VPS Blocks Cloud Server Blog

Interview at websiteplanet.com

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 00:04:08 GMT

Our Technical Director has been interviewed about VPSBlocks services and published at: https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/vpsblocks-interview/

We invite anyone interested in our services for VPS and Cloud PaaS hosting to read it.

A Beginner's Guide to VPS Technology

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 04:11:51 GMT

A Beginner’s Guide to VPS

Despite the increasing number of businesses now looking at VPS to boost their business performance, the most commonly asked questions related to VPS are still “What is VPS?” “Where can I find cheap windows VPS?” “How to use a VPS for my business?”.

All the answers lie in this article. In general, VPS, the goldilocks of the three main types of hosting options offers users full control and customisation options of a dedicated server without the exorbitant cost.

One of its unique features that makes it the favourite option to businesses is its flexibility where the resources can be upgraded or downgraded within minutes.

What is VPS hosting?

A Virtual Private Server is a physical server where several virtual compartments are divided. Within each of the virtual compartment is its own operating system, resources allocation and storage which makes its function similar to dedicated server.

Advantages of VPS

It isn’t hard to understand why VPS hosting has exploded in popularity over the past years in the hosting industry. Simply put, VPS hosting has contributed significantly to the success of many small to medium size businesses.

And here’s why.

As the website runs on its own set of resources from dedicated RAM, bandwidth allocation and CPU, you can expect the website’s performance to be impressive. A more effective performance means higher accessibility and reach to the relevant market audience.

Let’s look at the benefits of VPS in detail to know how you can take the fullest advantage of it.

Reliability

Unlike shared hosting where your website’s uptime and performance is wholly dependent on the other websites on the same server, VPS servers are completely isolated from one another ensuring optimal uptime of websites and applications.

The question to ask yourself is whether you are willing to put your business at stake by taking on the risks of collapsed or corrupted websites in a shared hosting environment.

Full control of server

Do you know that VPS hosting provides root access to the business owner? With such access, you are able to control the VPS environment like an administrator and create a system that would suit your business purpose.

You are no longer limited to performing only a few basic tasks or having to be subjected by the security limitations set by the shared web host. From customising software, running multiple operating systems, hosting various websites to third-party software applications, you can bypass the limitations by tweaking and creating in accordance with your needs.

PCI qualified

If you want to start accepting credit cards for your online store, you must pass the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test by following the PCI Data Security Standard.

This PCI standard is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express to protect against data theft and other kinds of fraud. It also helps ensure that the data by online merchants is processed, stored and transmitted in a secured manner.

Credit card payment is the preferred payment for consumers nowadays due to convenience. As such, by passing the PCI test, you will likely see an improvement of business performance on the online platform. Websites that run in VPS are more likely to pass the PCI test.

Scalable resources

For startup businesses that set up website hoping that it would grow into something large in the near future, the unique feature of VPS allowing resources to be scaled up or down without downtime or technical issues is something that shared hosting cannot provide.

When you expect a large influx of visitors on a certain period, you can simply notify the VPS service provider to upgrade your RAM which can be done within the click of a button. This feature ensures that there is no waste of resources and ultimately, money.

7 Signs that you need to upgrade to a VPS

There may come a time when you question whether VPS is required for your business. If you encounter any of the following scenarios, then it is a clear sign that you need to upgrade to VPS.

Your website takes a long time to load

If your website takes longer than 5 seconds to load, then it is considered slow. There are many reasons contributing to the slow loading time. One of these include reaching your shared hosting limits or when there is an overload of content and media on the website.

If you want your website to be attractive and convincing, then it must contain a lot of media content such as background videos, giant product images, short product or feature videos, large responsive hero image, or other enticing visual content.

Slow loading speed will result in visitors abandoning the website and go for an alternative website in the search engine results which can attract them visually.

If you don’t want your visitors to become distracted due to a slow loading time, then you should upgrade to a VPS so that your website can load within seconds or milliseconds. Fast loading page is able to capture the attention of the visitors and eventually turn them into customers.

You run an online store

When you run an online store, you will most definitely have credit card transactions on your website. When you process payments on your website store, you will need a PCI compliance certificate.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The PIC test protects credit card users against data theft in the course of passing the data to the online merchants. It seeks to ensure that the data is processed, stored and transmitted in a secured manner.

Most websites that subscribed to shared hosting plans fail the test due to high security risks. On the other hand, thanks to the well established security of VPS, it is highly likely that your VPS website will tick the boxes as long as it is configured correctly. These include maintaining a firewall configuration, developing and maintaining secure systems and applications, testing security systems and processes regularly.

You have a medium to high amount of traffic

Unfortunately, as your website evolves to become more popular, you may run into the trouble of website slowing down as shared hosting just cannot keep up with the traffic volume. This is exactly the reason why you need to allocate extra space to grow.

VPS allows your website to welcome high levels of traffic with the option of upgrading the resources by just the click of a button. Remember, you will need about 50% tolerance in resources when traffic spikes.

You collect data from customers

If your website contains and collects sensitive information, then it is a must to incorporate VPS into your business. Sensitive information is data which must be protected to safeguard the privacy of your business and can include personal information if your customer, financial data, custom requirements, etc.

Securing sensitive data from being stolen is one of the primary ongoing battles even for big businesses nowadays. Data protection is extremely weak when using shared hosting due to shared use of an IP address. This means that if your neighbouring website is attacked, then you are at very high risk of being attacked by the hacker too.

Using a VPS, you will receive your own dedicated IP address. A VPS is also highly secured if you choose the right VPS service provider. A good VPS service provider should firewall out any unwanted traffic at the hardware level before it even reaches your VPS.

You encounter server errors

For every second of your website down, you are losing potential customers and business. Server errors normally happen when your servers can’t fulfill the web requests due to limited memory in your hosting plan. If your website contains video or high quality graphics then it does not take long to max out the resources allocated to your website.

You need custom software or application

To make the website sophisticated enough to help sell the products or services, business owners usually adopt unique software or application. As multiple websites share the server in a shared hosting plan, it is usually unable to deliver support for loading the features swiftly.

Customisation options such as podcasts, radio stations, interactive application, and so on, require a more dedicated VPS to make it work.

You want to improve SEO ranking

What is the point of having a website if it is not attracting revenue for your business? SEO is not only about the search engine results but also factors in the general user experience and usability of a website. Search engine result is the most trusted tool by the customers, and having a presence in the top positions increases the website’s trust and ultimately drives increased site traffic.

If you are using shared hosting, you are sharing the same IP with other sites and if your neighbouring websites are affected by bad ranking, it may affect your SEO ranking too.

You need private backups

On top of the uses above, it is also cheaper to use cloud-based storage. Apart from the multiple uses of VPS, it is a perfect place for users to use up the leftover space for free file storage. Many reliable and well established VPS providers also provide managed server backups or offsite server backups.

What to look for in a VPS package?

For beginners who have a vague understanding of the server technology, VPS is definitely worth exploring as it provides the users with the flexibility and freedom to configure the settings and set up own software. As your business grows, you can scale up your resources accordingly or scale it down during the expected quiet period of your business.

You should definitely look for the important factors when choosing a VPS hosting service.

Unmanaged, semi-managed, or managed VPS

That is the first thing that you should look at when choosing a VPS plan. It all depends on your needs and technical know-how.

Unmanaged VPS is only suitable for a small number of users who are specialised in not only IT but server technology itself. These are typically software developers, application developers or programmers as the unmanaged VPS hosting offers greater flexibility by giving the users more freedom to update and strategise the security.

However, not all IT experts consider it worth getting an unmanaged VPS plan as managing a VPS is time consuming and labour intensive for having to keep up to date when it comes to security and administration.

Thankfully, there is a semi-managed VPS option. A semi managed VPS plan is where the VPS service provider handles all hardware, operating system or basic configuration issues. Website related issues such as internal server errors, slow loading page, or firewall issues at a hardware level are taken care of by the VPS service provider even before it reaches your VPS.

A semi managed VPS plan is ideal for those who are either inexperienced in command line Linux administration or those who prefer to invest their time in the core of the business while maintaining control on the management of their VPS.

Lastly, managed VPS is where the expert sets up and provides support for almost every single server management task. You may ask “What is a VPS server manager going to do for me?”.

They handle all the management tasks almost from A-Z such as software installation, configurations, network issues, troubleshooting, etc. Essentially, you just need to create the hosting account, update your domain dns and take a backseat. This is suitable for business owners who are unskilled in server administration.

Reliability

The best VPS host is reliable at providing a quality VPS plan, and excellent service will contribute greatly to the success of your business. You should expect exceptional server performances with high uptime, well-guarded security, fast server speed in addition to solid customer service.

If you are questioning the reliability of a VPS service provider, just contact them and ask how frequent does the downtime occur and how long does it usually take them to fix it. The answer should be no more than a few hours.

Reputation

If you are lucky to come by a VPS service provider that allows you to customise the resources, i.e. you get to select your operating system and choose your resources (CPU cores, dedicated RAM, SSD Disk, SATA Disk, Bandwidth), then it is more likely than not that the VPS service provider is a reputable one.

Reputable VPS service providers are able to show that they prioritise the needs of the users by allowing resources to be custom made in accordance with the necessity.

Other points to look out for is whether the VPS service provider is able to provide intuitive support service and respond to any issues in an urgent manner. Conduct a simple search on Google which will display all the negative and positive results about the company and check the company reviews on different niche review websites to get the real picture.

Self-healing failover

When the physical computer behind the VPS is running on fails, this unique feature is able to detect it instantly and automatically mount your VPS on another node so that your VPS is back online in the exact condition it was when the failure first occurred.

Effectively, this means that there is no downtime even during the maintenance session by the VPS service provider. The VPS service provider must have invested heavily on top notch technology such as Fast SSD Raid array in order to offer this feature that requires a fast transition. If you happen to come across this feature, take it as an added bonus!

Data Centre

The location of the data centre site selection speaks reliability itself. Remember, a brief shutdown on power can be devastating to hundreds of thousands of users which is why the location of the data centre must be in an area that can handle high speed and high volume data transmission.

An Australian VPS service provider of good repute should have their data centre located in Australia and preferably in an area with reliable telecommunications infrastructure and proximity to suppliers such as big cities like Melbourne or Sydney.

Avoid choosing a VPS service provider that outsources their data centre to another country as the security and technology have a higher risk of being compromised.

Cost

More often than not, the price offered by top rated VPS service providers is around the same range. A basic Aus VPS package cost about $15 to $20 a month that increases as you require more resources or special features.

However, this is not the essential factor to consider when choosing a VPS service provider as the resources are scalable at any point in time. Since a VPS will play a vital role in your company’s performance and online presence, the initial cost will definitely be outweighed by the advantages that it brings in the long run.

Customer support

The importance of good and reliable customer support cannot be overstated. Good technical support is of utmost importance whether or not you have selected unmanaged, semi managed or fully managed VPS package.

Simple questions such as how to use a VPS? How to access my VPS? Can leave beginner scratching their head for the whole day.

Even for those who are experts in server technology, having a reliable and good customer support may save the day especially when certain information is only available at the provider’s end.

Apart from enquiring with the VPS service provider on the responding timeframe and communication methods, you should also enquire on the level of expertise that the technician is equipped with.

One final note is to choose one with local Australian call centre as you definitely do not want to find yourself straining to understand unfamiliar accents or assisted by someone who lacks the technical knowledge.

5 mistakes to avoid when switching to VPS

It is fairly common to see business owners finally giving it a leap of faith to upgrade to the VPS after having lived with the poor quality of services provided by the current web host for months, or worse, years.

When making the move, the recommended process by a free migration services provided by the VPS service provider as it is faster. Immediately after you sign up for the VPS package, the support team will kickstart and handle the rest of the setup process.

Although it may sound fairly straightforward and simple, there are a few mistakes you should avoid when switching to VPS as it can be costly to your business operations.

Look at price instead of value

When choosing a VPS service provider, don’t let the pricing become the sole or the most influencing factor. Expensive plans normally come with a bundle of features, some even though may be justified, are hardly necessary or too sophisticated for your early business stage while some extra cost are just not justified at all.

Likewise, cheap VPS plans may be budget friendly but be aware that you may end up getting a poor customer service or no guaranteed uptime instead of quality service. Time and again, business owners that choose free or cheap VPS plan to save the initial cost ended up sacrificing their business reputation and profit in the long run. Always evaluate your needs and weigh it against the hosting options.

Agree to all the terms and conditions

The terms of service are often too long to read, but it is important to understand what it contains as your business rights depend on them. This is especially true for free or cheap VPS plan as it tends to limit the resource usage.

Another reason to look at the terms and conditions is that different VPS service providers have different consumer payment policies. Some may charge regressively whilst some proportionally, and some does not refund if you decide to terminate the contract halfway through.

Remember how a security breach is still the biggest fear for businesses online? Be sure to read the terms on data security, disclaimer and assurances against security breaches to know the measures that VPS service provider adopt when security related issues arise.

Failure to prioritise page loading speed

Yes, page speed impact your website ranking. A low page load is penalised by the Google search engine and has a direct impact on your ranking. That is exactly why you should prioritise page loading speed when you look for VPS service provider.

Some VPS service providers may promise a lot of sophisticated special features but fail to allocate the most basic dedicated resources resulting in deteriorating load speed.

Request too many domain names

It is common for VPS service providers to offer the option of adding more than one domain. Thanks to the “add-on domains” feature in the cPanel, users can create and host several different domains under one account using the very user-friendly control panel.

While this is definitely advantageous for those who want to operate a few websites without extra charges under different accounts, it is also risky as it means that all websites are controlled by one account only.

If the account is compromised, then all the websites will face security threat. We recommend trimming it down to only one or two websites for security reasons.

Choose VPS provided by a foreign country

It may be the low price or outstanding features that entice you to sign up for a VPS plan offered by VPS service provider from other countries. That will be a decision you wish you had never made. The location of your VPS plays a significant role in the management of your website’s position on the search engine results page.

Put simply, a search made in Australia will give priority to sites located in Australia. The focus is on the IP address of the website as it shows location and relevance of the search. For example, an Australian website that switches to servers located in China is going to suffer from poor search engine rankings back home.

Should you also utilise a Virtual Private Email Server?

Perhaps the primary reason that entices you to switch over to a VPS is that it can increase the performance of your website as well as giving you greater control on the content of the website.

However, do you know that your business’s email can be switched over to the same VPS too?

If you have already decided to purchase a VPS plan, you might as well add the mail server system to your VPS platform since it doesn’t take much to do it and involves just a few extra steps.

Having the mail server and your website running in the same VPS provides an umbrella that does not only protect privacy, but also security. Let’s look more into it in detail.

Privacy

Having your own email server means that all the email correspondence from your company is created in a private business environment making you less vulnerable.

You are able to run your own email server for communication amongst a closed group or adjust it so that it is accessible only from an internal network away from hackers and eavesdroppers. When you choose service like Google, your information can be used by them to generate ads and revenue.

Running your own email infrastructure also makes it significantly harder for other parties to extract the content from your email database. If you depend on email for your business, then you should have a virtual private email server.

Better control

Now that you are in complete control of your email server system, you can blacklist certain countries from sending you emails or tune the sensitivity of your spam filter.

Online security

Compared to those that outsourced their emails to services, running your own email infrastructure provides more security. In the former scenario, you are a potential target if and when the company is attacked, causing business data to be stolen.

Many free email providers also suffered from being hacked, resulting in some accounts being shut down. With your own business domain name, you can invest and tighten on the security.

Branding

Privatising your business email server allows positive brand building. Business owners often commit the mistake of having their business email.gmail.com.

Firstly, having an email address with your business domain is like having a professional online business card. It appears to be more professional when the recipient sees an email from say, support@yourbusinessdomain.com.

Secondly, your business will be identified easier as you are putting your business website out there. That will result in increasing online presence, making potential customers easier to get the information about your products and services.

Stand out from competitors

Your competitors may be using a free email account such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and so on. By using your business domain name email address, you will be one step ahead of them as your clients, associates and prospective customers will see a higher level of professionalism and devotion from your business.

Maximise functionality

By switching your email, contacts, calendars, and so on, to VPS server, you and your employees are able to get instant access to all the vital information that are synchronised. This ensures that your business management platform is constantly updated with the latest feedback and changes.

Backup

If the correspondence in relation to your business consists of large data such as attachments, then having a trustworthy backup is a requirement.

By switching your email to VPS, you are able to enjoy the benefit of backup storage on a periodic basis. Some VPS service providers offer option feature of offsite server backups while some VPS service providers retain at least 5 backups guaranteeing maximum reliability.

When your business is dependent on emails, the last thing you want to encounter is missing emails for an unknown reason, late delivery and receipt of emails, inability to send large attachments, frequent downtime and lack of privacy and confidentiality.

Switch your email to a VPS server now to make sure that your online business is established the right way.

Linux vs Windows VPS – which is better?

The newbies who are looking to switch to VPS are often forced to make a choice on which of the two types of operating systems which are currently dominating the market that they should use.

What is Windows VPS and how does it differ from Linux VPS? Let’s have a look below.

Cost

Linux VPS is a little bit cheaper than Windows VPS since it is an open source platform. In fact, most Linux software and applications are free to use. However, that does not mean that you can’t find cheap Windows VPS in the market.

It is true that users must pay a licensing fee for Windows VPS which is owned by Microsoft. However, at only a few extra dollars a month, you are able to enjoy well established strong core applications and support from the expert.

Performance

Linux VPS is secured with Secure Shell (SSH) which is used to managed VPS with command lines. Due to its straightforward command structure, it is more resource efficient as it does not require the administrator to perform reboots even under high loads of resources.

With Windows VPS, every driver or software update requires a reboot either immediately or automatically later on based on its own internal schedule. Also, Windows VPS comes with Graphical User Interface and a number of default Microsoft applications that take up a lot of VPU power.

Compatibility

Linux VPS pairs well with almost all form of open source software including PHP, Perl, MySQL whereas Windows VPS is tailored to work hand in hand with Windows specific applications which are written in Windows only languages such as .NET or ASP.

Certain applications such as Sharepoint and Exchange are also exclusively available for Windows’ users only.

User friendly

It depends on the level of expertise you have in relation to server technology. Non IT professionals may feel more comfortable using the familiar Windows as it uses Graphic User Interface (GUI).

The downside is that it consumes a lot of memory and resources as well as time to complete a task. Linux VPS, on the other hand, is command line based. It is a relatively straightforward display of information that is necessary without distraction.

For new Linux users, you will be glad to know that GUI is now also available to Linux and it just requires some learning on how to use.

Security

Common threats such as DDoS attacks, malware and data breaches are amongst the common threats. Users of Linux VPS have the flexibility to devise its own security strategy against cyberattacks. This also allows bugs to be fixed swiftly.

On the other hand, Windows VPS sort of takes care of this by providing regular updates to protect against security related errors. This could also mean that there is no need to employ extra staff to keep a lookout against cyber threats.

Server access

Server access is essential for users to have better control over the settings and configuration of their VPS. Linux VPS uses File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for uploading and downloading of files that are commonly used in building a website.

Another server access which is directly available for Linux VPS users only is Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, which is a cryptographic network protocol to operate network services securely over an unsecured network. Windows VPS users can access SSH too by installing PuTTY.

Support

When technical issues arise which are wholly unavoidable in the world of technology, you will want a professional and experienced support team to assist you instantly.

While there is a huge community of professional coders behind the Linux VPS that can give you advice and examine sources codes to fix backdoors, don’t expect them to be available 24/7 on standby at your service as they are usually not paid to do so.

On the contrary, Windows VPS has the upper hand as it is backed by a team of professional technicians that are equipped with the right knowledge to help you anytime.

Generally, Linux VPS is more versatile and cheaper, making it popular amongst small businesses, software developers, IT companies, and so on, whereas big businesses prefer Windows VPS due to its solid and reputable services over the years.

Which Australian VPS hosting provider can I trust?

You should look for a company that is reliable and trustworthy that provides the best VPS package. It is not hard to find out, just Google for actual feedback and reviews for the companies that you have shortlisted and you will soon be able to identify which of the Australian VPS hosting companies actually deliver their promises.

VPSBlocks, a leading Aus VPS service provider, has been one of the leading companies in the VPS Australia market.

As server performance is one of the priorities of VPSBlocks, we have invested heavily in making sure that our users are able to access the server anytime anywhere as long as there is an internet connection.

A unique feature offered by VPSBlocks, called self-healing failovers, gets rid of the server downtime and fix the unexpected lapses efficiently thanks to the clustering technology that uses Fast SSD Raid array.

VPSBlocks is also one of the few VPS service providers that are truly Australian. Both our data centre and call centre are based in Melbourne.

From beginner question like how to access my VPS to the most technical ones, VPSBlocks can sail you through any issues which you may face using VPS in an effective manner that you can understand.

Our VPS users can freely use the server without having to worry about the data storage being outsourced and compromised or receiving slow and confusing advice by a call centre that is based in a foreign country.

One of the best VPS features that VPSBlocks offers is that we allow users to select the resources of their plan ranging from OS, RAM, CPU, storage space, and so on, that fit well with their business.

Our payment plans are flexible with the ability to pay monthly, semi-annually or annually. Our aim is to set up a customisation option that is friendly for businesses of all sizes.

When it comes to business, every second and every cent count. If you have the vision of seeing your business take off, then opting for a VPS should be in your business strategy.

As an experienced hosting provider in the industry, VPSBlocks is ready to lend you a hand and grow alongside your business.

Learn more about our VPS plans here.

How VPS can transform your website and ultimately business

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:43:00 GMT

How VPS can transform your website and ultimately business

Is your website serving its purpose to serve your current customers and to attract a new base of patrons? Are you scratching your head wondering why is your revenue not picking up despite the excellent products or services that your business is offering? In modern times, the question is no longer how much technology can improve the online presence of your business but rather is it possible to even conduct online business without relying on the technology. Virtual Private Server is a key aspect to businesses especially for startup companies or businesses that are looking to make a grand entrance into the market or those who are desirous to improve from their current stagnant condition.

Is your website convincing enough?

If a website is one of your company’s strategy to reach out to your current and future customers, then you should make sure that your business website impresses them by the first click. Judging the quality of a website created for a business purpose can be subjective. However, there are some basic rules that a website should adhere to in order for it to serve its purpose as a convincing tool that turns visitors to become customers.

Accessibility

It is of utmost importance that a website is globally accessible by people from all walks of life including the disabled people. A highly accessible website loads quickly, be viewable in different browsers and operating systems consistently. If you are concerned on the accessibility of your website, you can use a free HTML validation tool to check.

Speed and Bandwidth sensitivity

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information that can be transferred via internet measured in a given time, usually in seconds. A good website has high bandwidth sensitivity that reacts positively with a new connection, page loading, page browsing, app or file download, streaming video content uninterrupted for long periods and daily processing functions despite having high-quality graphics. However, that is not it. You also need to allocate extra space to grow and when traffic spikes which needs about 50% tolerance.

If your website runs some interactive application, then you should make sure that your customer gets good user experience with the shortest response time every time they click on your website.

Design

The element of the design is also very important when judging the overall quality of a website as the design plays a key role in converting visitors to customers. A decent website is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and reinforces the purpose of the website whilst maintaining clarity and simplicity.

One of the examples of a bad website is where there is no synchronization between the audio and visual and also confusion by the visitors due to the poorly organized layout. Remember, a strong visual experience encourages the visitor to scroll down for more.

Content

The website must project strongly its goals and message that it wishes to bring across to the visitor to ensure that the visitor has all the right reason to return. To enhance the experience of the visitor, the methods on how the information is delivered must be considered.

A text rich page is often dull and unappealing to casual visitors. In order to capture the attention of your “future customer”, you should consider at least one of the few examples below in delivering your business’ messages across: -

Background videos

The background videos that play automatically the moment the website is opened serves the purpose of significantly reduce the amount of other content and is also very effective in engaging visitors. Without even the need of having to read a single word on your website, you are making it effortless for your visitor to understand clearly the key points of your products and company

Giant product images

Whether the sales you make are to other businesses or to individual consumers, giant product images help your business to highlight different features of products is a more effective way as it magnifies the benefits of a feature.

These gigantic images are also scan friendly to help generate a more in-depth understanding of the functions of the products through clear images rather than text rich articles. This method aims to optimize the user’s experience especially from different devices such as handphones, tablets, laptops and computers.

Short product or feature videos

Majority of consumers watch online video when researching their desired products and services. A short feature video on your website is a great tool to highlight a specific use of your product and influence the buyer’s decision-making process.

With a short and concise video, the visitor won’t be overwhelmed with too much information whilst being able to grasp your message. A strong example would be a video that shows a “before and after” comparison if you are selling skincare products, interior design services, furniture etc.

Large responsive hero images

Another method that quickly grabs the user’s attention is a large hero image that is often placed as a centerpiece in the background with text and other content overlapped on top. If your website is to promote or sell a product or service, the hero image should show off its benefits.

A clear example would be a screenshot on a compatible device that gives the buyer a taste by showing what to expect from your products or service. Hero images should render quickly due to its critical function. Unfortunately, many websites that feature a hero image suffer from Hero Image Delay with other widgets being loaded first and hero image last.

The reason behind this is that a high-quality image such as hero image consumes a lot of bandwidth while loading causing the loading time to increase. When that happens, hero image is literally useless.

Interactivity

Technologies are usually incorporated into a website to augment the purpose of the site and keep the user interested as well as allowing the users to contribute by giving their feedback.

This is especially useful as a marketing tool that provides you with the golden information about your target demographic. If you don’t want your website to end up like a book, then make it more than just informational. Remember, users are more likely to return if they find it engaging.

Ranging from social media (Facebook, Twitter etc), feedback and ratings, forums, FAQs, survey, videos, quizzes, chat rooms to broadcasting are just a few examples. However, bear in mind that if you have very limited resources, these extra plugins such as Facebook social plugins, Twitter feed widgets or sharing tools can take a toll on your webpage as it calls out to multiple different servers.

Security

Security plays a big role for websites especially those that collect data from the users. A properly secured website enables the users to visit with ease of mind knowing that whatever information that they are imparting is secured and for the intended purposes only.

Security has a huge impact on the design of the website due to the need to integrate the website with digital activity such as email marketing, social media and e-commerce activities. As such, a well-secured website normally requires a certain minimum amount of bandwidth for the integration.

Notwithstanding that data breach is a major PR and financial disaster that cause businesses to often invest heavily to prevent and combat this problem, there are circumstances where the website is not the primary source of attack but due to the neighbours i.e. another website on the same server or the poor security quality provided by the web host that cause the website to be attacked.

What role does VPS play?

Firstly, what is VPS?

VPS, which means Virtual Private Server is a virtualized server with its own operating system and allocated server resources within a larger server. A server is a powerful machine that stores a website’s data and files so that when someone googles your domain name on their web browser, your website shows up on the search result page.

VPS uses virtualization technology to divide the physical server into several smaller slices of virtual ones with their own operating system, RAM, CPU resources and dedicated storage. In effect, VPS totally transform the online business realms by allowing the user to enjoy the server and control their own website in an unprecedented manner.

How can your business benefit from VPS?

Speed performance

The slow loading speed of a website is usually the primary culprit that turns away most visitors.

Do you know that if your website takes more than 5 seconds to load, more than half the visitors will just abandon your website and go for the next available website, which could easily turn out to be your competitor’s?

The reasoning behind this is that visitors become distracted when made to wait for a page to load. So if your website loads within seconds or even milliseconds after a click, it is able to hold the attention and eventually help you to sell your products and services.

You may wonder what is the VPS position in this? VPS is especially important for websites who have background videos, giant product images, short product or feature videos, large responsive hero image or other enticing content.

For those websites, VPS should already be utilized for their website from day one to increase the connection speed and loading page for better visitor’s experience.

Security

A VPS protects the data and files of the business by utilizing a more reliable and security-enhanced infrastructure. In essence, a hypervisor is a computer software that is responsible for managing each and every individual VPS.

As it is the one that controls the communication between VPS and the hardware in the data center, it is configured to make sure only that specific VPS’s controller, i.e. the VPS user is able to write to and read from it. At the end of the day, every data from the VPS user is kept in a separate “compartment” it away from other VPS and secure.

Due to the importance of hypervisor in the entire VPS infrastructure, the VPS service providers normally invest heavily to protect it and impose not only tight control on the access of the hypervisor but also build layers and layers of security including firewalls.

A VPS plan from a reputable VPS service provider would include built-in firewall protection and secured remote access to assist in preventing unauthorized users from getting into the network. If you have selected for a managed VPS package, the health of your network can be guaranteed as the VPS manager will keep an eye out on your behalf and ensure that the server is current with the latest updates.

For VPS users, they also have the freedom to impose many precautionary layers to defend their websites from being threatened such as conducting regular housekeeping, i.e. running only the software that is necessary and removing those that are not, configuring the firewall to limit access to only the vital services and using secure passwords for user accounts.

Data protection

This aspect is essential for businesses that collect data from their customers online. VPS prevents data loss with automatic data backups and allows you to easily retrieve accidentally deleted files and restore the latest version of your work.

If online retail is an aspect of your business, then you are bound to receive credit card as one of the payment methods. Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test is the test behind every website that receives payment via credit card.

The PCI Data Security Standard is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express with the main aim of protecting the credit card users against data theft and other kinds of fraud as well as making sure that all data that is passed to the online merchants are processed, stored and transmitted in a secure manner. Due to the well-established security feature of VPS, it is highly likely that your website will pass the PCI test if you have opted for VPS.

Remote access

Your employees can work virtually anywhere, anytime as long as they have internet access. VPS can accommodate access to email, network data, website administer and even business applications from any computer.

With one central place to keep all the information that is vital to your business, you can better manage the information. It is also more accessible for the staff that travels frequently to locate and share information.

For example, the sales representatives can provide the team with the immediate feedback from the client after a pitch meeting so that the company can quickly adjust the products or services or adopt a new business strategy to turn the potential customers into long term loyal customers. With that in mind, travelling allowance, office space and commuting time can be saved.

Upgrade image

VPS can help you to present a more professional impression to your customers as it enables you to maintain not just one but multiple websites, create newsletters and exploit the sophisticated tools and software to the advantage of your business.

Cut cost on resources

This is one of the top reasons enticing business owners to choose VPS.

Save cost on upgrade

Buying new computers for businesses has always been an expensive hassle. Business owners spend tens of thousands every year to maintain the computers or to get a new one with more advanced technology.

When your computer lags, there are also soft costs such as your employee being unable to work efficiently due to their computer being slow or faulty. With VPS, your older computers or laptops may be given a new lease of life by off-loading the files and data directly onto the server which makes the current computers gain back its original fast speed and efficiency.

Save cost on hardware

What makes VPS so cost-effective is that it is based upon software that can be conveniently configured to perform many types of tasks. As a result, you will not need to buy additional hardware whenever new demands arise or when you decide to diversify your business.

Save cost on repair and maintenance

Bearing in mind that with new hardware, you will need additional cooling systems and additional allocation for repair and maintenance costs.

When you have a physical server, rebooting is very time consuming and comes a cost to your business reputation as your website will have to be taken offline for the required changes. With VPS, the whole system can be quickly rebooted.

Certain VPS providers provide self-healing failover which is an excellent feature specially designed to combat the situation where there is a networking failover scenario. This feature allows the server to heals itself whilst mounting your VPS on another available computer to ensure service continuity.

Save cost on storage

VPS offers the most economical backup solutions in the market. There is no longer any need for equipment or extra payment for the data recovery services by the expert.

Retrieving data from the cloud VPS server is hassle-free and can be done at the snap of a finger. All you need to do is to select a VPS package that offers a large amount of disk space and bandwidth to meet your storage needs.

Cut cost on labour

VPS allows business owners to gain control over their profit margins by cutting labor costs. If you select a managed VPS package, support for all server management tasks on request including software installations, configuration and troubleshooting will be provided and managed by the expert.

That means that you no longer need IT personnel who is specialized in VPS to be stationed in your office. At just a fraction of the labor cost, you can reap the full benefit of the VPS without worries of operation, maintenance and backup.

Motivates employees

A web-based application response time is important if you want efficiency. Ideally, 0.1 second is the ultimate ideal time for efficiency and for the users to feel that they are directly manipulating objects in the user interface rather than feeling that they are ordering the computer to do the sorting for them.

If the response time takes 10 seconds or longer, most users will lose their attention on the task and stray off doing something else and when the user comes back to check on the work, they will need to reorient themselves. With a fast response time, you are able to keep your employee focused.

What kind of VPS service provider suits your business?

It is not an overstatement when we say that a VPS service provider can make or break your online business. A competent VPS service provider does not only offer a well-mixed package but also excellent customer service and outstanding performance with well-secured infrastructure.

Good customer service

It is undeniable that customer service plays an important role in easing new users into using the VPS and in helping the current users to make the most out of the VPS. It is unquestionable that one of the biggest strengths of VPS is that you have the freedom to do what you want with your website and apps.

However, as all the resources come from the VPS service provider, you will most likely have to go back to them if and when any problem arises. You may have some questions from the first day when you start using the VPS.

Even the very basic questions such as how to use a VPS? How to access my VPS? How to use a Windows VPS? can hardly be answered by non tech savvy persons.

For companies with their internal IT department or personnel, customer support is still crucial as details in relation to the operation are only available at their end.

Would you be comfortable with customer support whose turnaround time is about 3 days or one which allows contact via email or website chat only? Or would you prefer a customer service that offers live support as and when you need them and is contactable by phone call or live webchat.

Do check whether the call customer service is outsourced by the VPS service provider to another country as communication problems or insufficient knowledge can be frustrating at emergency time.

Affordable price

The cost largely depends on the package that you require such as memory space, storage, root access, dedicated IP required, CPU cores etc.

If you are wondering about the cost of Aus VPS server, you can approach a decent and reputable company to get a quote from them based on your resources.

Starting from $10-$20 a month, VPS is considered one of the cheapest web hosting solutions for businesses. Don’t worry about the exact particulars of the resources as cloud VPS is mostly scalable meaning you can scale up your resources when you need more of it and scale it down when you need less of it.

Reliable

If you are upgrading your system to VPS, then you should get it from a reliable VPS service provider that guarantees that the VPS will behave well.

During your inquiry, feel free to check with the service provider on the guaranteed minimum of uptime which ideally should range between 99.5% to 99.9 % normally.

Constant downtime is a big no no and can easily contribute to impacting your businesses adversely. Certain VPS service providers are slow to notice and respond when there is a session of downtime whereas others get it fixed instantly sometimes without even being noticed by the users,

Australian VPS Data Centre

Data center is the brain of the VPS. It stores vital information including all data of yours and your customers.

A best VPS Australian service provider should have its data center located in Australia in a highly secured infrastructure equipped with the most advanced technology and cooling system.

Never ever select a VPS service provider that compromises on the quality by outsourcing their data center to another country just to save on their operation cost. The reasons behind are relatively straightforward.

Firstly, the technology in the outsourced data center may not be up to date and is prone to a breach of security. Secondly, regular breakdown is foreseeable due to low-quality maintenance by the data center providers.

Self-healing failover

This special feature is only available by SSD VPS cloud hosting providers. Its main purpose is to minimise the downtime of the server. It comes into the picture when the physical machine of the VPS runs on fails.

This special system immediately detects the issue and automatically mount the VPS on another node. With your IP address pointed to a new system, your VPS is able to be back online in the exact condition that it was when the failure first occurred. Another time you get to enjoy the benefit of no downtime is during the maintenance session by your VPS service provider.

Not all VPS service providers are able to provide this feature as it requires the clustering technology that allows the transition to happen swiftly normally by using FAST SSD Raid array.

Positive reputation

Be wise and do some research on the reputation of the VPS service provider before you make your decision. Simply Google and you will have an idea as to whether the company is trustworthy and do as they claim.

How long have they been in the Australian VPS hosting market? How are their ethics as a VPS host? What is its after-sale attitude? How do they react to complaints? All these will reflect whether the company is honest values their integrity.

With just an extra few dollars a month for an SSD VPS cloud hosting package, the benefits and convenience that you are able to reap far outweighs the various problems which may arise from other types of non-SSD or non-cloud VPS.

The key is choosing the right Aus VPS service provider. Get it right the first time and you will find your website more sophisticated and running smoothly without hiccups.

6 signs that VPSBlocks is the right VPS service provider for you

VPSBlocks provides one of the best VPS Australia has to offer. We specialise in cloud hosting and features SSD storage for all packages.

As one of the highly acclaimed companies, we are honest in our business conduct and uphold integrity at all levels. Despite the high-quality VPS plan and excellent customer service, our price remains at a competitively attractive range.

With many outstanding complimentary features and for those that need the extra kick for their websites, VPSBlocks has plenty of functional enhanced features to offer.

You want to improve the online popularity of your business

Step one is to get an operating system as it is essential to run the server which will directly affect the performance of your website.

VPSBlocks offers the OS for every type of business. From the popular CentOS, cPanel, Ubuntu and up to more than ten OS including Windows VPS, you need not worry that you are unable to find a suitable OS.

In the rare occasion your business prefers a less mainstream OS, just notify us and we will try our best to add it in just for you.

You foresee a growth in your business

At this point in time, you may need only the minimum resources to keep things rolling. However, do you know that many businesses are pressured to select a VPS package that contains excessive resources based on the idea that they may need more resources once the growth of their business starts to pick up.

Such lack of knowledge often results in waste of resources and most importantly, unnecessary cost to the business which could have been saved for other aspects of the business.

Contrary to this, VPSBlocks allows you to mix and match the resources that fit into the current stage of your business perfectly. As your business grows, you can then add resources to your system without worrying about the cost of migrations.

The whole upgrading and downgrading of resources take only seconds. To understand more on what is a VPS plan and to get an estimation on the cost, just click on the “pricing & order” tab in VPSBLOCKS.COM.AU and choose your criteria such as the operating system and resources such as CPU cores, dedicated RAM, SSD Disk, SATA Disk, bandwidth.

Lastly, you can even choose the payment option that suits the budget of your business of either monthly, semi-annually or annually.

As your business grows larger, you get to add up to six optional features including managed server backups, offsite server backups and server management as and when required to make sure that your website and app is upgraded to meet the needs of your increasing pool of customers.

If you are unsure, we can first provide you with a quote that sets out the details of the functions and costs of any extra features that are recommended for your own business structure.

You intend to keep your budget for VPS as low as possible

The basic introductory plan by VPSBlocks is only $10 a month where you can choose your desired OS including cheap Windows VPS. Most importantly, it comes with many complimentary features such as the self-healing failover, your own private RAM, guaranteed VPS share, dedicated IP address, managed hardware firewall, 24x7 service monitoring etc.

Whether you are considering cheap Windows VPS or Linux VPS, we believe that we have it all.

Once your business starts to grow at a steady rate, you should consider adding in the optional features such as SPAM filtering, managed cPanel Site Migration, server management, etc. that will further boost the performance of your website and taking the quality of your business up a notch.

You prefer not to spend most of your time managing VPS

For first-timer, feel free to refer to “VPS Advice” section in the VPSBlocks website that provides you with solid professional guidance and explanation on how to choose the right one.

All standard VPS plans from VPSBlocks are semi-managed means that all hardware, operating system or basic configuration issues are handled by them. If you encounter slow loading webpage, network-related issues such as 404s, Internet server errors, basic task automation, configuring specific settings, failure of the server to restart, VPSBlocks as the administrator will look into these problems for you.

You also have less to worry about the security of the server as any unwanted traffic is firewalled out at hardware level before it reaches the server. In fact, VPSBlocks is able to advise on getting the best performance out of your server.

If you are not skilled in server administration or prefer to maintain your focus on the core objectives of your businesses, then VPSBlocks offers the perfect plan for you.

What is VPS server management?

A VPS fully managed by the expert that will set up and run almost all the essential server management tasks for you. The managed VPS package offered by VPSBlocks is a full fledged management by the knowledgeable IT professional in order to make sure that you don’t need to worry about your VPS at all.

The support includes software installations, configurations, network issues, dns setup, maintaining the virtual server’s security, security updates and even troubleshooting with guaranteed of receiving priority if any critical issues arise. The main thing that you are required to do is to create the hosting account and update your domain dns to kickstart your VPS.

You have a growing base of business data

Business data relates to information about your day to day business operation including taxes, sales, revenue, strategy, rules, customer database, transaction record, record of interactions with customers and other stakeholders, social media, product catalog, employee data, business emails and record of inquiries, inventory list and partner data. The business data essentially forms the backbone of your business.

If you are seeing an increasing size of your business data, then VPSBlocks offers the exceptional RAID storage where many physical disk drive components are combined into one or more units for the purposes of performance improvement and/or data redundancy.

In fact, the specific storage system by VPSBlocks is fast 100% SSD RAID storage making is over 100x faster than SAS or SATA. As a result, your data is stored in various locations on multiple hard disks to protect against drive failure. The idea of your data being wiped out in the unfortunate event of server corruption is extremely unlikely. For those that practice extra caution, we offer the option of managed server backups where the entire VPS is backed up twice weekly with at least 5 backups being retained.

You want your website to attract more business

Your website performance depends on how your server connects to the internet highway.

If you want your website to attract new customers and keep the current one interested in your products and services, then your website must fulfill the following criteria.

It must react fast enough with new connection, page loading, page browsing, app or file download, streaming video content uninterrupted for long periods and daily processing functions

It must be visually appealing, easy to navigate and synchronises audio and visual properly with a clear and simple organized layout

It must contain background video, giant product image, short product, feature video, or large responsive hero images

It allows interaction such as users giving their feedback, forums, webchat etc.

It collects data from users

With such a website that aims to make an impression on your customer, you will need a high-quality bandwidth. VPSBlocks utilises Tier-1 bandwidth that provides one of the best internet connections globally with low latency.

VPSBlocks doesn’t just gain its status as one of the best Australian VPS hosting companies overnight but rather through time and reputation. Our company is built on outstanding professional service and the ongoing goal to forge a long-lasting and positive relationship with all its VPS users.

If you intend to do the same with your customers and aim to see a sustainable growth on your business, then VPSBlocks is here to serve and support you along your business journey.

How to optimize and secure your VPS

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 00:52:11 GMT

If you already know what is VPS hosting and how to use a VPS, then security and optimization should be the first steps to be taken after you migrate from shared to VPS hosting.

Depending on your VPS service provider, the transition from shared to VPS should be seamlessly smooth without any hiccups. If you have opted for an unmanaged VPS package, there are a number of things you need to do on your own at your server. Below are some of the tips to ensure that you do it the right way.

1. SSH connection

The Secure Shell (SSH) protocol is a cryptographical network protocol to operate network services securely over an unsecured network.

If you’re wondering “How to access my VPS?”, wonder no more.

Before anything can be done using VPS, you must log in to your server. To login to your website’s container, you will need your SSH client and login details. If you are using Linux PS, you can start right away by using SSH from the terminal without additional software. However, if you have selected a Windows OS, you will need an SSH client. The most freely available and popular one is PuTTY.

Before you log into your server via SSH, you have to get ready some information such as server address, username, password and port. The server address is usually your domain name/ IP address.

For Windows user, you will need to download the PuTty. Once it is downloaded, you can run it by double clicking the icon with a screen that pops up with the title of “PuTTY Configuration”. The steps to be taken subsequently are as follows:

Insert your server address in the host name input field
Enter the port number in the port field
Ensure that the protocol is set to SSH
Click open at the bottom
Enter your username and press enter once you see a window that looks like a Linux terminal
Enter password and press enter
Wait to be logged in
A few notifications may appear along the way which can you just press OK

For Mac or Linux users, directly open the terminal and issue a command which is in the form of “ssh username@hostname -p portnumber” by substituting the information required with yours and press enter. Then insert password and press enter again. Likewise, a few notifications may appear along the way which you can press enter or “y” as a response.

2. Change your root password

It is very important to attend to the change of root password as soon as you get access to doing so. Make it a routine to change the password for each service you are using and don’t ever use the same password for root account as that of your email.

open a terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Atl+T that will lead to a command prompt
type “su” at the command prompt, press enter
you will see a “password” line opening below the command prompt
type in the current root password and then press enter
Note: all passwords are case-sensitive
If the password is correct, you will be brought back to the command prompt as the root user
If the password is incorrect, try steps b) to d) again
Type “passwd” and press Enter
You will see a “Enter new UNIX password” line appearing below the prompt
Type in your new password and press enter
Retype your new password and press enter
If successful, you will see a line that reads “password updated successfully”
Type “exit” and press enter to log out from the root account

3. Update your time zone

Update your server’s time zone in accordance with your current location as the default time zone does not automatically change to match yours.

4. Create a sudo user

A new sudo user with root access must be created after which you must disable root access to the root username. The reason behind this is to prevent attacks on your server when they use default root username.

Let’s first explain what are root and sudo. Root refers to the system administrator account. It has user ID o and unlimited privileged and advantages to access any file, run any programs, modify any setting and executor system call. However, there are often circumstances that require you to share part of the administrative powers to other users. That’s when sudo command comes into the picture by allowing multiple administrators.

The sudo command allows you to execute commands like a root privilege provided that your user ID is first authorized to do so in the sudoers files. The sudoers file decides who can use the sudo command, the scope of the authorization as well as the period of the authorisation.

This is especially when you have an IT expert to do all the technical job for you. In this scenario, you may not know the root password of your own computer. However, that is not an issue as long as you are in the sudoers file.

It is important to note that a new user by default is unprivileged meaning that they can only modify files in their own home directory.

5. Securing your SSH

This is important to avoid brute force attacks on the SSH service that compromise accounts and passwords by using an automated program to test combinations of possible usernames and passwords.

The indicator of such attack against your SSH server is an excessive number of failed log-ins. You can toughen up the security of your SSH with one of the following tips:-

a) Change SSH port number

The default port for SSH client connection is 22. As it is the most used port due to its identity as the default port, attacks are normally launched and tailored specifically on port 22. It is also a target of worms, script kiddies and other forms of brute force attacks. To hide your SSH and make it secure, change your port.

b) Setting up port knocking

Pork knocking is an authentication method used by administrators to control access to computers behind a firewall. You can do this by simply using iptables to create simple yet secret knocking sequence to open the port. The purpose is to mitigate the chance of brute force attacks and to protect against an attack that scans a system for potentially exploitable services via port scan. Daemon, a program that monitors firewall log files for requests to connect determine whether a client seeking the network is from an approved IP address and whether it has performed the knock sequence correctly. Unless the attacker sends the correct knock sequence, the ports will be protected and appear close. If the knocking sequence was produced correctly, it would open up and allow access.

c) Using TCP Wrappers

TCP Wrappers is a host-based networking ACL system that is used to filter network access to Internet Protocol servers. So, when a network request reaches the server, TCP wrappers use hosts.allow and hosts.deny to determine if that request should be given access to the service. If you do not use TCP Wrappers, your system relies only on the firewall for full protection. However, that does not mean that with TCP Wrappers, you no longer need a properly configured firewall as TCP Wrappers act merely as a host-based access control list that adds another layer of security to your server. The TCP Wrappers help you to block out the uninvited comers and allow only the specified IP addresses.

d) Filtering the SSH port on your firewall

After you have installed the OS, you have to configure your firewall to a server-side software firewall that filters the logs and rejects SSH access packets unless the packet is heading to or originates from specified IP addresses. The most common and best practice to secure the server is by allowing only trusted public static IPs or private LAN connections. The whole purpose is to block unfamiliar and untrusted connections.

e) Disabling root login

Disabling root access is one of the popular and old school methods to keep the cyber attack at bay. Root login is allowed on most Linux operating systems that allows anyone to connect to port 22. By using the root user as default, brute force attacks can happen to your public server IP. This is especially the case if your root password is weak and require password authentication to log in to your SSH service. One way to check on the number of brute force attacks you receive is to check the security log. Even with a strong root password, it is still more secure to just disable root login and use a primary SSH user by issuing su command to gain root access if required.

f) SSH keybased login

As brute force attack tries various combination of usernames and passwords repeatedly until it gets in, it is only a matter of time before the password with a character such as uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, is cracked. A password-based login is also prone to dictionary attack where the password may eventually be cracked.

Instead of using a password, a keybased authentication, aka public key authentication uses asymmetric cryptography algorithms with public and private keys. How keybased authentication works is that it assigns a pair of asymmetric keys (one public and one private) to each user. The public key will be stored in the system that they want to use while the private keys would be kept secure on the computers.

To establish connection, the server would use the public key to authenticate. One of the examples is asking the client to decrypt a certain number using the private key that corresponds with the public key. A keybased logins enhanced the security yet allow fast SSHlogin without further prompt in the process.

g) Strong password

If you are more comfortable and used to login passwords, then make sure it consists of strong and unique character combination.

A strong password is a good mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, symbols, and length of at least 8 characters.

A weak password is usually single information related to you such as birthday, anniversary dates, pet name or simple number or keyboard character in a sequence that is easily predictable such as 12345 or QWERTY.

h) Configure idle timeout interval

Setting a timeout period for SSH connections is important to maintain the server stability and security because an open and unattended SSH session is more likely to be attacked.

If the account is inactive for a period of time, the connection should be shut down with login to be done again. You can set the timeout interval in your system’s TCP settings.

SSH servers are automatically configured to use TCPKeepalive that probes at a preset time to check whether the connection is still there. Depending on your system, the default can vary from five seconds to two hours.

You can modify it to your liking by altering the ClientAliveInterval value so that once the timeout is reached, the SSH session will be logged out instantly.

i) Disable empty passwords

Having an empty password is convenient especially if you trust all the people who access your computer. However, not having a password is a recipe to cyber attack as practically anyone can log onto your computer. You can disable login remotely for accounts without a password by editing the sshd_config file.

j) Set a custom SSH warning banner

SSH warning banners and welcome messages are a must especially against an unauthorized user trying to access or if you wish to make other kinds of the announcement.

A pre login SSH warning banner pops up before the password prompt that contains legal warnings with terms and conditions on the usage of the system. Another set of post-login message will be displayed just before the system is used.

This is not exactly a security tip but it serves to warn the connecting user on the site’s policy and may assist in the prosecution of IT trespassers on the computer system.

k) Detect and block brute force attacks

The best option to block brute force attacks is to isolate the offending IP address. By doing so, this will prevent future attacks from the particular IP address. Therefore, detecting the offending IP address is key.

There are two different ways to detect an IP address, one is the manual method or the automated method. The manual method is a simple straight forward process where you would analyze the system logs, located the suspicious IP address who is trying to access the server and then block it via the system’s firewall.

This process is simple however, it is time-consuming as you would have to go through each system log to find the suspicious IP address. A more efficient process is by using software tools this is the automated method.

By using software tools, these software tools will be able to perform the same task of scanning the system logs and immediately blocking the IP address. In order to set up an automated system using software tools, you would be required to modify certain parameters to isolate the searching criteria of the offender.

This script depends on the software tool you are going to utilize for your protection as each software defers from the other. Therefore, basic scripting knowledge is recommended.

l) Disable OpenSSh server on the home-based machine

OpenSSH is a tool for remote controlling or transferring files between computers. Its server component sshd listens continuously and carefully for client connections from any of the client tools.

So, if a remote computer is connecting with the SSH client application, the OpenSSH server will require authentication before setting up a remote control session. As such for machines like laptops and desktops, OpenSSH Server is not required.

m) Disable or restrict X11 forwarding

X11 forwarding is a secure shell feature with the mechanism that allows a user to start up remote applications but forward the display of the application to your local Windows machine.

An enabling X22 forwarding on the host allows a malicious user to open another X11 connection to another remote client during the session and perform unobtrusive activities.

If you don’t need X11 services especially if you are running a remote server and not graphics server in Windows, you should disable or restrict as appropriate in accordance with your needs.

n) Limit the maximum consecutive authentication attempts

One of the benefits of limiting the authentication attempts to a lesser amount is that it disconnects attacker who tries to enter and significantly limits the speed of such attack.

Normally, for each failed attempt, there will be some time penalty imposed and if the attacker reached the attempt limits, the connection will be rejected altogether.

o) Enable login notifications over email

An email sent to you on unrecognized login will alert you and protect your account from unfamiliar activity.

All you need to do is to quickly set up a script to send an alerting email to you once someone is logged in as root user. If you receive such notification and you are not the one that logged in, you should change your password as soon as you can.

p) Keep SSH up to date

Keep your server up to date as an updated server includes the latest critical patches to security holes. Many harmful attacks normally take advantage of the vulnerability of an out of date server which is not protected against constantly changing threats.

q) Enable strict mode

Strict mode checks some cases such as SSH key, configuration files ownership, permission checks before the SSH server starts. If the check fails, then SSH server daemon will not start. You should make sure that the strict mode is enabled for security purpose.

r) Disable .rhosts. Files

Rhosts is used to control which machine to trust for access to your account. If your machine trusts another machine, then it will allow the user to access your account without the need to enter a password.

This convenience is normally outweighed by the risk that carries with it. If your account on the other machine is compromised, then it is very simple for a malicious user to access to your account.

Rhosts should be disabled if your machine is not switched on 24/7 as it is easy for the malicious user to take over your IP address by imitating the behavior of the obsolete rsh command and trick the trusted machine.

s) Disable challenge response

A challenge response authentication works by one party presenting a challenge in a form of question and another party answering by providing a response.

When you have configured pluggable authentication mode (PAM) to use the challenge response protocol, the authentication is complete only after the user enters the correct answer to a question. Disabling it adds another layer of security to your SSH.

t) Disabling SSH-1 Protocol

Even though legacy SSH protocol 1 is most disabled by default, you should double check to make sure that it is. Legacy SSH protocol 1 is not secure. A lot of problems were discovered after its introductions due to its vulnerabilities.

If your infrastructure relies on this protocol, you should update it to SSH-2 protocol immediately

u) Hash Known Hosts

When you are connected to a SSH server, the client keeps a few details such as the server’s hostname, IP address and host key in a file called known_hosts which is located in the ~/.ssh/ directory. It poses a privacy and security risk to have a file containing a list of all the servers which you have access to.

To minimize the information to be given to an attacker when a machine or your client is compromised, you can hash the known_hosts file using the ssh-keygen command or set it to default by configuring your SSH to record a hash or the hostnames instead. This will obscure all current host keys.

v) OTP setup

A one time SSH password mode provides secure authentication for access to machines via the SSH protocol. When an attacker gains access to the virtual machine, they can takeover most of the running applications, data and also the machines and systems connected to it.

You will need to install a Vault SSH Helper to help verify the OTP used during the SSH authentication. A one-time password will be created every time a client wants to SSH into a remote host using helper command on the remote host for verification.

Once an authenticated client requests an OTP from the server, the Vault server would issue and return an OTP. Once the SSH connection is established, the Vault server then deletes this OTP ensuring that it is used only once.

6. Update your server

This is one of the main ways to secure the data stored on your server. You can update your server manually or automatically.

Updating it manually is time-consuming and may not bring your server up to date in a timely manner as you have to check manually for an update from time to time on each of the services.

To set an automatic update on Linux server is relatively easy with the condition precedent that you must have root level access to your server.

7. Install a firewall

A firewall is one of the security necessity. It helps to detect if the system is compromised. The firewall can filter outbound traffic, add anti-spam or anti-virus modules, protect against known application vulnerabilities and blocking IP address or port within certain range centrally instead of trying to make sure that there is no service listening for that particular port on each machine.

If you have many users who are not experts in security or find that manually checking the security condition of the server is too time-consuming for your business, then a firewall is a very good defense mechanism.

A firewall also saves a lot of time by providing central logs which helps to detect vertical scans and determine whether some suspicious user or client tries to connect to the same port as your servers periodically. Essentially, it is a good central choke point which makes things more convenient and safe for all users.

As one of the best VPS hosts in Australia, VPSBlocks offers our customers the service of managed hardware firewall as one of its many outstanding standard features where any unwanted traffic is firewalled out at hardware level before it reaches your server. You will be glad to know that VPSBlocks have partnered with SPAM Experts to filter SPAM at only a marginal cost to make sure that all your vital companies correspondence do not get buried under mountains of unsolicited emails.

8. Set up automatic backups

Backing up your data can help you protect and restore your data when something goes wrong bearing in mind that a lot of threats steal and erase data or encrypts your data making it useless.

Choosing multiple places to back up your data whether duplicate or triplicate is your safest bet. There are many ways to backup your data. However, if you have already selected a good VPS plan, then it should offer VPS cloud storage.

What is a VPS cloud storage?

VPS Cloud storage allows users to back up their data in hardware at a remote location which is accessible anytime via any device as long as there is internet access.

If you have chosen VPSBlocks as your Aus VPS host service provider, then you are one of the lucky ones to enjoy the supreme backup solutions that will give you peace in mind. With managed server backups, your whole VPS is backed up twice every week with at least 5 backups and you can restore everything should you need to do so.

You can also purchase SATA space which is mounted as a second disk on your VPS so that you can back up directly within your VPS at the price of only 15 cents per GB. The other backup service offered by VPSBlocks is Offsite Server Backups where your entire VPS is backed up weekly to an offsite location with at least 3 backups offsite. If you have special requirements, we can also cater to custom backup requirements.

9. Uptime monitoring

You will want to be the first person to know if your website is experiencing any technical difficulties. Downtime can impact your business negatively such as unhappy clients, appearing unprofessional, lost of sales or leads, slow in detecting hackers, poor ranking in search engine. However, it is not viable to hire a person to stare at your monitor all the time just for this especially if you run a small to medium operation.

If you have chosen a reliable VPS service provider, they will do this task for you and work on getting your site back up before anyone else including yourself notice the problem. Choose wrongly and an unreliable VPS service provider can contribute to website unavailability too due to lack of maintenance and quality infrastructure.

As such, choosing the reputable VPS service provider with a good track record is important in ensuring that your website loads properly.

As one of the leading Australian VPS hosting companies around, VPSBlocks offers a 24x7 service monitoring where you can setup 24x7 HTTP/URL monitoring to notify you of any failures via email and/or SMS alerts. It features 1-minute monitoring which means that it checks your website as often as once per minute. We also keep you in the loop by sending multiple notifications prompting you with updates and our staff are ready to attend to any automatic reboots of your Aus VPS after a certain number of failures.

10. Automate repetitive work

This is one of the top methods to optimize your VPS and your business’ productivity as it reduces the time and labour costs taken to perform repetitive tasks. Most of the repetitive tasks are administrative in nature such as database backups, email reminders, etc.

You can do so by using Cron which is a Linux based tool for scheduling time-based jobs that run automatically at a predetermined date and time and fixed interval.

11. Install a hosting control panel

Hosting control panel is an efficient tool to manage your VPS package. Two of the most powerful and popular control panels are cPanel and Plesk. With the hosting control panel, you can manage your entire server as you wish by creating and running applications, working with FTP, email management, upload website’s files, database management, etc.

VPSBlocks has a wide variety of options of the control panel in our VPS services offered including Windows VPS. The good news is if you want to use another control panel, you can contact them directly to inquire on whether they can configure it for you.

Does the above information sound a little too much for you to handle?

In an unmanaged VPS server environment, the entire server administration and the responsibilities of configuration and management including the security rest on the end user.

Even though unmanaged VPS is less expensive than managed or semi-managed VPS hosting when you compare the packages with the same allocated resources, you must have extensive knowledge in administration of server and a lot of spare time on top of focusing on the core of your business to constantly safeguard the server by making sure that the server’s services and website scripts are up to date to the latest version to avoid cyber-attacks.

As such, unmanaged VPS is only suitable for those with highly skilled and tech-savvy people with a reasonable amount of knowledge on configuration and VPS management. Unmanaged VPS is definitely not recommended for beginners with limited technical knowledge who wonder how to access my VPS? How to use a VPS? What is VPS server configuration?

Confused about what you’ve just read? Maybe it’s time to brush up with our ultimate guide to what is VPS Hosting and How to Use a VPS!

Well, the good news is that there are actually a lot of Australian VPS hosting companies that can manage your Aus VPS for you where the expert will set up and make the changes for you for almost all the tasks listed above in this article.

VPSBlocks offers a managed VPS package where support is provided for every single server management task on request including software installations, configurations, network issues, DNS setup, maintaining the virtual server’s security, security updates and even troubleshooting with guaranteed of receiving priority if any critical issues arise.

Essentially, everything will be managed from head to toe and all you need to do is to create the hosting account and update your domain DNS to kickstarts everything.

If you are not skilled in server administration or don’t mind paying a little bit more for peace of mind so that you get to focus on the core objectives of the businesses by leaving your VPS to an expert to manage, then VPSBlocks should be your go-to service provider.

On the other hand, if you are indecisive as to whether managed VPS plan or unmanaged VPS plan suits you, then you should consider a “semi-managed VPS”.

Put simply, it means that the VPS service provider being the administrator will handle any hardware, operating system or basic configuration issues which you may encounter.

The issues range from basic website relates issues (such as 404s, Internal server errors etc), slow loading webpage, basic task automation, configuring specific settings, basic firewall setup/ troubleshooting to failure of the server to restart.

If you choose a semi-managed VPS plan from VPSBlocks, we can firewall out any unwanted traffic at the hardware level before it even reached your VPS and even block out all the other ports and their expert will advise on getting the best performance from your server.

Semi-managed VPS plan is a good idea for someone who is not experienced in command line Linux administration as you get to use control panel interface to manage your Linux server making it easier. VPSBlocks offers an extensive control panel which allows you to shut down, start, suspend, take snapshots, mount DVDs, console access, etc

While you can totally take a ride in the backseat in the server management if you have chosen a managed VPS plan or take a slightly relax stance if you have chosen a semi-managed VPS plan, it is still very important that you conduct some research to ensure that you choose the right VPS service provider for your business since the very first day.

If you are serious about making the upgrade from shared to VPS, then you should consider a few factors including the essential features of the VPS service provider before you make your decision. Here are some questions to get you going:

How is the company’s reputation?
What are the types of support options in relation to customer service?
Is the storage SSD or HDD?
Do they offer semi manage or fully manage VPS plan?
Do they have the self-healing failover feature?
Most importantly, will I actually get what the VPS company promises?

It can be a difficult task to look for a good and reliable VPS hosting provider.

To begin with, there are only a handful of reliable and reputable companies that provide top quality VPS service in Australia that are truly Australian.

Some companies choose to outsource their customer care services to a foreign country to save on operation costs whilst some have data centers with outdated technology.

On the contrary, VPSBlocks is proud to be a true Australian VPS hosting company that provides a wholesome package and complete suite of support services that is tailored to suit your business and make it work.

Our entire support team is based in Melbourne and happy to tend to your questions at any given moment. You’ll also be glad to also know that all their data centers are located in Melbourne backed by robust network infrastructure that offers unparallel redundancy at the highest level of security.

It is not surprising that despite the top security measures taken, many businesses are still worried that using cloud services such as VPS cloud hosting would increase the risk of their data being stolen and wiped off.

This is when a good VPS service provider such as VPSBlocks that provide high-quality VPS features consistent with the latest technology advancement would make all the difference. Not only does VPSBlocks use SSD, but all storage is also fast 100% SSD RAID storage which is the best data storage that VPS Australia can find with the main aim at protecting the important data of all businesses by distributing redundant data blocks across various SSDs.

Even though you have more control over the VPS with an unmanaged VPS, you are unable to reap the fullest benefits of what VPS can do for your business if you lack of the knowledge or time for the VPS management.

Now that you know the ways to optimize and maximize the security of VPS, looking for a good Australian VPS hosting provider that will take care of those for you should no longer be a problem.

Why SSD VPS Cloud hosting is vital to your company’s growth

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 00:25:00 GMT

VPS is increasingly popular for start-ups and SMEs (Small and medium enterprises) as it plays an important role in improving the online presence of the business significantly by making the website more sophisticated and user-friendly.

As the VPS packages are getting more and more economical due to the technology advancement, business owners are convinced to upgrade from the shared hosting plans. In your VPS hunting process, you may come across a few technical jargons like Solid State Drive (SSD), self-healing failover, VPS Cloud etc.

These are all innovative features that are meant to enhance the advantages of VPS on your business many thanks to the industry competitiveness and the urge of VPS host to satisfy the customers. In this article, you will get to understand what these technical jargons are and how you can reap major business benefits from it.

What is VPS?

First, it is essential to make sure that you really understand what is VPS hosting. Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a single hardware server that uses its own operating system housed in an actual physical computer located in a data centre.

In a space where multiple websites share a single server, VPS partitions a single physical server to form multiple isolated, self-contained units within it which are independent of its neighbours. By purchasing the VPS plan, you have a virtual environment all to yourself where you get to control the digital resources exclusively. It is up to you to choose the operating system, hard disk, RAM, bandwidth etc.

With complete control, you have the opportunity to truly protect your privacy and add in layers of security features. There are generally two popular types of VPS - Windows VPS and Linux VPS.

What is Cloud VPS?

VPS Cloud is where you get to access to the computer and information technology platforms remotely without any difficulty by expanded network connection. If your “stuff” is stored in the data centres, then you can access them via WAN (Wide Area Networking) or internet connections.

If the images of actual cloud floating in the blue sky comes to your mind when you read about Cloud in the context of IT, then you are not too far off from understanding it. What is Cloud VPS in the context of IT?

Using Cloud, you no longer need to rely on physical machine or infrastructure to access to your important information as everything is virtual. You may wonder “how to access my VPS” when you are away from your machine.

By using cloud VPS, no matter where you are or what device you are using, you can access to the data, utilize and manage your web hosting resources to the greatest advantage of your business website instantly.

You can adjust the resources in accordance with your business by scaling up or down the resources. It also secures your website against downtime as the entire website host can “jump” to another machine that is functioning well if unfortunate events happen.

What about SSD?

Now that you know what is VPS server, surely you have come across the technical term of “SSD” when researching on the list of VPS service providers which you have shortlisted. Solid State Drive (SSD) is located in the data centres and is a highly advanced storage device that utilizes integrated circuits composed of electronic components to strategise the semiconductor memory as a disk drive.

Its NAND flash memory eliminates any need of spinning mechanism resulting in instant fetching of data and a boost on your website loading speed. Since NAND is a non-volatile memory, the data will still be retained even when the power is off.

This feature is usually provided only by VPS service providers that are reputable who prioritise the quality of their services and plan as SSD is more costly than the traditional drive.

Top 15 reasons why you must choose only SSD VPS Cloud hosting

Now that you understand what exactly are VPS, Cloud and SSD, let’s go through what is VPS hosting going to do to your business and breakdown the benefits offered by VPS SSD Cloud hosting.

1. Scalability

VPS SSD Cloud hosting is most suitable for businesses who rely on their website to convert leads to sales whether directly or indirectly. Direct sales is where your website happens to be an online shop or transaction platform whereas for indirect sales, your website acts as a business card and brochure that provides vital information on your products, services and company profile.

Since the traffic to the website is directly linked to the revenue with a higher number of visitors increasing income-earning chances and lower number of visitors reflecting quieter period, it is important that you have control on the scaling of the resources.

When traffic is high, simple increase the bandwidth RAM, etc. to minimize downtime and ensure that your customers get a satisfied and enhanced experience when browsing your shop.

2. Control is all yours

Since you are able to adjust your resources according to your business demands, it is totally up to you on how to use a VPS to your greatest advantage including the control of expenditure. There is no need to gear up your website during a quiet period or it will simply be a waste of resources and most importantly, money. This is especially important for start-ups and small businesses where every cent count.

Some VPS service providers even offer automated allocation services. It means that if you are expecting a high influx of visitors during the eve of festivals such as Christmas, Easter and New Year, then you can inform your provider to allocate extra disk space and bandwidth just for the evening or the entire day. This essentially allows budget management and optimizing of resources.

3. Make your website stand out

By using Cloud VPS hosting service, you can increase the RAM or enhance the performance of CPU with zero downtime. It does not matter even if your website is very sophisticated with special features, unique software or dynamic media files. Those VPS service providers that do not offer cloud hosting usually fail to deliver quick support for loading of features laden website and as a result, downtime happens. The only way to prevent this in a non-cloud hosting is to add more resources which are definitely not budget friendly.

With SSD VPS hosting, not only your customers get faster read of your website immediately, but you will also benefit from reduced usage of CPU. The longer the waiting time to load, the higher CPU usage is as the CPU is processing data to get the information from disk when in fact CPU can be used to process more information on your website. Since SSD is involved, the large volume of data is captured immediately by the disk without having to go through the spinning mechanism. It is dramatically faster, stable and more energy efficient.

4. Available 24/7

Anytime, anywhere accessibility is one of the strongest features of VPS Cloud hosting. As long as there is an internet available, you can easily access all your vital data of your website and make changes that are necessary to the circumstances. This is essential for people who travel frequently and yet would like to retain control over the business activities.

5. Budget friendly

You are actually “renting” the virtual system from the VPS service providers that do the upkeep and maintenance for you. In the event one node encounters a problem in SSD Cloud VPS hosting, the hosting is immediately and automatically transferred to another node. In essence, it is a cost saving option since there is no need to own or maintain any of the infrastructures of the server. Business owners can then focus on what they do best on the core of the business.

6. Flashing speed to retrieve data

Do you know why the traditional HDD delays the loading speed of the website? Put simply, when data is stored in HDD hard drive, the data is arranged in a very orderly pattern on each platter in a concentric, circular path which is then broken up into smaller areas. During the data retrieval process, the electromechanically movable parts spin to locate the data which takes time. If you are to retrieve a lump of data stored in many different tracks and sectors, that will take even longer and resulting in slow down of your website.

The new technology of SSD, on the other hand, is free from mechanical moving parts of spinning and fetching the data which are repetitive and time-consuming as it works on flash memory. What it means is that it keeps track of where data is located.

Hence, every time when data is to be retrieved or updated, the SSD controller merely looks at the address of the data requested and reads the charge status with almost no latency. This work excellently even on random data read/ write. Compared to the lengthy time taken to discover the data or reboot in HDD, it takes only a few seconds for your operating system to recognize the drive in SSD.

SSDs are also overprovisioned with storage to allow swift data movement so that there is room for the drive to move and delete data without affecting the overall storage capacity of the drive. SSD is definitely the hero in fast website loading speed especially in accessing performance-heavy workloads.

7. Durability

Heat is always the main culprit that kills electronic performance. This is the reason why data centres have to be maintained at a low temperature. SSDs reduce heat dissipation more than their spinning counterparts, as such it has life expectancies up to decades. Due to the spinning mechanism that heats up the drive fast, HDDs have a shorter life expectancy and many require a refresh only after a few years.

One of the factors that contribute to the round the clock availability is the hot plugging function of SSD which means that the whole system can be kept running when components are being replaced or added. The other factor is the unplug capability which means that in the very unfortunate happening of unfortunate environmental events that are disastrous to the data centre, the data will not be lost immediately and be retained for a period of time depending on the room temperature.

8. Reliability

SSDs are also stationary and have good shock resistance. On the other hand, HDDs with plenty of moving parts zipping around to access a high quantity of data at lightning speed and magnetic platters are prone to damage and physical harm when using more frequently. As such, SSD VPS Cloud hosting is more dependable due to less probability of failures on mechanical hardware.

The chances of the SSD drives failing are much less likely in the hosting data centres against earthquakes and other natural disasters. Further, even if there is a problem with one of your machines, there is no need to worry about your data being lost as Cloud VPS automatically stores all your files on several drivers for security and convenience in restoring those files.

9. Safety

Due to no movement of parts for accessing data there is hardly any wear and tear in SSDs contrary to the HDDs that often encounter data corruption or other kinds of unwanted interruption that mess with data.

10. Self-healing failover

The self-healing failover feature is one of the most impressive features of SSD VPS cloud hosting. If downtime is one of your top concerns, which it should be, then you must choose a cloud VPS host that provides this feature.

When the physical computer of the VPS is running on fails, this system detects it immediately and automatically mount your VPS on another node, then your IP address is pointed to the new system and your VPS is back online in the exact condition it was when the failure first occurred.

This clustering technology and transition can happen fast without wasting your time and resources. It works the same way too during the maintenance by your VPS service provider.

11. Perfect balance between Shared hosting and Dedicated server

Cloud VPS hosting guarantees you the exclusivity of accessing to the server like you are the only one using it, like that in the dedicated server, as each cloud VPS has its own resources such as CPU, RAM, etc. and yet you pay only a fraction of the price for it.

There is also no worry that the activity of other customers of the cloud will influence the performance of your website.

12. Low failure rate

When the parts in the mechanical device are in motion, it has a higher risk of failing because of instability. SSDs which are stationary have very low failure rates compared to the standard technology.

13. Greener

If you are running an environmentally friendly business, do not want to make any negative impact on the environment or are just conscious about environmental responsibility, then SSD VPS Hosting plan is the one for your business.

Due to the fact that it is free from moving parts, stable memory chips and minimization of heat, there is less usage on power even at a full sprint whilst not compromising on the performance of the website and speed of data access.

As cooling is usually one of the major operating expenses for a data centre, by using a cooler system, the VPS service providers are able to pass the energy savings on to the clients. Making your customers aware that you are environmentally friendly can also boost profits.

A data centre filled with HDDs is extremely noisy because of the amount of fan and cooling system required to maintain workable room temperature. SSD, on the other hand, is very quiet using only the system fans, cabinet fans and the central air conditioning that regulates the room temperature.

14. Search Engine Ranking

Know how to make your website rank higher and hence, viewed faster by more people to attract a good flow of traffic? Speed. Google has taken the website loading speed factor as a quality indicator for search results. This means that the faster your website loads, the higher it ranks on the Google search engine results. SSD VPS Cloud hosting improves the speed for fetching pages, content and processing php instructions.

15. Power cut protection

The SSDs in data centres are equipped with reliable backup during a power failure. With the voltage changes monitoring feature, a secondary voltage hold-up circuit immediately ensures that the drives are in good order with sufficient energy to save pending writes to disk if the voltage suddenly drops below a certain threshold. This role energy storage is normally taken by a battery, supercapacitor, or a discrete bank of capacitors. As a result, the data centres are able to operate continuously without loss of data or damage to equipment.

Do I need to upgrade to VPS?

VPS is a natural progression and improvement from a shared plan as your website grows to the point where shared hosting will no longer be sufficient to support or provide the resources you require. Not making the change at the right time will only stretch your resources thin which are directly reflected in your website performance.

To determine when is the right time to upgrade to VPS, you must first understand the many differences between the two and how those differences can make a change to your business.

Differences between shared hosting and VPS

What is a VPS offering that most shared hosting don’t? In shared hosting, many websites share and are stored in the same server. As a result, the cost for the provider is low which explains why shared plans are usually the cheaper option. However, the cost saving reason is easily outnumbered by the numerous disadvantages that carry with it.

Put simply, your website uses RAM and CPU power to run and with the number of visitors increasing each day, the resources required to make it continuously smooth and user-friendly also increase alongside with it.

In a shared hosting environment, there is only a limited amount of resources available. That means that if your website experiences too much traffic or when your hosting provider allocates too many websites on the same server, you can run into the trouble of website slowing down.

1. Performance

What is a VPS performance doing to do to your business? Well, a happy customer today guarantees your business to grow tomorrow. To maximise your customer’s satisfaction, you need to give them what they want – fast website loading speed.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is only suitable for simple websites that are static and informational without much activities going on. Since you are one of the many websites that are on one single server, you are most likely to hear some “noise” produced by your neighbour. The Noisy Neighbour Effect peaks at high traffic hours when most of the resources are being used by your neighbours causing your website to suffer from the bottleneck of inadequately allocated resources and as a result, slow speed and insufficient memory space.

VPS

The best option if your website receives average to a high volume of traffic or you are planning to run a few websites. You can easily enjoy the slice of server in peace by simply purchasing a decent VPS package from a good and reputable VPS service provider that ensures that the server is optimised and the network is not abused.

2. Security

Have you ever considered what will happen if your files and data including your previous customer’s information on the web are stolen? Securing data from being stolen is an ongoing challenge to many businesses. As technologies advance, so is the data theft act.

Next question, what if your customer finds out that you have failed to protect their data? Cyber-attack is one of the primary reasons that cause unsalvageable damage to the foundation of the business and the business’ reputation due to the loss of trust by the customer.

Shared hosting

In a shared hosting environment, you are essentially leaving the security part to your host. It depends on how much your host decides to invest in it. Though generally safe, your website is still very vulnerable and whatever attacks that may happen are beyond your control when your neighbour’s website makes a mistake. Your website will most likely suffer from the spillover of the attacks next door since you are all in the same community on the same server.

VPS

You are in control of the level of security. Furthermore, as all users are given an independent isolated IP address, it is not surprising that the risk of breach of security is much lower. With the freedom to build your own defense mechanism, you can install a security plugin, tighten the criteria of spam filtering and secure your SSH configuration that is more tailored to your business’ functions. This is why if your business collects any form of information from customers, then you have to choose VPS.

Don’t be intimidated by the whole DIY security features as you can opt for a managed VPS package where all these technicalities are taken care off by the IP expert.

3. Pricing

The pricing of the web hosting package should only be one of the many factors to consider. Do you honestly think that the host would give you high quality server usage if you are only paying one -dollar a month? Likewise, there is no need to pay a price that cost an arm and a leg for an entire server dedicated to yourself when all you need is a slice of the server with high quality features, which is exactly the package of VPS with reasonable pricing as low as $10 a month.

When should you make the transition to VPS?

These are a few indicators that tell you that you need to ditch the shared hosting and upgrade to a VPS:-

1. Your website takes a while to load

By a while, it means more than 5 seconds. That indicates that the shared resources are approaching being drained. There are many reasons that contribute to the strain on the website ranging from many users accessing the webpage simultaneously, on-going transaction, using live chat on your website, downloading files, postings on a forum to sending and receiving an email.

In a shared hosting environment, the amount of memory allocated to each user is limited and when your website can’t access the required amount of memory, page loading takes longer than usual. VPS package by a reputable and decent VPS service providers does not impose any of the limitations above.

As you are able to select the amount of RAM, it is anticipated that your website gets more responsive in a short period of time. As such, visitors to your website will no longer see blank screens and you don’t need to worry about any large influx of visitors affecting the smoothness of your website.

2. The traffic to your website is increasing

The right time to switch to VPS immediately is when you notice that your website starts to grow in popularity regardless of whether the growth is slow or fast. The indicators are increased in sales and revenue, traffic and positive reviews. Yes, it is a sooner or later task to switch to VPS but do not wait until performance is an issue before making the leap as the slow down of the website may have already caused some loss in reputation and revenue.

3. You are prohibited from installing an application

Majority of the shared hosting accounts limit the applications and services due to the scarce resources and security reasons. Once you upgrade to VPS, you can install any application you want to subject to the hosting provider’s policy and of course, legality. In shared hosting, you have to follow whatever PHP version opted by your hosting provider whereas in VPS, you can freely choose your own PHP module that best suits your business.

4. When more resources are in need

When you start to hit the quota of the resources that are allocated to you, you run into the trouble of limited access. Limitation includes the number of email addresses and mailing options, databases, FTP accounts, and so on.

In situations like these, it makes sense to switch to VPS where you get to select your resources such as CPU cores, dedicated RAM, SSD disk, SATA disk, bandwidth and operating system.

The boost of resources that are not available in a shared hosting environment also allows you to test out different configuration, changing different settings, learning various types of commands.

5. You want to make your website more user-friendly

The more sophisticated a website is, the more processing power is required to maintain the performance. Shared hosting with limited resources is hardly sufficient to handle websites with multiple apps, pages and files.

VPS hosting packages ensure your website to run fast with several processing cores even when handling many different kinds of request or performing different functions.

6. More storage space is needed

Many shared hosting are generous in the amount of disc space. However, don’t be fooled by this as it usually comes with many restrictions such as the number of files or folders that you can store. VPS, on the other hand, is scalable and allow a large number of files to be stored. It can be tens of thousands of images and high-definition media files which may just be required in the near future as your business grows.

7. You want your website to be available round the clock

Due to the limitation of the resources in shared hosting, there is a limit imposed on the number of visitors in order to make sure that your neighbours, i.e., all the other sites on the shared server get their fair share on the server resources too.

When your website exceeds the limits, two consequences may happen – you have to pay additional charges to unlock more resources or the access to your website is disabled completely.

None of these two outcomes are desirable as it impacts your business growth directly. With VPS, you can have your website available to all users round the clock even during peak times because VPS hosting allows the transfer of large amounts of data.

8. You are concerned about security

If you have plans to set up online retail or receive payment via credit card, then you have to pass the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test. The PCI Data Security Standard is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express to protect against data theft and other kinds of fraud and to ensure that the data by online merchants is processed, stored and transmitted in a secure manner. With VPS, it is more likely that your website will pass the PCI test.

As there are multiple clients sharing a server in a shared hosting environment where a lot of data are jumbled up together, it is almost impossible to be PCI compliant as it requires isolation of data.

Further, VPS users are able to take measures to secure their websites from being threatened by doing housekeeping which is running only the software that is required and removing those that are not, configuring the firewall to allow only essential services and requiring high-level security passwords for user accounts.

How to choose the service provider for SSD VPS cloud hosting?

The first step you need to take after you have decided on the upgrade is to shortlist a few VPS service providers with a good reputation and contact them right away to inquire whether they offer the type of service you need and to ask on the upgrade process. A good quality host should have a balanced mix of excellent service, security and performance.

Customer support

The first thing to look out for is customer support. It is essential as they are the one providing all the resources that will run your website. How to use a VPS? How to access my VPS? How to use Windows VPS?

These questions may be difficult to answer for non-tech savvy people.

However, whether or not your business has an IT department that specialises in web hosting, you will need the customer support of the VPS service provider as certain information is only available at their end. You definitely do not want a customer support that takes more than a day or two to respond to your emergency issue or one that limits the contact by email or website form only.

You can call the VPS service provider to inquire on their responding timeframe and ways of communication which ideally include phone call or live web chat. Another point to take note is that a local Australian VPS hosting company is always better than one that outsources their call service to another country to avoid communication problems or lack of knowledge.

Cost

What is the cost of Aus VPS server? A basic Aus VPS package from a decent and reputable company cost about $10-$20 a month with additional cost for special features. Before you approach the VPS service providers, you should have with you a list of the details of each of the resources that you require such as memory space, storage, root access, dedicated IP required, CPU cores etc. Remember not to be too rigid on the particulars as they are scalable any time.

Reliability

A good service provider for VPS SSD cloud hosting should be able to guarantee a minimum of uptime ranges between 99.5% to 99.9% normally. When enquiring with the VPS service provider, be sure to ask them on this issue and how long do they usually take to fix the session of downtime, which should not last more than a few hours.

Data centre

Yes, it is cloud hosting but still, you do not want your data to be stored in a faraway place halfway across the globe if it is of extreme importance to your business as you too share the responsibility in guarding those data of yours and your customers.

The best VPS Australian service provider that truly cares should have its data centre located in no other place than Australia. A data centre outsourced to another country may run the risk of not being able to secure the data completely as it is totally dependant on the infrastructure and technology on that particular country which may not be as advanced as Australia.

It is also foreseeable that regular breakdown may occur due to lack of due diligence or low budget by the VPS service provider.

Self-healing failover

As mentioned earlier, SSD VPS cloud hosting provides this special feature of self-healing failover. That minimises the downtime of your website. When the physical computer of the VPS is running on fails, this special system detects it immediately and automatically mount your VPS on another node, then your IP address is pointed to the new system and your VPS is back online in the exact condition it was when the failure first occurred.

There is also no downtime during the maintenance session by your VPS service provider. This clustering technology and transition can happen fast normally especially if the VPS service provider uses Fast SSD Raid array.

Reputation

Reputation normally speaks for itself. A well-established best VPS service provider should provide intuitive support service and treat any complaint with the utmost importance and urgency. It is also advisable to look into the history of the company. How long has the VPS Australia company been in the Australian market? Are they as genuinely Australian as they claimed? The answers to these will reflect whether the company practice with an uncompromising level of honesty and integrity.

You may pay a few more dollars every month for an SSD VPS cloud hosting compared to the other non-SSD VPS package, but the long-term cost saving from various problems which may arise from other types of VPS will definitely offset the initial payment.

VPSBlocks is one of the best Australian VPS hosting companies specialising in cloud hosting that features SSD storage for all of our VPS packages. We’re highly acclaimed as being one of the most reputable Australian VPS hosting service providers in Australia with our data centre and all support staff based in Melbourne.

With high confidence in quality service and VPS systems, we offer a full 15 day money back guarantee knowing that our customers are happy with the full value of our services and products being offered at great value for money.

The Ultimate Guide to What is VPS Hosting and How to Use a VPS

Wed, 29 May 2019 01:59:00 GMT

In 2019, fast sites are no longer a luxury but a necessity. Nowadays, people don’t wait for longer than 3 seconds for a page to load. If you want your business to take off and your website to stand out from your competitors, then a high level of client’s satisfaction is a must. This is the reason why a Virtual Private Server (VPS) plays a major role in the growth of businesses today.

If you are wondering what is a VPS, you will be glad to know that you are not alone when it comes to the technicalities of web hosting.

So the simple overbearing question is - what is a VPS server?

Put simply, it’s a server virtualised privately and is the most practical business solution sold as an internet hosting service.

What is VPS Hosting actually?

A VPS is a virtual machine that uses its own operating system housed in an actual physical computer located in a data centre. Unlike shared hosting where multiple websites share a single server, VPS partitions a single physical server to form multiple isolated self-contained units within it which are independent of its neighbours.

How can I benefit from a VPS?

A VPS is the absolute secret weapon to many successful small or medium scale businesses. What is VPS going to do for your business? It’ll offer increased control over your digital properties by giving you the ability to perform more advanced functions which are commonly limited by shared hosting.

What is VPS going to do for your website? The advantage of using a VPS for your website means that your site will run on its own set of resources with dedicated RAM, CPU and bandwidth allocation. The inevitable result is a significant improvement in website performance and ease of application access to your consumers with the significant boost of speed and improvement of reliability.

One of the main features of VPS hosting is that it provides root access to the business owner. That means that you are given greater control like an administrator and the power to use it for almost anything including customising software, running various operating systems, hosting multiple websites and third-party software applications with complete privacy. This is especially suitable for those with strong IT technical skills. Don’t worry if you are not as you can always request that your Australian VPS service provider manage or semi-manage the server for you.

If you run an online store, then you will benefit greatly by using a VPS as it is more likely that your website will pass the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test. The PCI Data Security Standard is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express to protect against data theft and other kinds of fraud and to ensure that the data by online merchants is processed, stored and transmitted in a secure manner. processing, storage and transmission.

Many businesses decide to invest in a VPS due to minimal downtime i.e. constant availability and stability of the website. Don’t adopt the wait-and-see attitude until your website is suddenly running slow or crashing due to the high influx of visitors to take an action on improving your website because it may have already turned away your potential valuable customers by then. Minimal downtime is essential for programs or websites that require server availability 24/7 such as tax-related programs and forex trading.

One of the cost-saving features of VPS is that it can be accessed remotely. With that in mind, you no longer need to be bound to a physical machine and have the option to employ remote workers which saves you from travel allowance and office space. You can even customise the VPS so that all your sales employees can access it to provide a constant update on the details of your company’s products and services.

With so many benefits that come with it, it is no wonder that VPS is the next logical path for a business that is growing. Companies can now have peace of mind by redirecting their resources to other internal sectors such as growth and development of their business rather than worrying on the technicalities of the web server.

Are there any disadvantages to VPS?

All kinds of web hosting carry with them certain cons regardless of how efficient they are. From a financial standpoint, there is no doubt that a VPS is probably more expensive than shared hosting albeit much more affordable than a fully dedicated hosting service.

Despite the cost issue, many Australian VPS providers have competitive VPS hosting plans for around $10 a month which is not much more than the cost for most shared hosting plans. Many businesses find that the VPS cost is quickly outweighed by its pros due to the result of improving online business performance as a whole.

Other problems that may arise include issues with your VPS service provider should they fail to allocate the resources appropriately presumably due to overselling their packages. When there are not enough resources, it can adversely affect the particular website that uses the VPS during peak period. Fret not as this issue can be easily addressed by checking how many virtual accounts are active on the server. Ultimately, this disadvantage is more of a choice of VPS service provider rather than the service of a VPS itself.

What are the differences between a Linux VPS and a Windows VPS?

Those looking for a VPS are often forced to deliberate and make a choice as to which of the two seemingly, equally dominating operating systems – Linux VPS or Windows VPS to opt for.

In other words, what is Windows VPS offering that Linux VPS isn’t?

Let’s compare their main features and see which one is best suited for different kinds of business.

Cost

Let’s begin with cost. Linux VPS is an open source platform and its cost is significantly lower than Windows VPS which is owned by Microsoft where the users must pay a licensing fee. Don’t worry about there being hidden cost as Windows usually inform their users upfront and it is also included in the price of your VPS package.

Compatibility

Linux VPS is suitable for open source software such as PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby or MySQL whereas Windows is proprietary meaning it works well mainly with Windows specific applications.

Control Panels

Due to its open source system, Linux offers more flexibility in terms of control panels. Even though Plesk is available for both Windows VPS and Linux VPS, cPanel is only available on Linux VPS making it popular amongst software developers and IT businesses.

Performance

Windows VPS is particularly known for its web application framework, ASP.NET. Some applications such as Sharepoint (collaboration and document management platform) and Exchange (a messaging platform) that are exclusively available for Windows’ users only. Linux VPS offers several open source applications such as audio, graphic design, content management systems, Q&A forums, and ready-to-use applications.

Security

Users of Linux VPS can use the sudo command to execute root level commands making it more secured apart from its default security system. On the other hand, Windows VPS, even though it is often targeted by more cyber attacks, have regular updates to encounter security-related errors protecting your business from digital threats. One could argue that the Windows VPS is prone to more cyber attacks due to its popularity when compared with the Linux VPS (similar to how you will find more virus attacks on Windows operating systems compared to Mac operating systems).

Standard Operation

Linux is command line based which may take a while for some people to get the hang of it but the plus point is that it is distraction free interface as it displays only the necessary information whereas Windows uses Graphic User Interface which is easier for non-technical users but consumes a lot of memory and resources which takes the device longer time to complete the task.

So, is Windows VPS or Linux VPS the best for my business?

Generally, Windows VPS is preferred by large businesses without an IT background due to its already established strong core applications and the professional team constantly streamlining and updating the system which even though forms part of your business budget but gives you peace of mind.

Linux VPS, on the other hand, is the favourite for small businesses due to its versatility and the low costs but requires the user taking a more active DIY role in security strategy.

What is Managed VPS?

Managing a VPS involves rebooting, optimizing your data storage, performance monitoring, installation and configuration of software, updating VPS, providing a backup solution, improvement of cybersecurity, installing control panel etc.

Does these all sound alien to you? If you’re sitting there confused and baffled by the technicalities mentioned above, then a managed VPS is better suited for your business.

Once you have VPS hosting, you can administer it as though the entire virtual server is in your control. On a managed VPS hosting, normally done by your VPS provider, the user gets all the necessary support to maintain and run the website efficiently. As a result of subscribing to a managed VPS, you don’t normally get downtime as it is often guaranteed as part of the VPS package.

This may be surprising to hear but a good VPS manager is cost (and life) saving. But what is a VPS manager and why is it relevant to you? A good VPS manager helps you manage your VPS for you and saves you from the trouble of needing to hire an IT personnel. In the unfortunate event of any technical problem arising, your VPS manager is dedicated to resolving the issue as efficiently and effectively as possible allowing you to rest in ease knowing that your VPS is being handled by the professionals.

What is an Unmanaged VPS

An unmanaged VPS is only ideal for tech-savvy business owners such as an IT company, hosting company or businesses with strong IT department and tech-savvy personnel that specialised in hosting website.

If you select an unmanaged VPS package, you are responsible for managing the entire VPS including its technical part such as system administration, server maintenance, software configuration. It is cost-effective due to its DIY feature and you have full autonomy in terms of software installation, usage and customization.

As web hosting is due to its neediness of constant uptime, maintenance of reliability and server stability, it may be difficult for an “outsider” to manage. The only thing that your VPS provider will do is to keep the network connection open and the VPS running, and the rest is on you.

Remember, you get what you pay for! So, choose wisely when considering to purchase an unmanaged VPS package.

How to use a VPS?

One of the biggest selling points of VPS is that you can access it remotely. With that in mind, you no longer need to worry about not being able to run the programs related to your business when you are away on a beach holiday. It is without a doubt that VPS is popular for web hosting. However, there are many more ways on how to use a VPS to the advantage of your business.

Web hosting

The most common use of a VPS is to host a high traffic website. With now the freedom to install or remove the software for your website, and the added boost of CPU, RAM etc, your website will be more optimised and able to respond positively even to the most impatient visitor. One important point to note is that Google uses page speed as one of the search engine ranking factors, so the faster your website loads, the higher you are on the ranking. A highly ranked website gets maximised organic traffic from search engines with the majority of clicks. Another plus point is that you get to customise the content of your website.

Virtual desktop

Business travellers often ask “How to access my VPS remotely?”. If you want to operate remotely like your local device on tasks like checking and responding to emails, installing applications, storing work files, running programs then go for Windows VPS where all these can be done via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). It also allows many users to connect simultaneously for data sharing purposes.

Virtual backups

Have you ever encountered those few dreadful occasions where your corporate data was corrupted due to virus attack or other forms of system failures? With all the disk space and bandwidth that comes with your VPS package, you are able to backup your data and save them in secured data centres. In the unfortunate event of data loss, simply pluck them from the VPS and restore it back to where they belong.

Online store

VPS allows you to tweak the settings of online store and optimise it to make it as fast as possible for optimal user experience. You can use the latest versions of PHP, web server software and even install plugins which are all not possible in shared hosting due to prohibited root access.

Forex trading system

Since there is almost 100% uptime, it works amazingly well with forex trading that requires 24/7 running of the application. Even when disconnected from VPS, all the applications that you have started within remote desktop do not close as the VPS is always active and connected. If you are still worried, then choose a VPS service provider that offers self-healing failover where any problem is automatically corrected without any human interruption.

Code development

A VPS provides the ideal environment for software or application development. You can invite other developers or your clients to connect to the VPS to see the code you are developing. It is also more secure since you are no longer using a public server to run the codes. If you save it in advance in DropBox, then you don’t have to worry about rebuilding it in a new server if the worst happens.

Comparison between VPS vs Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Web Hosting

It is important to explore all your options before settling down with an option you think suits you best. Given how any ambiguities you may have had about what is a VPS and how to use a VPS should be clearer by now, you may wonder about the other types of web hosting available to you.

The most popular alternative options to a VPS for web hosting is shared hosting and dedicated web hosting.

Shared hosting allows many websites to share a single server with limited server resources allocated to each customer based on the hosting package. Imagine it like a unit in a big block of apartment with a shared corridor and common facilities.

On the other end of the spectrum is dedicated web hosting where the customer gets the whole server to itself, not shared with anyone else. Imagine it as if it were a house built on a self-sufficient island.

Now, your next question probably is “Which one of those will benefit me better”? Answer those questions yourself by looking at the comparison below!

Cost

Yes, the factor of cost is always of concern for businesses but to base your decision entirely on price can be catastrophic. Check out the fee table below.

	Shared hosting	VPS	Dedicated Web Hosting
Monthly fee	$1 - $10	$10 - $55	At least $80

This is only an estimated average amount. Some cheap Windows VPS and Linux VPS can even cost just a few dollars. Sure, it may be extremely pocket-friendly, but beware of the basic low-quality features that often come with the budget pricing.

If you are looking to select a more sophisticated high-level package for dedicated web hosting, then be prepared to pay beyond the stated fee.

Website performance

A website’s performance goes hand in hand in with business growth. If you want happy returning customers, then you have got to give them what they want - a fast loading and responsive website. It takes only a few seconds extra for your client to abandon your website and go “shopping” somewhere else.

Shared hosting

If your website performs only a few basic standard functions such as acting as an informational page or a brochure type one that does not get a lot of traffic with the main intent of being non-profit, then shared hosting may be ideal for you. Despite the simple functions on your website, don’t expect it to sail smoothly all the way as you may experience a “Noisy Neighbour Effect” that happens sometimes due to the majority of the resources being used up by your ‘neighbour’ who is sharing the server with you. When that happens, your network performance and storage etc will be affected.

VPS

A VPS offers the best of both worlds and results in amazing speed boosts for your website along with a stronger sense of security, functionality and integrity. It is very unlikely to experience the nuisance from your ‘neighbour’ since you are effectively accessing to that specific compartment segregated by the SSD drive managed by your VPS service provider.

Dedicated

This is where you get to say bye-bye to those noisy neighbours, but at the cost of an arm and a leg. It is suitable for business that owns a resource-heavy website with hundreds of videos and extremely high-resolution images.

Security

A website well-guarded with proper security sends out a loud signal to your client on how much they matter to you - and how seriously you take your business. You are guarding your business’ reputation when you take active steps to protect the websites from viruses and your customers’ data from being stolen.

Shared hosting

The security of the website is handed over to the hosting provider where you do not have control over it. Yes, it puts your mind at ease not having to worry about the regular updates and maintenance, or does it really? Don’t forget that in a shared hosting environment with everyone sharing the same IP address, what your neighbour does affect your sites too. That is when you run the risks of malware and other types of unwanted intrusion.

VPS

One of the top reasons why businesses upgrade to VPS is that it provides excellent robust security since all users are isolated with independent IP addresses. You have the freedom to build multiple layers of security by installing a security plugin, spam filtering and securing your SSH configuration to maintain constant vigilance. If you collect data from your customer via your websites (such as online stores and newsletter) then VPS is highly recommended for data protection purpose.

Dedicated

Since you are all alone in the server, the risk of attack is also minimal.

Flexibility

Many businesses prefer the freedom to upgrade their server as and when required as determined by the volume of website traffic received.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is designed for low volume website traffic and ideally statically designed websites. With no root access, flexibility is strictly limited. Whether or not you get to install custom software or application such as specific PHP module on your website depends wholly on the discretion of the host. A simple update may take months to reach you as you have to wait for your turn due to many websites sharing the same server and resources.

VPS

One of the highlights of a VPS is that it offers the user to scale up and down resources on the go without downtime. You are allowed to scale up your RAM or CPU capabilities only when required such as high traffic and downscale it when demands are low. This scalability function is not available to both shared hosting and dedicated hosting at the speed of a snap of a finger. VPS also gives you the flexibility to fully customise your website the way you want it to be.

Dedicated

You may think that dedicated service offers the most flexibility. In truth, it does not. Strictly speaking, since you get the whole computer all on your own, you are able to customise it extensively to your liking. You may choose to run several operating systems, maximise the amount of storage and build an armour of hardware elements. Even though there are managed dedicated hosting services available, you will still need to do a lot of monitoring and the technical side on your own. If your loyal hardware fails, then your site is out completely without your “neighbour” helping you out by taking over in case of failure.

Shared hosting is the cheapest of all but it comes with many limitation and risks such as limited bandwidth, no root access etc. Dedicated hosting, normally preferred by large organisations, has an abundance of storage with an extremely powerful processor. However, is it worth budgeting tens of thousands of dollars every year if all you need is just a slice of an optimised private server that meets all your needs? VPS, a well-balanced option between affordability and performance may very well be just what you are looking for.

How to Choose the Best VPS provider?

Choosing a poorly run VPS service provider is a recipe for disaster. How do you select the one that will really help you to boost your business? To make VPS a worthy investment for your business, take time to think and conduct proper research into your list of good VPS service providers. Be sure to look out for the following five key points.

a) Self-healing failover

When choosing a good VPS host, remember to look out for this feature. It means that if the physical computer goes offline for any reason, your VPS is automatically and immediately mounted on another computer until the issue is fixed. VPS provider that adopts the traditional method requires many hours to physically move the drive to another computer and reconfigure. This also means that you will not experience any downtime during the maintenance by the VPS service provider.

b) Data Centres

Location matters. Where your information is stored should not be taken lightly. The close proximity plays a role in minimising response time and latency. That also shows that the company prioritises on quality rather than comprising its product by outsourcing the data centres that keep all your important data in another country to save on costs. So, when choosing the ideal VPS Australia has to offer, you should opt for a provider with a data centre based in Australia.

c) Customer support

A VPS service provider in need is the VPS service provider indeed. They guide you from basic questions such as “how to access my VPS” to serious alarming situations. The customer support team is like an emergency hotline that is supposed to save you from any potential or existing problem. If you are based in Australia, then an Australian VPS hosting company is always preferred. Make sure their way of communication fits yours. Some Aus VPS service providers allow only communications made via email or a contact form from the website whereas others allow more engaging method such as a chat window on the website or direct phone call access. Choose an Aus VPS provider that offers you to speak directly with level 3 VPS support technicians. Level 3 technicians have the most expertise in the company and have the ability to deploy solutions to even the rarest problems.

d) Reputation

If you are not tech savvy, simply look at the customer’s reviews. Look out for points on reliability, security and efficiency. All these will point towards whether the company has adequate resources and values to handle your server. Certainly, look at both good and bad reviews. Are they defensive and ignorant or responsive and helpful? How long is their turnaround time?

e) Reliability

There is no point upgrading to a VPS only to experience downtime all the time. A reliable VPS provider keeps your website up and running round the clock. Check out how much uptime does your VPS provider guarantee which should be at least 99.5% and ideally 99.9%.

These criteria, if satisfied, directly affect your website’s loading speed, bandwidth, storage, access, technology and security. Pick the conscientious VPS service provider that offers a VPS package that has the best value for money and most importantly fits for your business purpose. It takes only one mistake to show how important your VPS service provider is to your business - and it’s a mistake you do not want to test.

Should you use a Free VPS host?

If it is too good to be true, then it most probably is. Yes, there are free VPS servers available but they come with many risks and limitations.

Some people choose a free VPS server in order to have a taste of VPS before purchasing a valuable package. However, in the course of doing so, they may end up giving away a substantial amount of important data (including customer data) to the companies that provide free VPS service. In fact, most of the free VPS hosts provide only basic features that are suitable for students.

We would strongly advise against engaging with a free VPS host due to the general trend of countless negative reviews from businesses who fell prey to them. The typical complaints include:

Low specification that is not fit for even the most general purpose
No customer support even though the provider claims there is
Poor website experience or insufficient information making the customer confused on the right plan to select
Referrals or credits are required before the customer can use the VPS
The customer must continuously submit many forum posts to get a free VPS and the VPS is gone once the posting is stopped too
Scam to collect your data
Clickbait to the advertisement where they earn actual money

Since it is an investment which has a direct effect on your business, go for the best value for money. Paid VPS comes with a cost, but it isn’t that costly. With VPS options as low as $10 a month, you can get a VPS from a reputable company such as VPSBlocks. If you are doing business, then the cost is marginal. Don’t overlook how this small amount of spending can contribute to the success of your business by improving your web features.

Difference between a VPS and a VPN

Did you in the course of your research on the VPS topic accidentally venture into VPN and got really confused by the two? Aside from the words “virtual” and “private”, there is little or almost no similarity between the two when it comes to their purpose.

Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a paid service that keeps your web browsing activity secure, anonymous and private via a virtual tunnel that is encrypted between you and a remote server operated by the service provider. By doing so, all your internet traffic is routed through the tunnel which makes your computer appear to have the IP address of the VPN server. With masked identity and location, the user can access blocked websites, bypassing internet filters and keep their connections safe from being hacked. While VPS is mainly for business purpose, many people choose to use VPN to surf internets when they are at public wifi spot.

Why VPSBlocks is Probably the Best VPS Australia has to Offer

Save your time and stop doing guesswork in deciding who is the best VPS Australia has to offer. Proudly 100% Australian, VPSBlocks is one of the leading VPS service providers for businesses in the country. We know that’s a bold statement to make but given how we tick all the boxes of what makes a good and reliable VPS service provider, a service with VPSBlocks is a service carried out exceptionally.

Abundance of Choice

Firstly, you will be spoilt with choices when it comes to the operating system. We offer more than ten operating systems including the popular CentOS, cPanel, Ubuntu, Plesk Windows etc. You can also choose one of the many cheap Windows VPS and Linux VPS to begin with. If you have a preferred operating system, simply email us and our friendly team will do their best to add it in for you too.

Customisation

Many VPS service providers have readymade VPS packages that may not have all the specifications that suit your needs. VPSBlocks gives you the option to pick and choose the specifications of your VPS and get it tailored just for your business. With the customisation option, you get to choose the operating system, a number of CPU cores, dedicated RAM size, SSD disk capacity, SATA disk capacity, size of the bandwidth and even payment option (monthly, semi-annually or annually).

You don’t have to worry about any hidden cost as all costs are estimated and provided to you as a quote immediately. Don’t worry about missing out on certain enhanced features that may contribute greatly to the success of your business as the quote will also state the details such as the function and costs of any extra features.

Affordability

At $10 a month for the introductory lowest plan, VPSBlocks offers a very reasonable package for cheap Windows and Linux VPS hosting services that can hardly be matched by other competitors. Optional add-on features start as low as $5.

You can opt-in for managed server backup, offsite server backups, SPAM filtering, server management etc. Despite the extra costs, the optional features will prove their worth in the long run as a result of convenience and added advantages.

RAID storage

Afraid of website collapsing and downtime? Then VPSBlocks has the special feature of RAID SSD storage to save you from it. RAID storage means that when a disc fails, it is replaced with the data being rebuilt into it without affecting your VPS. It can withstand up to multiple disk failures (which is highly unlikely in the first instance) before the whole system shut down. RAID storage is over 100x faster than SAS or SATA.

Tier-1 bandwidth

VPSBlocks does not purchase to send or receive traffic from any other network and peers with other Tier 1 networks to maintain global reachability. With that, we have the widest internet coverage geographically.

True Australian based company

You will be glad to know that all VPSBlocks support staff are based in Melbourne and offer live phone support during business hours with quick turnaround email or ticket support outside of that.

Managed Hardware Firewall

Another free service that is included in all packages provided by VPSBlocks is that they provide comprehensive network protection from viruses, spyware, Trojans, malware and any unwanted traffic at the hardware level even before it reaches your VPS. You may of course, build your own security setup to allow your own firewall rules using the control panel to block all other ports.

24/7 service monitoring

You can set up HTTP or URL monitoring to notify you of any failures via email or SMS alerts. This is useful to proactively identify website problems before they escalate to become a substantial problem such as downtime. This features 1-minute continuous monitoring and even automatic rebooting of your VPS.

Being a conscious and conscientious company, we do not skimp on maintenance. With the self-healing failover, they offer limit scheduled maintenance that allows your VPS to be mounted to another physical server system or ensure that repairs are done smoothly without affecting your service.

A Round-up on VPS Hosting in Australia

A VPS hosting plan would be the best solution for you if:

Your website is growing and you need it to run smoothly but the cost is a major concern for you (even the lowest tier VPS packages that start as low as $10 a month are often better than any shared hosting solution)
You are not highly proficient in the technicalities of IT and web hosting (in this case, a managed VPS is your way to go)

We hope that our comprehensive guide to VPS hosting has helped put you in a position to understand exactly what is a VPS server and how to apply on to your business. The next step now is to find the right VPS hosting provider within your budget that gives you first class customer service, reliability, server performance and overall good user-friendly experience. By carefully choosing your VPS hosting provider to act as a good business partner to improve your website’s performance, you unleash the full potential of your business growth. VPSBlocks is proud to be the ideal Aus VPS provider that offers excellent Australian VPS hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes.

Why VPS Hosting is the Best Option for Business

Wed, 15 May 2019 01:47:00 GMT

When it comes to creating a successful business, a lot of emphasis is placed on customer care and experience which reflects upon a brand’s identity. Given the technological advancements pushing physical businesses into an online realm, your business’ brand identity no longer stops at just the storefront banner but reaches beyond tangible space into the virtual world of the Internet.

While countless businesses realise the importance of creating and developing websites, many do not take the right steps to reap its full benefit. Some businesses have limited knowledge on server and web hosting resulting in their websites appearing cheap, dull and totally unappealing to their target customers.

On the brighter side, smarter businesses that have tackled the digital space tend to have the advantage of exploring into the endless benefits that a VPS offers them such as unique content and fast loading times that nail the customer experience.

What is a VPS?

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtual machine that uses its own operating system housed in an actual physical computer located in a data center sold as a service by a company that provides internet hosting service. A VPS partitions a single physical server to form multiple isolated self-contained units within it which are independent of its neighbours.

It is the most well-balanced option compared to:

Shared hosting where multiple websites share a single server making your business website prone to suffering from downtime and other forms of interruptions caused by other websites within the same server;

and

Dedicated server where you have the entire computer to yourself which may be redundant, waste of resources and definitely not budget friendly for most businesses.

Many small or medium scale businesses become successful after experiencing a sudden surge of customers and revenue upon opting for a VPS. Come to think about it, it’s not that surprising given how a VPS allows business owners to have increased control over their business functions which are commonly limited by shared hosting.

Benefits of using a VPS

You may ask wonder what is VPS hosting going to do to benefit my business? Put simply, if your business goals are to reduce business expenses, hike up revenue and profit, make your customers happy, then a VPS ticks all these boxes for you.

A VPS improves the performance of your website with a significant boost of speed when loading a page and improvement of reliability with minimal risk of crashing or server error. Server availability can easily make or break certain businesses such as tax-related programs and forex trading that require an active server availability 24/7. Thanks to its own set of resources with dedicated RAM, CPU and bandwidth allocation, your website will be more accessible and user-friendly even to the most impatient visitor.

Adding to this, many businesses often experience frustration running their website due to limited functions. Whether or not you are allowed to add in features and run certain software on your website depends totally on the discretion of your web host. A VPS solves this problem as it hands over control to the business owner. With greater control acting in the position of an administrator, you now have the power to customise software, run various operating systems, and own multiple websites.

It is not an overstatement when we say that a VPS is a cost-efficient solution for your business. You can opt for a managed VPS package where a VPS manager helps you manage the entire server which saves you from the trouble of having to hire an IT personnel just for the maintenance of VPS. To those who are wondering “what if I’m away from my usual computer and how to access my VPS?”, you’ll be thrilled to hear that a VPS can be accessed remotely.

With the significant advantage of remote access, you now have the option to employ workers to work remotely instead of being bound to a physical machine. This possibility opens up doors of opportunity to save a good deal on office space and travelling allowance. You can even customise the VPS so that all the members of your sales team can access it for constant updating on the details of your company’s products or services.

If you run or intend to set up an online retail website and accept credit cards as one of the payment methods, then you most likely know about the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test. The PCI Data Security Standard is established by worldwide major credit and debit card brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express to protect against data theft and other kinds of fraud and to ensure that the data by online merchants is processed, stored and transmitted in a secure manner. With VPS, it is more likely that your website will pass the PCI test due to the security, integrity and load times of your server.

The above is only a slice of the plethora of benefits that you can get from using a VPS. If you want to take your business to the next level, then VPS is the growth strategy that you should adopt.

Disadvantages of VPS

No matter how advantages a VPS is for a business, there is an inevitable truth that there are certain cons that come with it.

Financially speaking, a VPS is not free. Although it comes with a cost, it is not as costly. There are options for a reasonable basic VPS package with bargains finding you paying only a few dollars more than most shared hosting plans. Compared to a dedicated web hosting service that may cost up to tens of thousands a year, a VPS is still the budget-friendly option.

Emphasis needs to be made in the selection process of your VPS service provider. Choose them wisely as a poorly managed VPS service provider can jeopardise your business. Many unscrupulous VPS providers neglect to allocate the resources appropriately due to overselling their packages. What happens next is a lack of resources, constant downtime that ends up driving your customers away. If you don’t want that, then do a thorough research on your list of VPS service provider before you decide by understanding the features being offered by a VPS service provider and their reputation.

Why is a VPS the Best Option for Business

Now that you understand what is VPS hosting, let’s explore why VPS is best used for business. The old-school way that businesses run their servers is by purchasing the entire server and installing it in the office. That also means that they need an IT expert on-premise all the time. These kinds of servers are usually task-specific and are not versatile at all rendering it underutilised all the time. The business that utilises this kind of server is always one step behind their much bigger business competitors. Then VPS comes and gives them the light at the end of the tunnel.

Pocket-friendly

Instead of owning and managing the whole server, you now get to rent it via a VPS. Renting a server frees up money for other aspects and development of your business. By picking and choosing whatever specifications you want such as bandwidth, RAM CPU, and so on, you have the opportunity to optimise your resources. Unlike the modern dedicated server, you don’t need to pay the upfront costs of the physical machine, maintenance and support of the server.

You are in control

Contrary to shared hosting where you are sharing the server with hundreds of other websites, you get your own private server in a VPS. You no longer need to get the “approval” from your web host for software installation or wait for your website’s turn for updates. Now that you are in control, you are able to customise your own website with enhanced security features and the software best for your industry that best suits your business.

Minimal downtime

If your website generates revenue for your company, then even the slightest downtime may put a big dent in your bottom line. Good Australian VPS service providers offer self-healing failover which means that if the physical computer in the data centre goes offline for any reason, your VPS is automatically and immediately mounted on another computer until the issue is fixed. As a result, you will not experience any downtime even when your VPS service provider is conducting maintenance.

Scalability

No doubt this is one of the biggest selling points when it comes to VPS being the best option for businesses. If you own a small business, pick a small package that fits into your budget. With a small business, you are most likely able to predict the amount of traffic your website will receive. As your business grows in time, scale up your VPS specifications to meet the expanding customer base. The upgrade usually does not cause any downtime making your site continue to operate without interruption.

Manage with ease

It is a misconception that every company needs an IT expert stationed in the office all the time or even an outsourced IT professional. This is especially true when their role is mainly to manage the server only. For many cash trapped small to medium capital businesses, this type of skilled resources can easily be taken on by your VPS service provider. Get a managed VPS package that cost only a fraction of the payroll of your IT personnel. A good VPS manager providers services from support for core service services, fixing problems to running updates for you.

VPS is the best option as it allows a business to focus on the core elements of growing the business. The technology of VPS is so advanced to the point where security, performance, availability and scalability are no longer issues. The only challenge lies in identifying the right VPS service provider that meet your needs.

What kind of business needs a VPS?

As long as your website attracts customers, i.e. revenue and profit, then a VPS is the ideal solution to help sculpture your online presence. In fact, the size of your business does not really matter as long as you are looking to grow it. When investing in a business, the point of effort relating to scalability should be incorporated into the business plan which matches the purpose of a VPS seamlessly.

VPS works great for various types of business ranging from IT technical software development to merchandise retail and service related. If you are wondering what is a VPS function in a business world and how to use a VPS to the advantage of your business, then we have the answers for you.

VPS provides a happy beginning for online retail thanks to its boost in loading speed. If your page load time takes longer than 3 seconds, then be prepared to bid farewell to a large section of your customers as this significantly affects conversions, page views and definitely your SEO ranking.

Another reason why VPS takes the eCommerce world by storm is that it increases the likelihood of your website passing the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance test which sets the gold standard established by global credit cards and debit cards brands such as Visa, Mastercard and American Express for the purpose of combating fraud and protecting data.

VPS is also the most favoured type of web hosting amongst companies that provide IT technical service such as code development and hosting services. With root access and flexibility to run various operating systems, VPS provides a stable working environment with complete privacy without the extra cost of maintaining the expensive hardware.

It is also the preferred solution if your business runs on software. A VPS’s star feature of minimal downtime makes it a valuable platform for programs or websites such as forex trading, finance and accounting software that require server availability and stability all the time.

If your company hires sales representatives that travel frequently to turn potential customers into actual profit-generating customers, then VPS may be the secret to being cost-efficient due to its remote access feature. You no longer need to incur cost for travelling allowance and office space since the sales employees can access to the VPS remotely to update and report back on their sales results. At the same time, you are also given the freedom to upload new strategy or information of your company’s products, export and import sales data to the financial system and correspond with the customer via email.

Essentially, many risks normally associated with websites and software are reduced or eliminated completely by adopting a VPS, especially a managed VPS, into your business plan. An allocation of few hundred dollars a year on a decent VPS package will shift your company to a more customer focus company yielding greater customer satisfaction since any technical concern which may arise on the server will be taken care of by the expert.

Understanding more about VPS Security

The online platform may cause some businesses to concern over the security and the privacy of the data of their customers. In fact, some pay well beyond their budget for the exorbitant dedicated server based on this objection. That is unnecessary and a waste of resources as a VPS can easily take care of that.

Let’s begin by looking at the way a VPS works. A hypervisor, also known as virtual machine monitor is a computer software that creates and runs virtual machines and is responsible for managing the individual VPS. It controls the communication between a VPS and the hardware in the data centre such as usage of CPU resources and allocation of memory. When a VPS is booted up, the hypervisor software will ensure that only that specific VPS’s controller, i.e. you, are able to write to and read from it. In essence, it keeps the data separate from other VPS’ and maintains its security.

You may now ask – Well, what is the protective measure by the VPS service provider on the hypervisor? Any decent VPS service provider would invest heavily on protecting the hypervisors from being attacked. The reason for this is that once the hypervisor is compromised, the entirety of the VPS would be affected as a consequence. As such, a good VPS service provider would impose tight control on accessing the hypervisor and maintain it behind multiple layers of security including firewalls.

Next, is the security on VPS level. It is often misunderstood by non-tech savvy people that dedicated server is more secure than VPS, perhaps due to its pricing. Since a VPS allows your data and files to remain hosted in a separate and secured partition which is not accessible to other clients of your service provider, a weakly protected dedicated server can be more vulnerable than a strongly guarded VPS. It all comes down to the configuration of the software and the invasion by unwelcomed threats that are subject to the flaws that exist within the software.

There are many precautionary steps that can be taken by website owners to ward off the threat such as doing constant housekeeping, i.e. running only the software that is required and removing those that are not, configuring the firewall to limit access to only the essential services, and block off others and using secure passwords for user accounts.

Why VPS Hosting is Better than Shared or Dedicated Web Hosting

All business owners are given the three options when it comes to going “online” - Shared, VPS, or Dedicated web hosting. Selecting the right hosting service makes a tremendous impact on the business. It is not hard to see why VPS hosting is the most preferred one amongst the other types of web hosting as it is the most well-balanced option.

In a shared hosting environment, many websites share a single server with limited server resources allocated to each customer based on the hosting package. In a dedicated web hosting environment, the customer gets the whole server to themselves, not shared with anyone else. VPS lies in the middle where the user gets a slice of the server dedicated to them and therefore gets the best of both worlds.

a) Performance

Nowadays, if you want your business to grow, the first thing you have to do is to make sure that your website performs well. A fast loading website gives the customer a positive experience and you certainly should not expect to see happy returning customer if your website loads as slow as molasses.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is only suitable for websites that are simple, static and informational without activities required. Since you are sharing the server with few other websites (which could be up to hundreds), you are most likely prone to hearing some “noise” produced by your neighbour. The Noisy Neighbour Effect happens mostly during high traffic hours when the majority of resources is being used by your neighbours causing your website to suffer from slow speed and insufficient memory space.

VPS

If your website receives average to a high volume of traffic or you are running a few websites, then this is the best option. A decent VPS package from a good and reputable VPS service provider will make sure that the server is optimised and the network is not abused so that you get to enjoy the server in peace.

Dedicated

It is true that this is the most direct solution that eliminates the noisy neighbour problem. However, since a well-managed VPS service provider can easily solve that issue at a fraction of the cost of the dedicated web hosting, this is hardly convincing enough for a business to go for dedicated web hosting.

b) Security

As technology advances, many businesses find it a challenge to keep their files and data, including customer’s information, on the web secured and safe from being stolen. In a worst-case scenario, cyber attacks cause major unsalvageable damage to the business and destroyed the business’ reputation and the hard-earned consumer trust. Choosing the right kind of web hosting eliminates that problem.

Shared hosting

The security of your website in a shared hosting environment depends wholly on how much your host has decided to invest in it. Even though shared hosting is generally safe, your website is vulnerable to attacks as it is beyond your control when your neighbour’s website makes a mistake. Since you are all in the same community on the same machine, your website will likely to be impacted shortly after your neighbour.

VPS

Since all users are allocated an independent isolated IP address, the risk of a security breach is significantly lower. Nonetheless, it all comes down to the fort of security which you have the freedom to build, unlike shared hosting. You can freely install a security plugin, select your own criteria of spam filtering and securing your SSH configuration as a defence mechanism that is more tailored to your business’ functions. This is one of the top reasons why a business that collects information from customers chooses VPS. If you are not an IT expert or wish to avoid wasting time and cost on learning how to gear up your security, then get a managed VPS package where the technicalities are handled from top to bottom.

Dedicated

Just like VPS, the website owners are able to deploy their own security measures as well.

c) Pricing

A simple recipe for disaster is to base your decision entirely on the pricing of web hosting when selecting the one that suits your business. You may think that you have struck a good deal on a one-dollar package but low quality shared hosting services may restrict the growth of your business. On the alternative end of the stick, a dedicated hosting setup typically falls too costly when it comes to budgeting. But will the end quality meet your expectation? Unlike the two, a VPS occupies the middle ground by offering high-quality features (provided you choose the right Australian VPS provider carefully) and reasonable, competitive pricing.

A VPS, the “Goldilocks” of web hosting with its many outstanding advantages, is often regarded as being neither too expensive nor slow, providing the well-balanced solution for all businesses looking to flourish in the digital space.

How to Choose the Best VPS for Your Business

When you begin your search to find the best VPS Australia has to offer, it is understandable that choosing the best one can be tough given the many technical jargons. As a good VPS can give a game-changing effect on your business, we have carefully shortlisted the few important points to look out for when picking the best VPS service provider that supports your business.

Customer support

If a business does not own an IT department that specialised on web-hosting, then it is dependant on the customer support of the VPS service provider on all day, everyday basis from the very first day. It is not unusual to have many questions, especially when you first started on the VPS and not getting a clear answer, or worse, a response can be extremely frustrating. When serious issues arise, you need to know that your service provider has your back within the right time frame and salvage you from the existing problem.

Always choose an Australian based VPS hosting company and make sure that they do not outsource their call centres to another country to avoid problems such as communication challenges or lack of experience to give you the best advice.

Be sure to take a look at the website to find out the methods of communication being offered. Some Aus VPS service providers may paint a vibrant picture on how excited they are to help you in growing your business, but in fact, limit all contacts via email or contact form only. When customer support is needed, it has to be at least live either by a chat window on the website or through a direct phone call.

It would be a good idea to enquire the expertise of the technicians that answers call from the customer directly. The preferred level 3 VPS support technicians are ideal personnel to go to as they are equipped with the most knowledge and experience with the ability to deploy solutions to even the most challenging problems.

Cost

By now you should have a certain idea as to the kind of assets that are required by your website. Considering that VPS resources are scalable, don’t get bogged down on the exact details of each resource. Simply list out the estimated criteria for the resources such as memory space, storage, root access, dedicated IP required, CPU cores etc. then compare the prices of the packages offered by the Aus VPS hosts. What is VPS server cost? Australian VPS server costs usually range from $10 - $60 subject to add-on features that may or may not be negotiable depending on your contract term.

Reliability

In a VPS environment, uptime is expected all the time. A reasonably good VPS service provider that is confident on the quality of their service would guarantee a minimum of uptime normally ranges between 99.5% to 99.9%. A session of downtime should not also last more than a few hours.

Data Centers

If you run a business, then you have the responsibility to act seriously in guarding the important data. You can do so by selecting an Australian VPS hosting provider that houses their data centre in Australia. Many VPS hosts outsource their data centre to another country for cost saving purpose. It is foreseeable that many issues may arise from outsourcing a data centre such as security-related issue due to total dependence on the far-away data centre provider or regular breakdown due to lack of due diligence by the VPS service provider.

Self-healing failover

If downtime is one of your top concerns, which it should be, then you must choose a VPS host that provides this feature. When the physical computer of the VPS is running on fails, this system detects it immediately and automatically mount your VPS on another computer, then your IP address is pointed to the new system and your VPS is back online in the exact condition it was when the failure first occurred. This clustering technology and transition can happen fast normally because the VPS service provider uses Fast SSD Raid array. It works equally well too during maintenance by your VPS service provider.

Reputation

If technology is not your forte, just google for the customer’s reviews and look into the history of the company in relation to Australian VPS hosting. Do they provide intuitive support service? Do they attend to the complaint immediately? Is there any negative feedback on downtime? How long have they been in the market? Are they 100% Australian as they claimed? These are just some of the examples that would reflect whether the company is trustworthy. Remember to also choose one that commits to conduct their business practice with an uncompressing level of honesty and integrity.

Finding the right VPS host can be a challenge but it is necessary. Do your homework because the benefits that you can reap from partnering with the right VPS service provider is plentiful including cost saving, acceleration of business growth and most importantly, peace of mind so that you can focus on what you do best, the business side.

Why VPSBlocks is Probably the Best VPS Australia has to Offer

When it comes to finding the best VPS in Australia, VPSBlocks is proud to be one of the top leading players in the Aus VPS industry. For a great price, we offer many outstanding complimentary features and very functional enhanced features for those that require.

Abundance of Choice

With more than ten operating systems including the popular CentOS, cPanel, Ubuntu, Plesk Windows etc. you are spoilt with choices. Cheap Windows VPS is amongst the list of selection too. If you have a preferred operating system, just drop us an email and we will do our best to add it in for you too.

Customisation

Many VPS service providers have readymade VPS packages due to limitations of their own internal capital for resources. Many websites are forced to choose a package that contains specifications which are closest to what they need but they often end up paying for the additional RAM/CPU/ storage space that they don’t even use. To help prevent this, VPSBlocks allow our clients to select the exact VPS plan and customise a perfect package that fits squarely into your business. Just click on the “pricing order’ tab on our website and select the operating system, configure your resources (CPU cores, dedicated RAM, SSD Disk, SATA Disk, bandwidth) and lastly set your payment option by monthly, semi-annually or annually.

If you are worried about how much resources you need or which operating system you should choose for your business, simply refer to “VPS Advice” which is filled with solid professional guidance and explanation on how to help you choose the right VPS option for you.

There are also up to six optional features such as managed server backups, offsite server backups and server management. You may want to select only the essential features in the beginning and add it on later as and when required. You will then be provided with an instant quote which states the details of the functions and costs of any extra features that may be recommended for you.

Affordability

Whether you are looking for cheap Windows VPS or Linux VPS that come with quality specifications, VPSBlocks has it all. Our basic introductory plan is as low as $10 a month with optional add-on features as low as $5. If your budget allows, consider adding in the optional features in your plan, which is only extra few more hundred dollars a year, as it may unlock the hidden potential of your website and transform the quality of your business.

RAID storage

RAID is a data storage protocol that combines many physical disk drive components into one or more units for the purposes of performance improvement and/or data redundancy. All storage in VPSBlocks is fast 100% SSD RAID storage which is over 100x faster than SAS or SATA. Since your data is stored in different locations on multiple hard disks to protect against drive failure, you no longer need to worry that your data will be wiped out in the unlikely event that the server is corrupted.

Tier-1 bandwidth

Your website speeds depend on how your server connects to the internet stream. VPSBlocks uses Tier-1 bandwidth that provides the highest quality internet connection globally with low latency.

Genuine Australian based company

Not just a self-proclaimed Australian company, VPSBlocks is truly an Australian brand from head to toe. With our data centres and all our highly trained support staff located in Melbourne, you get access to live phone support during business hours with quick turnaround email and ticket support outside of that.

Managed Hardware Firewall

Another free service that is included in all packages provided by VPSBlocks is that we protect the core systems with a well-managed hardware firewall. Maintaining this firewall requires regular updates so that the attacker cannot exploit any vulnerabilities in the services. Managed hardware firewall monitors the state of internet connections and rejects those that do not match a known familiar active connection, therefore, providing an additional line of defence to mitigate the impact of any misconfiguration which accidentally allow traffic without user interaction. Don’t forget, this is in addition to your own firewall rules which you can set up in the VPS control panel.

24/7 service monitoring

You can setup 24/7 HTTP/URL monitoring in the VPS control panel to flag and notify you of any failures via email or SMS alerts. This features 1-minute continuous monitoring and even automatic rebooting of your VPS. These reliable real-time notifications can help to mitigate any problems before they explode to an unmanageable level.

Disaster recovery

VPSBlocks offer the advanced service of direct VPS replication of your VPS to local or external locations at a reasonable cost. What is VPS server replication? With a 15-minute replication time, your entire VPS including firewalls and networking configurations is continuously replicated elsewhere to an alternate infrastructure for you to easily recover in case of disaster. The manual failover to your direct replication server saves you from embarrassing downtime.

Why VPSBlocks should be your VPS choice

The list of reasons why VPSBlocks is the best in Australia is aplenty. By choosing us as your VPS hosting provider, your website will be pampered with the self-healing failover features and regular limited schedule maintenance. With the aim of providing the best growth opportunity and digital foundation for your business, your purpose is to choose the best Australian VPS service provider that works seamlessly with you and provide a long-lasting and sustainable positive impact on your business growth. VPSBlocks is your answer.

You can’t afford to fail even once when it comes to business websites. Thankfully, VPSBlocks comes to the rescue and redefines the boundaries of online business as the websites no longer need to be bound by the four walls set by the host.

At $10 for the lowest specifications VPS package, we offer a budget-friendly option for businesses of all sizes. If you envision your business to grow at any point in the future, then it is never too early to choose a VPS service provider that provides the extra miles such as add-on features and high maximum bandwidth, large storage space, and more, so that you can scale up your VPS package when your business is ready. Take a leap of faith and speak to VPSBlocks at 1300 839 448 today for more information to securing a brighter future for your business.