After countless hours spent getting your web site up and running,
planning and executing your marketing campaigns, and filling orders,
the last thing you want to worry about is the performance of your
web site. Although it is rarely considered by small businesses,
the performance of your web host can actually be the bottle-neck
of your entire operation. If your web site loads too slow, or doesn't
load at all, you will lose both credibility and customers.
One-of-a-Kind Indefinite Power Backup
All the servers we use are protected
by high-end managed Liebert and APC UPS (Uninterruptible Power
Supply) battery power backups, which are able to sustain the network
for much longer than is needed for the natural gas generators
to become activated. The generators utilize a constant supply
of natural gas and, as such, are able to supply power indefinitely
in the event of an extended power outage.
CathCom Hosting also utilizes Ethernet Power Controllers which gives
the unique ability to automatically monitor, log, report,
notify, adjust and control the power status of all servers, and
even remotely reboot servers in the event of serious errors that
cannot be resolved on the software end. This increases reliability
and uptime by preventing power-related problems by early detection
as well as through the ability to automatically bring frozen servers
back up almost immediately! These advanced devices are much more
reliable and scalable than similar devices used by competing services
that communicate over telephone and power lines, and also enable
operations staff to respond to emergencies much quicker
by remotely rebooting servers instantly anytime and from anywhere.
High-Speed Upstream and Gigabit Internal Network
The increasing capacity of the Internet demands a growing need
for services that surpass the current standards of delivery. We provide
a gigabit Ethernet-based internal network
featuring ultra-fast throughput with extensive room for expansion,
redundant routers and switches throughout, etc.
Moreover, the bandwidth infrastructure (ie. Internet connection)
includes a cutting-edge 1,000 Mbps (GigE) Fiber Internet connection,
providing you with the assurance that powerhouse delivery is available
when needed, while superior reliability and data delivery speed
are assured through redundant connectivity to three Tier 1 providers
including Big Pipe, Rogers Telecom and New Global Telecom. The servers
are on the backbone of Internet by being within one "hop"
of their sophisticated peering networks.
This upstream provider redundancy substantially increases reliability
by eliminating downtime in the event that up to two of these three
providers become temporarily unavailable. Enhanced delivery and
scalability are also achieved through BGP routing to all providers
- this means that data requests are directed through the provider's
network that offers the lowest latency (ie. fastest route) to
their particular destination, ensuring expedient delivery of your
web content and improved response times for your visitors and
customers.
Custom Load-Balanced Firewalls/Routers
CathCom Hosting uses a technology called LVS on the Custom Firewalls/Routers
to provide both the Firewalls/Routers and the network with redundancy,
fault-tolerance, load balancing, packet filtering and port blocking
services. "Fault Tolerance" and "Load Balancing"
refers to the ability to have any number of machines providing
the same service. Not only do they share the load between them
appropriately ("weighed" to those servers that are able
to handle higher loads), but if one server crashes, the others
are able to instantly and transparently take its place. LVS also
allows servers to be temporarily disconnected from the pool for
downtime-free maintenance and upgrades, and servers to be easily
added to handle higher loads. This provides you with the best
in network performance, reliability and protection.
Innovative E-mail System and Features
Our state-of-the-art mail system breaks new ground in high-volume
mail processing, features, SPAM filtering, and Virus protection.
It's modular design employs well supported, widely used and actively
developed open-source technologies. Each server in the system
is duplicated for superior fault-tolerance, redundancy, maintainability,
and expandability. Load-balancing LVS directors evenly distribute
the load across the system. MySQL Replication offers the ultimate
in speed, by permitting each server to read from a local database,
and reliability, by enabling the entire system to continue operating
even if the central database goes down. Finally, it allows any
changes that you make through the Control Panel to take effect
through the entire system instantly.
Our innovative mail system includes new features such as SPAM
scanning, Virus scanning, IMAP, auto responders, aliases, always-BCC,
"Catch-all" accounts, and much more. Finally, it runs
on an isolated Gigabit network, improving security and speed.
The result of all of this is a highly efficient, extremely fast,
reliable, secure, robust, and feature-rich e-mail service for
CathCom's customers.
Unique Backup and Disaster Recovery Technology
Our shared servers are running a redundant 3Gbps SATA-II RAID
configuration, giving you maximum efficiency and reliability with
a failsafe server crash fallback.
CathCom Hosting also features a unique multi-terabyte hard drive
backup solution - faster, more reliable, and more scalable than
the magnetic tape-based systems used by our competition. Featured
is an advanced Disaster Recovery system, allowinging restoration of
a server in the event of a complete crash or disaster in a little
one hour, as opposed to several days. Utilizing award-winning Retrospect backup software, backups
include full file and .NET 3.0 (+ ASP.NET) permissions. Backups
are performed daily on a completely isolated Gigabit network,
and we maintain a secure off-site storage facility.
Moreover, Retrospect version 7.5 includes several important new
benefits over competing services still using the old Retrospect
6. For example, it is significantly faster at backing up data
due to enhancements to the algorithm that automatically determines
new files and folders which need to be added to the current Backup
Set on-the-fly.
That said, any disaster recovery system can fail occasionally,
typically because a server may be damaged and require a complete
server rebuild. This occurrence can cause several hours of downtime
with competing services. Consistency is crucial, particularly
in the installation and configuration of software for optimal
(and critical) performance, security and reliability. To make
this procedure fast and consistent (eliminating human error),
CathCom Hosting has its own automated installation and
configuration software, which is able to take a bare machine and
turn it into a fully functional and complete web server, reducing
the total server rebuild time to under one hour with only two
key automated steps:
A bootable CD automatically formats the drives, installs and
configures the operating system and starts the automatic server
installation software.
This automated software installs and configures all server software,
settings, permissions, etc., putting it live on the network.
This proprietary improvement to the standard Windows 2003 hosting
setup ensures that the significant R&D invested into
pinpointing the optimal way of setting up a web server is taken
advantage of, resulting in the best possible performance and reliability
for you.
CathCom Hosting uses a product called Nagios to provide advanced
monitoring for the entire network 24 hours a day. It provides
automatic notifications, alerts and statistics about each device
connected to the network, allowing for fast resolution of all
problems. The system
also takes a series of logical steps to instantly and automatically
correct most problems even before a technician is required to
address them.
This system is able to instantly detect network failures,
including all service and server outages, problems with the UPS,
generator, and power management systems, and automatically notify
staff, 24/7 anywhere in the world. Furthermore, over 300
advanced test clients (on the Windows 2003 servers alone) monitor
more precise metrics such as CPU usage, RAM usage, hard disk space,
the status of all RAID arrays and automation routines, etc. on
each server individually allowing the monitoring of patterns that
may indicate problems now or down the road, and pro-actively correct
them before they are even noticed.
Moreover, the servers use special software at the web server level
to detect and preempt corrupt client web scripts, and other threats
that can contribute to high CPU load, extraordinary memory consumption,
etc., including denial of service or worm and virus attacks. This
unique technology is directly integrated with the Nagios network
monitoring system to detect these items in advance and prevent
them from causing website downtime for CathCom's valued business customers.
Ethernet Power Controllers
Nagios also interacts with the Ethernet Power Controllers. If
a server is not responding properly, the typical procedure is
to determine what has occurred to bring it to that state. However,
if the server is completely non-responsive, a physical power restart
is required. CathCom Hosting's Ethernet power controllers provide
the unique ability to automatically monitor power status
and remotely reboot servers any time, day or night, further increasing
reliability and uptime in three ways.
As the central power control point, the Nagios-based advanced
Network Monitoring System automatically monitors, logs, reports,
notifies, adjusts and maintains the power status of all servers.
Nagios can also reboot servers automatically in the event of serious
errors that cannot be resolved on the software end, bringing them
back up more quickly than competing services.
We have the ability to reboot servers
instantly anytime and from anywhere.
Scripted (by design) reboots for load balancing enable a redundant
server to easily turn off a malfunctioning peer in the same pool,
and then take over completely.
These advanced devices are much more reliable and scalable than
similar devices used by competing services that communicate over
telephone and power lines. The rack-mountable power controllers
communicate over standard Ethernet, and possess built-in web servers,
allowing for easy integration with Nagios.
Offsite Network Monitoring
Our Hosting also uses an offsite network monitoring system,
which integrates with Nagios to track network and server uptime,
CPU load, disk utilization, and to also provide an accurate view
of overall infrastructure performance. This unbiased, third-party
layer of monitoring ensures that all systems are up and running,
scanning server and network metrics as often as once a minute
and generating daily, weekly and monthly reports. This enhances
both availability and proactive capacity planning.
State-of-the-Art Climate Control
The award-winning, state-of-the-art climate controlled data centre
offers the peace of mind knowing that reliability and performance
are guaranteed. Ensuring that the data center remains a constant
temperature at all times is an essential component to ensuring
optimum reliability and server performance.
The sophisticated, dedicated cooling system features temperature
sensors that integrate with Nagios to dynamically monitor the
environment and ensure that optimal temperatures are maintained
throughout. Even the slightest variation in temperature is detected
and the network monitoring system immediately notifies 24/7
personnel.