Have A Big Website - Worried About Server Load

Have we ever thought how big websites could be configured to handle massive amount of traffic? How thousands of businesses worldwide are facing challenges everyday to make sure there are no connection failures due to heavy load or congestion of traffic at the website.

The answer is straight, every organization will have to monitor and baseline amount of traffic by going for stress test to find out if the current hardware could be supportive enough to handle a specific amount of load. One such great software is the ?Web Application Testing? or WAPT, which is a great utility for any website?s sustainability. This software is load, stress and performance testing tool for web sites and intranet applications with web interface. WAPT is designed for MS Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Windows 98/Me operating systems. The question that should be asked is why should we consider WAPT or why should the organization consider Load or stress testing? We certainly believe, major performance issues would arise if stress test has not been performed.

This could very well mean that after the server reaches a certain level of concurrent connection made by visitors, it would consume its hardware resources to process every visitor?s request. If there is a lot to process, the server might give priority to web application than its local resource ending up in a system crash.

Thus, the goal of WAPT is very simple; it helps the organization?s web servers to become active at every stage of stress, whether it?s a web development or website traffic processing power. WAPT can perform a stress test by simulating several thousands of concurrent connections to check the web server/website performance and if it finds any bottlenecks it would warn and suggest fixing this issue by recommending the very next thing.
There are lots of new features added in WAPT 4.0
- You can use multiple virtual profiles to test a single scenario
- There is support for IP spoofing where each virtual user can run with individual and unique IP address
- Each Virtual can be configured with different username and password and is compatible with Windows Integrated Authentication or Basic Configuration.
- You can see and configure the type of reports even a test run summary report is generated
- There is command line interface available
- There is a support for persistent cookies
- All the test scenario and profiles are stored in XML format The Main features of WAPT 4.0
- You can have the application run and understand multiple languages
- There is cool recording feature which you can use to record any configuration and stress test simulations for later review or demonstrations as it supports playback of HTTPS/SSL 2.0 & 3.0 pages. You can also record the user connection speed using the keep-alive connections to a HTTP 1.0 or HTTP 1.1 pages or even HTTPS/SSL pages.
- You can generate data for run-times on specific scheduled intervals by randomizing the delay between the page hits.
- It also has a support for proxy servers for HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 & 5 and supports cookies as well.
- All the authentication request can be handled using NTLM (windows Integrated Authentication) or using the basic authentication.
- If you would like to call the website by a different name, then you also have the facility to add custom host headers
- All this the scenarios can be configured using the user friendly Wizard
- You can choose the reports to be either graphical or in plain text along with full virtual server logs
A must tool for administrator or other user who would to maintain their website efficiently.

Ted Peterson writes for CoreDownload, a shareware archive where you can find utilities like WAPT to test your server

Hard Disks for Web Servers Explained

A web server's hard disk drives are vital because they are where your website data is actually stored. There are several important technical terms to describe hard disk performance. They sound complicated at first, but they are actually very simple. Knowing what these terms mean can help you to choose a hard disk drive, or understand whether a web hosting company is giving you a good deal on a server. Here are the main terms used to describe hard disk drives.

Capacity-- How much data can be stored on the drive. This is measured in Gigabytes (GB). Note that hard disk manufacturers use what is known as a decimal Gigabyte, which is 10 to the power 9 or 1,000,000,000 bytes. Computers use what is known as a binary Gigabyte, which is 2 to the power 30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Therefore the hard disk capacity in GB claimed by the manufacturer is smaller than the number your computer will report. This has been standard practise for many years, but it can catch out beginners. You will need to choose a disk with several times more capacity than your website takes up, in order to leave space for future growth.

Spindle Speed-- This is simply how fast the platters (the hard metal disks that store the data) rotate. It is usually between 5,400 and 15,000 rpm. In a low to mid range web server you should be looking for a 7,200 rpm drive. A high end server would have 10,000 or 15,000 rpm drives. The faster the spindle speed, the faster the drive can read and write data, so faster is better.

Seek time-- A measure of how long it takes for a hard disk drive to move its heads to the correct part of the platters to find the data that it is looking for. This is measured in milliseconds (ms). This will be somewhere around 10 ms, give or take 5 ms. The lower the figure, the faster the drive finds the data.

Cache-- The drive stores some data in Random Access Memory known as the cache buffer. It is much faster to access the buffer than it is to find data on the drive. The drive controller keeps data that you have recently used in the cache in case you need it again, and it also reads data from the disk that it thinks you might ask for next. This makes it faster to access data, so long as the data you asked for is in the cache. Otherwise the drive will have to find it on disk. Cache memory is especially important for accessing small, frequently used files. Cache sizes start from around 8 Megabytes, the more the better.

Sustained Transfer Rate-- How fast the drive can transfer large files that do not fit into the cache buffer, or small files that were not in the cache. In other words, this is the maximum rate that the drive can read files from the disk itself. The greater the rate, the better, especially if most of your data is stored in large files.

Interface-- This is the connection between the drive and the computer's processor. Older servers use PATA, also known as Parallel ATA or IDE. Newer servers use SATA, also known as Serial ATA. High-end, expensive servers use SCSI, and very high-end servers use Fibre Channel. If you are just starting out with your first dedicated web server, you will probably want a SATA hard drive.

RAID-- This is where two or more hard disks are connected together, which gives improved speed and/or reliability compared to a single hard disk drive. You should consider RAID hard disks for your web server to improve reliability.

Now you know the vocabulary, you will be better able to choose hard disk drives when you rent or buy a web server.

Jimmy Martin is a writer and webmaster. You can read more of his guides at www.eejitsguides.com

Why Do You Want A Good Web Design and Hosting On A Good Server...?

The answer is very simple for this question. Because a good web design attracts user and some time visitor loves the design and bookmark the same site for future visits or for future reference or might be interested in making the same web design for his clients or might be possible he/she will edit the same design. But this is true that your website must have a good design. Not only to attract the internet visitor but also helps in browsing the products & services, so that visitor can reach to the destination with the minimum number of clicks.

Web Designing - While audience creation, advertising and promotions drive traffic to a site, it's the design that either encourages visitors to explore or drives them away in frustration. A good design is, of course, aesthetically pleasing. More importantly, though, it engages visitors, makes it easy for them to navigate the site and compels them to explore the site further, purchase products and return another day. Attractive graphics that support the company's message are important. But large graphics that take a long time to load frustrate users. Many visitors won't wait long enough for the graphic to finish loading. Additionally, visitors are less likely to return to a site that has cumbersome or confusing navigational cues. Selection of a Web Designing Company is always a big game as far as your online business is concern. Web design differs significantly from design for other media. The most important difference is that the Web is interactive, incorporating hyperlinks and devices for immediate visitor feedback. Some sophisticated designs include dynamically generated pages that are custom-tailored to each visitor's interests, preferences and buying habits. To implement effective designs, our team of web designers and implementers has sufficient technical skills such as HTML coding, scripting and programming in addition to artistic skills. As the navigation reveals the structure and organization of the web site, It should provide a consistence and predictable way to find and focus on the information you want in the smallest possible number of clicks.

Web Site Development

When it comes to the website development, your Web Designing Firm must understand your business requirement and type of business or services you are offering to your customers. The quality of your services and the cost of the services or products. A good web design company can increase your web site traffic by offering a user friendly navigation in the web pages that facilitates user in finding the services & products. And once if user ready to purchase something from your website, my personal experience is, he bookmark the site. But only condition is he/she must got the best deal from your side. developing the web pages is might be a small task but arrangement or the content and intralinking of the web pages is always a important point. A Web Development Company first creates a complete rough website structure and then proceeds for the final structure which would be the best in nature with the design, pages, content arrangement, link color, and link names, CSS in the site, the color combinations and the use of the images. There is no question that when it comes to fast and efficient display of graphics on Web Pages, smaller is better. Techniques optimizing the color depth of the Web - friendly GIF and JPEG images for the fast download and applying simple height and width HTML tags are the secrets of our greatest site design. There are certain factors that search engines do not like. While keeping those factors into consideration, we will create an extremely search engines friendly website. The secret of great page design is to create a page grid, build tables, work with color and use type. Innovation & focus on the target visitor drives our creative team to custom design each site with a right combination of text layout, fonts, colors, backgrounds, pictures, animation?s, icons & bars. At UWS India we do not just develop web pages; rather we nurture your dreams into your website.

Web Hosting

Web hosting is like a supporting hand when it comes to any online business through a website. An excellent web server supports your website in term of web site speed, performance, executing queries, database queries sent by you or your potential customers, enquiry management with its security and best performance with maximum uptime. At any point of time if you or your visitor looks for your site or click on your site link form any location in the world, a good web server returns the response immediately that helps user to browse the site and choose the product & services he/she want. The identities of a good web server are... It must respond to each & every request sent to the server, minimum or limited domains hosted, updated with all new available features and all those features your site requires, security of the website and your database, maximum uptime, and all. You may choose a cheap hosting from any vendor if you are new in the online business through website but if you are a professional, you would not like your site to host on a discounted server with approx 2000 domain hosted or with bad performance. A good Web hosting Company can solve your this downtime, security, features, and performance problems.

Ultimate Web Solutions is an internet marketing company operating in New Delhi, India provides Website Designing, Website Development, Website hosting, search engine optimization, link popularity building and SEO friendly web design service, along with domain name registration. http://www.ultimate-websolutions.com/

Learning ASP Series - Installing Personal Web Server

Welcome to the first chapter of your Basic ASP Learning Series.

I mostly communicate on a personal level, so it's better we acquaint ourselves in the beginning. My name is Amrit Hallan and I'm a web developer. I work through my web site - http://www.bytesworth.com. I'm not a nerd (and don't want to be) and most of my knowledge has come to me piecemeal through lots of hard work and interaction with my other developer friends. I don' t think it'd be fair to say that I'm an authority on ASP but yes, I have a few satisfied clients in my portfolio and I know enough to get you started. By the time you are through with these daily chapters, you'll have learnt enough to make a small shopping cart in ASP.

Most of the chapters will be organized in a linear fashion, so that you always have to work according to your previously acquired knowledge. Sometimes I'll sound like writing the entire chapter in a bulleted form, but that'll be just to keep the unnecessary (I mean that is out of the scope of this reference) stuff out.

I wish I could know your name too. But I don't know how many people are going to read this. If you want to let me know that YOU are the one at the moment reading this, you are welcome to send me a friendly message at mailto:amrit@bytesworth.com. I love to hear from people (ok, the word "people" excludes Spammers - they are not people).

Enough of my warming up. Here we go with the first chapter.

Installing Personal Web Server

==> Beginning of Chapter One From there, install the PWS on your computer. The installation
program creates a folder, inetpub in the directly you specify during the installation. This inetpub, further has a folder, wwwroot. So if you install your PWS on your C drive, the wwwroot path should be

C:INETPUBWWWROOT

All the files that you create, you store under wwwroot. What we generally do is, we create separate folders for separate projects under the wwwroot folder. So if I created bytesworth folder in wwwroot folder, the full path should be

C:INETPUBWWWROOTBYTESWORTH

And when I have to view the page on my browser, I'll have to type

http://localhost/bytesworth

as the URL.

After you've installed the PWS, it's icon appears on your desktop, and at the bottom right of your screen. Click or double-click on the icon. On the main window, you should see the message:

Web publishing is on. Your Home page is available at http://servername

The servername is the name you use instead of localhost. But if you are confused about this name game, just use localhost and it should always work if you haven't been naughty and messing around with your computer's basic setup.

Before you proceed further, open the Windows Explorer, go to c:inetpubwwwroot and create a new folder here by the name of "learnASP" (how boringly predictable! So you can name it something else). We'll be storing ALL our files in this folder.

Hence, whenever we want to run a newly created file, we'd type in the location bar:

http://localhost/learnASP/newfile.asp and press Enter.

Ok, next, click on the Advanced tab. Select Enable Default Document

In the Default Document(s) box, type the list of file names you would like to use as your default file once the name of your site is type in the browser.

If you have no idea what's the default file, it is the file that answers your call when you type a specific URL without a specific file. For instance, if I type http://www.bytesworth.com the file that actually gets loaded by default is DEFAULT.ASP. This depends on the setting. Some servers use INDEX.ASP or INDEX.HTML or INDEX.SHTML. It all depends on the file parsing set up on your web-hosting server.

Then click on the Edit Properties button, after selecting the Home folder. There are three select boxes, viz., "Read", "Execute", "Script". Select all of them. The selections tell the server that we want to execute server side scripts in our ASP pages. ASP pages won't run if the server can't read and execute them.

Close the window, and your PWS is running. Of course do not run two servers simultaneously. So if you installed the Apache Web Server and left it running, and then loaded PWS, there is going to be some problem for you to sort out.

Amrit Hallan is a freelance web designer. For all web site development and web promotion needs, you can get in touch with him at http://www.bytesworth.com. For more such articles, visit http://www.bytesworth.com/articles and http://www.bytesworth.com/learn.

Secure Your Own Bandwith With a Dedicated Server

If you are serious about your online business endeavors, you might just consider looking for an online dedicated server. The dedicated server is actually an entire server which is at your disposal, and which is not shared with anybody else.

Right from the start, the advantages are clear: you, as the webmaster, have full control over the server, including option of operating system, hardware, etc. You can customize everything according to your own personal needs, while the administration is still handled by the hosting company.

The most important advantage of using an online dedicated server is that your website performance will not be affected by the traffic of the other websites with which you would have been sharing your server's bandwidth.

The online dedicated server environment provides an exclusive server or servers devoted to the sole purpose of serving yourself only. You do not share hard disk space with other customers, and you avoid shared hosting.

Before dedicated servers existed, a web site developer used to have two hosting options, the low-priced shared hosting model and the premium-priced dedicated server. A person who bought space on a shared host would get a certain amount of disk space and monthly transfer, and would have the web site served from a common web server.

The hosting company would attempt to provide a wide range of options for the web site developer, in order to increase the popularity of their products. But, for example, if a customer needed a non-standard program installed or maybe wanted to use a privileged account in order for a particular utility to run, he would be completely not allowed to achieve these goals.

A simple example might be a site which required a database to store the information in. Many hosting companies provide the standard MySQL database to use on their servers. If your application requires another type of database though, then it could prove to be incompatible with the shared hosting account.

And a dedicated server can be customized anyway you want. But, there's also a catch. Because it can handle much more traffic than a shared hosting account, their much better performance doesn't come cheap. A typical dedicated server can cost the savvy webmaster hundreds of dollars per month depending on its size, network connectivity and the amount of management required from the hosting company.

Webmasters who don't fit into the standard shared hosting model and find that it doesn't work anymore for them, or whose sites grew very popular and required a large amount of resources have the alternative of a dedicated server. It can be customized to exactly fit the needs of you as a site developer. And as long as your business is very successful, you are probably way better with a dedicated server at your disposal.

Select the ideal dedicated server for your needs
Dedicated servers.
http://www.dedicatedserverhost1.com

Save with a comprehensive web hosting package
http://www.webhostingpackagedeal.com

A Change in Paradigm: Dedicated Server

 I found it hard to believe, but suddenly I was faced with a real
problem. Well, I suppose most people would not consider it a huge
problem, quite the opposite, in fact. However, it was stressing
me out complete, interfering with my writing. I even had trouble
sleeping.

What was this horrendous problem? My web site was becoming very
popular. So popular, in fact, that I was getting very worried
about bandwidth charges.

You see, this was happening after September 11th, 2001, and I had
been reading about some people who had created very special and
beautiful sites. These sites were so incredible that they
attracted lots and lots of visitors. So many visitors that they
received hundreds of gigabytes worth of traffic. The webmasters
suddenly found themselves charged hundreds or even thousands of
dollars for using bandwidth over their allocations.

I had purchased a contract with a shared hosting service which
allowed 27gb/month of traffic. This seemed like more than enough
at the time. However, I was noticing the bandwidth increasing at
an alarming rate - about 2gb/day. At that rate, I would exceed
the allotment by quite a bit. I had some time, but not much.

Okay, what to do? I looked around at the various shared hosting
options and didn't see much that was all that attractive. There
were some that offered "unlimited" bandwidth - I didn't trust
these at all. Most of the terms and conditions actually did
place a "reasonable" limit of some kind. I preferred a limit that
was know verses a limit that was unknown.

Actually, truth be known, I was getting a little tired of the
paid host option. I mean, it's far improved from free hosts, but
there is still much room for improvement. Some of the things that
were bothering me were:

Downtime - All of the shared hosting servers that I'd checked
out so far seemed to be down more often than desired. I've been
in the computer industry for over 23 years, and to me a few hours
of downtime in an entire year is about all that's acceptable.
It's not that hard to achieve these kinds of statistics - I've
been doing it myself for years.

Support - The level of support from virtually all hosting
companies I've used to date has been pathetic to mediocre. My
expectation is simple. My site is down, I want someone to work
on it quickly. I want to call someone, get an answer right away,
and get the problem resolved. Especially during normal business
hours. I have never received that level of support from any
hosting company yet.

Strange errors - I've noticed that my web sites will run fine
for a few days or weeks, then start having strange delays. I know
this because I monitor my sites with an automated service. These
delays are probably caused by things that other customers are
doing on the same server.

Lack of communication - Web host support people seem to forget
that we webmasters and businessmen depend upon our web sites. I
don't know about you, but if my site goes down for any length of
time I completely freak out. I want to know why it's down and
what's being done about it. And virtually always I get no
answers. This is most annoying when the downtime has been planned
- these hosts have my email address, why is it so hard to send an
email and let me know what's going on?

Log file issues - Log files are very important to any true
webmaster. They are useful for finding errors, gauging traffic
and determining the success of promotions and articles. Yet so
far all of the shared hosts gave me incredible grief about log
files. They seemed to want to initialize them at odd intervals
(unpredictable), didn't allow easy access, allowed too easy
(unsecured) access and generally made it difficult.

Okay, given all of that, it was time to make a change. Not just a
change to another host, but a change in paradigm.

I had tried free hosts (three of them) before deciding they were
not at all suitable for anything except a small hobby web site. I
moved up to paid shared hosts and for a while was happy. I moved,
then moved again, then again. The hosts were all fine for a
while, then starting having trouble.

Shared hosting was not doing what I needed. The straw that broke
the camels back was a question of bandwidth. Internet Tips and
Secrets was exceeding 50gb a month (almost four million hits and
three quarters of a million page views). Wow.

I could not find a shared host that offered a package of a full
gigabyte of disk and upwards of 50gb a month. Not a single one
after looking at over a hundred different packages.

I had a real problem. You see, go over the monthly bandwidth
charge and you get smacked with huge overcharges. For the web
host I had at the time, the charges were $6 per gigabyte. This
would make my hosting bill very large indeed.

Thus I began looking for a dedicated hosting service. I quickly
found a company and purchased a single month.

Here's what I got. A web server all to myself. I could define as
many as 250 different web sites on the server, and I had complete
control of the DNS. I had root access to the server (meaning I
was more or less god on the box) and could literally do anything
I wanted. I could install anything, do anything and control or
not control everything.

I had 9gb of disk space. Best of all, the service provided a
whooping 400gb of bandwidth usage per month. The server was
extremely fast for my needs. All for around $200/month plus a
setup fee.

The downside (there is always a downside, isn't there)? The price
was a little steep, but a predictable $200 a month is far
superior to a surprise $500 or even $100 hosting charge. They
also didn't provide any real autoresponders (but I solved that by
purchasing a package) or web based email. Their support is also
very basic - they have a 24 hour help desk which is friendly and
competent, but they do not appear to be technical heavyweights.

Thus I have now, after a week of hard work, begun a new
adventure - a dedicated web server for the 16 sites that my wife
and I own. So far, the experience is far superior to the shared
hosting nightmares that I've been facing.
problem. Well, I suppose most people would not consider it a huge
problem, quite the opposite, in fact. However, it was stressing
me out complete, interfering with my writing. I even had trouble
sleeping.

What was this horrendous problem? My web site was becoming very
popular. So popular, in fact, that I was getting very worried
about bandwidth charges.

You see, this was happening after September 11th, 2001, and I had
been reading about some people who had created very special and
beautiful sites. These sites were so incredible that they
attracted lots and lots of visitors. So many visitors that they
received hundreds of gigabytes worth of traffic. The webmasters
suddenly found themselves charged hundreds or even thousands of
dollars for using bandwidth over their allocations.

I had purchased a contract with a shared hosting service which
allowed 27gb/month of traffic. This seemed like more than enough
at the time. However, I was noticing the bandwidth increasing at
an alarming rate - about 2gb/day. At that rate, I would exceed
the allotment by quite a bit. I had some time, but not much.

Okay, what to do? I looked around at the various shared hosting
options and didn't see much that was all that attractive. There
were some that offered "unlimited" bandwidth - I didn't trust
these at all. Most of the terms and conditions actually did
place a "reasonable" limit of some kind. I preferred a limit that
was know verses a limit that was unknown.

Actually, truth be known, I was getting a little tired of the
paid host option. I mean, it's far improved from free hosts, but
there is still much room for improvement. Some of the things that
were bothering me were:

Downtime - All of the shared hosting servers that I'd checked
out so far seemed to be down more often than desired. I've been
in the computer industry for over 23 years, and to me a few hours
of downtime in an entire year is about all that's acceptable.
It's not that hard to achieve these kinds of statistics - I've
been doing it myself for years.

Support - The level of support from virtually all hosting
companies I've used to date has been pathetic to mediocre. My
expectation is simple. My site is down, I want someone to work
on it quickly. I want to call someone, get an answer right away,
and get the problem resolved. Especially during normal business
hours. I have never received that level of support from any
hosting company yet.

Strange errors - I've noticed that my web sites will run fine
for a few days or weeks, then start having strange delays. I know
this because I monitor my sites with an automated service. These
delays are probably caused by things that other customers are
doing on the same server.

Lack of communication - Web host support people seem to forget
that we webmasters and businessmen depend upon our web sites. I
don't know about you, but if my site goes down for any length of
time I completely freak out. I want to know why it's down and
what's being done about it. And virtually always I get no
answers. This is most annoying when the downtime has been planned
- these hosts have my email address, why is it so hard to send an
email and let me know what's going on?

Log file issues - Log files are very important to any true
webmaster. They are useful for finding errors, gauging traffic
and determining the success of promotions and articles. Yet so
far all of the shared hosts gave me incredible grief about log
files. They seemed to want to initialize them at odd intervals
(unpredictable), didn't allow easy access, allowed too easy
(unsecured) access and generally made it difficult.

Okay, given all of that, it was time to make a change. Not just a
change to another host, but a change in paradigm.

I had tried free hosts (three of them) before deciding they were
not at all suitable for anything except a small hobby web site. I
moved up to paid shared hosts and for a while was happy. I moved,
then moved again, then again. The hosts were all fine for a
while, then starting having trouble.

Shared hosting was not doing what I needed. The straw that broke
the camels back was a question of bandwidth. Internet Tips and
Secrets was exceeding 50gb a month (almost four million hits and
three quarters of a million page views). Wow.

I could not find a shared host that offered a package of a full
gigabyte of disk and upwards of 50gb a month. Not a single one
after looking at over a hundred different packages.

I had a real problem. You see, go over the monthly bandwidth
charge and you get smacked with huge overcharges. For the web
host I had at the time, the charges were $6 per gigabyte. This
would make my hosting bill very large indeed.

Thus I began looking for a dedicated hosting service. I quickly
found a company and purchased a single month.

Here's what I got. A web server all to myself. I could define as
many as 250 different web sites on the server, and I had complete
control of the DNS. I had root access to the server (meaning I
was more or less god on the box) and could literally do anything
I wanted. I could install anything, do anything and control or
not control everything.

I had 9gb of disk space. Best of all, the service provided a
whooping 400gb of bandwidth usage per month. The server was
extremely fast for my needs. All for around $200/month plus a
setup fee.

The downside (there is always a downside, isn't there)? The price
was a little steep, but a predictable $200 a month is far
superior to a surprise $500 or even $100 hosting charge. They
also didn't provide any real autoresponders (but I solved that by
purchasing a package) or web based email. Their support is also
very basic - they have a 24 hour help desk which is friendly and
competent, but they do not appear to be technical heavyweights.

Thus I have now, after a week of hard work, begun a new
adventure - a dedicated web server for the 16 sites that my wife
and I own. So far, the experience is far superior to the shared
hosting nightmares that I've been facing.

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets
at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to
read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your
internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.