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Network and Technology

Some information on the infrastructure behind, and the technology on, our servers

We pride ourselves on our technology and select only premium providers of the latest equipment. We don't skimp on hardware and we don't overcrowd servers: we only offer what we can provide.

All our hosting is based in the leading Bluesquare datacentre in Maidenhead, with offsite backup to Bluesquare Milton Keynes as standard for all shared hosting, and as an optional addon for all VDS/Dedicated servers.

Our servers are connected to a leading Cisco-powered, multi-homed gigabit BGP network for the ultimate in reliability, even if one provider should experience issues. This commitment to choosing the best provider, rather than the cheapest, has gained us near-perfect network uptime with only 30 minutes' total network disruption to customer hosting - ever! Please feel free to download a Speed test file for a demonstration of our performance - all servers are connected via gigabit ports to the gigabit network.

For the technically inclined we have provided further details below; if you would like further information on any aspect of our network or hardware, please contact us. We have nothing to hide and are confident we provide among the best facilities in our industry!

Take a look at a graphical version of our web hosting network.

Service Level Agreement

We guarantee a 99.9% service uptime, excluding planned or emergency server maintenance or conditions beyond our reasonable control. All customers will be notified of planned maintenance at least 24 hours in advance. Premium Hosting customers receive a 99.95% SLA. Many hosting companies provide no SLA at all, or require specific packages to even guarantee a 99.9% uptime! We take our hosting extremely seriously and post all issues to our public forums. Thousands of businesses rely on our services being available and we use 24/7 external monitoring to ensure that if there is an issue at our end, we know about it before you do!

Backup policy

We have a stringent backup policy to ensure that if you accidentally delete data, we should be able to help.

• Fault-tolerant disks in 15K SAS RAID 5 or 10
• Off-server backup via R1Soft Continuous Data Protection
• Redundant DNS servers for maximum reliability

All Premium Hosting packages include backups 4 times a day via R1Soft, and separate independent backups.

Please note that while we have invested heavily in providing the best backup facilities absolutely free of charge, we do not guarantee the reliability or presence of our backups and strongly advise all our clients to keep local backups of their data. Our backup methods must not replace your own backup responsibilities. If your website holds critical data, you must contact us to discuss your needs.

Server locations and specifications

We use the latest stable equipment from leading vendors, including:

• Dell R710 chassis
• Dual Intel Quad-Core Core i7 processors
• SAS hard drives in RAID 10 with hot-spare
• 8 - 12Gb Professional-grade Error-Correcting RAM
• Tuned servers with PHP and MySQL caching for maximum performance

All our servers run the user-friendly cPanel/WHM control panel, with the Fantastico or Installatron system which provides easy installation of over 30 popular scripts.