Windows hosting is when you are using the specific NT applications. Microsoft FrontPage may be used on both the Linux and Windows platforms as since most hosting firms support the Microsoft FrontPage server extensions on both.

If you don’t need asp.net and MS SQL database support then Linux Semi-Dedicated Hosting would be perfect for you as it comes with the cPanel control panel which is the best control panel in hosting industry.

Q. Do you use redundancy in your servers?

Ans. Even though all server types can be redundant in principle, it is typically consumption servers that are set up redundantly. Redundancy ensures that visitors to an Internet site can still access the website even if one site server goes down, for example due to hardware failure. Another advantage of redundant servers is that the system load can be spread over all available servers (“load balancing”). This is especially useful in situations of high-volume traffic, when many users access the website at the same time. It prevents one server from being overloaded while another stands idle and could easily take some of the load.

Redundancy option is included as standard on our high configuration servers and is available for an additional cost on low configuration servers.

Q. Does it matter that I have a shared IP for using Whoiscart and is it worth me getting a dedicated SSL?

Ans. Both Shared as well as Dedicated SSL fulfill the main aim of SSL; i.e. transmitting data in encrypted form over the networks, so it depends on you whether to stay with Shared SSL or opt for Dedicated SSL. One of the main considerations in using a shared or dedicated SSL is the URL and how it will appear to your customers.

With Shared SSL, the URL may look something like this:

https://secure.yourhost.com/~username/

Whilst with dedicated SSL, the URL is determined by you, either as another registered domain or as a sub domain of your website domain name. You can have your private secure url such as https://secure.yourname.com/

Dedicated SSL gives your site a more professional appearance in their address bar when someone is in the secure area. Using Dedicated SSL certificate projects a better image to your clients. You can place a private SSL secured seal on your site and build the trust of it.

We offer dedicated SSL certificate for £39 per year. A dedicated IP is free if you purchase the SSL certificate from us.

Q. Is it possible for me to reboot the VPS? Does that imply that I have to somehow monitor the VPS and the site it runs, and take corrective action myself?

Ans. Our VPS Hosting plans are powered by Virtuozzo Power Panel, a powerful VPS management tool which is provided as standard with Linux/Windows VPS Hosting plans. Virtuozzo allows you to reboot your VPS from your end if you need to do so after installation of some software or anything else which requires the virtual environment to be rebooted.

Additionally with Virtuozzo you will be able to stop and start services, view the running process and set up alerts to notify you if there is a problem with your VPS. Virtuozzo powered VPSs offer an order of magnitude higher efficiency and manageability than traditional virtualization technologies.

If there are any hardware problems or anything else which results in downtime then our VPS team will send you an email notification and our phone support team will call you if the downtime is expected to exceed a time frame of 10 - 20 minutes.

Our responsibility is to keep the VPS nodes up and running with minimum uptime of 99.95%, but VPS Hosting customers should contact our VPS support team on weekends to get security settings updated on their VPS and enable monitoring services for their VPS.

Q. Do your servers have hardware or software firewalls?

Ans. A hardware firewall is offered for additional cost, By default we configure a software firewall as per the requirement of our customers on both Linux Servers as well as Windows Servers.

We offer Cisco ASA 5510 Firewall for Windows Servers as well as Linux Servers on shared basis for £25 per month. If you need a Dedicated Cisco ASA 5510 with full remote access to the firewall then it would cost £199 per month with setup fee equivalent to month fee.

We can also provide you with “Juniper Netscreen 5GT Plus” or “Cisco ASA 5510 AIM-SSM10″ as per your requirement.

Q. How much is the file transfer rate on your servers?

Ans. Customers based in UK get close to 10 Mbps file transfer speed, but server to server file transfers can exceed at over 20 Mbps.

Internal transfer from Server - Server in our Datacenter is close to 100 Mbps

Q. Have you setup RPC access on your servers?

Ans. We provide KVM over IP for remote access in case of network problems for servers. As we offer fully managed servers so you may not need KVM unless you have some specifc work to do.

Q. Do you support terminal service connections on your Windows servers?

Ans. Terminal Service connections or Remote Desktop Protocol sessions allow a user to access applications or data stored on a remote computer over a network connection. By default there are three Terminal Service Connections enabled for each server. If you need more than three connections a monthly charge of £25 per month will be levied for each connection.

Q. What is your email use policy?

Ans. We do not allow sending of unsolicited bulk emails or commercial information over the Internet. Bulk e-mailing creates problem for our network resulting in blacklisting of our IPs addresses and subnet.

We reserve the right to suspend a server or an account of a customer in the event of bulk transmissions of unsolicited emails via the customer’s server or account and/or advertising products or services provided by the customer or by one of the customer’s accounts.

If your server, one of the accounts on your server, or IP range(s) associated with your server are found to have been listed on any of the RBL lists provided by SPAM blocking organizations, we will take action in having these listings removed by allowing you 24 hours time to rectify the sending source on the server. Full cooperation is expected from the customer in having these listings removed, as to prevent any of the above mentioned unpleasant actions.

There is also a set limit of 200 emails sent out every hour on a customer’s account on a shared server to avoid any sort of email spamming from our servers. We work hard to maintain a clean network and if we ever get any spam complaint or any other genuine spam complaint then the only option that we find is to suspend account of the customer responsible for spamming.

Q. What happens if you have a problem with one of your carriers?

Ans. in such a scenario, traffic is automatically routed from another route.