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24/7/365 Server Monitoring &Human Response
HTTP (String) Monitoring
HTTPS Monitoring
DNS Monitoring
SMTP Monitoring
POP3 Monitoring
IMAP Monitoring
MySQL Monitoring
FTP Monitoring
SSH Monitoring
cPanel Monitoring
WHM Monitoring
2 Custom Ports Monitored
DOS Attack Mitigation
24/7/365 Technician Availability
Initial Security Audit & Server Hardening

System “Root Kit” Scan
SSH Hardening
host.conf/sysctl.conf Hardening
Directory/Partition Hardening
Unnecessary System User Removal
MySQL Optimization
Disk Health Check
RPM Integrity Verification
Process and Socket Audit
Remote Port Scan
Disable unnecessary/insecure services
Kernel Updates (grsecurity)
General System Updates
Mod_Security Installation/Configuration
Monthly Server Security Audit/Updates
Additional Monthly Admin 2 Hours/ 4 Issues
Re-secure a server after intrusion

Thank you for the reply. Hosting UK started originally with Alabanza years ago but
left because they were literally stealing clients from our servers when the
customers got big enough. Hosting UK then were with companies from Burstnet, to
Pegasus, Dialtone (until they left us with crashed drives for a week without
help) and finally bought our own servers and moved to the current datacenter
in early 2003. Hosting UK have had excellent uptime there since network-wise. The
only issues Hosting UK ever have are due to the poor quality IBM IDE drives Hosting UK had
which were shipped with 17 servers I ordered. (I also have several with
SCSI drives (secure4, 5, 8, 9, windows, and another sitting empty).

So far Hosting UK have sort of diversified ourselves by being different and not in
the same datacenter as everyone else with the same offerings. After our
experiences, I just don’t trust any other company to provide me a server for
$100 per month anymore or any price for that matter. I want to see it and
know that no one else but me or my staff are going to make it work or not
work.
My goal was to compete with server offerings, not pay them. Truth be told,
I STILL have 14 servers ready to go and can start selling some right away.
The only set back has been that every time, I give up due to problems like
this. I want to offer decent support to the customers for servers.

I do understand what you are saying about supportting the servers and having
an admin for them. I sort of thought you meant that your team could handle
any level of trouble from your end besides the obvious need for a live human
to be at the server for an OS install or reboot/remote hands. In my mind
and ideal support solution is one where your team has a Level 2 tech nearby
and Level3 tech at their disposal for emergences at all times. I can
understand why there were problems now if some were on holiday. It makes
sense and I know that it cannot be prevented. Everyone deserves a day off.
The datacenter is owned by a company which writes software for very large
companies and needed their own facility. It is actually a very outstanding
facility built by Aperian back in the .com boom. I do pay them for 1 hour
of remote hands/support each month and have yet to use it one time. I was
prepared to add more hours as Hosting UK gained more need for it and still can.

Had Hosting UK not had hard drive failures this year, I don’t think I would ever
have had to go to the datacenter at all. If you think back, it was always
host21 and secure6.. both IDE drive servers. I finally got a Samsung drive
for secure6 and it has had no hard drive errors since. The problem the
other day I think was caused by rebooting VIA the APC while there was
reading/writing going on. That always causes a lot of problems with those
IDE boxes. That, or there were some files deleted by mistake or a kiddie.

My idea as of today is to use that other Dell 1750 SCSI (with RAID I) as our
newest cpanel server. Hosting UK will eventually migrate clients off secure6 and
retire all IDE servers for our virtual hosting clients altogether. I will
then put new samsung drives in all of the servers I have sitting there not
being used and start selling them on our site. I will refer them to you
for support or just include one of your plans for support with the server.
Hosting UK also have the Windows server SCSI with RAID I live and Plesk will be put
in next week sometime.

The thing is that I need to know that the techs who are doing things on our
servers are not the ones causing the problems too. Hosting UK had very little
downtime until late this year and that is what has raised the red flag. If
you don’t have a Level3 tech available for emergency issues or major issues
like a database failure, or exim, then I may need to hire one. But I need
to know that type of support is there in case your team needs to escalate
such an issue.

I will discuss some of these issues with the datacenter and see what can be
done. I cannot honestly say I am in favor of moving my customers again
because each move only results in lost clients no matter how many
precautions Hosting UK take. If I do move, I will still keep my servers and maybe
do something with sagonet.com here in Tampa or Neutelligent.com in Tampa. I
really cannot blame our datacenter for any of the problems Hosting UK have had so
far besides the small attack last week which originated from our rack. But
I do agree Hosting UK need faster resolutions if a problem arrises with hardware or
something major which cannot be handled by you, or your techs.

Well, I will let all of this digest and as you said Hosting UK will hopefully be
better off after the holidays.

We am currently dealing with 30 Signups per day.
We know we had downtime on server6… but not all of the signups are due to this as We am finding out.

We am going to put a list together, but one such example is a ticket We have pasted below below.

Honestly , We feel like We am not getting what We am paying for at all. We fixed many of the problems on server6 and server5 by eCommerce Hosting company self over the past few days and neither web hosting company or We felt anyone was helpful at all.

There was more than one occasion that We asked someone to do something simple like start httpd after debug (took me 5 minutes and We am NOT a Linux guru at all). We can say something and then be told:
OK, or Someone is working on it, etc. and find out later that no one has done a single thing at all.

We spent a fair amount of money advertising this month and am seeing clients like the one below cancel for what We consider to be a stupid reason to loose a good customer. $100 he pays me, one bad or poor answer, We loose more than $100 off it.

Earlier in the morning yesterday after the server6 restore, We had sent a detailed email after doing the same detailed instructions on AIM regarding what else was needed on server6 to restore it (basically a few rsyncs, debug and start httpd, reboot). We come back later in the morning and no one had started anything and httpd was down. We had to fix that, bind as well as eCommerce Hosting company sql. Even worse, during that time, someone pops up on AIM to tell me it is down. Of course it is!!! web hosting company told me he had also given the same details on AIM when someone finally did come on (another issue in itself).

Another example, yesterday, We was online all day and night until 5 AM today. A problem with eCommerce Hosting company sql on server5 existed along with bind failing. One person at your office on AIM said a tech was working on it. So We told this person We would leave it alone and let them work on it which was a bad mistake. We come back 30 minutes later to check an email and someone comes on AIM and says eCommerce Hosting company sql is down on server5 as if We didn’t know this and expect someone to be working on it. Ok, We know this, and someone there is supposed to be working on it right? We must have been wrong. We ended up working on it for a while and got it working along with bind and ftp and a reboot fixed the rest. This happened several times yesterday . Why am We fixing things your techs should be able to fix just as fast or faster?

We may as well pay eCommerce Hosting company self to do this.

A few weeks back We was very close to writing a good report on add site link. This would be invaluable advertising for you. In fact, We can’t pay for better advertising eCommerce Hosting company self. We even thought about offering to say you provide our support on our own site so we can try to market your services to others. .
After talking to web hosting company about the issues over the past 24 hours, and what We am seeing while catching up on cancellation notices today, we are ready to take our business elsewhere.

We chose add site link who was not eCommerce Hosting company lowest priced option just because of the fact that you seemed anxious to try hard to earn and keep our business, seemed to know our business, and would manage our servers and handle our tickets all in one. We am experiencing the exact issues We was worried about and expressed concerns about before We signed up. The issues above, and poor or canned answers and/or answers which are hard to understand.

We am sure you know We try to be very open and give and take suggestions. We don’t just want, We dream of working close enough with a firm that We feel like they are part of eCommerce Hosting company company. We was even considering paying add site link more money to start handling sales/billing for me as well as emergency phone support so you would be eCommerce Hosting company entire outsourced solution. We now am sickened and discouraged due to the fact that it is Christmas in 2 days, We have spent a lot of our extra cash flow on marketing and now We have to worry every hour about eCommerce Hosting company servers health and if they are indeed in good knowledgeable hands.

We can tell you that despite the fact We am not a Linux guru, We know when We am dealing with someone who knows what they are doing. Over the past few days, some of the people We speak with must not know what is going on if We can fix the things that We did yesterday without an education in IT or any real Linux training other than eCommerce Hosting company own learning.

We did write you regarding eCommerce Hosting company concerns on what happened yesterday morning with server6 and how nothing was done as asked even after We emailed and AIM’ed personally to someone as did web hosting company on AIM on what was needed.

eCommerce Hosting company question to you… is add site link wanting our business still or have you decided you don’t?
If we aren’t a good match, then fine We will move on after year end. But We think it is time We know what is going on and that someone take responsibility for eCommerce Hosting company servers being server, up and working correctly and if they don’t know what they are doing, to admit this. Replies should be audited occasionally by a team lead (and of course eCommerce Hosting company self now that We am on alert for this). If a representative cannot answer a simple request with an answer that makes sense, or at least acknowledge and pass it to someone who does know what they are doing, or how to answer, then they shouldn’t be responding to the tickets at all. We have chatted with you before and We know you are an intelligent person who knows this business and has ambitious hopes for a successful business. We am afraid to go through more tickets to see what kind of replies are there, but do you think the one below was sufficient?

We know eCommerce Hosting company email is long and winded, but please realize eCommerce Hosting company personal feelings when We see things like We have lately.

We look forward to your reply and addressing eCommerce Hosting company concerns.

As the title suggests: the system is more than just a billing system. For the billing part we don’t have any very usual needs, but for the account management system we do. We have already evaluated quite a few systems, and none of them come close to meeting our requirements.

First of all I will describe the billing system:

We basically need a quite ordinary billing system that processes payments and sends out invoices and such. It will need to process credit card payments through our Authorize.net gateway, paypal payments (subscriptions), and furthermore it will also need to be able to automatically process bank transfers and money orders, but I am still evaluating to see if that’s possible at all. My bank told me that it may not be possible yet, but by October it will be – so we will possibly need to have adjustments written later (meaning that it should be written in a way so that you can adjust things at a later time). Furthermore it will also need to be able to register domain names through Enom, and setup SSL certificates through GeoTrust. We have complete documentation available on how to do this, although I reckon this is quite complicated. I will go deeper into the specific way we want it to work later, but this should give you an idea of what we need. [edit: forgot to add: something that will also be quite important is a referral system and a reseller system – and furthermore also a fraud screening system using 3rd party applications]

The billing system will be the same for Low Cost UK Hosting and Dedicated Hosting, however the Account Management Systems will be quite different, so I’ll describe them separately.

Dedicated Hosting account management system:

Dedicated Hosting is (will be) a VPS provider only. What we need is basically a management system with a client end and an admin end. In the client end the customer will basically be able to do everything he possibly needs to:

- billing (viewing invoices, updating credit card details, changing billing method, etc..)

- support tickets (we would use a 3rd party application for that, but we would just integrate it into this system by simply reading from the 3rd party system’s database).

- Statistics for bandwidth, but also average load and things like that – this works quite different from the way it works with a dedicated server. The hardware node would need a script on it that would collect the data every minute or so and write it to a database, and then this management system would have to make nice graphics out of it (using mrtg for instance)

- Service monitoring: using several remote servers we will include a monitoring service to make sure that the client’s services are running properly. We would use 3rd party system for the monitoring purposes for the biggest part.

- Emergency procedure: here the client can define what should be done if any of his services fail. For instance he could define that we should immediately try to restart the service – but he could also define that we should contact him and if we don’t manage to reach him within 30 minutes we take action.

- Upgrade system: here the client can order upgrades and it would automatically generate an invoice for the client. Once that invoice is paid the system would upgrade his VPS automatically.

- Domain panel: here the client can order domains and maintain them.

- SSL panel: here the client can order and manage SSL certificates.

- DNS panel: here the client will be able to make use of our free DNS service so that he can very easily manage his dns on our dns servers.

- Reseller features so that the client can easily manage multiple VPS’s.

- Abuse reporting system

- Reboot functionality

- Password recovery

For Dedicated Hosting this would be to order procedure (very basic):

Our staff pre-configures several VPS’s with standard configuration and inserts the account details (ip address and VPS ID) into a database (basically a pre-built queue).
Client places an order
Client makes payment
System validates and processes the payment
System gathers account details for one VPS from the pre-built queue. If the client has selected a custom configuration (for instance client wants cPanel) then the system first makes that adjustment to the VPS (which is much more simple than it sounds) and once it’s ready it sends the account details to the client.

So in other words: unless if the client selects a custom configuration, he will receive the account details instantly, which is very interesting for the client because clients don’t like to wait. If the client selects a custom configuration it just takes a couple of minutes.

The Dedicated Hosting admin end is where we manage just about everything (apart from support since we do that in the real support system). These would be the included features:

- Billing management

- Statistics per VPS (and also the ability to create reports of several VPS’s at once)

- Monitoring per Linux VPS

- Account privileges: in here we will be able to make exceptions to the rules of what a VPS hosting owner may or may not do. For instance we would be able to select here that the VPS hosting owner may not upgrade his account (for whatever reason) or that he may not exceed his bandwidth limit (ie: if he does exceed his bandwidth limit the VPS’s would be suspended automatically until the next month starts or until the client upgrades his package).

- Bandwidth management: as previously stated basically we need to be able to define what happens if the client uses more bandwidth than he is allowed to. Also the system should send out a notice to the client once he reaches 80% (for instance) of his bandwidth limit.

- Management for the services that the client has (domains, ssl, dns) so that we control what they are doing.

- Abuse tracking system: if we receive an abuse report from spamcop (for instance) the system automatically parses the report and analyzes what VPS is causing the problem. Then once it knows what VPS is causing the problem it will automatically route the complaint to the client.

- Maintaining and inserting new VPS’s that we have setup. Possibly we are also going to need to actually setup new VPS’s from this system but I’m not sure about that yet. (this is actually quite simple but I’m not sure whether we will need this).

- Recycling canceled accounts: the system would have to recycle accounts that have been cancelled so that they can be used for new clients again. (this is very simple)

- Licenses overviews and reports of just about everything so that we can keep in control of everything very easily.

That’s about it for Dedicated Hosting, it’s quite a lot because everything probably takes quite some time to work out.

Now as for Low Cost UK Hosting: the principles of the system will be the same, it will just work different since with Dedicated Hosting we are talking about virtual environments and with Low Cost UK Hosting (dedicated servers) we are talking about physical environments. I will not go into the specifics since it’s approximately the same, it will just need to be coded different. And also some things will be different: for instance an upgrade can’t be done automatically since we need to add part manually.

This would be the order procedure for Low Cost UK Hosting:

First we setup quite a few new servers with our standard configurations and we put the servers in our racks and plug them in. For now we leave the servers offline (explanation will follow)
Client places order
Client pays
System validates and processes payment
System grabs the details of the appropriate server and sends a “power on” signal to the APC power switch, so that the system gets turned on (this is just done to save power while the server is not in use, but this may not really be necessary though).
Details are sent to the client

Again, this would only work for default servers, but the more different combinations of servers we setup, the better this system becomes. If the client orders something that we don’t have pre-built a notice is sent that we have to do the customization manually and that we will send the activation details once we are ready.

As you can tell, this is just an overview of what’s included in the system (or I should say: systems – because the Dedicated Hosting and Low Cost UK Hosting systems are completely separated). I’m not sure yet what would be the best way to start out, but you’ll obviously need a lot more detailed information for each of the points that I mentioned – for now I have just described what each feature will do but I haven’t described how it will work exactly.

Let me answer those questions:

1. Well as said we will have two main products; dedicated servers and Ecommerce Hosting UK.
Dedicated servers can have just about any OS that the client chooses (linux,
bsd, windows), but what we sell most is redhat based. The Linux Ecommerce Hosting UK’s are
based on RedHat and the Windows Ecommerce Hosting UK’s are based on Windows Server 2003
(enterprise edition).

2. That’s one of the key aspects that we are going to work on. We currently
have a very lousy system (based on ModernBill) and it’s not configured
properly at all. That’s about to change, I’ve been working on it for quite a
while but never really got to finishing it due to lack of time. Currently
the only thing clients can see in there are invoices. Furthermore there are
seperated login areas for MRTG stats, APC reboots, remote serial console,
etc). It’s all so misconfigured that I often have to send out invoices
manually. Regardless of all that, I’ve been doing that for like 5 years by
now and it’s working very well because I have my own way of doing it, but it
just all needs to be automated.

What we are going to have in the near future is a complete portal where the
customer can simply do everything:
- billing
- support
- setting things like reverse DNS
- domain registrations
- SSL certificates
- APC reboots
- statistics
- and much more.

Furthermore it will also have a very nice customized panel for the staff
members. Basically everything will be integrated with eachother. Right now
the support system is already working well (Hosting UK use kayako esupport), but we
are getting nice enhancements to just about everything. For instance: when a
client opens a new ticket, the system will automatically look up useful
information about that client and display that to the tech. That’s
convenient and saves time. Apart from that there will be a lot of other
enhancements.

Just keep in mind that it’s currently all pretty much set to work from one
location, so it’s currently nowhere near that nice yet.

3. That’ll be quite a huge list. I will work on this tomorrow and send it to
you.

4. I’m not quite sure whether I understand this question correctly, but I
guess you mean a situation like when a server is down, and Hosting UK can’t get it
back up remotely. In a case like that, you tell the client that Hosting UK are
looking at it now, and you pass the ticket to our datacenter. Hosting UK have worked
out support agreements with them and they basically take care of everything
that needs to be done on-site. Hosting UK have been working with them for a very
long time and they always reply fast (especially to emergencies). I will
provide you with full details about how to get in touch with them shortly,
they can be reached using their support system (which is almost the same as
our system) and if they don’t reply fast enough you can also call them.
(furthermore Hosting UK are also working on those enhancements, and Hosting UK will probably
set something up that the tech just presses a button and sends the entire
ticket on to the datacenter - or partially).

5. No, not always, but very often there is. I don’t sleep that much, and
neither does matthew. I’m not sure how we’re going to deal with emergencies
exactly yet but particularly in the start I’ll just leave my phone on at
night, so basically you can reach me then if really needed. But what I
really would like to achieve is that the techs can work all alone, but I
realize that takes time.

6. Just like the portal system: Hosting UK are lacking that at the moment. Hosting UK are
currently working on a new website and it’s a huge project, but the past few
months I haven’t been able to work on it due to my workload. The site is
design wise pretty much done (apart from some small adjustments) and we’ve
paid a lot of money for it. The designers are personal friends of mine so
they don’t mind that Hosting UK complete it later, but I expect that once the techs
are working I’ll be able to finish this up a lot faster. Basically what just
needs to be done is working out the content of all pages - and it total
there are hundreds of pages, so it’s a lot of work. But once it’s done,
it’ll really be something.

Secondly as I already said: what Hosting UK are currently mainly working on is a new
brand, which will be called UK Web Hosting (not
open yet). This brand will be very similar to the setup of www.eukhost.com
but with the main difference that it will only sell Ecommerce Hosting UK technology. It’s not
really that much work to set it up, but we are just waiting for a few things
to be completed before we launch it (such as a creditcard merchant account
which takes another week or so). Currently there is not really a market
leader in the field of Ecommerce Hosting UK technology providers, and with this brand we are
going to try to become the market leader - and I think we have a good chance
to succeed.

But to get back to your original questions: there are none, at the moment.
But what may be useful is our forum, where there are some conversations
(it’s not that large though) and you’ll find some pre-sale conversations as
well;

7. Our main office is in NL (Europe). Our main
datacenter is in Atlanta). Our new datacenter is in NL. We have a huge amount of space there (over 75,000 sq feet
of available space - but it doesn’t all belong to us by far), but we are yet
to really start out there. We have setup our first rack in there at the end
of March (2005) and we are currently running only two servers in there, of
which one belongs to a customer and one belongs to us (it’s a huge Ecommerce Hosting UK
server, but completely unused at the moment). That Ecommerce Hosting UK server has initially
only been used for testing purposes, and is now just idle. Once it is
launched, it will be the first Ecommerce Hosting UK server that we use in NL (along with a
few more servers that will be coming in during the next few weeks). We are
also going to provide dedicated servers in this facility but we are going to
start out on a low scale with that, because we don’t really have too much
experience there yet. It’s a brand new datacenter and it’s owned by someone
I know. The total size is about 80,000 sq feet and in the entire datacenter
there are only like 20 racks now. But the main issue is that it’s not (yet)
staffed 24/7 so until that’s sorted out we won’t do dedicated servers there
on a large scale (but we can already start doing Ecommerce Hosting UK on a large scale there
without any problem).

8. I’m having a bit trouble to ‘decide’ when we originally started. Back in
the days, I started in July 2000 with a group of friends and in 2001 all but
one dropped out, and we really started doing business in 2001 (although it
was on a very low scale, with just a reseller account). In those years I was
still in school/University and it was just a hobby, although we did take it
all very seriously. By the end of 2001 the other person also dropped out
because I was doing everything and he was just sitting back. From that
moment onwards, it’s been getting bigger constantly. I started out by only
offering shared hosting (I was still in school so I didn’t really need an
income) and it just became bigger and bigger. As of the end of 2003 sales
really started taking off, and that just kept on going on. In May 2004 I was
still in University but I decided I wanted to work full time,
so I didn’t finish that (and I can’t say I regret that). As of that moment
things just kept on getting better, and in September I hired matthew. At
that time I was already working approximately 80 hours per week, and I
currently still am, and I’m just really looking to change that.

That’s just the brief history of the company. As you can see I started out
without a single penny, and it grew out to what it is now without ever
having invested any of my personal money. Anyway to answer your question:
even though it was only a hobby back then, it started in July 2005.

9. Already described above.

10. Yes and no. We include a default level of management with all servers
which can be considered “semi-managed”, meaning we help when needed. Our
clients have been very easy on us so far, apart from when there’s a problem
they just don’t really contact us. There are only just a few people who just
don’t know anything about how it works, but those people always use cPanel,
so it’s easy to manage. Most of the time, when a client who doesn’t have a
clue signs up, he has a lot of questions about how everything works and then
we just help that client out and answer his questions (in the future our
tutorials will cover that for a big part). But usually after a week or two,
the client settles down and only contacts us if he has a problem.

But we are really the kind of company that will bend over backwards for a
client, if a client has a problem with his server, even if it’s something
that could have been prevented easily, we generally always help. What we
don’t really do is 3rd party script installations, but that’s probably just
one of the few exceptions.

With the introduction of the new website a lot will change. We are going to
offer (optional) management plans which the client can purchase for an
additional fee, which would be just about as advanced as the client needs it
to be. Also we will be adding some more advanced products such as load
balancing.

As for Ecommerce Hosting UK: these are fully managed, but they take very little work usually
since they are based on templates. Currently, these templates are not done
yet (or well.. Not the way we want it), so there is some more management
involved right now, particularly with Windows. With Windows the main problem
is also that we are just lacking knowledge about this platform. But in
short: once the templates are done the way we want it to, we can just add
templates that the client needs with just one click. We are also working on
a security package for both Windows and Linux, which can be included by
default with the Ecommerce Hosting UK. The same goes for pre-configuration such as cPanel
systems; with just one click we’ll be able to setup a fully configured
cPanel system (with firewall and all). Furthermore, since we will have the
forum which is expected to get big, people will be able to find a lot of
information there. So even though we are really expecting to sell thousands
of Ecommerce Hosting UK’s, it won’t take as much management as you may think (or at least,
that’s what we hope).

If those templates work out well, we are going to do pretty much the same
thing for Linux Dedicated servers. We’d just setup a server with cPanel,
fully configure it, and then create a drive image out of it. Then we use
that same image to setup new servers, so they are fully configured when we
deliver them (if the client wants that). Apart from all this, we will be
doing many other things that will help us reduce the workload for our techs.

Lastly: as you can see we will have many important changes in the near
future (I expect over the upcoming 3 months). That’s why it may get a little
messy. My original plan was to get the techs once everything on our end
would be completed, then they would be able to work much easier and wouldn’t
have to adjust to the changes we make in the company. But the problem is
just that we can’t hold it off any longer, we just need the techs now.

Well that’s quite a long story, but it should give you a starting overview
of what our Hosting Company is like.