July 25, 2012 at 11:30 AM

I have been in the web hosting industry since 2002 and I've seen a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding Virtual Private Servers (VPS) over the years.

This article is the first in a series of articles I'm going to write about our new Xen VPS offerings and how having one can benefit any website, big or small, and that they may not be as confusing to operate as one might think.

What is a Xen VPS?

With typical shared web hosting, a user is given a storage and bandwidth allocation on a dedicated server and they share the server's CPU, memory and other resources with hundreds of other users.

With a Xen VPS, a server's resources are divided into much larger resource allocations and the user is given an isolated, virtualized dedicated server environment. In other words, a virtual dedicated server with each Xen VPS having its own operating system and control panel. There are much fewer users per server, as compared to shared web hosting, and as a result, Xen VPS have much better performance. Because each Xen VPS is ran under its own isolated environment, security is also much stronger. With shared web hosting, the vulnerability of your neighbor's script could impact you. With a Xen VPS, this vulnerability won't affect you as your environment is isolated from your neighbor's environment. Additionally, because a Xen VPS is running its own operating system, you have more flexibility than with shared web hosting. You can install what you want, when you want and you aren't limited to the restrictions imposed on shared web hosting (what processes you can and cannot run, how often you can run them, how many e-mails you can send per hour, etc.).

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June 12, 2012 at 4:08 AM

Hey Geeks!

I wanted to give you a behind the scenes update on what's been going on at GeekStorage HQ. It's been awhile since my last post (I've been slacking!).

New Office Location

We've recently started work on renovating some new office space in Norman, Oklahoma. I'll throw up some more pics as time progresses, but here's one of the new flooring being installed.

We hope to be up and running in the new space by the end of June. If you ever make it to Norman, Oklahoma, please stop by and say hi!

New Features

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February 5, 2011 at 8:34 PM

Hey Geeks!

I just thought I would drop a note and let you know what's going on behind the scenes at Geek HQ.

2010

Last year was very exciting for us and it brought some major upgrades to both our network infrastructure and hosting architecture. Those upgrades included things like increased network capacity at our Chicago data center, the addition of Ksplice (rebootless kernels, yeah!), Softaculous (1-click installer for 175 scripts!) and CloudLinux OS (the best shared hosting OS!).

What's to come...

We are constantly working to try and improve the awesome web hosting we provide to you. Through new vendor partnerships, software additions, network improvements, etc. we are constantly looking ahead and trying to build the best website playground available, while still keeping it affordable.

Here are a few things to look forward to in 2011:

• Launch of our new Customer Portal (management of your GeekStorage account and other very cool features)

Back in April of 2010, I first spoke of a brand new customer portal that would be launching "soon". Well, almost a year later I can tell you that we are still hard at work on this awesome portal. There was a minor setback in the timeline as we made other business decisions that required further development within the portal. We anticipate the portal to be available to our geeks by the time we publish our 2011 version of our "State of GeekStorage" in April.

I can tell you that you will be very happy if you were an avid fan of our forums before its untimely demise! (*hint*)

• Launch of a new website (almost 4 years later, it's time for a new look!)

We have been working with a great web designer in creating a new look for GeekStorage. This new website will debut with some new major service offerings, keep an eye out!

• Knowledge Base Revamp (finally, a real Knowledge Base!)

For the longest time, we used our community forums as our knowledge base. Even though the forums of the past are gone, we have scoured its content, looked within our ticket system for common issues and reached out to our geeks.. all in an effort to create a comprehensive Knowledge Base. We are about 1/3 of the way through writing content for the new Knowledge Base and encourage you to e-mail us or post a comment on this blog if you have ideas for content you'd like to see addressed by us.

• 3 New Service Offerings with...
  

... details to come (/teaser). We have three major service offering additions we will be launching very soon. Keep your eyes peeled, I think you'll like them!

In Closing

Hopefully this brief post has given you an idea of what we are up to behind the scenes. We have a lot planned for 2011 and we can't wait to make it available to you! :)

Regards,

Jay

January 20, 2011 at 12:51 AM

Hey Geeks!

We are currently rebuilding our hosting knowledge base and we can use your help! If you have any topics you would like to see covered by our expert geeks, please let us know!

Thank you,

Jay

November 28, 2010 at 4:32 PM

GeekStorage is proud to announce the upcoming addition of CloudLinux to all of our Shared Hosting and Reseller Hosting servers.

This update will improve service speeds significantly across all Shared & Reseller Hosting services, and implement improved resource tracking & management per account. Users of the "x3" cPanel theme will also find new statistics in their cPanel display, corresponding to their CPU Resource Usage and Concurrent Connections.

Major CloudLinux features include:

• Increased uptime since no one account can slow down or take down an entire shared server
• Better reliability and performance with a server that is running at peak operating capacity
• Better control over CPU resources
• Compatibility with cPanel, LiteSpeed and Ksplice... all major components of our shared hosting infrastructure

CloudLinux’s core technology is Lightweight Virtual Environment™ a kernel-level technology that limits the amount of resources (CPU, I/O, memory) available to a group of processes. While similar to container type virtualization technology, LVE is completely transparent and lightweight. Once installed, the LVE works transparently to manage resources that the hosting provider sets for the accounts on a server. It controls the CPU resources to ensure that each account on a shared server is allocated enough resources to run efficiently without jeopardizing the other tenants on that server, making the server more stable and delivering better performance.

CloudLinux has been thoroughly tested by Geek Support and we are extremely satisfied with the performance improvements seen with the addition of CloudLinux.

All Shared & Reseller Hosting servers must be rebooted as part of the installation of CloudLinux. As a result, we have scheduled maintenance for 11/29/2010 between the hours of 10:00 PM and 11:59 PM CST (GMT -6), with estimated downtime being approximately 10-15 minutes for each server.

If you have any questions regarding CloudLinux, please contact us at [email protected].