The Planet Blog

At The Planet, we’re excited about the holiday season. We’ve had a great year, so this is a perfect time to look back on 2007 and store away the memories much like one would store server backups in our data centers. How’s that that for a convenient segue into a discussion about The Planet’s backup solutions?

We currently offer NAS, DiskSync, Dedicated SAN and Dedicated Backup Server options, and as the resident backup and storage guru on the Product Management team, I love sharing backup knowledge with our customers. What question do I get most often? Easy: What is the difference between

What is the difference between NAS, DiskSync and the Dedicated Backup Server?

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is storage space allows you access over FTP. You write or provide the software to create and send backups to your NAS, and it functions as a reliable external disk to protect your data and store information separate from your server. Think of it as a target disc, albeit a pretty small one. You can buy NAS space from The Planet in increments ranging from 20GB to 200GB, and our typical NAS setup accommodates many users on each of our available NAS devices.

Our DiskSync product offers a much more complete SAN (Storage Area Network) infrastructure backup solution with the ability to schedule full backups and perform restores in our managed environment. Rather than having to create the backup software, our DiskSync solution enables you to quickly and easily monitor and track your data backups. On the infrastructure side, we host the large storage network and maintain the integrity of all DiskSync user data. The SAN structure is significantly larger than a NAS device and is much more scalable. It’s able to accommodate a considerably higher number of DiskSync users and any additional space you may want or need. DiskSync backups are available in 10GB increments with unlimited capacity.

With our new Dedicated Backup Server (DBS) solution, you become the admin for the entire system. You get a dedicated server with the R1Soft CDP Server software/license installed, and full root access. You have the ability to manage backups and delegate authority to users and sub-users, and you manage the OS, which allows for true customization for any of your more complex backup needs. We’ve found that many customers want this complete control and the peace of mind that each DBS is individually encrypted for data security since no other users access your DBS. Our most popular Dedicated Backup Servers come equipped with 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB of data, but we’re always open to a challenge if you need more.

While that’s a quick rundown of our three main backup solutions, it succinctly explains a few of the key differences I like to communicate when asked to run through the options. We feel this array of products can meet the needs of almost any user, so if you have additional questions about backup solution implementation or if you would just like a little more information, visit our Backup page or post a quick comment to let me know.

-Brett

I live and breathe technology, just like many of our customers. In speaking with my colleagues, they encouraged me to share my thoughts on a few technologies that are important to the Web hosting business.

In particular, clustering is top of mind for me right now. We talk a lot about clustering. So what does it really mean? Clustering involves multiple computers working together so they can be viewed as one. You’ve probably heard of a database cluster or a clustered Web server farm. These are prime examples of taking multiple servers and using clustering to give you high availability or high-performance computing which provides scalability that’s typically achieved by load balancing servers within the cluster.

One thing common with clusters is that the servers are typically setup independently and then joined with the cluster. This means that the operating system and applications are installed, and then configured to work as part of the cluster. For most clustering implementations, a single application instance cannot use the resources of more than one physical machine.

If you want an application to run on three servers, it requires that you install the application on three nodes in a cluster. Then the cluster can be set-up for load balancing the application across the three nodes.

Another critical clustering factor that shouldn’t be overlooked is storage. Clusters typically share a common back-end storage system so that all nodes in the cluster are working with the same data. Whether it’s a SAN with Web application content with all the nodes performing simultaneous reads in a load balancing cluster, or a direct attached storage subsystem that the nodes of a high-availability cluster exclusively access, the common shared storage is an integral part. For example, products may include Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC), Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server, Sun Cluster and RedHat Cluster Suite.

Another hot topic is grid computing, which has many similarities to clusters and is often referred to interchangeably. A grid offers the ability to add or remove resources — like servers — from the grid as needed. This is referred to as “computing on demand” or “cloud computing.”

One distinction is that applications on a grid can typically scale to more than one physical server. Another nice feature of grid computing is that each node can be commodity hardware, so we can leverage the servers we already offer which provides a value to both our customers and to The Planet.

A grid is also well suited for running separate applications in a utility computing environment. Imagine if you had a SaaS application, and it ran on a grid where you subscribed to a minimum set of resources like CPU GHz, storage GBs and network Mb/sec. The grid would dedicate the minimum required resources to your application, and make sure there are enough resources in reserve to meet any bursting or scaling that may be required. It could add more servers to your grid on demand and free them up when they are no longer needed.

So these are the type of technologies that we’re evaluating at The Planet. Stay tuned for more details.

- Bryce