Are you people clear what a data center is?

We often hear the term data center or data centre, but do we really know what is it?

Basically, a data center is not a place where website and domains are hosted. This is a huge misconception among people about data center and most of them associate it with the data center. For many, the term datacenter is still a mystery, despite its crucial importance.

In short, a data center could be defined as a skeleton that supports the IT infrastructure which enables communication and exchange of information between devices that are connected to the Internet and World Wide Web. There are many such technology companies that handle huge amounts of data and information have their own data centers in multiple locations such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc…

A data center is a building where web hosting companies store and maintain their dedicated servers to get rid of the costs behind building a data center. Usually a data center consumes a lot of energy due to the large amount of web servers are placed in it and requires a lot of equipment to power and maintain them due to which it utilizes a lot of energy. There are five effective ways to save energy in the data center. It is possible to save over 10-15% of energy without additional cost.

It is common that the distribution of air per hot and cold aisle is the best way to ensure the cooling of equipment. Even though there are still many benefits to derive from the cooling system, it is necessary to find a mechanism that makes the exhaust air to a location other than the back of the equipment. You need to find mechanisms to deal with the heat of equipment that are ventilated by side or on top.

The Cisco devices, for example have a ventilation system which operates by side, as some HP equipment air through the top. In order to maximize the movement of the wings of hot and cold air it is essential that the equipment should be arranged so as to facilitate the air circulation, according to their previous settings. The ‘racks’ should be positioned perpendicular to the air conditioning to ensure non-blocking hot air.

The second way to save energy in the data center is via the establishment of certain points regarding the setting of temperature and humidity in the data center. “Most people have the perception that the data center must be cold, however in reality it should be slightly warm and slightly humid. According to the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers [ASHRAE] the average temperature of data centers should be located below 68 degrees and 50% humidity. It is ideal environment for a data center, because there are areas where it is necessary to have some heat. The placements of temperature sensors on the equipment and tests help determine the optimal levels of temperature and humidity. According to the Sun, it is possible to change the temperature and humidity levels up to 4% lower energy costs.

The third recommendation relates to the placement of the air conditioning in the appropriate locations, where it is most required. The data center floor plays an important role to bring the air where it is needed most. Air conditioning that does not reach the places where you need to be properly positioned; otherwise it takes energy to transport the air.

The fourth way relates to the drilling of the plates or grids. Wards of cold air, there are perforated plates that let cold air rising and being directed. The hot wings were not to be perforated. When making configuration changes, it is essential to take into account the perforation of the plates or grids. If there is a hot aisle and cold aisle and there is a change of equipment, you may need to leave holes in racks that let hot air from the hot aisle entering the ward of cold air.

In our daily lives, we are facing an increased number of users demanding when it comes to mobility and collaboration. Currently a lot of mobile devices with Internet access are available in the market. The strong growth trends of this type of access make this increasingly important requirement for organizations.

A messaging service that allows users the flexibility of mobility and collaboration adds significant value to the organization. One of the most feasible alternative in this regard can be achieved by moving your email in the cloud environment using cloud services, using it as a service from an external source.

The use of email in the cloud as a service results in the following advantages for the company: cost savings, more flexibility in meeting the needs of users, more availability and reliability in the tool and maintenance of the latest technologies in the market without having to migrate or upgrade.

In practice, from the corporate point of view it has at least six benefits that help streamline the routine and increase labor productivity of all enterprise users:

• Access to email, calendar, tasks and contacts from anywhere
• The idle time can be transformed into productive time
• With faster response times, user satisfaction can be increased
• Scheduling meetings quickly and with confidence
• Executives and other decision makers may be better informed and keep informed of changes or events in real-time business
• Users can find the required information quickly and work with them, no matter where they are

M2M is defined as machine-to-machine – a kind of technology that facilitates automated wired or provides ability to communicate wirelessly between mechanical or electronic devices.

The Machine-to-Machine (M2M) lets networked machines to switch data and execute actions without requiring human’s assistance. Most of the times, M2M is used to facilitate remote monitoring. Machine-to-machine communication play a significant role in telemetry, management of warehouse, remote control, robotics, traffic control, logistic services, management of supply chain, management of fleet, and even telemedicine.

Some of the core elements of a Machine-to-Machine system are sensors, RFID, a Wi-Fi, mobile phone communications link and autonomic computing software which is programmed to render the data and make decisions.

One of the most familiar M2M communication type is Telemetry, basically used to transmit operational data from remote sources. Previously, the telephone wires were used in telemetry for automatic transmission and measurement of data from remote sources. However, later the radio waves were utilized.

The huge growth of public telephone networks and Internet has leaded the expansion of telemetry from engineering and manufacturing to daily use in electronic products and appliances that are connected to the Internet. The products and appliances that are built with M2M communication technology are considered as smart products in the Industry.

As the cloud is rising in various industries, people are getting attracted towards cloud-based solutions. A virtual desktop in the cloud is one of the cloud solutions offered in the web hosting industry. But, does anyone have idea, what it is and is it beneficial? Let’s check it out…

What is Virtual Desktop in the Cloud Solution?

A virtual desktop in the cloud is a cloud-based solution, where all of your desktop data is moved in the cloud along with applications and software’s providing you the choice of your operating system. It simply means that you can connect through a web browser regardless of the devices you are using to access it. The only difference is that you will be able to access it virtually from anywhere, at anytime. The virtual desktop in the cloud frees you from using a particular device to access your data.

Is virtual desktop in the cloud safe for corporate world?

Without doubt, it is totally safe for corporate data due to the highest security and safety of end users. As indicated by Gartner Research firm in a recent study “Know the Security Implications of Adopting Hosted Virtual Desktops“, which further states that this practice can help organizations optimize compliance with regulatory requirements.

However, the Gartner research firm points out in its report that before betting on this type of hosted virtual desktops providers in the field of security, people must assess available alternatives as well.

From Gartner, Neil MacDonald, analyst and vice president of the company, says that the fact that there are more and more corporate data extended to hundreds or thousands of devices, most of which do not have a proper safety requirements in place, due to which its causing an increase in the risk of loss of information in companies. In this regard, he notes, “hosted virtual desktops can help improve safety levels in the client environment as centralized computing applications and sensitive information in the data center, providing safety to managers and technology information of the organizations and an opportunity not only to improve efficiency but also support their own security.”

How do virtual desktop in the cloud work?

This technology allows corporate applications and data sharing in a centralized work environment, instead of those applications and data they are only in the user’s computer. Thus, wherever the users are, and from any device they can always access their tools safely.

But not only security is the major advantage offered by this way of working, it also carries a huge cost savings which is the most important benefit to users, says Gartner.

Given this trend, in the last four or five years the hardware and software have evolved that allow virtual access to applications and corporate data by users. It have emerged all kinds of appliances, reference architectures, storage virtualization and custom software, along with all kinds of security solutions on the matter of cloud services.

This system works like phone numbers, one person can contact another entering the number for that another person his/her phone. In the case of Internet, a computer, mobile phone or any other device uses IP addressing to communicate with each other.

When the Internet was designed, it was thought that the 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses would be sufficient to sustain the network forever; however with the significant increase of mobile devices connecting to the internet in recent years, it was found that IPv4 addresses would be insufficient and lead to an exhaustion of the IPv4 protocol.

To avoid this situation, a new Internet protocol called “IPv6” also known as “IPng” (Internet Protocol next generation) was created with the possibility of expanding the number of addresses 340, 282, 366, 920, 938, 463, 463, 374, 607, 431, 768, 211, 456. Now, with the IPv6 there are over 340 trillion trillion trillion possible addresses.

Why is IPv6 So Important Today?

Moving to the new IP protocol is extremely important in today’s world. Transition from IPv4 to IPv6 allows continued growth of the Internet and new devices can be connected to the network by communicating with each other.

What is World IPv6 Launch?

World IPv6 Launch is the day, when the Internet Society prepared for the launch of IPv6 with some of the most visited sites on the Internet, major Internet service providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world to prepare their infrastructures for the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 permanently.

On June 6, 2012, the World IPv6 Launch got real. The Internet Society carried out a World IPv6 Launch day, and instead of testing the IPv6 they make it all real and brought permanent IPv6 deployment for products and services.

Check out the following World IPv6 Launch Infographic, explaining how the internet changed and is continuing to change.

Infrographics Source: worldipv6launch.org

Often website owners notice a page on their website “Account Suspended” with a message “This Account Has Been Suspended”. The message simply indicates that your web hosting account associated with this website has been temporarily suspended. There could be several reasons for the suspension of your account. The most common reasons are mentioned below:

Billing Issue – If your web hosting account is up for the renewal and the hosting company is not able to charge you from the credit/debit card information they have in their database, then it might be possible that your account may get suspended for pending payment. To avoid this issue, you should update the necessary information by getting in touch with the billing team either by phone, email or via 24×7 live chat support.

Violation of Terms of Service – It might also be possible that if you are hosting adult material and copyrighted contents, then your account might get suspended, as copyrighting contents is a violation for most of the web hosting company’s Terms of Service. The status of the account will remain suspended until the adult material or copyrighted content is removed.

CPU Usage – Another possible reason for the suspension of hosting account could be, if your web hosting account is consuming an excessive amount of resources such as CPU and RAM, affecting overall operation of the server and websites hosted on it. Due to this, the web hosting provider has to suspend the most resource consuming account in order to restore the stability on the server.

In such a condition, the technical team has no time to contact the account owner and has to suspend the account. Also, he hosting provider will ask you to upgrade your web hosting plan.

There are high availability and reliable solutions like “eNlight Cloud” available in the market to prevent these situations from happening, however people are not still aware of the “cloud advantages” and due to which they avoid getting into the cloud.

Also, a better solution to avoid high level of resources consumption by your site is to regularly perform maintenance and optimization of MySQL tables. Always remember that, if you recognize that the current web hosting plan is not enough to meet your website requirements, it is better to upgrade your web hosting plan instead of getting your account suspended every time.

Most of the times parents express a desire to block a website from being viewed on their Windows computer to protect their child from various things when they are online. Doing this doesn’t require much effort; all you need is just to follow the steps given below:

Steps for Blocking a Website on Windows Computer:

Step 1: Login to your Windows Computer.

Step 2: Go to the following path:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

Make sure to backup the “Hosts” file before editing it.

Step 3: Right-click the “Hosts” file and open it with Notepad. At the end of the file you will see something like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost

Step 4: Now, simply replace the “localhost” with the website name you want to block:

127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com

Remember that, www.youtube.com and youtube.com are considered as two different sites, even they points to the same place. To block the site effectively, you must block both the sites (youtube.com & www.youtube.com).

Adding the website name will stop the user from viewing the website, however if the user knows the ip address of the website he / she can still browse the site with the help of websites’ ip address.

In order to block it completely, you could also use the IP address of the website creating another line in the hosts file and entering the ip address in the same way as done for the domain name.

For Example:

127.0.0.1 youtube.com
127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com
127.0.0.1 173.194.36.1

Step 5: Finally, go to Start -> Run -> and type “ipconfig/flushdns”

That’s it! Enjoy…

Sharing information is one of the concepts that we set for internet. There are various means and methods to accomplish this sharing and how the world wide web just keeps growing, some terms were created to define which content can travel on a given network.

• Internet
• Intranet
• Extranet

In this article we are going to see that what do these terms actually means.

Definition of Internet

It is the largest cluster of computers on the planet interconnected by a network , allowing access and transfer of any kind of information like images and videos, etc…

The protocol used on the Internet is TCP/IP infrastructure and network support services such as email and voice calls or video calls. Thanks to the ability to transmit data over long distances. Public cloud computing resources are too shared via the Internet.

Definition of Intranet

Similar to the Internet, Intranet is being widely used within enterprises to share information among employees exclusively. With this it creates a world of possibilities to be developed within the intranet, for example:

The IT system offers an opening called technical;
The HR Company announces internal vacancies available;
The Personnel Department provides change of address forms, coupons, etc…

Definition of Extranet

Extranet is a computer network which can be accessed and controlled from anywhere on the planet by an employee of a particular company. We can illustrate the concept of extranet when we speak of a multinational company.

With branches in various locations around the world, exchanging information about purchases, sales, manufacturing, distribution, accounting and other, it would be very difficult if extranet wasn’t there.

The cloud computing is still a key trend in the forecasts of researchers, analysts and consultants, virtually inevitable in recent years. The cloud is always in them, either by their strengths as well as its risks. The projections of where we take 2013, the cloud technology could not be missed. “The cloud is one of the most important technology trends of 2013 as per the ConsumerLab Ericsson, and one of the keys to understand what will happen in 2013 and next”, according to Gartner, a major security risk to companies that must be faced.

Gartner have highlighted three major trends among top security for 2013:

• The Rise of Social Media
• The Momentum of the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
• Growth of Cloud Computing

These three realities that will create more headaches for network managers, Gartner says.

Some of them have also adopted changes in pitch. During a webinar, Earl Perkins, Gartner Research Vice President said that “Will the major providers of security technology be the same ones in three to five years?” as mentioned by NetworkWorld. The answer is probably no.” The security technology market is volatile now, as noted by Gartner analysts, as the cloud services that allow access to information from anywhere and enabling BYOD it on any device are generating new security challenges that require different solutions.

Particularly, speaking about the cloud, experts from the industry recommends that the network managers should rush to build formulas in order to make sure that the users must authenticate, whenever they access the cloud services and can guarantee the security of corporate information.