Glossary
- I don't understand your terminology.
We specialize in web hosting and embedded engineering services, so like any specialist we often slip into shop talk jargon. We realize that can sometimes be confusing to those not familiar with the terms, but we still use them for conciseness. Here's a list of terms that we hope will help if you unfamiliar with our language.
We offer "unmanaged" hosting where we provide power, internet, etc. and you take care of the software/upgrades/content and also the hardware, either purchasing your own or leasing it from us
We also offer "managed" hosting where we take care of all of the above, and you can be involved as little or as much as you would like.
A "distribution" (or version) of Linux. Everyone has their favorite, and our personal favorite (after administering a variety of Linux systems for the last 15 years) is Debian. Debian's package manager outperforms all other distributions in ease of use, unlikelihood of an upgrade breaking something, and the vast amount of applications available for installation (~26,000 at the time of this writing).
Greylisting (see the knowledge base post about spam)
The use of secure IMAP is preferred in order to encrypt your login and email data as it travels between our server and your computer.
See the "Multiple Links, Single IP address" section on wikipedia.
The use of secure POP is preferred in order to encrypt your login and email data as it travels between our server and your computer.
Rack Space
Leasing space/costs are measured in units of a "U", which is approximately an inch and a half in height. A typical server for a small to medium site is 1 or 2U. You can lease space in 1U increments, and discounts are available for quarter, half and full racks (42U).
"Mirrored" drives, where for every usable hard drive in the system, there is an identical drive that has an exact copy of the original drive. Both drives can be read from, but each write requires both drives to be written to. In our servers, hardware RAID cards take the load off of the CPU to allow for faster access.
A more complicated version of data redundancy than RAID1, where you have fewer "wasted" disks by only requiring one extra disk per system (rather than double the amount of disks in a RAID1 system), but any one hard drive can be lost at any given moment, and no data is lost.
Same as RAID5, but up to two disks can be lost at any given moment, and no data is lost.
Raw Logs
Web site statistics have their place, but sometimes you need to see exactly what happened on your web site. All of our customer have access to the real-time Apache access and error logs for debugging and/or analysis.
Redundant Internet Connection
Our servers are located in a provider-neutral facility, which means that there are many different network providers in the same facility. In our case, there are six providers to choose from, each of which comes into the building with its own wires. Additionally, there are multiple entry points for the providers, so if a truck manages to drive into the side of the building and wipe out a wall or something the providers on the other side of the building would still be fine. In addition to manual switching between providers, our internet connection is multi-homed (see definition above), which basically means that the connections are automatically managed without human intervention to keep your server / site running smoothly.
Rent-To-Own Servers
In addition to typical shared hosting environments, where you basically don't really know or care what hardware you are running on, we offer complete server solutions for customers who have larger CPU and/or disk space requirements than can be met in a shared environment. What often happens is that someone starts on a $5/month "unlimited" plan with one of our competitors, but ends up using too much CPU and having their website shut down, often without notice. Bad news for them, but good news for Lime Daley, as then we get a call asking if we can host their site. There are three ways of getting a dedicated (or semi-dedicated) server for your use with Lime Daley.
- You can purchase your own server and have us install it in our data center. (You may install it yourself if you prefer.)
- You can have us buy a server, and then lease it from us. If you ever cancel your service (why anyone would do that, we don't know), we keep the server.
- You can get a "rent-to-own" server from us, where we pay for the server initially, but over time, you pay us back, At the end of the contract period, you own the server completely. This last method allows you to have your own server without any upfront costs, and have something more than a great experience with our service to show for your money at the end of the contract.
A variety of shells are available, and if your preferred one isn't there, we can install it for you.