Selecting a Web Hosting Provider
By Howard Stevens, VP, Software Development & Delivery, Pragmatix, Inc.
As seen in TechXpertise , The Technical Newsletter of the The Business Council of Westchester

What makes selecting a hosting provider challenging is that most websites are no longer simply static online brochures; they are dynamic, database-driven sites vital to the success of your company. Security, redundancy, and availability are all of paramount importance; even today's most basic sites require a modicum of security and redundancy that is still all too often overlooked. Much as you never have to think about the electricity that powers your office, a quality hosting service should be transparent and consistently reliable.

There are literally hundreds of types of providers, package options and services to choose from. How you select the provider that's right for you is largely dependent on your individual needs. Selecting a hosting provider need not be daunting if you first take the time to define your hosting requirements.

Hosting Requirements
To define your requirements, you must first know what is the application, or applications that you will be hosting. Begin by outlining the technical requirements associated with those applications. For example, will it require its own server, multiple servers, or can it be on a shared server. Since each application is different, it is impossible to list every consideration here, however you should attempt to define as many parameters as possible; minimally, you should be able to define the following:

• What OS, web server, and database does the application require?
• How much disk space and RAM will be necessary (currently, in 6 months, in 1 year)?
• How many processors, and what speed processors will be required to meet your performance requirements?
• Will any custom services or components need to be installed and configured?

Access Requirements
Next, define your requirements for accessing the server, both physically and virtually. The team who created the application should be able to tell you how much maintenance the application will require on a regular basis. Will you need frequent access to the physical server, or can you rely on onsite service technicians to perform necessary maintenance for you? Will FTP access be sufficient for updates or will you require more pervasive access, such as via PCAnywhere or Terminal Server? Will a user account be sufficient to perform application maintenance, or will Administrator privileges be required?

Security Requirements
With the risk of computer crime both verifiable and growing, securing your application and its data is increasingly more important, not only to you, but to your customers as well. Security is a must; the only question is how much. Ask yourself: How sensitive is the data within your application? How critical is it to keep your site running 24/7? How secure does your server need to be? The level of security required depends on the nature and importance of the data in your application, and the ramifications should it be compromised.

The physical security of the hosting facility is non-negotiable; while physical security can range from simple man-traps to multi-level biometric scans, if the facility doesn't have at least fundamental security measures in place, move on.

A firewall is your first line of defense again unwanted intruders, and many hosting providers will offer this service as an add-on option. Unless you are planning on obtaining your own firewall, make sure that the hosting providers you consider have one. Intrusion detection is another security measure to look for, and almost as important as a firewall. Once your firewall has been breached, an IDS system is the only thing that may stop them from doing real damage. Make sure that you hosting provider has knowledge and expertise to configure and maintain these mission-critical systems properly.

Redundancy Requirements
Redundancy is another important consideration. When something runs afoul, as it inevitably does, how soon do you need to be back up? In a second? An hour? A day? A week? How frequently can you tolerate outages?

While redundancy does not guarantee 100% uptime, it certainly can get you close. Minimally, a hosting provider should have redundancy power that includes a backup generator, and telecom lines from multiple carriers into their facility. Additional redundancy can include high-availability firewalls, multiple routers, and clustered servers, depending on your specific requirements.

Backup Requirements
Backup is another important service that many hosting providers offer. Again, depending upon the nature of your application, backups should occur at various frequencies. Mission critical data that changes often should be backed-up on a daily basis; perhaps even mirrored across drives or replicated across servers. Other data may only need to be backed up on a weekly, or monthly basis. Make sure that the provider has a service that meets your needs and your budget.

Bandwidth Requirements
Always an optimist, I'll assume that your site will soon attract droves of users, a.k.a. customers, who will expect the same performance and reliability as when there were only a handful of users on the system. It's easy to be foiled by success, but even easier to plan for it. Does the provider offer "Burstable Bandwidth," to accommodate occasional spikes in traffic? What is the process for increasing your committed bandwidth (the bandwidth allocated to your servers on a regular basis)? Is there space in your cabinet to accommodate more servers? How many? Since, moving servers will most likely require downtime, it is important to make sure that you can add servers near to your existing ones.

Support and Maintenance Requirements
Another important consideration when defining your hosting requirements is the level of support and service that you expect. Do you plan on maintaining the server yourself, or do you require someone to keep a watch on it, and perform maintenance and updates as necessary? Perhaps you would just like to know that someone is available onsite 24/7 in an emergency? Of course, the more complex your applications and server configuration, the more expertise the support personnel will be required to have.

Most hosting providers guarantee uptime, usually in the ballpark of 99.99% per month, which can often be a misleading statistic and marketing hook that is for the most part not the most important measure of a service provider. Take a look at the fine print...it usually stipulates that "downtime" is calculated by the amount of time that the network is unavailable after such time that it is reported by the customer. In essence, downtime that goes unnoticed is not considered downtime. What's more, it completely ignores any downtime due to server related issues. So my advice is to look for a hosting provider whose customer service is measured by testimonials not statistics. Don't be afraid to ask for referrals.

As most small businesses outsource their web-application development as well as their hosting, so a good place to start is to ask the developers which hosting provider they recommend and why. One of the key things developers look for is ease of maintenance; if the hosting provider makes site modifications laborious, it may cost you more in support than it would in monthly hosting fees with another provider.

While ease-of-maintenance is most relevant to a shared-server environment (your site is hosted along with many other on the same server), there are four main factors that span all types of hosting arrangements. The four things to consider when selecting a Hosting Service Provider, in addition to price, of course, are:

• Security
• Redundancy
• Scalability
• Support

With any of the above criteria it is important to correlate each provider's offerings with your requirements. Only after this analysis has been completed should price be evaluated and contrasted among providers. Price is typically comprised of a number of factors, including space, bandwidth, security, and managed services. Most hosting providers will negotiate so try to tailor a package of services and a price to suit your specific needs.

The answers to the above requirements will greatly determine if a shared-server or dedicated server environment is right for you. The more custom requirements and more access required, the more likely you will need a dedicated server. Of course, many hosting providers offer managed application services, where they maintain the application as well as the server.