AWS, Azure, CloudLinux, CloudFlare & iFactoryDNS
Keeping your online services performing involves an ever greater array of systems and services. At the minimum a web server is required to host your website and make it accessible to all the world. Your website could use a shared server that hosts other websites – this is the case for most of the world’s websites. For higher traffic websites they may have their own web server. This could be a physical, Dedicated server in a data centre or it may be a virtual cloud server hosted on platforms such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS. Physical dedicated servers offer the advantage of control over the physical hardware of your server system. Alternatively, By deploying a cloud server you gain the benefits of redundancy and scalability without having to be concerned with the underlying hardware.
More advanced web applications require a multiple server environment. Options can include moving the database to a separate server to remove the load off the web server. More advanced configurations have one database server that performs ‘writes’ (updating data) and one or more other database servers to perform ‘reads’ (serve data). A master & slave software system keeps the read & write databases synchronized.
For high-traffic sites, DevOps (developer operations) teams or system administrators will deploy multiple web servers that split the traffic between them, all managed by a separate load balancing server. This allows additional web servers to be added as the traffic dictates.
To support high-traffic, content-heavy websites, a CDN (Content Delivery Network) can be implemented so that static content such as images, video, CSS & Javascript files are served by a third party service. These CDN servers cache a copy of the websites content and when a user visits the website, these assets are served from the CDN, thereby removing some of the load from the web server. Advanced CDN systems allow for caching of assets all around the world, allowing international visitors to your website to experience faster load time, as parts of the website are served by servers close by.
For your website to be available via its domain name (such as example.com.au) as opposed to its IP address, It needs to make use of DNS (Domain Name System). DNS converts a user’s request for a domain name into an IP address that the server requires. DNS solutions have evolved in complexity to offer redundant solutions and geographical-based targeting to allow different regions to redirect to different servers.
Hybrid cloud products, (such as CloudFlare), also exist that combine a CDN, DNS management and threat protection. They offer advantages but can also have adverse impacts on website performance, in particular page load times.
Hosting your own website is possible, but does come with inherent risk that could cause you to lose everything if a power failure or dropped internet connection occurs. A hosting service will ensure that your website is available for viewing continuously without fear of interruption. Choosing a third party service for your web hosting makes sense as they are specialists in managing and configuring a web server, patch management, firewalls and virus protection.
Whether you’re deploying Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, Joomla, Drupal or an application framework, iFactory has you covered. All our plans include SSL. iFactory can design a hi-performance server infrastructure to match your application, website or Ecommerce requirements.
Our web hosting solutions allows iFactory clients access to a range of flexible, effective and affordable internet services.
CloudLinux
A unique Linux based system.
It is the first commercial OS that aims to make the ability to offer stable hosting a reality.
Customers are unable to monopolise the resources as each user has tenant isolation, Which means customers are isolated from each other so if one customer’s server fails, Everybody else is protected. There are also resource limits available to control the amount of resources used by each client. This stabilises the server and resource limits can be customised for web applications such as a blog or shop so that if one area is exceeded it will not affect the rest of the site.
Security patches are released quickly to ensure customer safety and Lightweight Virtual Environment Technology is employed to further stabilise and protect customer server connections.
CloudFlare
A website optimising solution.
A way to protect and enhance your website online. CloudFlare offers services which can speed up your site, increase site loading time for sites with ad servers, protect it from a range of online threats, provide full analytics for your site and enable easy installation of web apps on your site.
CloudFlare operates with any web hosting, domain name or CMS platform to provide its users who require a more sophisticated web approach with enhanced website features. On average, A CloudFlare website loads twice as quickly, uses 60% less bandwidth and generates 65% fewer requests. CloudFlare-powered websites enjoy a significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks.
AWS Amazon Cloud
A cloud-based infrastructure resource system.
It is an innovative cloud-computing service which offers a complete set of infrastructure and application features to enable you to run everything for your online project in the cloud. Cloud-computing is the ability to run on-demand IT services through the internet using a pay-as-you-go system.
Estimating capacity needs when adopting a new application can be difficult. Cloud-computing eliminates shortfalls or exaggerations through the provision of extra resources based on your needs at any given time.
AWS Amazon works within a diverse set of industries such as media, financial, retail, education and government, Offering a number of infrastructure resources including apps, big data, backup and storage, digital media and gaming. It offers its clients supreme flexibility and customisation and provides it to hundreds of thousands of customers globally.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud solution incorporating more than 100 services with a range of tools to support their use. Over 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure services and they have data centres around the globe including several in Australia.
Google Cloud
Google Cloud allows users to tap into their world-class infrastructure. They offer solutions to run applications on their secure cloud, reliably and securely manage data at scale and work with analytics, machine learning and AI.
iFactoryDNS
Automation of DNS services
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for any resource connected to the internet or a private network. Its role is to convert domain names to numerical IP addresses for the purpose of locating computer services and devices worldwide. A DNS provides a worldwide, distributed keyword-based redirection service which is an essential part of the internet. Think of it as a virtual telephone directory that converts your request to visit a website into a command your web browser understands.
iFactory offers DNS management enabling us to control our DNS server clusters used by our growing list of clients. The system allows us to reduce human error whilst editing complex and repetitive DNS data, to validate DNS before it is published and to automate the distribution of DNS data. Our DNS management software gives us code diversity and application performance which increases security and therefore the reliability of our services.