Blog Archives | Page 55 of 60

Christopher Wray

Getting the most out of virtualisation & dedicated servers

August 26, 2008

Thinking of a new dedicated server? Have you thought about virtualisation? Virtualisation is allowing companies to maximise server, storage and power resources. Instead of running each different application on a different set of server hardware, why not run mulitple operating systems on one machine.

RSAWeb is helping customers to maximise dedicated servers. Instead of purchasing 2-3 servers for a production / development setup, why not virtualise and use one server to do the job of many. The latest Dell XHD server from RSAWeb is extremely powerful, with 8 CPU cores and up to 32GB RAM. This can support multiple virtual machines. For example, a server with 8GB RAM allows you to run a production frontend server on 2 cores and 2GB RAM, another database server with 4GB RAM and the balance can be split amongst smaller development servers. All on 1 set of hardware!

At the same time, you will need to make sure you arent overutilising your resources, however Virtualisation has a great benefit that should you need to scale this out at a future date as your requirements grow, you can easily migrate one of the virtual servers to another physical server also running Citrix Xen (RSAWeb’s virutalisation standard) – this allows for easy flexibily, all without any reinstalling or changing of settings on the server, amazing!

Use your server in a flexible manner and cut your costs whilst also going GREEN! Using the latest AMD and Intel processors and DDR2 RAM you use less power, less cooling and benefit the environment at the same time.

Christopher Wray

The Broadband Olympics

August 21, 2008

With so many broadband products competing for your attention, it’s not easy to spot a champion. Who’s going to bring home the gold?

Before we can award any medals, lets look at which events our broadband olympians compete in. This is important because contrary to what some people might assume – when it comes to broadband internet, one size DOES NOT FIT ALL. Different users have different needs.

As a good starting point we’ve chosen the following events: ‘Performance’, ‘Mobility’, ‘Value for money at home’ & ‘Value for money at work’.

Lets see how they performed:

1) Performance
Who won the gold?: Ultra DSL
– Ultra DSL Tackles demanding internet needs head on: Voice over IP (VoIP) services like skype, online gaming & video streaming.

2) Mobility

Who won the gold?: HSDPA
– HSDPA provides maximum wireless broadband coverage across the Vodacom cellular network. A winner for the user who’s always on the go.

3) Value for money at home

Who won the gold?: iBurst
– iBurst is a reliable and affordable product for home users who don’t need anything fancy. Great entry-level packages.

4) Value for money at work

Who won the gold?: Business DSL Unlimited
– Business DSL Unlimited delivers high performance broadband with no bandwidth limits. The ideal solution for SME’s with high internet usage.

Not sure about which event your broadband solution should be competing in? Not to worry. Our broadband consultants are on standby to coach you through the process.

To speak to one of our consultants call: 0861 RSAWEB

Christopher Wray

Beijing Olympics begin

August 08, 2008

The number 8 is extremely lucky in china, and it is no coincidence that the Beijing Olympics start on the 08/08/08. In keeping with this 08 theme, a group of industrious Chinese bloggers at 8:08am this morning released a twitter campaign named #080808 to tag all Olympic news from around the globe. All you have to do is tag any social media post with the #080808 tag and you can join in the fun. Take a look at this mashup one of Google China’s developers hacked together to bring all of the tagged technologies together. Even more amazing is that he developed the mashup in only 6 hours…

Currently if you search for #080808, you can see a new #080808 tweet coming up every 0.5 seconds!

Update: Google has just launched a Olympic landing page that includes a map of medals, Youtube video highlights and news headlines.

Christopher Wray

Back Up a Linux Web Server

August 07, 2008

So you have a Linux Dedicated Server and your apps are working like a dream, all good right? Well good for now, until you by mistake overwrite your apache.conf!

Backups are essential and we have a number of solutions to help you backup your servers. The easiest is to backup your server to our NAS backup facility using some common linux commands. Here is a good tutorial on how to Back Up a Linux Web Server.

Christopher Wray

Zimbra releases Desktop Client

July 24, 2008

Today Zimbra, RSAWEB’s email service of choice, released version 3 of its desktop email client. Designed to compete with Outlook, Thunderbird and Mac Mail the software allows users to sync their desktop with their Zimbra mailbox for offline access. The product promises the robust features of Outlook, which are lacking in Outlook Express and Thunderbird. Users can access Zimbra accounts, or any Pop/IMAP supported email boxes. Zimbra Desktop also includes a calendar, contact list and other useful features.

Zimbra also received the backing of Michael Arrington from the well known tech blog Techcrunch, here is what he had to say:

I like the ability to tag items, collapse conversations, and perform web and local searches via the search bar in the top right corner of the app. If I wasn’t all Mac across the board to keep things synced properly, I’d use Zimbra permanently.

Get Zimbra Desktop here, and if you are not already using Zimbra, take a look on our website.

RSAWEB is an authorised Zimbra Hosting Partner.

Christopher Wray

When You Have a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail

July 07, 2008

Today, Mark Cuban blogged about the old saying, “When You Have a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail“. Too often in todays world we try to make the internet a solution to everything, just because we as technologists understand it, can control it, and have access to it.

While I am definitely an advocate for more internet proliferation and believe that Africa still desperately needs more of it, it’s use and application doesn’t always make it the silver bullet to all of our productivity and business problems. As an Internet Service Provider we see ourselves as “enablers”, rather than “fixers”, more like a hammer manufacturer rather than the one wielding the hammer. Our clients use our Data Centre’s, our broadband and our other services in order to deliver their own solutions or to solve a business need.

Today, in our Cape Town office we installed a whiteboard in our sales team area in order to track, communicate and monitor the progress of our sales team. We could have used an online system or built a system ourselves, but the R 950 whiteboard just does the job better than anything else!

Dont get me wrong, Facebook is cool and I am all for social bookmarking and online collaboration but how, when and for what tasks you use the internet will ultimately define you and your overall success.

We as service providers are going to keep enabling! How will you be using what we provide?

Christopher Wray

ADSL upload speed upgraded to 512k confirmed

June 25, 2008

It has been confirmed, Telkom has increased the ADSL Broadband upload speeds. We have confirmed that one of our 4MB testing lines has been upgraded to 512k.

Upload speeds for all 3 line types have been adjusted. All 384k lines will be upgraded to 128k upload (from 64k), all 512k lines will be upgraded to 256k from 192k.

This is great news as more data calls will be able to be pushed over a single DSL line. This affects services like VoIP and sending of large emails and documents from an office will also now be faster than before.

Christopher Wray

New 30GB Fibre DSL

June 20, 2008

Due to popular customer demand, we’ve decided to include a 30GB Business DSL Fibre package to our Business DSL offering. Geared to fill the gap between the 10 and 50GB options, the new 30GB option is available to you as of today!

Since the inclusion of our new Capped Business DSL range, we’ve had great feedback from customers who’ve enjoyed enhanced performance & throughput, with speed tests coming in just short of the maximum 4MB/s maximum download speed.

International ping times are also vastly improved with the fibre option (300ms) in comparison to the traditional satellite option (750ms), enabling faster international browsing, quicker VPN’s and improved VoIP service speeds.

Christopher Wray

4 Servers for the price of 1

June 17, 2008

How do we achieve this? – by using Virtualization technology: Virtualization in the context of server hosting, is the practice of creating multiple ‘virtual’ servers using one single physical server. This is done in such a way, that the Virtual Servers behave and appear as if they were separate physical servers. Each Virtual Server can have it’s own Operating System installed that can be rebooted independently.

This is done using a software virtual machine monitor, such as ‘Xen’, which acts as the primary application layer, allowing another layer of multiple guest operating systems to be installed on each virtual server.

In short, Virtualization gives you the luxury of multiple Operating Systems, without the cost of extra hardware.

RSAWEB’s Dedicated Server packages all come with a Virtualization option at no extra charge, allowing clients to install their own choice of 4 different Operating Systems. Virtualization works with both Windows and Linux, allowing you the ability to run them both on one server.

Need more info? speak to one of our account managers on 0861 RSAWEB.

Christopher Wray

ADSL upload speed increase in June

May 29, 2008

We previously covered the proposed Telkom ADSL upload speed increase trial in our post in February, news posted today confirms that the ADSL line speed on the 4 Mb/s ADSL service will be increased to an upload speed of 512 kbps from the end of June. This is a marginal increase from the current 384 kbps, but will allow for better throughput for 2 way services like VOIP and ADSL VPN.

So, using a VOIP example:

If you use the G729a VOIP codec (40kbps per voice channel) you will be able to have 12 simultaneous voice channels, previously you could only engage 9 channels safely with an upload speed of 384 kbps. So for no extra cost you will now get an extra 3!

ADSL 4Mbps service = 384Kbps upload. (Current)
to
ADSL 4Mbps service = 512Kbps upload. (end June)