High Availability Windows Web Hosting

We can set up custom high availability Windows web hosting packages, with website and email space plus extra features to suit your specific needs. This option is designed for mission-critical websites where the best possible uptime is required (see our Windows Web Hosting Packages for normal websites).

Your website is hosted on two separate webservers in two separate UK datacentres, using different internet connectivity, with completely automated software failover to the secondary webserver in the event of any issue with the primary webserver. Windows Server 2003 is used throughout.

Standard Features For High-Availability Hosting

A number of options are also available, including our Enhanced AntiSpam And AntiVirus Service, domain name registration, SSL certificates, additional parked domains, consultancy and software/script development.

To obtain a free quote for a custom high-availability hosting package to suit your needs, please contact us!

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Spam And Virus Protection

All of our hosting accounts include our Standard AntiSpam and AntiVirus Service at no extra cost. All mail is scanned for viruses using Clam Antivirus (detected viruses are removed). You can optionally enable the Spam Assassin engine for your account to reduce the amount of unsolicited email reaching your mailboxes.

Our optional Enhanced AntiSpam and AntiVirus Service offers a significant step up in effectiveness. 98% or more of all spam is eradicated, and two AntiVirus engines (Kaspersky and Clam) are used to ensure no viruses get through. AntiSpam analysis uses sophisticated multilayer processing, with hourly updates of the AntiSpam rules/database and AntiVirus data. If you want to minimise spam, we highly recommend this service to you.

Web Application Support

We provide full script and cgi-bin support. Because we don't overload our servers, we make sure that ASP and CGI timeouts are generous so your scripts and applications work properly. We believe our packages are ideal for complex scripts and web applications.

In addition, we do support ISAPI DLLs, although we would definitely not recommend ISAPIs for new applications, due to the difficulty of debugging and managing them. We do ask that ISAPI DLLs are fully debugged final versions (to protect other users on our servers), and that you use ISAPI Manager (a free download from www.turbodb.de/en/support/isapi.html) to look after the loading/unloading issues.

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About High Availability Hosting

Using conventional web hosting, where your website is hosted on a single webserver, there are a number of factors which could cause your website to be unavailable, including:

The traditional solution is a hardware-based high-availability setup, using one or more hardware failover / load balancer machines together with multiple webservers. However, in most cases this will only offer protection against the first of the factors listed above.

Although datacentres are designed to be resilient, with backup power, redundant networking and multiple internet connectivity providers, over the years we have been involved in hosting we have seen a number of situations where unforeseen circumstances have resulted in failures, even in the best datacentres. Remember, too, that routine maintenance must be performed in any environment, which can result in period of downtime.

To ensure your website is protected against downtime or failure in any one datacentre, our high-availability hosting packages use a multiple-datacentre approach, controlled by a redundant software-based automated failover system. This protects against all of the factors identified above.

How Does It Work?

Your website is hosted on two separate webservers, in different UK datacentres: we'll call them the primary and secondary webservers. Your domain name is hosted on our DNS servers. Failover software, running on two systems in different datacentres, continuously checks that your website is running on the primary webserver. If the software detects that your website is unavailable on the primary webserver, it automatically changes the DNS settings for your domain so that website requests go to the secondary webserver instead. When the primary webserver is available again, the settings are switched back so that requests go to the primary webserver. Note that the effective speed of the switchover is dependent on how quickly other locations on the internet see the change to your website's DNS. In most cases this is now within just a few minutes or less.

You need to make sure that you upload new or changed files to both webservers when you make changes to your website.

What About Databases?

If you use a Microsoft SQL Server database, this is located on our separate database server (not on a webserver). We can provide SQL Server redundancy: please contact us for more information.

MySQL 5 databases are located on individual webservers, so could be located on the primary and secondary webserver hosting your website.

Note that any database solution which involves database redundancy will involve extra planning and programming on your part.

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Important Notes

VAT Tax. The prices shown above exclude VAT (European Union sales tax) which is currently chargeable at 20% on all services (no matter which country you are in).

Prohibited Scripts And Applications: To protect the security and integrity of our customers' files and accounts, we maintain a list of scripts and applications that are prohibited from use on our web hosting and email hosting servers. This list can be found here. Please check that a script or application you wish to use is not included on this list before placing your order. We are happy to advise on alternative scripts or applications where relevant.

Terms: Please make sure you read our Terms and Conditions carefully before placing your order.

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