Our custom built cloud web hosting platform with Hepsia explained
We have spent a massive ammount of time and effort to develop our own unique cloud hosting platform and we continue to spend time maintaining and improving it. We are busy adding new features and spare no time or resources for research and development.
We have managed to achieve a well-balanced and load-resistant web hosting platform that is able to provide you with a truly trouble-free online presence.
The implementation of this system took us more time than scheduled, with interruptions occurring more often than expected. However, it was all worth it!
The advantages of our own cloud hosting platform with Hepsia over a standard cPanel web hosting platform
The formula to success of our web hosting platform is the winning combination between the innovative ZFS file system and our cloud-based hosting servers. Here is what this combination brings to the table and how it helps you benefit and have advantage over the widely spread cPanel hosting packages based on EXT4:
1. Data Reliability – the ZFS storage system does not crash in the event of a sudden power loss or even a server breakdown and hence does not need to run any file system check. While in the meantime cPanel needs to run a file system check after each system failure or unexpected server shutdown to ensure that the EXT4 file system is not compromised. On big EXT4 partitions, a file system check takes between 30 minutes to several hours, during which time web and email services are not working.
2. Data Integrity – ZFS is protected against silent data corruption due to its built in checksum ability. This way, when data gets corrupted on any of the disks in the RAID array, the system will be able to identify the corrupted files and to recover the data from the healthy disk only. Since the EXT4 file system does not have checksums, the system might mistake healthy files as being corrupted and damage the data on the healthy disk as well.
3. Data Processing Speeds - over 3000 IOPS with our ZFS-based servers vs. 200-600 IOPS with a cPanel server based on the EXT4 file system, i.e. our servers are at least 5 times faster than an HDD-equipped cPanel server.
4. Data Compression – thanks to the ZFS LZ4 compression that we use to store your content, data reading and writing on our platform is a lot faster, meaning that our customers'' web sites will be delivered faster to the public. Also. the compression shrinks down the space that sites take up on the storage server, which allows users to upload more files within their allocation quotas.
5. File Storage Limits - there is actually no file limit with ZFS, because the space-saving technology it uses makes it non-dependent on the number of files stored in the system. On the contrary, with cPanel services using EXT4, the increased number of files slows down the performance in critical times, which forces providers to set file restrictions. So, while the majority of the web hosting providers offer unlimited data space with explicit file quantity restrictions, our unlimited file storage is truly unlimited and you will never have your account suspended as long as your files are website related.
6. Backup Speeds – thanks to the snapshot-based data backup method that is being used, ZFS backups are incredibly fast and simple. We know from experience that ZFS snapshot backups are more than 10 times faster than rsync based backups on a cPanel server, with practically no impact on system performance.
7. Backups per Day – Thanks to the short backup times, we make at least 4 backups per day, in contrast to cPanel hosting providers who perform backups once every two weeks. That’s at least 14 times more backups for your sites over a two-week period.
8. Email Performance – as we use the same ZFS/SSD caching setup for the mail servers, all of the improvements listed here apply to their performance as well.
9. Server Hardware – as opposed to a regular cPanel server, ZFS storage-based servers use specially optimized hardware that features large amounts of RAM in order to improve read and write caching. Also, we do not run any other applications (like web and FTP) on our storage servers, which allows us to make full use of the hardware resources and ensure better security for your data.
10. Server Recovery – in event of a total disk failure, we are able to restore the web/mail services from our backup servers, until the disks are replaced and synced with the latest backup data. It is all done within just a few minutes, with minimal impact on services uptime, in contrast with EXT4-based cPanel servers where it may take hours, or even days for the system to be fully restored.
11. Amortization Levels – Due to the caching methods in use and the way data is written, the actual read/write operations on our ZFS-based drives are 3 to 5 times less as compared to cPanel. This leads to much lower amortization levels and a longer lifespan for our servers in comparison with an HDD-equipped cPanel server.
The ZFS file system is implemented on all servers in all data center locations. Service is guaranteed with our solid 99.9% Uptime Guarantee and our no-questions-asked money back policy. Guaranteed response time is 1 hour but we usually respond to tickets in about 15 minutes. Not confident about moving? Let us know, and we will migrate your websites from your previous host to our platform for free!