Hostway News & Events

Hostway slices cost and raises speed of server deployment with virtual server farms

London, UK, 2nd June 2008 — Hostway, a global web hosting leader, today launched its dedicated virtualised server range. The new virtualised server portfolio enables companies which could not previously afford virtualisation to take advantage of it by using a hosted solution. The new offering also expands Hostway’s existing dedicated server range by increasing the reliability, scalability and cost-effectiveness of customer hosting arrangements.

“Many companies are keen to use virtualisation because it can help them cut costs, increase server utilisation and make their infrastructure more robust and reliable, but simply don’t have the expertise or the resources to set up a virtualised server environment in-house,” said David Foxley, enterprise technology manager, Hostway UK. “The licenses for ESX server can cost thousands of pounds alone, add to that the costs of implementing the technology and training staff to manage it and you could find that the cost of adopting virtualisation cannot be justified by the benefits it brings. Using our new hosted virtualised servers, companies can benefit from virtualisation without having to train and certify IT staff, or make large upfront investments.”

Hostway can now have new web, database or application servers up and running in around thirty minutes, rather than the several days required to build and configure a standard dedicated server. This helps companies to rapidly scale up their infrastructure as needed and enables a “pay-per-resource” approach.
Hostway’s virtualised dedicated servers are also more robust than standard dedicated servers because resources can be split over a “resource pool” including several different physical servers. This means that companies are no longer reliant on the performance of a single server box, ensuring business continuity in the event of one physical server failing.

Hostway’s dedicated virtualised servers also allow companies to stack different kinds of servers on top of each other, allowing them to run a web and exchange server on the same physical machine, for example, and add further servers as needed from their resource pool. In a typical web hosting scenario, companies can save between 13% and 17% on their hosting arrangements, as well as benefiting from Hostway’s hosting environment, which includes enterprise-grade firewalls, global server load-balancing, 24/7 support and fully managed systems. Hostway’s virtualised dedicated server environment has been successfully trialled with customers such as the BBC, Design UK (an independent digital agency), Conjungo (a technology search engine) and the National Pub Quiz.

“Very often, businesses are forced to buy entire dedicated servers when they simply don’t need all the resources that the server offers,” continued Foxley. “By using virtualisation, companies can purchase as many or as few resources as they need and run multiple web, application, database or email servers. This “pay-per-resource” approach is much more cost-effective than purchasing entire new servers every time you add another business critical application. Furthermore, many companies are intimidated by using virtualisation platforms such as ESX because of the time and expense associated with training in-house IT staff, but by choosing hosted virtualisation, all of the maintenance and setup is outsourced to a team of VMWare-certified experts. By offering customers a more cost-effective, flexible and scalable solution, we can solve some of the traditional pain-points that companies have been experiencing with web hosting for years.”

About Hostway Corporation
Hostway (Worldwide)
Founded in 1998, Hostway Corporation (www.hostway.co.uk) is one of the three largest web hosting companies in the world with a direct presence in 11 countries, 15 worldwide operation centres, and more than 700 employees. Serving customers both small and large, Hostway combines best of breed hosting infrastructure with innovative online tools that help customers broaden their reach and grow their businesses online. Hostway offers a wide range of managed hosting services ranging from Windows and Linux based shared hosting plans, to complete dedicated server and Enterprise managed solutions to now over 600,000 customers worldwide. Hostway franchises include - Affinity Internet, Bigstep, DiscountDomains, Hostway UK, Hostway Netherlands, Hostway Korea, Hostway Australia, Hostway Denmark, NetNation, PowerMedium, RegistryPro, Server Service, Service Over Internet, ValueWeb and WinSave.

For Press Inquiries Contact:
Kewal Varia/Christian Sharp
Spark Communications
020 7436 0420
Kewal@sparkcomms.co.uk
Christian@sparkcomms.co.uk

* Scenarios are based on comparing hosted virtualised and hosted servers in the following arrangements:
a) 4 web servers, 2 application servers, 1 MS SQL cluster, SAN space, load balanced, firewalled, Internet access, managed systems and setup (17% saving in a virtualised environment)
b) 2 web servers, 1 MS SQL server, firewall, load balanced, Internet access, managed systems and setup (13% saving in a virtualised environment)