Howdy-do, Turnkey Lovers?

You know, I haven’t spoken with you guys and ladies in quite some time. It’s been too long, and I just wanted to write a post for you. Today, one of my favorite musicians’ latest album came out, and it got me thinking — thinking about what some people consider to be the American Dream.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the story; some lady or gent claws their way from the bottom to the top. It could be figuratively or literally. It could be coming to this country and opening up a chain of gas stations, or coming to this country and opening a chain of hosting companies. While all of that is fine and dandy, I wanted to share with you, Turnkey Internet lovers, my hosting dream.

Now, this dream is mine and mine alone, but I’ve also gathered a bit of information just from dealing with multiple clients on a daily basis. You see, I believe the hosting dream is very similar to the American Dream. I say this, as I work with hundreds of clients who have this idea that they can start a hosting company.

They purchase a Turnkey reseller account, and set up their site to begin. They may then have a developer, or use one of our website development tools, to build and design their site. Dedicated IPs are purchased, and assigned to domain names that have been recently bought through Turnkey’s domain registration. The customer then sets up the reverse DNS (dynamic naming service) to only be in their domain, after which WHMCS or a similar billing product is purchased or provisioned so that orders can be processed.

Next comes the fun part — marketing this new online business. Maybe you create a hosting account on a credible hosting forum to begin making a name for yourself. You may even create social media accounts on sites such as Twitter or Facebook to develop a following. Sure enough, the day comes that you receive that first customer. The beginning of a long journey has arrived.

Support issues will be raised, and need to be addressed quickly and completely to the customers’ satisfaction. Repeat. Repeat, repeat. You repeat until your customer base grows. Your name is mentioned in forums and in social — and possibly your local (newspaper, television, etc.) — media.

You see, that’s my hosting dream. That anyone can deliver a satisfying product to their customers with the correct tools, ambition, proper networking, support, etc. That anyone can provide top-notch support and superior customer service. That, with all of this, you and your budding hosting company can flourish.

That’s my dream and desire for every customer that approaches Turnkey Internet. My hosting dream is for our company to help your company succeed and thrive.

I just thought I should share that with you, as everyone has to have a dream, right? How could we achieve anything in this life if we never have a dream?

From my hosting dream, to your own.

Until next time, Turnkey lovers!

Howdy-do, TurnKey Lovers?

Jeremy here, with another entry for you to gobble up. “Gobble”? Well, that’s a funny use of the word, but it actually deals directly with my current post. The word “gobble” results in thoughts about turkey. Now, this could be due to the fact that I’m hungry. Any reference to food incites a bout of extreme hunger, causing me to crave that 5-piece spicy nugget from Wendy’s that I have left over. But, I digress.

The reason that I mention “gobble” is really to talk about turkey—not TurnKey—but turkey. That, sometimes dry, meat that you have to cook perfectly on Thanksgiving, or start looking for a gallon of water to just get through the meal. Turkey brings us to Thanksgiving; one of the joyous occasions most Americans celebrate every year by engorging themselves with as much food possible, and then passing out an hour later. Ok, that might just be me who does the passing out part…

There is also another GREAT benefit to this time of the year. Have you figured it out yet? Did you even guess? I’ll give you a hint; it’s the day after you recover from stuffing yourself with delectable food. Queue the jeopardy theme song—BLACK FRIDAYYYY!!!

Black Friday isn’t considered a holiday, but with the sheer amount of people out shopping, you would think it was the busiest holiday of the year. I will give you a bit of history on the day Black Friday:

This day, Black Friday, is the official kick-off to the Christmas shopping season. You will see/hear/read about many retailers opening up at 4AM or earlier to accommodate the large rush of customers expecting to find ridiculous deals on different products. Consumers every year look forward to this one day, so that they can purchase those headphones they’ve been eying for months that were a bit too expensive, or that new 50-inch LCD flat screen that they’ve been wanting to hang up over their fireplace since first seeing the ad on television.

To put this in perspective, I’ve included the table below from our good buddy Wikipedia, which depicts the average amount of money that is spent on this day:

Retail Sales

The National Retail Federation releases figures on the sales for each Thanksgiving weekend.

Now, you may be wondering, “What on Earth does this have to do with hosting?” Well, my friends, we live in a world with a digital economy now, and it seems that everyone and their mother has a website. Almost every major retailer has some sort of ad space where they post their upcoming deals for Black Friday. With so many consumers looking for the best deal, you can imagine that sites will receive heavy traffic spikes due to the demand of finding the best deals.

These large spikes of traffic need to be handled as smoothly as possible, so that retailers and consumers do not experience any downtime during this whirl-wind of a day. Enter stage left—expandable cloud servers, multiple VPS’s (virtual private servers), or another dedicated server to handle the increase of traffic. All of which you can find here, at TurnKey Internet.

Each solution has its unique benefits. For example, let’s say you have a cloud server. On Black Friday, your traffic quadruples. Well, one of the main benefits of a TurnKey cloud is the ability to add more resources without incurring downtime. You could have more RAM allocated, increased disk space, or even increased bandwidth. The scalability is very enticing. Then, after Black Friday has concluded, you can downgrade your cloud server with no issues.

Or, let’s say you purchase an additional TurnKey VPS to handle your increase of traffic. You could then have those extra VPS’s decommissioned. You see, the real winners on Black Friday are the consumers/retailers that plan ahead. They purchase the additional bandwidth or add another server before the day occurs. As my college professor would say, “Prior preparation prevents poor performance.” That could be increasing your Turnkey cloud resources, adding an additional Turnkey VPS, or purchasing a new Turnkey dedicated server ahead of time. That way, you can keep your sales flowing in and your customers happy.

Now, my chicken nuggets are calling. Until next time, TurnKey lovers!

The Cloud, and Cloud hosted applications are all the buzz today. Businesses are converting IT infrastructure into the Cloud every day – phone systems, virtual desktops, office servers, and lots more. But when your business is making that transition to The Cloud, why are there there so many options that look the same but with different names like “Cloud Hosting”, “Virtual Servers”, “VPS”, “Dedicated Servers”? Which is the best option for you business – and what is the difference?

First, the term “The Cloud” is among the most popular terms on the Internet today, but lacks an agreed upon firm universal definition. The Cloud is IT on Demand. The cloud is a scalable, reliable and cost-effective way of accessing information technology at any time from anywhere. The technology of the cloud revolves around the benefits of moving expensive and complicated IT out of your office into an efficient, scalable, and secure datacenter. So if you are looking to move your office server into “The Cloud”, you are looking to host the office server in a secure datacenter, and use the Internet to connect to it from any where, any time.

A Virtual Server (also called a Virtual Private Server, VPS, Virtual Machine, VDS, Semi-Dedicated, or Hybrid server) is the term used for the computer server and software that runs on the same physical computer server as other virtual servers and is functionally equivalent to a separate physical computer dedicated to the individual customer’s needs. A single high capacity server in a datacenter can host 10 or more Virtual Private Servers – such that each client has their own privacy, computer resources, customizable operating system and software. The virtual server model is a more power and cost efficient method and provides an easier to manage and generally more reliable computer server infrastructure than say hosting the same application on a typical server in your office.

A dedicated server has all the same benefits of the Virtual Server for privacy, and custom software, but costs more since you have all the resources dedicated to just you (even when the system is idle, its using up electricity, so your costs and efficiency aren’t as optimal compared to a virtual server). But the dedicated server does offer a high level of performance, and for a busy application (say a phone system that connects 500 employees across 3 regions of the country) you will find the dedicated server is your best value when you need the maximum level of computing power.

Cloud Hosting can mean just about any type of hosted solution in a secure datacenter. The more advanced Cloud Hosted solutions providers are offering a robust scalable network of servers that can provide redundancy and scalability that otherwise is not present in a single virtual server or dedicated server. You have to be careful when you shop vendors who use the term “Cloud Hosting” to promote using the Cloud to host your application or server. What you generally want is cloud hosting solution which offers you a ‘virtual machine’ in the cloud providers network, that offers some level of scalability, and redundancy. Some Cloud Hosted solutions providers focus on you developing a specific application and hosting just that application (not an entire server or operating system) on their cloud – this is a bit more complex and ideal for developers. For instance Amazon EC2’s web site states “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.” SalesForce’s offering in the cloud called Force.com lets savvy businesses and developers write applications to run on their cloud platform, utilizing their proprietary system to gain scalability and redundancy.

TurnKey’s offering, TurnKey Cloud offers a full virtual machine ontop of multiple redundant clusters of servers which provides the cloud benefits of scalability and redundancy to let you install any operating system and any applications without having to utilize software developers to convert their applications to a proprietary cloud platform. If it runs on the server in your office, it will run in the TurnKey Cloud platform.

So what’s different between Cloud Hosting, versus a VPS or a Dedicated Server? The reality is they all do about the same thing but vary based on price, ease of use, performance and the ability to offer scalability and redundancy. Some hosting companies sell a non-scalable non-redundant VPS and call it a Cloud Hosting solution because its hosted over the Internet, and it looks attractive due to the lower cost. Companies like TurnKey, Amazon, SalesForce offer a true Cloud Hosting solution with scalabiltiy and redundancy included. So you have to look closely at the infrastructure utilized by your ‘cloud hosting’ solutions provider.

A VPS will be your lowest cost – easiest to use, option in most cases. If you need a lot of computing power, or resources (disk, network bandwidth, etc) – your costs can go double or more very quickly. The down side is your VPS resides on a ‘shared’ resource (that dedicated server that is split up between 10 or more other VPS clients). So there can be times when you have trouble getting all the performance you may need, and scalability is limited (you may be able to increase ram or bandwidth double or more from your initial machine, but costs shoot up quickly as you do so). But the VPS is easy to manage, you don’t have to worry about hardware generally since the server that your VPS is housed on will typically be a very high end server with built in redundancy. But it is still a single point of failure, which can have several hours of down time should your provider have to do maintenance.

A Dedicated server will actually be your best performer, and best value if you have a highly demanding application that needs a lot of computing power. You can have access to 24 or more cpu processors, and 128+ GB of ram if your budget allows – and it’s a lot cheaper than getting the same computing power versus a Cloud based Server. The downside is the single point of failure, and additional administrative efforts needed to maintain a dedicated server. Make sure you selected a dedicated server from your provider that includes management, backups, and guaranteed response times if something goes wrong.

A Cloud Server (Cloud hosted solution) – is going to give you best of all worlds – but at a price. You get the simplicity of a virtual machine to administer it. You get the ability to scale to very high capacity (even speeds faster than your average dedicated server), and you can even replicate to multiple servers and utilize load balancing for literally infinite scalability. The built in redundancy offers protection from single point of failure on hardware (since a cloud based server if the hardware fails, should auto restart on another node within a few seconds, picking up right where it left off) – but all this does come at a higher price. Typically 2x to 4x the cost of a traditional VPS, and if you need a lot of computer power, disk space, or bandwidth you really are going to pay a lot more for the privilege to have that level of redundancy and ability to scale on demand

So what works best for your business? Give your Service Provider a call – tell them what your application is, and your needs, and concerns – and they will help you choose the best one. At the end of the day, all 3 get you ‘in the cloud’.

Reduced Data Leakage

This is one of the first things cloud vendors will tell you, and they’ll be right. Many laptops are not safely protecting data with the appropriate encryption. Data is sent here and there and it’s lost here and there. Cloud encryption protects transmitted data every time. And then there’s the obvious data “leakage” issue (read: loss). How many hard drives need to fail before we all recognize the incredible peace of mind cloud storage can provide? Cloud hosting varies in its security offerings, so look for a host that offers secure firewalls and robust backups (read: Turnkey Internet).

Better Monitoring

Centralized storage makes it easier to monitor and control your data. Yes, this does  mean you’re putting all of your data eggs in one basket, but as an IT professional I would much rather know where my data is and focus my security efforts on that location than spread my data all over the place and hope for the best. Besides, “all in one place” doesn’t have the same meaning for cloud servers. Cloud networks are mirrored so data is safe, regardless of what might happen to a single machine.

Responding to Problems

If a cloud server is compromised, it’s a matter of seconds to restore all of the lost data from backups. This means you have no downtime, ever. You can restore data remotely, from anywhere, and with your robust cloud monitoring, you’ll know the second a problem arises. With all of your data in one location, you can easily assess the security problem and fix it.

Improved Logs

Logging is often overlooked, or it’s an afterthought and this means you may not have enough room allocated for your logs. With the cloud, you can index your logs for instant search results. This is true real-time view of your information. If your company is concerned with establishing a C2 audit trail, you can easily opt-in to allocate resources for extended logging.

Improved Security Software Performance

Security vendors are more accountable when their clients are more vigilant. The security concerns so many of us have surrounding the cloud have made many security software companies step up their game. They’re not only making their software more comprehensive and robust, they’re making it more efficient. Cloud clients are watching their billable CPU cycles. They know how much it’s costing them to run software. Visibility equals accountability.

One of the most compelling and least talked about benefits of cloud computing is the potential it offers for a real positive impact on the environment. As computer usage continues to grow at an exponential rate, technology-related emissions grow right along with it. We hear all the time about how using less paper saves the environment, but the electricity it takes to access all that information digitally is rarely talked about or quantified. Office IT infrastructures are huge energy sinkholes. Businesses lose thousands of dollars each year paying to power their IT infrastructure when they could be saving a fortune by transitioning their business to the cloud.

Greenpeace predicts the global carbon emissions from computer use will double by 2020. That would be unsustainable and environmentally catastrophic. Greenpeace also states that datacenters that consolidate usage and power could conserve resources significantly. This may seem counterintuitive, since datacenters are huge energy consumers. But, when you consider the power saved by consolidating usage, it makes perfect sense.

In an office environment, servers typically stay online 24×7. This may be necessary for the business—if workers need access remotely or software needs to run constantly—but it is extremely wasteful. Those servers are running at full power even if they are only needed for a small amount of processing. In a datacenter, every piece of the computer’s processing power is used. Many offices can conduct their daily operations for the same amount of power one office was using in-house. It’s a basic consolidation equation but it’s one that business owners have yet to embrace.
Another aspect of the environmental friendliness of the datacenter is the power source. Most datacenters are equipped with extremely efficient energy infrastructures. For example, our new datacenter in Latham New York will be equipped with NYSERDA approved power. NYSERDA is the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. They conduct energy audits of commercial buildings and suggest best practices for equipping spaces with the most efficient technology possible. We can offer our clients a state-approved level of efficiency that we’re willing to bet their office parks probably don’t offer.

In addition to these green-friendly benefits of cloud computing, it is fairly easy to see how much cost savings there is here as well. Hosting and running applications from the cloud eliminates the cost of in-house hardware and IT staff while improving performance and reliability (more on that in the next article). Read more on Greenpeace’s take on cloud computing, renewable energy and the future here: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/make-it-green-cloud-computing/.

Cloud computing is relatively new for most business users. As we have begun talking to our clients about the possibilities of the cloud for their businesses, we’ve found many of them are concerned about the safety of their data. Regardless of the actual safety of having a server in your office (and we know that it’s not very safe at all considering the possibility of theft, disaster or hardware failure) simply having the information physically close makes people feel safe. It’s a perceived security, but it’s a powerful perception.

The truth is, information in the cloud is far more secure than information in the office. While “the cloud” makes it sound like the information is floating around somewhere, subject to the whims of the Internet, in reality the information is stored in a physical server inside a secure datacenter. Servers in datacenters (if they are anything like ours) are protected by physical boundaries like thick walls and security cameras and biometrics. They are also protected by virtual boundaries like firewalls and passwords. Then, to top it off, they are protected by backups, so you can restore any lost data immediately. In the TurnKey Cloud, backups are encrypted, adding yet another level of security. You can even completely restore your entire operating system keeping all of your stored settings intact. You can control your entire account remotely, including remote reboots.

In the end, if you’re concerned about the security of your data, cloud hosting is the best possible option. While it may seem new and dangerous, it is designed with businesses in mind—providing the kind of security and accessibility that has never been available before. In addition to all that, it’s cheaper and more efficient than housing your own infrastructure in-house. At TurnKey, we see this as a no-brainer.

The Cloud Brings Ease of Use to both IT managers and business owners. The complexities of setting up and maintaining office servers and desktop applications can be replaced with a click of a button for scallable IT On Demand with TurnKeyCloud’s Virtual Desktops and Cloud Servers.

TurnKeyCloud simplifies compliance requirements for your business with our Cloud Applications which provide instant compliance such as HIPAA and SOX compliant email and PCI / PA-DSS eCommerce Compliance.

TurnKeyCloud Saves You Money

TurnKeyCloud takes IT on Demand further by helping you greatly reduce your IT costs – no more expensive servers in your office to replace every few years and no need for expensive IT consultants. For example, TurnKeyMail our Enterprise Email Solution can provide you with a robust feature rich email and collaborative solution for your entire office for $19.95/mo. Compare that to the cost of placing a microsoft exchange mail server in your office ($20,000 and up for the server, software and installation by a traditional IT Company).

TurnKeyCloud is Reliable

TurnKeyCloud solutions are housed in our Enterprise Grade Datacenter providing redundant network, power and data systems to ensure continous access at all times. Our Cloud Servers offer self healing redundant systems – should a server go down (for maintenace, or mechanical failure) it self heals and replicates to a new server within minutes. Data backups are automated and stored off site – providing you not only the best in reliabilty but the peace of mind of data security as well. Compare a Cloud Server to running a server in your office, if the disk drive fails, or power goes out – what would you do? With TurnKeyCloud, your cloud server is back online automatically with our self-healing technology.

TurnKeyCloud Protects Your Data

TurnKeyCloud solutions are all protected by internal backup systems, offering daily, weekly and monthly backups of all your servers, virtual desktops, and applications. We remotely backup these systems, provide you with easy access to snapshots in time for restoring data should you need access to the data. Our Cloud Servers and Virtual Desktops utilize advanced encrypted connection protocols to protect your data, and ensure your business and staff always are protected.

TurnKeyCloud is Green Friendly

Cloud sourcing IT is not only reliable, cost effective and instant – but it also helps save the environment. That server in the office running your business email, or company CRM, or other applications will be drawing power 24 hours a day to keep it connected to the Internet. Even when there are no emails to deliver, – the disk drive, the fans, the power supply all are drawing electricity.

With a Cloud Server – our cloud infrastructure is up to 30 times more energy efficient versus leaving that office server online all day. Cloud Servers are more efficient because of the core design model of virtualization and how resources are allocated on demand. For example, TurnKeyCloud through its datacenters provides services to clients from around the world. A client in Asia typically will have highest usage when clients in the United States are at their lowest – so over a 24 hour period the TurnKeyCloud system dynamically and efficiently can allocated resources on demand to ensure you have the maximum performance while greatly reducing your typical energy foot print.

The cloud is IT on demand. The cloud is a scalable, reliable and cost effective way of accessing information technology at any time from any where.

The technology of the cloud revolves around the benefits of moving expensive and complicated IT out of your office into an efficient, scalable, and secure data center. This data center is where your IT equipment, office servers, desktop applications, web applications, business software and data can all be accessed easily, at a much lower cost, and securely via the Internet.

TurnkeyCloud is IT On Demand

TurnKeyCloud offers ready to go Cloud Applications that help any business be more efficient, communicate and collaborate with ease. Our instant on technology can have these Cloud Applications running for your business within seconds, and save you both money and time versus trying to deploy similar solutions in your office. Our Cloud enabled Virtual Desktops let you connect your computer work environments together with employees across the room, town, or globe with a shared desktop, suite of Microsoft Office applications, and access to files and folders in a secure environment. Cloud Servers offer instant replacements and instant capacity for your office servers. At the push of a button you can deploy additional services, cloud servers, increase speed, increase storage capacity, increase the number of users all without having to call your IT company and schedule an expensive site visit.

How Does the Cloud Help My Business?

Cloud Sourcing your IT (Information Technology) provides significant Cost Savings, increased reliability for your business, instant access to computer resources or applications when you need them, green friendly benefits to both you and your community, and access to powerful software tools to help your business grow and be more efficient.

How is Cloud Hosting Different?

Traditional hosting servers run applications in a linear design without extensive redundancy or scalability. The traditional method until now when hosting a server, web site or application is to place it in your office on a single computer. Although the hardware on this computer may have some limited redundancy such as a spare disk drive- it is inevitable to have some form of business disruption from loss of power, exceeding the capacity of the computer or network, hardware failure, human error, or simply having a software crash. This disruption could cost a business significantly in lost data, lost time, and for the IT company you have to hire to come in and fix everything.

With the TurnKeyCloud Hosting model, the single point of failure is replaced by a scalable on demand network of computing resources that are hosted in our data center with multiple redundant ultra-high capacity network connections, on-site generators, precision cooling systems, and leveraging green-friendly practices. The single server design model of yesterday is now replaced by sophisticated SAN (Storage Area Network) file servers, multiple clustered HyperVisor virtualization based systems, and control module nodes that ensure a reliable always available experience for your servers and software applications.