CathCom

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.