High-Performance
Windows VPS

Operating System Updates

Hostek provides operating system updates for all VPS servers. These patches are automatically applied during night time hours. The scheduling of updates can be customized by contacting Support.

Application Updates

Updates for software applications that are installed by Hostek, such as MS SQL, MySQL, and ColdFusion, is performed upon request. Please contact Support for assistance.

Performance Monitoring

We routinely monitor all VPS or Virtual Dedicated servers for availability (uptime) and high resource utilization. If a problem arises we will act accordingly to restore services and contact you as necessary.

Premium VPS Management Services

As part of our Premium VPS Services add-on, we also provide answers or suggestions on how to properly manage or maintain you server. This includes analyzing your server usage/performance and making suggestions. This also includes proactive monitoring and upgrade/patching management.

Two hours of Premium Management Services is included with the Premium service add-on. Each support case is a 15 minute minimum. Additional time beyond two hours can be purchased at our current hourly rate.

NOTE: This is NOT a supplement for programming or development.

What is High Performance Disk Space

By utilizing Dell's Compellent SAN, a true Enterprise grade storage solution, we have a unique high performance disk space solution. This "smart storage" forces all disk write activity to RAID 10, which is the fastest redundant storage configuration. Over a short period of time, data is then moved to RAID 5 storage for efficiency in disk read activity with a combination of higher storage capacity. This allows us to keep prices affordable while providing such a high performance disk solution.

What Makes Hostek's Private Cloud Different?

Every part of our disk storage is redundant. We not only have multiple primary SAN's (as described above), but we have invested heavily into secondary SAN's with live replication from the primary SAN—which ensures recovery in the event of a problem with the primary SAN. With little effort. we can recover your server from failure from the backup SAN.

Does The Operating System (OS) Use Part Of This Space?

Yes, as with any VPS or Server that can be completely customized, the OS uses part of the disk space.

What Processor Is Used?

For those of you that like details... we use fast Xeon e5-2667 v2 3.30ghz processors. Many hosts use older/slower 2.4ghz and 2.7ghz. This CPU speed is important to your site's performance.

* 37.5% faster than 2.4 Ghz
* 22.2% faster than 2.7 Ghz

Scalable Processor

Additional processor cores can be added to your server if you have an application that requires additional processing power. In most cases, the packages we have devised are based on the needs of average customers. We realize however that there may be cases where you need additional processing capabilities. In these rare cases, our Support team members can schedule an upgrade to your server's hardware features upon request.

If you have MS SQL Web, Standard, or Enterprise Edition installed, the license only covers two processor cores, and you may be required to add an additional SQL Server license if the number of processor cores is increased. For performance and optimal resource usage, it is strongly recommended to host SQL Server instances on separate VPS servers.

For pricing, see the Optional Add-Ons section under the relevant VPS hosting plan.

Scalable Memory

With our cloud infrastructure, your server's memory can be scaled quickly from 1GB to 256GB. In most cases, this upgrade can be performed within minutes and requires a simple reboot.

Guaranteed RAM

The resources allocated to your VPS are guaranteed resources.

To request additional memory for your server, simply contact Support.

For pricing, see the Optional Add-Ons section under the relevant VPS hosting plan.

Network Port Speeds

Each of our virtual machine hosts are equipped with redundant 1Gb Links. Individual VPS servers are provisioned with 100Mbps connections.

Scalable Bandwidth

If required, server bandwidth can be scaled to accomodate the needs of your traffic.

Burstable Bandwidth

For abnormal network traffic patterns, burstable bandwidth allows your VPS to handle network requests without interruption.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited bandwidth means that there are no hard limits placed on the amount of bandwidth, or network traffic, either to or from your server.

Unlimited bandwidth applies to normal applications that are not primarily used for streaming of either audio or video.

Nightly Backups

We keep rolling backups. That means if you select 30 days then we will take nightly backups of your server and store them for 30 days. On the 31st day the oldest backup will be deleted and replaced with the current day's backup. These are full backups of both the entire file system and bare metal level server backups.

How A File, Folder Or Entire Site Can Be Restored

With our backups, individual files, folders or an entire server can be restored.

For VPS's, these restores can be completed within the Control Panel if on the Windows operating system. For Linux based operating systems, simply make the request to our support team.

What is a VLAN?

A virtual local area network (VLAN) is a type of private network for a multi-server environment.

As an example, assume that you have a web server and a separate database server for performance purposes. This is a common setup to allow for a scalable solution. In order for the web server to quickly and efficiently get the data to or from the database server, a VLAN provides for fast and efficient communications between the two servers.

Does my VPS have a static IP address?

Yes, the VPS will be assigned its own static IP address.

Can I order additional static IP addresses

Yes, if there is a specific/valid need for it. The cost is £2.50.

How do I test my site if I don't have a static IP address?

In your control panel, we do provide a link to a testing/pre-prop URL. Also, for most CMS's we recommend modifying your HOSTS file to test the website before you change the DNS. (Search community.hostek.com ) for instructions on how to change your HOSTS file.

Avast or ESET Server Security

Protecting your server from viruses, trojans, rootkits, and other malware is vital. That's why every VPS server is equipped with ESET Server Secrity or Avast Server Security no additional charge.

ESET Server Security (Recommended)

ESET Server Security is recommended over Avast primarily due to it's efficient use of server resources. Avast from time to time may consume a large amount of server RAM. ESET performs much better for business class servers.

MySQL Databases

MySQL database sizes are limited only by the total amount of disk space available to your VPS.

MS SQL Databases

Express Edition
The limit for databases when using MS SQL Express Edition is 10GB for Express Edition 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Web Edition The limit for databases when using MS SQL Web 2012, 2014 or 2016 is limited only by the total amount of disk space available to your VPS.

Using our custom-built Windows Control Panel, you can select specific version of PHP on a per-domain basis and even customize the php.ini file as required by your application.

The ISAPI_Rewrite module for IIS allows your Windows web server to support Apache .htaccess files for URL rewriting. This feature is recommended for a number of popular web applications (such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, et al).

What is a Virtual Private Network?

A common use for a virtual private network (VPN) is so that Remote Users can connect directly to a server.

A VPN allows users to send and receive data to or from a server as if they were directly connected; providing a more secure method of accessing the server and its resources.

VPN Pricing and Ordering

If you require a VPN for your server, please include the request in the additional comments section of the checkout process.

If you require more than 25 VPN users, please contact our VPS Sales department for assistance.

Load Balancing and VLANs

Load balancing and Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are also available to assist you with creating your own network infrastructure within our private cloud. If you would like to enquire about these features, please schedule a free consultation so that one of our VPS Solution Specialists can help you explore your options.

Average Sites per VPS

The real answer is... IT DEPENDS. There are a lot of factors that go into how many sites can be put on a VPS.

The grid below represents average use sites. The average site has fairly low usage.

Busy sites may need several Business level VPS's in a Load Balanced configuration to insure high availability and page load times.

Additional Information

The grid below is just a rough estimate, since the type of site, how busy, how code optimized, etc. all play an important role in how many sites can be put on a VPS.

Schedule a Consultation with one of our VPS onboarding specialist and we would be happy to help you determine the right package for you or help you customize a package for your specific needs.

Unlimited Conditions

We strive to offer ample resources with each plan type. However, there are certain cases where a customer tries to abuse certain resources, so we have to have certain restrictions on the Unlimited features.

Unlimited in one respect means not abusive. Abusive is to be determined by management. Our goal is to provide hosting, so we don't go around looking for abusers. However, when we find one, we will notify the account holder to correct the situation.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited bandwidth means that there are no set limits placed on the amount of bandwidth, or network traffic, either to or from your server, that you can utilize during a month.

Our Unlimited Bandwidth feature is intended for normal application or website activity. Live video streaming for example, is not a normal application or website activity. If you need live streaming or any other non normal bandwidth requirement, consult with our VPS specialist and we can customize a solution for you.

If you are hosted elsewhere currently and you are getting charged extra for bandwdith, you may have an abnormal usage scenario. You should first do a free Consultation with one of our VPS specialist in advance to avoid any surprises.

Will Hostek Help Me Migrate My Site To Hostek Servers?

Yes. In most cases we are able to migrate a site from another host with no problems.

Will I Experience Any Downtime During Migration?

There will be no downtime during the migration. We provide you with a pre-propagation URL to test the site before updating the DNS. That way you know it works before "flipping the switch" on the DNS.

Best Effort Guarantee

Once the site is migrated, if something doesn't work that used to work on the old server, we will provide a "best effort" to work with you to help get it working on our servers. It's extremely rare that we can't get something to work.

We have migrated thousands of sites and have lots of experience with various scenarios.

How Many Sites Can Be Migrated For Free?

This varies by plan type. If you have more than 10 websites we recommend Scheduling a Consultation to discuss the migration process. This will insure a seamless and hassle-free experience for you.

What's the difference between Cloud Servers, Physical Servers and Physical Cloud Servers?

At Hostek, Cloud servers are virtual servers carved out of a very high performance physical server. A Cloud server environment offers many advantages over a pure physical server.

With a Cloud Server, you enjoy the added high availability that you do not get from a plain physical server. For example, if the host server (underlying physical server) goes down for some reason, your Cloud Server is automatically live migrated to another server in our Cloud.

With a Physical Cloud server, we have an underlying hypervisor at the root level, which makes the full server resources virtual. This allows for the server to have, utilize and not share the server resources. But the big advantage is that if something happens to that physical server, then the server is brought up automatically on another physical box, again with dedicated resources, not shared.

There always has to be an available matching server in the cluster for the failover to happen, so that does increase the cost some, but the benefits are huge. With the Hostek Physical Cloud server setup, we have many "standby" physcial servers available and the costs is spread out amongst customers utilizing the Physical Cloud servers, which helps keep the costs down for the "standby" servers.

Why would I use a Physical Cloud server?
You should strongly consider Physical Cloud server over a physical server. It's basically the same thing except with the added high availability feature the Cloud offers. If you do not need a physical server, then we suggest our normal Cloud server offerings.

Operating System Updates

Hostek provides operating system updates for all VPS servers. These patches are automatically applied during night time hours. The scheduling of updates can be customized by contacting Support.

Application Updates

Updates for software applications that are installed by Hostek, such as MS SQL, MySQL, and ColdFusion, is performed upon request. Please contact Support for assistance.

Performance Monitoring

We routinely monitor all VPS or Virtual Dedicated servers for availability (uptime) and high resource utilization. If a problem arises we will act accordingly to restore services and contact you as necessary.

Premium VPS Management Services

As part of our Premium VPS Services add-on, we also provide answers or suggestions on how to properly manage or maintain you server. This includes analyzing your server usage/performance and making suggestions. This also includes proactive monitoring and upgrade/patching management.

Two hours of Premium Management Services is included with the Premium service add-on. Each support case is a 15 minute minimum. Additional time beyond two hours can be purchased at our current hourly rate.

NOTE: This is NOT a supplement for programming or development.

What is High Performance Disk Space

By utilizing Dell's Compellent SAN, a true Enterprise grade storage solution, we have a unique high performance disk space solution. This "smart storage" forces all disk write activity to RAID 10, which is the fastest redundant storage configuration. Over a short period of time, data is then moved to RAID 5 storage for efficiency in disk read activity with a combination of higher storage capacity. This allows us to keep prices affordable while providing such a high performance disk solution.

What Makes Hostek's Private Cloud Different?

Every part of our disk storage is redundant. We not only have multiple primary SAN's (as described above), but we have invested heavily into secondary SAN's with live replication from the primary SAN—which ensures recovery in the event of a problem with the primary SAN. With little effort. we can recover your server from failure from the backup SAN.

Does The Operating System (OS) Use Part Of This Space?

Yes, as with any VPS or Server that can be completely customized, the OS uses part of the disk space.

What Processor Is Used?

For those of you that like details... we use fast Xeon e5-2667 v2 3.30ghz processors. Many hosts use older/slower 2.4ghz and 2.7ghz. This CPU speed is important to your site's performance.

* 37.5% faster than 2.4 Ghz
* 22.2% faster than 2.7 Ghz

Scalable Processor

Additional processor cores can be added to your server if you have an application that requires additional processing power. In most cases, the packages we have devised are based on the needs of average customers. We realize however that there may be cases where you need additional processing capabilities. In these rare cases, our Support team members can schedule an upgrade to your server's hardware features upon request.

If you have MS SQL Web, Standard, or Enterprise Edition installed, the license only covers two processor cores, and you may be required to add an additional SQL Server license if the number of processor cores is increased. For performance and optimal resource usage, it is strongly recommended to host SQL Server instances on separate VPS servers.

For pricing, see the Optional Add-Ons section under the relevant VPS hosting plan.

Scalable Memory

With our cloud infrastructure, your server's memory can be scaled quickly from 1GB to 256GB. In most cases, this upgrade can be performed within minutes and requires a simple reboot.

Guaranteed RAM

The resources allocated to your VPS are guaranteed resources.

To request additional memory for your server, simply contact Support.

For pricing, see the Optional Add-Ons section under the relevant VPS hosting plan.

Network Port Speeds

Each of our virtual machine hosts are equipped with redundant 1Gb Links. Individual VPS servers are provisioned with 100Mbps connections.

Scalable Bandwidth

If required, server bandwidth can be scaled to accomodate the needs of your traffic.

Burstable Bandwidth

For abnormal network traffic patterns, burstable bandwidth allows your VPS to handle network requests without interruption.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited bandwidth means that there are no hard limits placed on the amount of bandwidth, or network traffic, either to or from your server.

Unlimited bandwidth applies to normal applications that are not primarily used for streaming of either audio or video.

Nightly Backups

We keep rolling backups. That means if you select 30 days then we will take nightly backups of your server and store them for 30 days. On the 31st day the oldest backup will be deleted and replaced with the current day's backup. These are full backups of both the entire file system and bare metal level server backups.

How A File, Folder Or Entire Site Can Be Restored

With our backups, individual files, folders or an entire server can be restored.

For VPS's, these restores can be completed within the Control Panel if on the Windows operating system. For Linux based operating systems, simply make the request to our support team.

What is a VLAN?

A virtual local area network (VLAN) is a type of private network for a multi-server environment.

As an example, assume that you have a web server and a separate database server for performance purposes. This is a common setup to allow for a scalable solution. In order for the web server to quickly and efficiently get the data to or from the database server, a VLAN provides for fast and efficient communications between the two servers.

The ISAPI_Rewrite module for IIS allows your Windows web server to support Apache .htaccess files for URL rewriting. This feature is recommended for a number of popular web applications (such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, et al).

Spam Experts is a professional email security solution that is tailored to provide content and virus filtering. Whether it's spyware, malware, phishing, virus, or spam, SpamExperts will protect you by eliminating unwanted mail before it reaches your inbox.

With the existing anti-spam measures in place, 99% of spam is taken care of. However, for those wanting an even higher level of spam protection, SpamExperts is a great choice.

SpamExperts Premium Anti-Spam can be added to any domain for just £4.99 /month/domain.

What is a Virtual Private Network?

A common use for a virtual private network (VPN) is so that Remote Users can connect directly to a server.

A VPN allows users to send and receive data to or from a server as if they were directly connected; providing a more secure method of accessing the server and its resources.

VPN Pricing and Ordering

If you require a VPN for your server, please include the request in the additional comments section of the checkout process.

If you require more than 25 VPN users, please contact our VPS Sales department for assistance.

Load Balancing and VLANs

Load balancing and Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are also available to assist you with creating your own network infrastructure within our private cloud. If you would like to enquire about these features, please schedule a free consultation so that one of our VPS Solution Specialists can help you explore your options.

Average Sites per VPS

The real answer is... IT DEPENDS. There are a lot of factors that go into how many sites can be put on a VPS.

The grid below represents average use sites. The average site has fairly low usage.

Busy sites may need several Business level VPS's in a Load Balanced configuration to insure high availability and page load times.

Additional Information

The grid below is just a rough estimate, since the type of site, how busy, how code optimized, etc. all play an important role in how many sites can be put on a VPS.

Schedule a Consultation with one of our VPS onboarding specialist and we would be happy to help you determine the right package for you or help you customize a package for your specific needs.

Will Hostek Help Me Migrate My Site To Hostek Servers?

Yes. In most cases we are able to migrate a site from another host with no problems.

Will I Experience Any Downtime During Migration?

There will be no downtime during the migration. We provide you with a pre-propagation URL to test the site before updating the DNS. That way you know it works before "flipping the switch" on the DNS.

Best Effort Guarantee

Once the site is migrated, if something doesn't work that used to work on the old server, we will provide a "best effort" to work with you to help get it working on our servers. It's extremely rare that we can't get something to work.

We have migrated thousands of sites and have lots of experience with various scenarios.

How Many Sites Can Be Migrated For Free?

This varies by plan type. If you have more than 10 websites we recommend Scheduling a Consultation to discuss the migration process. This will insure a seamless and hassle-free experience for you.

What's the difference between Cloud Servers, Physical Servers and Physical Cloud Servers?

At Hostek, Cloud servers are virtual servers carved out of a very high performance physical server. A Cloud server environment offers many advantages over a pure physical server.

With a Cloud Server, you enjoy the added high availability that you do not get from a plain physical server. For example, if the host server (underlying physical server) goes down for some reason, your Cloud Server is automatically live migrated to another server in our Cloud.

With a Physical Cloud server, we have an underlying hypervisor at the root level, which makes the full server resources virtual. This allows for the server to have, utilize and not share the server resources. But the big advantage is that if something happens to that physical server, then the server is brought up automatically on another physical box, again with dedicated resources, not shared.

There always has to be an available matching server in the cluster for the failover to happen, so that does increase the cost some, but the benefits are huge. With the Hostek Physical Cloud server setup, we have many "standby" physcial servers available and the costs is spread out amongst customers utilizing the Physical Cloud servers, which helps keep the costs down for the "standby" servers.

Why would I use a Physical Cloud server?
You should strongly consider Physical Cloud server over a physical server. It's basically the same thing except with the added high availability feature the Cloud offers. If you do not need a physical server, then we suggest our normal Cloud server offerings.

Does my VPS have a static IP address?

Yes, the VPS will be assigned its own static IP address.

Can I order additional static IP addresses

Yes, if there is a specific/valid need for it. The cost is $3.

How do I test my site if I don't have a static IP address?

In your control panel, we do provide a link to a testing/pre-prop URL. Also, for most CMS's we recommend modifying your HOSTS file to test the website before you change the DNS. (Search community.hostek.com ) for instructions on how to change your HOSTS file.

With the addition of the CloudLinux option addon, you gain the flexibility of being able to select specific versions of PHP on a per-domain basis. Additionally, the versions are automatically updated ensuring you have the latest versions.

Overview

CloudLinux is an optional add-on that provides enhancements which are designed to guard against performance spikes, slowdowns, and unexpected downtime as well as additional security enhancements.

Features

Some of the features of CloudLinux include the following:

• LVE Manager
  Allows you to configure CPU, memory, disk IO, and concurrent processes on a per-user basis.
• MySQL Governor
  Monitor MySQL usage, throttle abusive processes, and improve stability and performance.
• CageFS
  Increase security by encapsulating user accounts and prevent many types of attack including privilege escalation and information disclosure.
• PHP Selector
  Provide the flexibility of being able to select specific versions of PHP on a per-domain basis. Versions are updated automatically.
• HardenedPHP
  Fix known vulnerabilities in commonly used versions of PHP and secure your legacy applications.
• And much more!

Softaculous is an automated installer for cPanel. It offers over 380 scripts and commonly used web applications which can be installed in a single step, saving you time and effort.

Unlimited Conditions

We strive to offer ample resources with each plan type. However, there are certain cases where a customer tries to abuse certain resources, so we have to have certain restrictions on the Unlimited features.

Unlimited in one respect means not abusive. For example, if your site is consuming a abnormal amount of resources on the shared server, that would be abusive.

Abusive is to be determined by management. Our goal is to provide hosting, so we don't go around looking for abusers. However, when we find one, we will notify the account holder to correct the situation.

Unlimited Storage

For disk space on shared plans and reseller plans, if a site is using more than 30 GB of space, that would be questioned. That is not normal shared hosting usage.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited bandwidth means that there are no set limits placed on the amount of bandwidth, or network traffic, either to or from your server, that you can utilize during a month.

Our Unlimited Bandwidth feature is intended for normal application or website activity. Live video streaming for example, is not a normal application or website activity. If you need live streaming or any other non normal bandwidth requirement, consult with our VPS specialist and we can customize a solution for you.