How it works

The ideal itself is fairly simple, they have a large amount of equipment that is treated as a pool of memory, processors, hard drive space etc and each virtual machine running on the cloud makes use of the pool. From the customer’s point of view the solution is cheaper than the equivalent physical hardware and the Virtual Machine instance(s) act just like physical machines do.

The cloud platform in theory

The ideal hosting platform is one you don’t need to worry about, you don’t need to plan for scaling,waste, special configuration, backups, redundancy and maintenance. The cloud platform doesn’t allow you to be worry free but its a big step forward.

• Scaling
  When using the cloud you can add and remove memory, CPUs and hard disk space on the fly, so scaling is far less of a problem. You will still need to have multiple virtual machine instances once you reach the operating system max but even that is simpler as machine instances are much easier to clone than physical hardware.
• Backups
  Because its all virtualized backup disks can be attached as hard drives, this backup space can be much lower speed than your live data and hence much lower cost
• Redundancy
  Each hard drive are in a redundant array, all the memory and processors are taken from the pool so if any part of that pool no longer works its simply removed from the pool and replaced by a technician. So you don’t have to worry about your hard drive dying on a friday evening at 5:30.
• Maintenance and Monitoring
  The only part you really have to maintain in this system is your software, all the equipment is taken care of by the host.
  Also, you can arrange with the host that the machine instance be monitored and should the monitoring software pick up a hard drive filling up or some other resource being overused it can add on the fly extra resources.
• Initial Setup
  As its a virtual machine, no operating system installations are necessary as the host can simply use a standard disk image for any given OS.
• Utility Costing
  You only pay for what you use, if your website has shifting requirements, the cost shifts with the requirements.

The h365 cloud platform in practice

Here are some of the good and bad things I found about the system

• Fast hard drives
  On pretty much any system the hard drive speed is a major issue and bottleneck, on the h365 cloud your OS runs on 15000 RPM hard drives which is super fast. You really notice it when you extract a file.
• Expense
  This is not a cheap system, before going for this system you want to seriously look into the cost, particularly for backup, firewall, cost for hard drive space, cost per CPU and cost per GB of RAM. All of which may shock you a little if you compare it to other hosting options number for number it won’t come out well unless you include on the fly system changes, up time and load balancing into your calculation. The benefits to the system like reliability and performance have to be essential to you and not just nice features. As of this writing there is a significant discount in place for Microsoft Biz Spark customers, be sure to mention that when you are asking for prices.
• No automated control panel
  This is something I’ve been told by H365 is in development, I haven’t really found this to be very inconvenient as I wasn’t under pressure to get the system live but creating an instance took about a week and it took a few weeks after that before I had everything sorted. Still they set up the servers with all the software I required with the configuration I requested, all I had to do was deploy my application.
• Great Support
  I found the support excellent, I’ve sent in quite a lot of tickets and they’ve been dealt with quickly and professionally, I haven’t had any trouble with the solution yet but I feel confident that if anything disastrous were to happen it would be resolved quickly and to my satisfaction.
• Backup
  This is something you have to pay for but its done off site and stored redundantly. Very simple to configure.
• Firewall
  Its possible to create a network of virtual server instances and remote control them over VPN so that nothing bar port 80 and 443 on your web server are exposed. This greatly enhances security, also something you have to pay for.
• Run Book
  This is a description of the system as well as any procedures the support technicians should follow in the event of failure of any monitored condition. Rather clever idea, I thought.

Conclusion

I’m generally impressed by the system, having come from Blacknight its been nothing but a breath of fresh air but without the Biz Spark for a starter business like us it would have been cost prohibitive.  What I would have expected from their system would be a charge for each CPU hour rather than each CPU so that the hosting costs would be correlated to the income. However I’ve used a few enterprise level systems before and I’ve never had to worry so little about maintenance and the future. I may not be as excited as I was when I first looked at cloud but I’m genuinely looking forward to the things I will do with this one.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I recently called up Digiweb to get a quote for a Windows Virtual Private Server, I got an answering machine the first time I called. The second time I called I got someone who didn’t really seem to understand what we were discussing. I asked him would .net be preinstalled on the machine and he answered “Yes, .net, .com, .org will all work” or something to that effect, I then clarified I meant asp.net and he put me on hold, presumably to find out what I was talking about. Of course while he was away he must have discovered that the VPS he was offering was not yet available and so when he returned he appologised and said that he’d cal when it became available. I got a call just there today from him telling me how unprofessional it was  that both my boss and myself were calling their sales department seperately about the same server.

In contrast, I was on the Rackspace website and used their live chat function and talked with someone who really understood what they were talking about, they even asked what kind of business it was for, not just my requirements. She then took my number and said one of the sales team who was more suited to deal with my requirements would call me. An hour later I recieved a call and was absolutely wowed by his competancy. I’m generally left feeling like I’ve just had a conversation about quantum physics with an 8 year old after a call with most service providers, particularly that guy from digiweb, but on the call with rackspace I felt like the 8 year old. I felt like their managed hosting solution would cost more, but it would save the company I work for money on maintenance and downtime, I felt like they knew more about what they were doing than I did.

And last but certainly not least I got an email from NamesCo, a provider I had only heard of in relation to their take over of register365, the shared hosting and domain registration part of hosting365. They had read my blog on blacknight and when my blog went down due to a logic/usability error* with their cp they thought that Blacknight had taken it down. They offered me 3 months free trial as a rescue package by which time their servers would be upgraded to their new cluster that apparently will blow anything else in Ireland out of the water. I was utterly chuffed, wasn’t even sure if anyone was reading the blog. There was a strong urge in me to say fuck the year worth of hosting I have with blacknight, but the recession is strong with me and so I just asked for more information about the new cluster.

*http://lacy.ie/downtime

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I had wordpress set up using their cp, I clicked install it worked, I was impressed. Then I noticed that the upgrade feature wasn’t working, I tried even chmoding recursively to 777 (publically writable), no dice, it kept saying I had to ftp the upgrade. Unfortunately you can’t create an ftp directory that points at the folder of one of the cp installed web applications so that wasn’t an option. So then I tried moving the directory to the website root and removing the application because I had it setup on ‘/’ (http://www.lacy.ie/). Of course what is the first thing you forget to do when you delete something, that’s right backup! Miracle of miracles I actually remembered, funny thing is, the database names of the cp created web applications are restricted and so I couldn’t restore the database once it was deleted by the web app uninstall because I couldn’t recreate the database, oh and I forgot to mention you can’t choose the database you want to restore to. So my blog was down for at least a day while I waited for BK to get back to me and fix the problem.

Eventually they did and it was all fine, they even explained to me that the problem with permissions was actually that I had it set to php4 as well as php5 and php4 was used by default. The reason php 5 handles this better than php4 is probably something to do with how php5 is running, what should be happening is that the script is being run by the script owner but what was actually happening under php4 was that all php processes were being run as the same user. Now imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find php4 control panel. All I could find was “PHP Support” and “PHP5 Support”. Ok I want php, and I want php5, its just php4 I don’t want. But wait, I said to myself, this control panel wasn’t designed to make sense, and so I unchecked the php support option and my php based application worked fine. If you are looking for hosting, come down the rabbit hole at blacknight

See PHP Support AND/OR PHP5 Support

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Right, I’m going to assume that you are nothing like me and actually went searching for an article like this before you dived in head first. Either that or you are making use of the restore function and shock and horror its actually working.  I recommend you follow this to the letter, I’m not going to try it a couple of different ways because I have neither the time nor inclination, the first time everything worked I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to some work that actually makes money.

First off you’ll want to install MSSQL, you’ll need x64 version. You’ll need to go into iis and on your default ftp site enable writing to the home directory before you can upload the installation files. Make sure you upload both the server and the tools into the ftp site, I’d recommend zipping them beforehand and I’d recommend using 7z to do it. It has an x64 version, its free and its on sourceforge. So once you have the two folders on the server sitting side by side called SERVERS and TOOLS then you need to download the native client from the following URL: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=50B97994-8453-4998-8226-FA42EC403D17&displaylang=en, put it in the same directory. So that you have SERVERS TOOLS and the native client exe all sitting in the same folder. Click on the native client exe and install it. Then you can click on the setup in SERVERS, install everything bar reporting services which won’t install because you are running 32 bit IIS on x64 windows. Yes there is a way around reporting services breaking by preventing 32 bit from running as x64 but that will break plesk and probably other stuff.

Next you’ll want to install .net. There are two ways you can do that, either you download the stand alone installer from microsoft.com or you use windows update. Now if you have delved a little into the machine you’ll have discovered windows update is disabled. This is because Blacknight handles all the updates themselves (apparently). To start windows update you will have to go to the start menu, click run, type services.msc and hit enter.
Right click on automatic updates, set to automatic, click apply, click start then ok. Right click on Background Intelligent Transfer Service, do the same. Open your browser, go to http://update.microsoft.com You don’t need IE 7, so select the other priority update option and clear selection. Then go to optional updates and install 3.5.

Next you want to tell plesk to add your www subdomain when you add a domain.
Do the following:

To set this up automatically for any new domains you add to your Windows Plesk VPS go to (in Plesk):
# Server >> DNS Settings >> Add new record
# The record you are adding has to have the following details:
Record Type: CNAME
Domain name: www
Canonical name: <domain>

Next go to the blacknight domain control panel and add your domain using Plesk as hosting. Once that is complete you should have the domain listed in plesk. You’ll need to add physical hosting for it. I’m not going to tell you how to do that but you will probably notice that you aren’t able to run .net 3.5 apps yet. You’ll need to do the following to get that working on whatever site you have.

To change over an IIS website (even if you created it in Plesk you are going to have to follow the following instructions)

Firstly you will need to find what folder the version of .net you want to use is located and you will need to know what number IIS has assigned the domain you want to change.

For example if you wanted to set up .net 2.0 and configure a domain to use it the folder is most likely the following (though you will need to verify):
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

If you look up the domain in IIS Manager you should see what number it is using*

Once you have confirmed the directory you can open a command prompt in Windows:
Start >> run >> type in ‘cmd’ and press enter

In here you can change to the directory in question:
cd C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

If you run the following command you can see the different vhosts (domains) on the server and what version of .net they currently have installed:
aspnet_regiis /lk

A sample output of this would be (please see below for how to tie these numbers to a domain name*):
W3SVC/14382/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573
W3SVC/17058/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573
W3SVC/17090/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573
W3SVC/17123/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573

To add .net 2.0 to a vhost we run:
aspnet_regiis /sn *vhost*

where *vhost* is the vhost name taken from the above results.

For example to set W3SVC/17058/ROOT/ to .net 2.0 we do:
default path> cd C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
then:
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727> aspnet_regiis /sn W3SVC/17058/ROOT

If you run the ‘aspnet_regiis /lk’ command again it will look something like this:
W3SVC/14382/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573
W3SVC/17058/ROOT/ 2.0.50727.0
W3SVC/17090/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573
W3SVC/17123/ROOT/ 1.1.4322.573

*You can find out what the number between W3SVC and ROOT is through the IIS Manager on the server.

Hope it all works out for you.

Related posts:

1. How to (Successfully) Install Cisco VPN Client on Windows 7 I’ve been having trouble connecting to h365 using the cisco...
2. Handling Relative Paths and debug mode with Jquery in ASP.Net Web Forms I had a problem where I wanted to use the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’ve been using blacknight for a week or so at this stage.

My first encounter with them was in my search to for a host that would provide .Net 3.5 support. As always hosting companies are reluctant to do anythign that might add to their downtime and .net 3.5 can be quite difficult to install. To cut a long and uninteresting story short, they fitted the bill in terms of the technical requirements for the project. They also met the client’s requirement for it to be hosted with an Irish provider.

At 5 euro a month with a 5 euro set up fee they are by far the cheapest hosting package I’ve ever had, they must have about half a million clients all packed onto each server. In terms of performance, I’m not noticing much of a difference (our application is a small one); in terms of functionality I’m really noticing a difference.

I am quite used to plesk, on my dedicated server I use it to manage DNS, firewall, database and a few other things. I like plesk, its simple, it works, I feel that lack of frustration is worth paying for. However the recesion has hit, and we’re all looking at the bottom line a little more closely these days. So I’m currently sitting staring at Blacknight’s version of plesk which is buggy but its usable. Perhaps plesk licenses cost too much when each user of the system is only paying 5 euro a month for the privilege of hosting 30 domains on the minimus shared hosting option but you can’t help but think that they could be the holy grail of hosting if only they got some license agreement with a company that’s far more specialised into this area.

My second gripe with the blacknight is access to the mssql server. I’m not sure what the issues are with mssql but either it hasn’t been written with shared hosting in mind or blacknight are paranoid but having to use mylittleadmin rather than Microsoft Sql Server Management Studio feels like trying to operate with one hand tied behind my back. Where is my graphical sql builder? Where is my export data? etc etc. All of which is available if you go with Host Ireland (who oddly enough seem to have their servers in Britain) but then again you don’t want to go a month with them telling you they will have .net 3.5 “you just have to wait until tomorrow, definately tomorrow!”.

Now before you begin saying, but Stephen, if you want a better hosting package, then pay for it, particularly given that you are spending valuable time on this! Keep your dedicated server and ditch blacknight or get a virtual private server. I am finding something about the blacknight, I’m getting used to the way they do things. Their system could be better, it could make more sense in general but the more I use it the more sense it makes to me. I’m finding ways of getting things done quickly, I mean everything I want to do is in that control panel… somewhere, all I have to do is find it.

If you are considering getting hosting with blacknight it may be worth doing some calculations in your head. If you are going to start migrating all your clients onto it, then go for it, you’ll get used to how they do things and massive amounts of money will be saved. If you want a simple blog site, and don’t mind spending a day setting it up, go for it. If your time is expensive and you want something quick, simple and you will only want it once, look elsewhere.

Its been a while since I wrote a blog entry, sorry if it hasn’t been the most coherant, I’ll get better

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.