Brad Kingsley's Blog

Question for you: What is managed hosting?

2008-08-26T11:35:00Z

It doesn't take much looking around to realize that the term "managed hosting" is being diluted and perhaps even abused by some web hosts.

Rather than posting here about my thoughts on the definition (if you host with ORCS Web then you're already familiar with the hosting experience we consider "managed hosting") - I'm hoping to solicit some feedback from readers (you) on what is envisioned when the term "managed hosting" is heard.

What things come to mind? What are some core basics you think should be part of any "managed" solution? Also, what would be your ideal managed solution if you could draft it out yourself?

Spam Volumes 2008

2008-07-24T11:30:00Z

Just over a year ago I blogged about the huge volumes of spam that we report on (and either block or tag for our customers). At that time the amount of legitimate email - of many millions of emails we deal with - was right around 17% (83% spam!).

Well, it's a year later now and I thought I give an update. The percentage of email that is spam has grown from the 83% last year to an amazing 94% currently!

Wow. I continue to be amazed at the levels of spam sent. It seems like a general market condition of supply and demand would cause the volumes to drop over time. If people don't click on the spam emails - either because the messages never arrive in their inboxes or because the consumer understand it is spam and delete it - then it seems spammers would stop bothering with sending it. I take this to mean that people ARE still responding to spam emails, which is unfortunate and will cause this trend to most likely get worse before it gets better.

~Brad

Hosting Power Costs

2008-07-22T13:12:00Z

No doubt about it, power costs are increasing. Everyone feels the pain at the gas pump now, and more are feeling it in utility bills. When your utility bills run many thousands of dollars, like it does for hosting companies, you feel percentage increases even more.

New servers are more powerful than ever in the past - generally drawing more electricity to power them. New servers are also smaller than ever in the past - meaning the power requirement per square foot ("per square foot" is something commonly reviewed and analyzed in data center scenarios) are increasing drastically. Another power consumer often not considered by people who don't deal with data centers is cooling. The more dense the server capacity, the more heat per square foot, which requires more cooling, which requires more power.

I've already heard and read in a few places some grumblings from the lower end "cheap" hosts who are being squeezed on costs but have put themselves into a market position where low cost is their only value. When low cost is your only value, raising your rates can literally kill your business. So, if they can't raise rates, and their "fixed" costs are rising, my guess is that these companies will look at their other costs - like payroll - for ways to stay profitable. The challenge there of course is that with layoffs and salary cuts, quality of service often drops, so that's a very tricky route to take also.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next year or two. I've been approached recently (as I am every few months) by business brokers and in the most recent contact it was mentioned that this one broker alone was representing over 200 hosts looking to sell. Interesting. I suppose we'll see a much smaller number of competitors in the market a few years from now - either from mergers and acquisitions or from the super-low margin hosts going under.

NOTE: ORCS Web isn't in the "cheap hosting" business and while we've seen power cost increases, it has not had a negative impact on us (no worries there).

~Brad

SQL Injection attacks are increasing

2008-07-08T15:22:00Z

SQL Injection attacks are becoming increasingly common the past few months and website owners should both be aware and also take precautions against them. A simple explanation of SQL Injection is when a hacker takes advantage of code that neglects to validate input data before interacting with a database. If the code doesn't validate the data, a hacker can actually enter SQL statements as the input and have them run against the database - causing all types of bad results ranging from data theft, to data corruption and loss, to server compromise.

Here are some links with further information about SQL Injection and some steps to protect code from being open to this attack:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms161953.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb671351.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998271.aspx
http://www.misfitgeek.com/Tools+To+Block+And+Eradicate+SQL+Injection.aspx

~Brad

Is your SQL Server performance slowing down?

2008-07-06T18:00:00Z

One thing I've seen many times over the years is customer applications that used to perform quite zippy slow to a crawl under heavy load. The uninformed person might crank up performance monitor, see that RAM and CPU are high, and order a "bigger" server. What I have seen though in many cases is that the server resources may be high, but not because the hardware can't handle the load, but because the SQL operations aren't optimized.

One of the first places I suggest looking when researching SQL Server performance is to review the locking (which leads to blocking). Sure, faster hardware may help the queries to run faster so they release locks quicker, but throwing hardware at the problem isn't always the best solution.

SQL Server locks data even on read operations - and many people don't realize this. They are generally "shared" locks, but they are still locks. Addressing locking/blocking can often have drastic impact on the performance of the application.

Rather than explain all this myself in this post, below is a link to an article that helps understand lock contention and also mentions one of my favorite SQL Server "tricks" - NOLOCK.

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/articles/per/lock_contention_nolock_rowlock_p1.aspx

~Brad

Helping Others: Hosting Customer Service and Technical Support

2008-07-01T11:37:00Z

“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'” -- Brian Tracy

I agree. When I started ORCS Web and we hosted our first customers back in 1996, the reason was to satisfy a real need that was communicated to us. The reason wasn't that the market was hot and we thought we could ride a wave and make a ton of money (like many people did during the "dot com" boom) but rather seriously trying to help clients by providing the absolute best customer service and technical support possible.

We continue to keep our focus on helping customers and providing true value so that they can excel at their business. We don't overload packages with unrealistic claims of "unlimited" resources (which obviously can't be a true claim - there are limits to everything) - instead we focus on customer needs and satisfying them with our proactive managed services to give our customers peace of mind knowing that their web team at ORCS Web will take care of anything that needs to be addressed.

~Brad

http://www.orcsweb.com/
Managed Hosting Solutions
#1 in Service and Support

UMPC: Samsung Q1 update

2008-06-17T19:12:00Z

Almost exactly a year after purchase and the Q1 is failing now. It sounds horrible - I believe the cooling fan is dying a painful death. The UMPC seems to be overheating because of this, which is causing it to shut itself down quite frequently lately. I haven't called Samsung about it yet. I'll post a quick blog about their response when I get a chance.

~Brad

New iPhone Announced

2008-06-09T20:00:00Z

Those who know me know that I love mobile connectivity. I'm always on the lookout for lighter, but fast and usable, mobile devices. I've never used an Apple computer nor do I have an iPhone (my XV6800 from Verizon works quite well). I must admit though, the newest iPhone just announced sure sounds good. The fast 3G network; the built-in (and enabled!) GPS; the (theoretical at least) better integration with business applications and software (like Exchange); it sounds like this new version will be quite a nice little device.

~Brad

Microsoft Security Response Center

2008-06-03T14:14:00Z

If you aren't already familiar with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), you should check it out. It's a blog hosted by ORCS Web for Microsoft where they discuss all things related to Microsoft software security including clarification of issues and application/system patches when applicable. It is quite informative for anyone interested in security - and if you aren't interested in security topics - you should be.

~Brad

www.orcsweb.com
Managed Hosting Solutions
#1 in Service and Support

What's in a name?

2008-05-20T14:24:00Z

Our name - ORCS Web - is a point of curiosity, and sometimes confusion, for some people.

Here is some background on it:
In the 1980's I ran a dial-up BBS on a Commodore 64 in the Washington DC area named "The Outer Reaches".

In the early 1990's I was running a BBS again, this time on a PC using various flavors of operating systems and software. (Does anyone remember OS/2?)

Around 1995 I started doing web development (Visual Basic) for a number of customers who wanted to leverage interactive technologies on Microsoft platforms (I wrote a lot of front-ends to JET data sources). Later that year and in early 1996 I started writing web applications for customers - still Microsoft platforms (IDC/HTX files at first) and still front-ends to JET (even with its scalability issues [note the KB article attributed to my early dealings with JET]). During this 1995/1996 desktop-to-Internet transition I renamed to The Outer Reaches Computer Solutions. (Starting to see a pattern? [O...R...C...S... :>]).

Mid-1996 my development customers were complaining more and more about the incredibly poor choices in Microsoft platform web hosting. Wanting to make sure my customers were happy, I bought my first server and started hosting them myself. In 1998 I stopped doing web development to focus only on web hosting and at that time changed the name to ORCS Web, Inc.

Now that you have the background. What are your thoughts about the name? Some people call us O.R.C.S. Some call us Orcs. Some call us Orcas. I've heard from some people who say names don't matter - just keep up the great service and support. I've heard from others who hate the name and, while they still say keep up the great service and support, they think a better name would be worth considering.

We have a great reputation tied to the name, but still, I want to put it out to anyone reading - what are your thoughts on the name? Love it? Hate it? Change it? Keep it? I'm just curious of my blog reader's opinions on the topic.

Oh, hey, if you need great Managed Hosting from a company specializing 100% in Microsoft platform hosting expertise, let us know. We'd love to put you in touch with some references for you to get a feel for the difference in our services versus the general hosting market.

Brad Kingsley
Founder and CEO

www.orcsweb.com
Managed Hosting Solutions
#1 in Service and Support

Windows XP SP3

2008-05-13T00:16:00Z

I've got Windows XP Service Pack 3 installed and have no troubles to report.

Hosting Feedback: Kudos for Peter

2008-04-22T22:32:00Z

A nice blog posting from a customer about his hosting experience with ORCS Web. He gave a shout-out to Peter also --- great work Peter! Keep up the great customer service!

http://weblogs.asp.net/palermo4/archive/2008/04/16/awesome-hosting-support-for-asp-net-sites.aspx

~Brad

Hosting Feedback: Kudos for Pam

2008-04-15T20:09:00Z

Steve Smith blogged about the great service that Pam, a veteran webteam member, recently provided:
http://aspadvice.com/blogs/ssmith/archive/2008/03/21/Gotta-Love-Orcsweb.aspx

Great job Pam!

~Brad

Things Break

2008-04-08T20:12:00Z

I almost titled this "Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)" which is a commonly understood term when dealing with just about any technical device. MTBF means just what it says - no explanation needed there.

What it also means, without actually saying it, is "things break". Even things without any moving parts have the potential to fail. I wish it weren't true, but it is. Some things break more often than others - hence the need to understand the MTBF for various devices.

It seems that many hosts are afraid to say it out loud - as if the general population believed that things never fail (I don't think they do, but perhaps some believe it). It is an unfortunate fact of the business though. That is why tens of millions of dollars are spent on data center infrastructure with layers of redundancy across components. It's why we perform regular tests of fail-over processes to gauge the impact (or lack-of) to services when devices fail.

Technologies have advanced quite a bit in recent years and dealing with a single device failure is quite reasonable. What is really frustrating, while having a low chance of occurrence, is when there is a quality redundant solution in place but two (or more) things fail at once. Every component has a MTBF so it is possible, and has happened to every host I know of at some point, for really bad luck to occur and a backup device will fail at the same time as the primary device.

Those situations are stressful and frustrating for sure (because of all the up-front time and investment in the redundant solution). That's really when a managed hosting company succeeds or fails though. How the hosting provider handles the situation technically; how they handle the customer service; how they handle updates; how they handle testing and getting things back to initial state; etc... Years of experience with highly-available systems, top-notch expert staff, comprehensive systems and tools, tested processes - become hyper-critical in these already critical type of situations.

Some related ORCS Web specific information:
ORCS Web has been providing managed hosting solutions on Windows Server platforms for 12 years now. Before founding the company I was in the Advanced Technology and Integration department at NASDAQ* where a large focus was on handling highly scalable and highly available solutions for Microsoft platforms. This is not new stuff to us - this is what we do.

Our Webteam support group is loaded with Microsoft-certified people who themselves have years of experience. Several of the team speak at conferences and technology events; several have written books; a couple have been recognized as technology MVPs by Microsoft. This isn't just a job - our team members love what they do and are the best in the industry.

*Things even fail at NASDAQ - they have two geographically separate data centers and at times have had to utilize each.

Customer Hosting Experience

2008-03-11T15:32:00Z

One of our customers - Steve Smith of ASPAdvice and Lake Quincy Media - blogged recently about his hosting experiences.

http://aspadvice.com/blogs/ssmith/archive/2008/02/04/Hosting-Experience.aspx

~Brad