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HELP
All you ever wanted to know about web hosting but were afraid to ask

By Hasnain Zaheer

Crash! It's 6 in the morning, Mumbai, and your Website has gone down, down, down. A couple of continents away, the site's prime, non-resident Indian audience is back from work, and seeking to be entertained, to buy products, whatever. The point is: as far as they are concerned, the site is just not there.

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Be there. Or be square. A great business plan, loads of funding, and a snappy site can be easily undermined by sloppy Webhosting. Running a site as a member of the cyber business community is not just nuts and bolts. In this just-a-click-away age, reliable hosting is an absolute must for survival. To put it in perspective, even 99 per cent reliability translates into your e-Commerce site going down for 3 days a year. Is that acceptable? Surf with BT as it takes you through the 3 routes to hassle-free Webhosting.

Me, Moi, Mein

Host the site on your own server, even within your office premises. You have full control: confidentiality is maintained, connectivity and reliability is in your domain, and you are able to take decisions to scale up or down depending on traffic. Another benefit is the ability to quickly serve India-based traffic--faster than it would through a server located in the US. Says Rohan Bulchandani, 27, who hosts Indishop.com on his server located in Mumbai: "A local server allows us to administer it immediately if there is any downtime."

It is, however, the more expensive option. That's because you also need to monitor the system 24x7, make adequate security arrangements, hire people for Web server administration, and update all software. You even have to arrange for generators for extended power outages, take daily back-ups, and so on. In short, do everything that a datacentre manager does--albeit at a lesser scale--for your server.

Obviously, this suits companies that already have systems administrators on the rolls--or are willing to hire them--and have much of the required hardware and software infrastructure as part of their main operations and activities. It also makes sense if your mission critical e-business cannot be left in someone else's hands. Just remember: setting up all this infrastructure might hamper your time to market.

My Server, Your Headache

Retain the server, but outsource the hosting of your Website. A hosting service provider gets paid for systems administration and monitoring. One option is collocation: put the machine in a data-centre or server-farm, where you rent some physical storage space. You pay network access charges. And the hosting service connects your server to its pipes to the Net, apart from providing basic services, like taking back-ups, monitoring, and allowing your personnel to enter the premises to maintain the system. Sure, it's very expensive--a collocated server costs anything between Rs 6 lakh to Rs 15 lakh per annum. But such a system gives you the flexibility of control, minus 24x7 monitoring.

Another option is hiring a dedicated server in a datacentre, for which you pay a fixed monthly rental. A good datacentre would host your site on high-end servers. A dedicated server could cost between $500 for entry level, to $1,200 for professional business sites, and guarantee uptime in the range of 99.8 or 99.9 per cent. Compare Infobase's Simarprit Singh, who runs 10 Websites, affirms: "This is by far the best option. We find that this is more convenient and flexible." The debate is far from closed. Read on.

Virtually, Hosted

The most visible service on the Web is virtual hosting. Basically, a Website is given space in the server of the hosting service provider. Your Website shares space on the server's hard-disk with other Websites. This is by far the most economical solution, although it leaves the crucial issue of connectivity in the hands of a third party. Most such services are available through resellers, who buy Website hosting space in bulk and offer them to customers in small packages. There are a number of Indian resellers, but do a credibility check before signing up. And remember: sudden spikes in traffic to other sites sharing the same server and telecommunication lines may affect connectivity.

That's why it's important to read the fine print: the disclaimers, SFX on the limitations on traffic, loading files, updating data, speed to scale-up as business grows, ability to take on spikes in traffic, et al. Virtual hosting could be a good starting point, but what happens when your site gets more traffic? Ask Alok Kejriwal, 29, CEO, Contests2win.com, which was hosted on a public server. Frequent crashes started when traffic increased to over 2,00,000 page impressions. "That's when I quickly shifted the site to a stand-alone dedicated server." Agrees Sanjiv Khandelwal, 34, who launched B2B site Polyesteronline. com 6 months ago: "Your own server is definitely recommended for a e-Commerce business." Hosting a dedicated server costs approximately Rs 10,00,000 per server a year including hardware and connectivity costs to the Net.

It's critical to ensure that the hoster has a local contact, or to go through local resellers. Cautions Singh: "You might practically need to contact them even 2 or 3 times a day." Concurs Kejriwal: "One must deal only with local resellers. The hosting service provider should be accessible 24 hours a day to you within 5 minutes of a problem being reported." Some more desirables: the hoster should be able to run through a Website's executable code and diagnose any clumsy code; often crashes arise out of defective code. Finally, the hoster should also be able to install all the relevant traffic reporting software on your site.

Some of the criteria that determine the quality of the hosting service would be server software (NT servers generally command more fees), connectivity (t1, t3 or oc-32 lines connecting the server to the Net), and add-ons (scalability, e-mail, usage statistics, control panel, and so on). Finally, always ask for references and direct Website names. Visit them, and surf, extensively. That's one way of ensuring that it will work for you too.

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