The difference between a microsite and a website

You hear the term microsite a lot, but what is the real difference? A website is your regular website that contains all the information you want to present to your visitors. A microsite is a site that you create for a specific purpose, be it marketing or for focus. You will probably host them in the same place, your Los Angeles data center. Here are some of the main criteria when defining a microsite:

A microsite is usually a temporary construct that only exists for the period of its purpose. If there is a marketing campaign that is focusing on a niche or product, it is often a good idea to create an accompanying microsite for the duration of the campaign. Please remember that a microsite is not a landing page and has more information.

The microsite also does not need to be small. The micro component of the name is more about its purpose than its size. It is as big as it needs to be. It might be a

subdomain or a subfolder of the main site but has to function as a standalone site and should only have a cursory reference to the main site.

You will also find that microsites have its own social media profiles, email address, and forms. According to Rack Alley, even video and text content will exist purely for the microsite, for the duration of the campaign, or as a permanent resource for the niche.

Data center or server room: Which is better for your business?

It wasn’t very long ago that all servers were entirely in-house. The company invested in the server room, the backup systems and security. Also, the company hired staff with specific skills to manage the different systems. Today, the story is very different, with cloud hosting or an LA data center, these same organizations have the option to stay in-house or move everything out. Here is a quick look at the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining your server room:

Advantages:

The main advantage is that you own all the systems. Everything happens on your schedule, and any costs can be deferred or incurred as you see fit. It is a lot of work, but it comes with the sort of customization that is difficult in most third-party environments. You can modify or change any component of the system to your needs, where in any other setting it might clash with the policies of the host or the requirements of other clients.

Disadvantages:

There are two big disadvantages. The first issue is with the resource requirements. You want your IT staff working on solutions and improvements to the technology related to running the business, rather than working to keep the data center running. The other is security. According to Rack Alley, there is an ever-increasing threat of new and advanced malware, viruses and malicious Internet traffic, which requires the sort of security expertise that is expensive to maintain in-house.

The different types of hosting

rackalley1Written by Rack Alley

The most basic definition of web hosting is the service provided by the large hosting providers to host your website or application on one of or a part of their servers. The infrastructure required to run a data center is expensive and for smaller organizations, using an online web hosting service is the most cost-effective. Here are the main types of hosting in the market today:

Shared hosting

This is the most popular type of hosting because it is also the cheapest form. With shared hosting, several customer accounts are hosted on the same shared server. In some cases, this can be hundreds on the same server. This is the option when looking for la web hosting.

Dedicated server hosting

This is the rental of the entire physical server. It is only different from server hosting Los Angeles because the server is usually the property of the hosting company. This sort of hosting provides a lot of power and flexibility. However, it does require in-depth technical knowledge.

Virtual private server

This is somewhere between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. With this model, a virtual server is rented. It is one of many virtual servers on the same physical server. However, the number of virtual machines running on a single server will be far less than shared hosting. In addition, certain performance guarantees are provided.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their Los Angeles data center.

Basic guide to setting up a disaster recovery site

rackalley1Written by Rack Alley

This a basic step by step guide to setting up a cold site at a la data center for a small to medium sized company that has its own application servers in house.

Virtualize

The first step to making a relatively quick (read: hours to days) transition from your office to a cold site with server hosting Los Angeles during a disaster is to virtualize all critical servers in the organization. Ideally, an in-house cluster is the best way to maintain redundancy at the main site.

Backup

Daily backups of critical data and weekly backups of all other data is the next step to put in place. This data can then be restored at the cold site in the event of a disaster. These backups can be taken on tape or disk but need to be stored at an offsite location. Ideally, this would be away from the office.

Replicate

Any critical systems where any data loss cannot be tolerated should be replicated in real time to the cold site. Since the workloads would have been virtualized systems like Hyper-v can replicate to another over the internet every few minutes.

You now have a system where in the event of a disaster, the critical system can be failed over, at which point the restore process from backups can begin. After some DNS and other changes, the cold site is brought up until the main site can be restored.

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Rack Alley provides premium LA colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their Los Angeles data center

The advantages of shared web hosting

3Written by Rack Alley

One of the many choices when it comes to hosting your own website is shared web hosting. Basically, shared web hosting is one server shared amongst hundreds or even thousands of accounts. Each of these accounts can have many sites/domains run by them. While this does sound problematic, and does have its share of issues, it also comes with some benefits:

Cost

Shared web hosting is cheap. You will most likely be paying less than ten dollars a month for an account that lets you host a few domains, websites etc along with some email accounts. For a site starting out it means not having to shell out hundreds of dollars for capacity that will not be used.

Growth

These shared hosting services are limited by the amount of resources you can use. Although they do state that most are unlimited, it is not so and you will eventually have to upgrade when the site grows. But this is not a bad thing. As your site gets bigger, you have the option of upgrading the package in place. You can go to a higher shared package or even go to dedicated or virtual hosting or colocation at an la data center.

Support

Services like la colocation have a lot of flexibility but it also means a lot of more work. You will almost certainly have to do everything on the server yourself. Shared hosting comes with support where a lot of the leg work can be done for you. Certain levels of support are provided and anything additional can be paid for.

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Rack Alley is a provider of colocation services, including server hosting los angeles.

A primer of shared hosting packages

Written by Rack Alley

Choosing a web hosting package for the first time user can be a difficult prospect. There are so many different packages to choose from. The differences between them might not be so obvious. The most popular package you will find on almost any web host is the shared hosting package. They come in many names but are usually the cheapest or one step up from the cheapest. Here is a primer on what to expect from a shared hosting package:

Shared

This reason that these packages are so cheap is because they share a single web server across multiple accounts. In some cases this could mean that a shared account could have thousands of other users on the same server. There are few problems that can stem from that. Firstly, anything that another webmaster on the same la web hosting does can affect your uptime. If a site is suddenly hit with a spike of traffic, it can slow all the other sites on the same server. The same goes for punishments.

Unlimited

These packages also trumpet how they allow unlimited amounts of everything. Unlimited bandwidth, disk space etc. None of this is true. For most customers there are enough resources provided that they would never notice. However, were your site to suddenly become a breakout hit or get a massive amount of traffic, you are likely to be shut down citing some condition. They will then recommend a dedicated server.

Other limitations

There are also some other limitations. The easiest example is security. Now that Google gives additional ranking boosts to sites that use SSL, every site is now looking to get SSL setup. Unfortunately most shared hosts will not be able to give you a dedicated IP that SSL requires. You will need to get proper server hosting los angeles in order to get that dedicated IP.

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Rack Alley provides premium colocation services perfect for small and enterprise customers at their los angeles data center.

What to Consider Before Choosing a Colocation Provider

Written by Rack Alley

Colocation is one the option that you will find if you have been on the look out for a data center. If you are seeking a time-efficient and cost-effective solution, colocation might be the answer you are looking for. A colocation service is generally quite easy and safe to set up. Some of the most important factors to consider before choosing a provider is the network and location.

Why colocation?

If you had to set up a dedicated data center for your company, that would have required a considerable amount of investment. Both in terms of time and money. Colocation enables you to save time and it is a cost-effective solution. The basis behind colocation is the sharing of a data center with other businesses. The information of each company is stored in a secured manner so that they do not overlap.

Location and Network

Location is an important factor to consider for various reasons. Firstly, if you would be looking to send an employee from your company from time to time to visit the data center, it will be worthwhile to hire one that is not too far. Secondly, you might also consider whether the location is subject to natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes. The power structure and fibre paths constitute of the network facility in a region.

Across the world, companies are hosting their data in locations such as Hong Kong and Los Angeles. LA data center services have become a distinction of quality. These data centers are energy-efficient and as such are able to provide competitive prices. These companies invest in better hardware to ensure better LA colocation services.

RackAlley provides Los Angeles data center to various types of businesses worldwide.

Why You Need Colocation

By Rack Alley

In the digital age, no company can afford to be caught flat-footed where technology is concerned. This is a great way to end up handing over market share to your competitors. Unfortunately, too many businesses don’t understand how Los Angeles colocation can end up contributing to their bottomline. Even the ones that are located right by an LA data center often let this amazing solution move right under their noses.

Fortunately, you can act today and get on the ball, even if you’ve never used coloation before. The great thing about colocation is that it’s virtually a turnkey solution that you can take advantage of at any time. When you do, the benefits begin immediately.

In short, colocation allows you to put almost all your digital hardware offsite. There, it will stay protected and under the right temperatures so no amount of traffic or use can ever fry it or throw it overboard. As a result, you get the digital services you need and another company handles all the work that goes along with supporting it.

So if you want to stay relevant in the digital age without all the overhead, colocation is undoubtedly the way you need to go.

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When you’re in the market for a Los Angeles data center, it doesn’t get any better than Rack Alley. Like any company, you have unique needs when it comes to what a data center means, but Rack Alley understands this, which is why they offer custom solutions to every customer.

Save Money on Your Web Hosting

By Rack Alley

Just about every company in LA needs help with hosting. It’s how they keep a website up and running that actually serves their best interests. Unfortunately, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could be working against your own. Los Angels web hosting companies can charge an up and a leg and unsuspecting businesses are usually paying.

However, you can save on LA web hosting if you know what you’re doing. First, consider the fact that the whole surrounding area can be used for your hosting. You could even head to Northern California.

Secondly, you want to consider those companies that have an a la carte option. By this, I mean that you need shouldn’t have to pay for a bunch of options you’ll never use. Maybe you just need web hosting, but not colocaiton. Many companies offer both and will insist on you buying a package that includes the two. This is wasted money.

Lastly, there’s no underestimating redundancy. You absolutely need a system for backing up your information. This will save you a ton of money if an earthquake hits or something else goes wrong. Of course, it will also save all the information you need to successfully run your business.

Rack Alley is your one stop shop for a LA data center. Whether you need colocation, hosting, support or just about anything else, Rack Alley has the resources, redundancy and expertise to ensure you get what you’re looking for at the best possible price.

Job Distribution

By Rack Alley

                Los Angeles is one of those places that never seem to sleep. No matter what time of the day, you will see people up and about, busy with one thing or the next. The reason for this is that Los Angeles has developed into a highly busy district with various forms of enterprises booming, whether it is small scale or large scale. Due to the demand of many of these enterprises to expand their respective locations, the value of land has skyrocketed since the last millennia. This has affected small enterprises who cannot afford land in order to house their servers and network infrastructure. This is where web hosting comes in.

                In los angeles web hosting is very common because the prices of real estate is too expensive and small enterprises cannot afford to spend on a piece of property that will only house computers and other hardware equipment. Web hosting is when you will turn over the set up, and maintenance of your website and network to a third party company who specializes in such data storage, one such company is Rack Alley. Rack Alley utilizes their data centers and network infrastructure  by distributing bandwidth to different clients depending on their need, while still maximizing the use of their assets. For you, as a client, you save on the expensive costs of running a data center and you don’t have to worry yourself about things that you dont understand.

Leave the experts do their job, so you can focus more on yours.

Rack Alley optimizes la data centers to store critical information to keep your businesses on the go. Los angeles data center space rentals are secure and effective.