Release date: 1st February 2010.

These accreditations are testament to the high level of Server Management & Support services the company provides when Hosting and Supporting business critical applications on behalf of its clients.

The achievement of the internationally recognised accreditations provides added confidence to all ForLinux stakeholders that the correct processes are in place to deliver High Quality hosting whilst minimising security risks.

“These International Accreditations provide reassurance to our clients that our processes meet the stringent standards and demonstrates our commitment to information security.
Along with our fully certified technicians, who have all been advanced CRB checked, we are confident that we will continue to provide a High Quality, Secure, Managed hosting environment that offers maximum protection to our clients” say Steve Nice, Technical Director at ForLinux. 

About ForLinux Ltd: ForLinux are leading experts in providing and supporting hosted Open Source applications, delivering first class solutions that are individually tailored for each client.  Established in 2002, ForLinux has built a strong reputation on their expert knowledge and their High levels of customer service.
ForLinux specialise in providing bespoke managed hosting solutions to serve and support business critical applications.

ForLinux have been working with Rapid Web, a digital web agency based in Staffordshire, since 2003. Rapid Web’s solution includes several Fully supported, managed, Dedicated Linux Web and database servers. Ashley Peake, Technical Director at Rapid Web explains how working with ForLinux has benefited the company and their clients.

Partnership

“We have been using ForLinux to support our Web servers for a number of years now, this has enabled us to keep control of our hosting directly so we can offer our clients the best possible service but at the same time having the reassurance knowing that if something was to go wrong we would have someone working on the problem almost instantly.”

Rapid Web began working with 8Ball when the company launched their first website and have supported their continued E-Commerce development over a number of years. The website has seen fantastic growth; 8Ball.co.uk is now one of the UK’s largest on-line t-shirt distributors with an impressive 10,000+ items in their on-line catalogue.

8 Ball’s server requirements have steadily increased as their business has continued to grow and it quickly became apparent that their existing server solution would need expanding to cope with the high volumes of traffic the site was attracting.  However, being unable to anticipate the extent of the future demand, 8Ball needed a flexible solution that would be able to grow with them rather than having to continually change their server architecture or pay for a large solution with potentially redundant capacity.

Scalable solution

ForLinux assisted Rapid Web in re-engineering the server solution for 8ball.co.uk in the run up to Christmas 2009. With the growth in traffic that 8ball.co.uk had been experienced through 2009, it was clear that traffic was going to peak and a more robust solution was needed.

“We moved 8Ball’s website onto a Xen server platform after extensive research and testing. We looked at many other options including VMware based hosting but yet again ForLinux’s solution was the most cost effective and reliable.”

ForLinux provided and implemented a solution comprising of a Managed Xen Web server and a MySQL Database server. The new solution was initially the same specification as their previous server set up, however as the new solution was built on a Xen platform, it would allow additional resources to be added and/or removed when required.

Implementation

“One night in December around 10pm I had a SMS warning me that the 8ball website was seeing slow loading times, after checking the server load and memory usage I called ForLinux and requested more CPU & Memory resources to be allocated. Within 5 minutes the server was back up and running at full speed with the additional resources.”

The ForLinux and Rapid Web Monitoring System flagged up an issue with 8Balls web server struggling to cope with very high levels of traffic. With a single phone call to ForLinux, Rapid Web requested additional RAM and CPU resources to be made available to the machine.  The on-call ForLinux technician was able to apply the resources and with a reboot of the server, the machine was scaled up and able to cope with the high traffic demands of 8Balls busiest Christmas yet!

“A lot of hosting companies talk about 99.999% SLA, this means nothing if their support fails to deliver but with ForLinux’s support you know you’re in good hands. I’ve just checked one of our older servers that’s due to be replaced this year, it’s uptime is 902 Days! Needless to say ForLinux will be handling the upgrade.” Ashley Peake, Technical Director, Rapid Web Ltd

Technical Director of ForLinux Ltd, Steve Nice, recently wrote an article for .Net Magazine, which demonstrates how to set up an Amazon Web Services EC2 Instance, running Linux and Apache.

The feature contains a step by step tutorial guide to installing and deploying virtual servers on the Amazon EC2 network and highlights the potential pitfalls to be aware of at each stage.

The article discusses the different ways the Amazon EC2 can be successfully deployed within the infrastructure of different organisations.

Download the full article here: Creating a Linux Server in the Cloud

The company have been outsourcing the support of their Linux web servers to ForLinux since December 2007.

Sam Phillips, Technical Director says:

“Initially we were providing the support for our web servers internally, however, this proved to be a costly and problematic solution.  It became apparent that to do this effectively, we would require a team of System Administrators.  At this point, we decided to outsource the support of our web servers and began working with ForLinux.

The ForLinux technical team have integrated fantastically with our IT staff, and the relationship has gone from strength to strength.  The knowledge of the ForLinux team, in relation to our business, has continued to grow to the point where we feel our needs are clearly understood.

The proactive monitoring service that ForLinux provide is crucial to our business. When a problem occurs, the ForLinux team ring us with a potential solution, which they are ready to work on straight away.  An example occurred the other day, when the monitoring system picked up that we were running out of file space on a client server, a client process had enabled some extensive debug logging and forgotten to turn it off! When we received the call from ForLinux, the technician had already accessed the server in question and produced a list of files which could possibly be deleted.

Like any technical team, different members of the ForLinux team have specialist areas of knowledge. The Technical Team Leader, always ensures we are directed to the most appropriate technician for the specific problem.

It is really easy to contact the technicians directly and any support requests that we submit are always actioned and returned in a very timely manner. I am in contact with the ForLinux team most days and any problems I pass to the team, simply come back done.

One of the main differences with ForLinux is their commitment to continually improve the levels of service they provide, which ensures the quality of support we receive is excellent.  Many support companies simply measure themselves on how quickly support issues are actioned and closed, however, with ForLinux, it is the quality of the responses we receive that make them stand out from the rest.

The areas in which ForLinux really excel, are their high levels of communication and the quality of the service they provide. Having ForLinux support allows us to offer complete reassurance to our customers when it comes to out of hours support.  This is fundamental to the promotion of our services.”

The article assesses the progress of certification within the Open Source Community and evaluates the impact this is having on the companies and technicians wishing to demonstrate and validate their Open Source skill sets.

The full article can be found at http://www.bcs.org

“We were originally hosting our server with another company, where we had a dedicated Colbolt RAQ4 which was fine at the time. However, after a couple of years we started experiencing real problems with security and spam issues. I realised we needed to upgrade our system and decided to investigate the possibility of setting up a fail-over solution at the same time.

Our host at the time recommended that we spoke to ForLinux regarding their fail-over solution. The thing I instantly liked about the ForLinux team was that they did not try to ’sell’ to me but rather explained the various solutions that would be suitable for our requirements and the benefits of each. We went ahead with a fail-over solution from ForLinux, who also began providing high level technical support for our server”.

Service Levels

” We were very happy with the service levels ForLinux provided, and it made sense to keep all our hosting and support services together, so soon after, we moved our hosting over to ForLinux as well.

We are reasonably technical ourselves and provide first line support to our clients, many of whom are not technical, they run hotels and manage car hire businesses and just want to ring up and deal with people when they have an issue. Our technicians offer first line support however we need a company that can provide technical support on a higher level as and when required and this is where ForLinux come in. I wouldn’t dream of hosting my dedicated server alone, without that extra support”.

Ticketing system

“The ForLinux ticketing systems works very well and when we raise a ticket, the support team usually come back to us very quickly. There is also telephone support available if and when we need to speak to a technician.

The ForLinux team are very knowledgeable and there is always someone who can deal with the problems and errors we incur. Nine out of ten times we can get straight through to a technician and, on the odd occasions when we haven’t got straight through, the technician called back within a matter of minutes”.

Trust

“Compared to previous IT Support companies we have dealt with, the level of support ForLinux offer is very high. For me the size of the company is perfect to achieve a consistently high level of service. They are large enough not to be reliant on a few key members of staff but small enough to deliver a personal service, where customers are not just numbers going through to an overseas call centre. Everyone in the company including the reception staff, the accounts department and the help desk staff, are genuinely very helpful, we know them and they know us.

There are many similarities between ForLinux and our company, both in terms of size and the ethics of the company. With ForLinux you know that they are genuinely trying to find the best solutions for your business rather than just trying to sell you the most expensive solution. The size and fit of the company is perfect for us, I trust Steve Nice (Technical Director),I know he isn’t going to just sell to me and that trust goes all the way through the company”. 

Andalucia Com SL is the company behind the “Information about Andalucia” website which was created in 1996. Andalucia.com set the trend in southern Spain, being one of the first sites to offer clear, concise information about the region primarily for the tourist, the foreign resident, and the international investment market. Today the site is unique in the world major regional or city commercial (dotcom) websites in that it primarily offers information supported by related advertising rather than a booking engine supported by a location guide.  It attracts over 450,000 visitors every month and , www.andalucia.com,  is  the most visited web page about Andalucia and Southern Spain.

Andalucia Com also provide Website design and web hosting services for local businesses in Southern Spain,  currently holding around 200 websites on a dedicated server through its sister company Andalucia Web Solutions.

“We initially came to ForLinux when we were experiencing issues with our hosting. The server we were operating on was too small and this was causing site downtime.  Our incumbent supplier did not flag this up to us and we found it hard to contact them, as they would only deal via email, so we took the decision to move and were recommended ForLinux by our development company”.

Infrastructure growth.

“Since we moved, ForLinux have integrated with our IT infrastructure very well indeed. We have expanded our solution and increased the number of servers to provide a more robust solution.
The proactive monitoring of our servers is really useful and fortunately we have had little experience of problems because of this.
It is very easy to speak to a dedicated ForLinux technician, even out of hours and they always seem happy to deal with phone calls even when we should be raising a ticket.  The technicians are very knowledgeable and can usually resolve issues quickly.

Compared to other hosting and support companies we have dealt with, ForLinux are a world apart. In our experience the level of service provided by ForLinux is very high and the aspect that stands out the most is their ability to put a human face to IT support”.

Blue Chip Vacations

Founded in 2000 as a provider of luxury self-catering holiday accommodation in and around The English Riviera in South Devon.  The company has experienced rapid growth and now offers over 600 properties across Devon and Cornwall, from traditional cottages to luxury town houses, converted Victorian villas to modern apartments.
Blue Chip pride themselves on their outstanding levels of customer service, both before and during a guest’s holiday and have won several awards including the South West Tourism Award for Excellence 2005/6.  Throughout their impressive growth the company have remained customer focused ensuring guests return year after year.

This is a short post on the basic principles of scaling your Apache PHP MySQL based hosted website.

Scaling your website isn’t as simple as introducing a new web server.  It is easy to upgrade the hardware however, there are the issues associated with migrating the website to the new hardware, such as coding for new versions of software and coordinating an IP address change.  Your Apache PHP MySQL host may not be able to provide the same IP address.

There are several routes one can take when considering scaling PHP MySQL hosting websites.

Step 1: Split the Apache PHP and MySQL functions

If your current server is running both Apache PHP and MySQL, the first step is to split them onto their own dedicated server. This should have the effect of reducing load on the Apache PHP web server by about 50% depending on the amount of work the MySQL server is performing. To do this will require a change of the MySQL connection parameters (as long as you have coded your website this way). Having a cross over cable between to two servers provides a dedicated 1Gb interface rather than running across a LAN switch.
Total number of servers 2.

Step 2: Load balance the Apache PHP Web front end

Introducing a hardware load balancer to the solution will provide a method of distributing web traffic to two or more web servers.  The load balancer should take care of persistence and redundancy. If one Apache PHP web server crashes, the load balancer will only direct traffic to the remaining live Apache PHP servers.  In this scenario,  you will have to ensure the remaining web server(s) can adequately cope with the traffic.
Additional web servers will need to be configured to mirror existing web servers.  Static files, user account, web configuration files and software versions must match, otherwise you will have inconsistency which will be difficult to troubleshoot.
Total number of servers 4 – Load balancer, 2 web servers, 1 database.

Step 3: Network File Server

If additional web servers are required then the management of static files across multiple web server becomes unmanageable.  A network file server provides a single point for the static assets of your website. Using a NFS (Network File System) server you are able to “mount” the NFS partition on to each web server. This provides a method for your web servers to read and write to a central location.  There are generally two types of solution for the file server – NAS and SAN. A NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a server with more than 2 drives, configured as large disk.  A SAN (Storage Attached Network) is a more complex device with space for many disks and no single points of failure. As such a SAN is more expensive than a NAS.
Total number of servers 6 – Load balancer, 3 web servers, 1 database, 1 NFS

Step 4: Additional Database servers

By this stage the web servers are managing the web traffic.  However, the database server may start to have performance problems. One solution is to increase the server specification. Installing additional RAM is the first solution, but this is only a temporary measure and the database is still a single point of failure.  There are several options at this stage for scaling the database.

i) Add a replicated MASTER/SLAVE MySQL server and change your code to perform reads from the SLAVE and writes to the MASTER. This has the affect of reducing overall load on the database but doesn’t help if there is a failure of the MASTER unless the application takes this into consideration and switches to the SLAVE (which then becomes a single MASTER).

ii) Add a replicated MASTER/MASTER MySQL server and change your database structure to have odd and even indexes.  In a Master/Master set up, both servers are able to function for reads and writes. However, as data is replicated between the server you cannot have duplicate records, hence changing the database structure to prevent this.

iii) Add a MemCache server. Not exactly a database solution, but this would ease the pressure from the database and therefore give you more time to decide on the final solution.

iv) MySQL Cluster.  With this solution, no code changes are required but the database table types will need to change which can cause complications.

Total number of servers 7-9 – Load balancer, 3 web servers,  2-4 database server, 1 NFS

The original insurance comparison service, launched in 1999, linking insurance companies and brokers to a common interface that allows a prospective customer to find the cheapest and most suitable insurance in one place.

Joined ForLinux in 2003 during a period of prodigious growth which propelled Insurancewide into The Times Top 100 Growth Companies

EXPERTISE FOR EXPANSION

Danny Ramdenee, Head of IT ;

“We were introduced to ForLinux through our ISP company at the time. We’ve been with ForLinux for about six years and they’ve been very much part of our rapid expansion. It’s their advice and expertise that have allowed us to plan for that growth.

Being a totally Internet-based company, the technical side is hugely important, so before we do anything really we talk to Steve and the guys to make sure we put in the right infrastructure or software or anything like that.

I’m responsible for a wide range of areas and disciplines, so to stay abreast of all of that is pretty much impossible. I basically wanted to supplement myself and bring in expertise so that I could take a breather on some of these fronts. ”

DEPENDABLE BACK-UP

“Now we have a dedicated manager who is very much on the case all the time, and I do value that because I don’t have to be glued to everything like a hawk all the time. I know I’ve got a back-stop there and some support.

Back-up procedures are certainly one of the key areas. We had a bit of a disaster at our previous hosting company when they lost all of our data. ForLinux came in and helped us to install better back-up. ”

FLEXIBILE,COST-EFFECTIVE, RESPONSIVE

“In IT, with any kind of partnership, I’ve found it’s normally very much a case of ‘Where’s your money? Here’s the bare minimum’. Companies feel that if it’s not in the contract, they don’t have to do it. But ForLinux is much more amenable and has the flexibility to allow for the realities of everyday life in the IT world.

They perform to a realistic level that allows us to tackle things as and when we need to, so we don’t have to go into excruciating contractual details on what we expect of them. They are very responsive in that respect… It’s quite a key asset. ”

EXPERTISE INCLUDED

“They have a very good range of expertise within the company and it’s very hard to stump them with anything, and if you do they will go and find out about it.

So it’s a bit like having additional team members. They give us what you’d expect if you were doing something to foster the interests of your own company, rather than trying to get a third party in who is looking to work to strict rules, and that’s very important.

They’re very flexible in that way, and that’s one of the key factors in ForLinux having retained us for this length of time…. We know what to expect and the performance is good.

They’re very good at being proactive rather than reactive. That’s a thing I’m always looking for in any IT company, and it brings a lot of peace of mind.

The five years of partnership pretty much speaks for itself. And it has been improving all the time, so satisfaction levels are still high. The price is surprisingly good as well for the kind of industry they’re in, so that’s another plus point. ”