Image certainly impacts other’s perception of your business. When you offer solutions, do your prospects actively listen?

Your company’s style of communicaton can influence how prospects view your products and services, and can enhance or adversely lend to any long term partnership (alliance) possibilities.

Sales Diplomacy

When your sales department is challenged, overwhelmed or put on the spot, are they thoughtful and diplomatic in their interactions? Do they respond in a professional manner, even when clearly outside their comfort zone? How well they communicate directly relates to their close ratios. If they’re talking to a hundred prospects each week and only closing two, is that acceptable? Could be - percentages need to be measured against your Return On Investment (ROI).

Professional Image Impacts Sales

How prospects read your company impacts their perception of your credibility, and ability to deliver solutions. Your sales department needs to know when and how to use diplomacy, when and how to be tactful and they need to understand the concept of credibility.

Your image as a company - to be perceived as professional, should be addressed in your business plan, measured and tweaked frequently.

 If you’re the owner or CEO of your organization, or possibly an Operations Manager, how do you transition from good to great in terms of implementing planned actions that add value to your organization - moving forward to capture the opportunities of tomorrow?

Ingredients for creating a strategic framework

Some essential ingredients will be innovation, persuasiveness and a thirst for strategic change. You have to balance existing operations against the key attributes of your organization’s strategic thinkers (including yours). You have to encourage innovation and risk taking. I’ve always heard that if you want to be big, you have to think big. The same applies in transitioning from being buried in your ongoing activities, to being proactive - becoming a champion for strategic change.

What happens when you start thinking strategically as an organization?

• You begin to understand the needs and expectations of your customers
• Your internal departments rise  to greater readiness and competitiveness
• You anticipate and innovate strategies to link vision to core capabilities
• You recognize opportunities to influence and create alliances
• You develop persuasive skills

For example:

One of the key themes in today’s market is the “Green” economy.

Would tapping into “Green” be strategically sound? Is there a fit for your organization? Be proactive - make business connections to identify lucrative new ideas and markets within this emerging sector. Learn how other businesses in your industry are capitalizing on success in the green economy.

Have you tapped into your local community?

In Metro Saint Louis, every month hundreds of entrepreneurs take on the risk of starting new businesses - everything from cleaning services to concrete manufacturers. Many of them will need the services you sell, but will they buy from you? Not if you don’t have a strategic marketing plan to offer solutions that reach up, down and across your organization.

Memory leakage can cause serious problems

While most memory leakage is quite small and doesn’t present any serious problem in and of itself, the accumulated effect of running programs for hours on end can compound problems, sometimes leading to disastrous results.

So what is memory leakage, exactly, and how can we resolve it?

My original understanding was that certain programs, when closed, did not release their allotted space in memory - thus reducing the amount of memory available to other problems. Memory leakage is so much more complex than that. A slight bug in one program might interact with some other program causing increased allocations of memory until some program crashes (not necessarily the program with the leak). As a consumer, how would you know where to begin to isolate the cause? I’m not a developer, as I suspect most of us aren’t. Debugging code is best suited for the programmer geeks. I started my quest for answers with searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia

In computer science, a memory leak is a particular type of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program where the program fails to release memory when no longer needed.

From Google - over 3.4 million results

From Bing - over 8.1 million results

From Yahoo - over 10.6 million results

I don’t really have time to search through 22 million results, so I’ll highlight a few results here.  

Some contributing causes of serious memory leaks

Leaks inside the operating system itself

Leaks in system critical drivers

Leaks in embedded devices

Leaks in programming languages

Leaks where programs are able to request memory that hasn’t been released, even when the program terminates

Memory Managers

Most memory managers can recover memory that has become unreachable (if it’s unreachable it retains no value), but they normally cannot free memory that remains reachable. And it’s worth noting that there are levels of reach ability - with strong or weak references. Add to that, every system has a finite amount of memory anyway, so if a memory leak is not contained (possibly by a reboot), it will eventually cause problems.

A simple Google search for Memory Management Programs returned over 68 million results. Yipes! A word of caution - many of these programs are outdated and in fact, produce some overhead of their own.

One in particular caught my interest - SpeedUpMyPC by Uniblue. It lets you monitor and control all your PC resources with easy, one click instructions. System settings, internet usage, disk clutter, RAM and CPU are all automatically scanned, cleaned and optimized for peak performance.

If you have a recommended program, please share its strengths and weaknesses with us here.

In today’s competitive global marketplace, it is essential to ensure that your customers can see you at any time, day or night. Even short outages impact your business. In the past couple of months, I’ve followed a number of tragic stories on web hosting forums where literally hundreds of sites were compromised and data lost, some forever. Is uptime important to your business? It’s critical to ours. We’ve recently added an icon to our home page reflecting our uptime stats dating back to 2005 - verifying our services have averaged over 99.9% uptime!

About Monitoring Services

System monitoring services provide everything from simple to very advanced server, network and website monitoring and reporting services with a fast, effective and automated method for checking a variety of services. Whether you are monitoring a single server or hundreds of servers distributed around the world, these packages make it easy to manage your monitoring configuration and view real-time monitoring data.

The number and types of services that monitoring packages track varies, but most offer at least three monitors that are checked in varying intervals (generally one to fifteen minutes).

These services and others should be a part of your disaster recovery and business continuity plan.

Advanced Solutions

If your business depends on your online presence, you need an advanced solution that monitors your entire online infrastructure. Today’s websites are becoming increasingly complex, incorporating dynamic content derived from multiple sources, backend web services, email, chat and other communication mechanisms.

There are lower end packages offered FREE, as well as advanced options that track your entire infrastructure.  Some of the services most commercial packages track are HTTP and HTTPS, POP and Secure POP, IMAP and Secure IMAP, SMTP and Secure SMTP, DNS, FTP, SSH, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server databases, RTSP streaming media, ICMP ping, and arbitrary TCP/IP ports.

Options

The types of options offered are generally shorter intervals between monitoring, the number of monitoring locations, alerts by email, additional monitors, web page content filtering, HTTP password protection monitoring, monthly reports, online statistics, a control panel, DNS monitoring, public statistics, ping monitoring, alert failure limit, custom time zones, error details, web server monitoring, POP3 and SMTP email server monitoring, FTP server monitoring, multiple alert contacts, XML/RSS statistics and a statistics download.

With some you can create user accounts with restricted access. With others you can follow 301 or 302 redirects and monitor the resulting web page.

How far back can monitoring statistics and reports be archived?

Free plans are typically only archived for a few months, but with most packages, detailed statistics can be archived forever.

What about failover?

With many packages, their monitoring infrastructure is architected to withstand failure of any component. If one monitoring node is inaccessible, checks begin immediately from a alternate node and continue until the original node returns to service so that your servers never go unmonitored.

Intelligent Services

Some packages can actually analyze your online presence and intelligently determine the services that need to be monitored. Even with the most basic of online businesses, there can be 15 or more critical services that can impact your business.

What is it you need to know and why?

You need to know the status of your network (network performance) and availability every single minute so you can react immediately to any service disruption. It’ s always better to know first before your clients starting calling with issues. Monitoring packages also help determine hosting company’s compliance with their Service Level Agreements.  (SLA)

False Positives

Are these packages failsafe? False positives have been a problem with some packages, but as global resources become more affordable, confirmation of service outages has become more reliable.

Other uses for monitoring packages

You can extract sales and marketing data about the quality of your infrastructure

Use the same tools to gain more knowledge about the infrastructure of your competitors.

Use as evidence with suppliers of your infrastructure.

As a manager

As a manager you may already have tools for monitoring your infrastructure from the inside, but these packages give insight to the end-user experience. You’ll not only be able to properly analyze the availability of your company’s services and estimate lost revenue, but you’ll also have the information you need to make demands on external network and service providers if they’re not living up to your expectations, or their SLAs.

What are some the packages available?

1. NPG
2. Panopta
3. Pingdom
4. AlertSite
5. Internet Uptime Monitor
6. Hyperspin
7. Site Uptime
8. Alertra
9. Uptime Auditor

It seems this question keeps popping up on forums across the Internet. Maybe this helps …

A virtual private server (VPS) separates you from other customers on a physical web server, running on a copy of its own operating system, but it shares CPU and RAM resources of the physical web server with other VPSs running on that server.

A dedicated server, on the other hand, is a physical web server leased and controlled by the end client, without sharing physical CPU and RAM resources with other sites. Its very much like owning your own server, without the huge capital asset investment.

Most hosts offer a mix of unmanaged versus managed services for dedicated servers. Unmanaged plans typically offer the basics - the hardware, operating system, control panel and Internet connection.

In a VPS, a single physical server is partitioned so that it appears as multiple servers. The physical server boots normally, then runs a program to boot each VPS within a virtualization environment.

With a dedicated server, you have more flexibility and control. Dedicated servers have historically been the server of choice for complex business or high end eCommerce sites, but have recently become very popular substitutes for VPS servers and less complex solutions.

The answer I think is neither, although I recently read through a ton of replies to a thread on an Internet forum that focused largely on one versus the other.  IMO, web hosting sites (and all sites, really) need to be functional, meaning they have to first capture your attention, and then provide real value. If you found their site via a keyword search, does their site adequately address solutions to your unique requirements?

Business Class Solutions versus Old School Solutions

Hosting sites are expected to answer basic questions and offer related packages, but how many venture beyond “Old School” to offer hands-on solutions? Visit a dozen sites and tell me what differences you see in real solutions - that address today’s market. This is what separates Hostirian from the crowd. We focus on Business Class Solutions - based on years of experience formulating solutions for companies just like yours. We just launched two new Shared Web Hosting Plans that absolutely rock. Plus we’re here 24/7/365 offering hands-on support from resolving simple email password resets to consulting on disaster recovery - offering a blanket of hosting security so you can do what you do best - drive your business successfully.

I recently read through a thread (about network outages) on WHT that contained 177 pages of posts, 2644 replies and attracted 152,980 views. It was a very powerful thread about the destruction and ensuing consequences of a few very popular web hosting providers. The hacker himself posted in the thread (although his post was deleted rather quickly), claiming it was the provider’s lax security in the assignment of passwords that enabled the attack.  This reinforces a question I routinely pose on this blog.

Is YOUR mission critical data backed up and protected?

A quick Google search for remote backup software returned 6,810,000 results. I’d say that’s significant.

I think everyone agrees that mission critical data needs to be backed up, but how is debatable. In the hundreds of businesses I’ve serviced over the years, most in-house IT departments used DAT tapes. Very few actually physically removed those tapes from their premises every day. Even fewer remotely backed up their data. So maybe the better question to ask would be, “To what degree is your mission critical data backed up and protected?”

As an ex-RMA Manager (for a local networking firm), I witnessed quite a few defective DAT drives doing hard time on my shelves. I’ve also seen my share of managers scrambling to recover lost data following “unscheduled events” like virus contamination or hacks. Do you think it can’t happen to you? Keeping your fingers crossed isn’t the wisest strategy to ensure your business’s continued success.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are Important

I always recommend incorporating comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans, then periodically reviewing their effectiveness. One part of that plan should be remote offsite backups. Very often incorporating a remote backup is as easy as downloading a software client onto your network server or personal computer. Many have setup wizards to walk you through the steps of connecting to the backup server, setting up your backup sets, creating a backup schedule and setting a secret encryption key. Typically, backup sets can be configured to run in a variety of ways - backing up data files at the end of the week or your My Documents folder multiple times per day.

Remote backups traveling across the Internet need to be encrypted so that you and only you have the ability to decrypt your data. I recommend programs that use DES, Triple-DES, Blowfish or Twofish algorithms for encryption.

Measuring the success of the data transfer is important. Look for programs with email notification of successful backups or backups with warnings (with log files attached).

Once your data is remotely backed up

Ok, you’ve backed up your data, but now have a need for one file, or an entire volume of data from two months ago. Is this possible? Simply answered - Yes. There are programs that allow instant access to any version of your data files, from the initial backup to the last incremental backup and EVERY version in between.

Locking down clients

Locking down clients simply refers to implementing procedures to protect critical backup sets from being accidentally changed or deleted, while flexible enough for administers to view and change those settings that control the level of usage each client is offered.

When to backup?

Most organizations schedule backups in the evening, during lulls in their business operations. Some programs allow you to run in silent modes (in the background) without displaying any Windows or Task Bar icons - allowing you to run backups throughout the day.

What if my backup gets interrupted?

Let’s say you start a backup and you lose power. Will the remote server retain the ongoing transfer, or bite the bullet? Features like event managers allow you to resume interrupted backups.

Does remote backup software offer file filters?

Most do - file filters allow you to include or exclude files from the backup selection, mostly via file extensions.

Just the tip of the iceberg

There are so many things that can and do go wrong in business every day. One thing is for sure. If you have hardware, particularly IT hardware, it will go down sooner or later. Power supplies fail, memory modules flake out, hard drives crash, DAT drives melt down - stuff happens. Some issues can be resolved in minutes or hours, but others may take days or weeks.

Backing up your mission critical data is an integral ingredient to averting disaster, but just the tip of the iceberg, in developing and managing a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan that will ensure your business’s continued success. Step back and ask yourself, “What if?” What if a disgruntled employee, possibly a sys admin, corrupted your main servers, then disappeared? What if your building burnt to the ground? What if that DAT drive refuses to release last night’s tape - holding it hostage with a strangle hold on its recording heads? What if? What if?

Dedicated Servers Promotion - While They Last

Limited Quantities Ready to Roll Out

Offer One

• Dual Intel® Xeon ^TM CPU 2.80GHz (4 Core)
• 1GB RAM
• 80GB SATA Drive
• 1 IP
• 2000GB Monthly Data Transfer
• CentOS 5
• $129.95/Month

Offer Two

• Dual Intel® Xeon ^TM CPU 2.80GHz (4 Core)
• 2GB RAM
• 80GB SATA Drive
• 1 IP
• 2000GB Monthly Data Transfer
• CentOS 5
• $179.00/Month

Options (ADD/Month)

• Windows 2003 or 2008 standard $25.00
• 10GB Managed Backups $25.00
• Patch Management and Monitoring $25.00
• Advanced Monitoring $25.00
• Vulnerability Scanning and Reporting (as low as) $10.00

Hostirian (http://www.hostirian.com) is a leading web hosting and colocation provider in the Saint Louis area. By focusing only on web hosting and colocation, Hostirian is able to provide a level of customer support and consultation that remains unmatched by other providers and at a cost substantially less than national web hosting companies. Hostirian offers shared and fully managed web hosting services, and colocation to businesses operating mission critical systems. Hostirian also offers web hosting services to a growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver application services to their customers over the Internet. Hostirian also offers related value-added services, such as fully managed firewall services, and consulting services (including capacity and migration planning).

▓ Hostirian (314) 216-7148   Business Class Solutions
Colocation - Dedicated Servers - Shared Web Hosting
▓ 24-7-365 NOC Tech Support steve.bloemer@rcig.net

Does your web host provider offer personal tours of their datacenter(s)?

Do they feature online tours? See for example TOURS.

How long have they been in business?

Are they members of the BBB?

What level of security do they employ?

What is their uptime?

Do they offer a Service Level Agreement?

What are their Terms of Service?

Do they have a money back guarantee?

Do they offer managed services?

Are their technicians certified?

Are they a one-stop-shop?

Do they offer control panels, and which ones?

Do they offer both Windows and Linux solutions?

Do they charge setup fees?

Do they have failover bandwidth?

Do they offer BGP bandwidth?

Do they offer cross-connects?

Do they offer live chat support?

Do they offer 24/7 phone support?

Do they offer live event monitoring?

Do they offer disaster recovery plans?

Are their plans scalable?

Will they customize a plan for you?

Will they provide references?

I’m sure there are many many more questions you may think of, but these are a great place to start. Finding the right provider with whom to entrust your data requires some forethought and research. Don’t over think the entire process. Search the Internet for positive / negative reviews, narrow down your list and then call each prospective vendor. 

Gauge which provider best fits your business model. How important and relevant are each of the above? Assign a value to each, total the numbers and compare vendors. Often, the correct match jumps of the page and hits you square in the forehead. Often the offer seems too good to be real - for instance, an offer of unlimited bandwidth on a VPS. That’s just not realistic given the cost of bandwidth to the vendor. 

I would recommend assigning a heavier weight to a disaster recovery plan. And also to their technical expertise, as it directly relates to the level of service you can expect to receive from them. 

You’d be amazed how many hosts do NOT offer phone support, or only during business hours. Uptime can be verified to some extent as there are sites that monitor hosts, but those do not necessarily monitor every router - so the numbers can be misleading. If your prospective host publicly lists anything less than 99.9% uptime, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Downtime can cost thousands in lost revenue and disgruntled clients. 

Do you recognize their references? Are those references credible? 

Even if your application doesn’t fit a plan you see featured on their website, call and ask them if they’ll customize a plan for you. You may be pleasantly surprised. 

You are certainly welcome to call or email me. I’m always here to help.
__________________
▓ Hostirian (314) 216-7148
Premier Colocation - Dedicated Servers
▓ 24-7-365 NOC Tech Support steve.bloemer@rcig.net u d o solid download

To your success

- Steve

Why Host With Us?

Hostirian’s ‘Business Class’ shared web hosting plans provide fuel to drive today’s market, allowing you to stretch your investment, all while offering extended features NOT found elsewhere at comparable pricing. Our ‘Business Class’ solutions span the entire scope of hosting  from Dedicated Servers, Colocation, Disaster Recovery, Managed Services and Managed Exchange to Domain Name Services.

Emerging Technology Solutions

Our Business Class shared web hosting plans offer a full suite of features including dynamic support, email, FTP and Web/FTP statistics, with an easy to use Plesk control panel capable of running on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Business Class Solutions that give you a Competitive Edge

As you look to an online presence to supplement your operations, our packages enable you to focus on what you do best - drive your business. We’ve partnered with hundreds of businesses just like yours, giving them the competitive edge to succeed in their market.

About Hostirian:

HOSTIRIAN, a division of River City Internet Group (RCIG) was founded to meet the needs of regional businesses seeking a local web hosting partner capable of providing state of the art and cost effective hosting facilities, superb customer service and assistance in marketing and managing their business’s web presence. Hostirian offers shared web hosting services and managed web hosting services to businesses operating mission critical, multi-functional Web sites. In addition we offer Web hosting services to the rapidly growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver their application services to their customers over the Internet. We also offer related value-added services, such as firewall management, stress testing and consulting services including capacity and migration planning. Our services give the customer the option to use their own hardware and software or we can provide the hardware, software, network technology, and systems management necessary to offer our customers comprehensive outsourced Web site and application hosting solutions.