XLHost Review

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About XLHost

XLHost is a privately held organization in Columbus, OH.

The parent company of XLHost (eNET Inc.) has been involved in providing quality Internet access and hosting services since 1993. One of the very first dedicated server and virtual web hosting companies in the world, eNET Inc. designed what is most likely the very first remote reset device ever created. eNET steadily grew from a local Internet Service Provider in the 1990s into a regional Internet leader with presence in many major cities. Once mass adoption of the Internet took hold and broadband became more common, the demand for dedicated servers and hosting expanded at an exponential rate.

XLHost was created in 2000 as a result of the new demand for faster and more reliable everything. Networks, servers, operating systems, and even datacenters evolved at a blistering pace during the early 2000s. XLHost has always remained on the forefront of making new technology available to its customers and partners.

Today, XLHost continues to grow with a development roadmap well into the future. The XLHost datacenter is privately owned and operated by XLHost. Ownership of the datacenter ensures that XLHost can both expand to a virtually unlimited size and that we can control costs. Many “datacenters” are simply leased (or sub-leased) square footage which can lead to problems similar to what happened after the “dot com” bust when many large companies sold off some of their datacenters (with these leases still in the buildings.)

At XLHost, the customer is always first and value means more than just low prices. Our great support, the latest technology, the best network, the amazing self-support tools available in Grande, everything we do is tailored to add value to our service offering. We realize that there are many choices available when shopping for dedicated servers or virtual private servers and we greatly appreciate each and every client. Thank you for your interest in our past, present and future. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Dedicated Server Datacenter

With our wholly owned and state of the art datacenter located in Columbus, Ohio; we have drawn upon our 13 years of real world datacenter planning and management experience to deliver organizations and individuals the very best environment for their hosted IT infrastructure. The XLHost datacenter can scale to a virtually unlimited size without interrupting current facility operations due to its modular construction. Whether You manage one dedicated server or one thousand, XLHost is the right partner for your dedicated hosting needs.

Some of the benefits of the XLHost datacenter include:

* Our secure datacenter is monitored 24/7 for intrusion and fire to protect your valuable infrastructure.
* N+1 power conditioning and redundancy on the first production PowerWare 9395 deployment in the world.
* Diesel generators with on site fuel and weekly test cycle.
* Redundant HVAC totaling over 100 tons.

Midwestern location allows us to deliver incredible prices and was chosen for:

* Milder temperatures.
* Lower energy costs.
* Historically lower chance of natural disaster (As opposed to Coastal U.S. or Southern U.S. based datacenters).

Network

XLHost’s no compromises network is built for reliability, performance, and scalability. These goals are achieved through a number of unique methods, all of which are designed to meet or exceed the expectations of our clients and partners. XLHost is pleased to deploy Cisco routers and switches alongside Foundry Networks content switching/load balancing devices. Whether you are managing a single virtual private server or hundreds of dedicated servers you or your organization will benefit from XLHost’s no compromises network.

Performance is achieved on XLHost’s network through a number of unique methods including:

* “No distribution” switching, every dedicated server on XLHost’s network is physically connected directly to a Cisco Catalyst 6500 access switch. By removing the distribution layer XLHost eliminates a possible point of failure, latency, and packet loss from your hosting experience. Many dedicated server providers oversubscribe their access layer which can cause numerous performance issues.
* By choosing to partner with only the finest Internet transit carriers in the world including Level3, Global Crossing, and TWTelecom; XLHost ensures that your dedicated server always meets or exceeds your performance requirements.
* XLHost’s routing tables are updated hundreds of thousands of times per day, automatically. Many dedicated server providers tout their usage of BGP as a performance enhancement. The truth is BGP is only a traffic director. BGP has no performance basis to use to decide which path is the fastest and has the least amount of packet loss. XLHost’s network constantly tests all of our connections to find the best route to use to specific destinations (up to thirty thousand times per minute). Based on this performance data, routing decisions are made and trouble avoided.

These are some of the ways that XLHost ensures network reliability:

* Physical connection diversity: We connect with our Internet transit partners via multiple protected fiber-optic entry points into our state of the art datacenter.
* N+1 peak bandwidth availability: XLHost constantly makes available two times its average peak bandwidth plus an additional 1/3rd as a backup to make sure we are ready when you are.
* Multiple Internet connections (BGP4) to Level3, Global Crossing, TWTelecom, and more.
* All core and edge network devices are both chassis redundant (duplicate systems) and have redundant power supplies, processors, modules, and connections to the network. All redundant systems are hot and push traffic to eliminate convergence time inherit in hot-cold network scenarios.

Scalability is achieved through:

* XLHost’s no compromises network commitment means that our network will exceed performance requirements at every layer and be upgradable without impacting client performance or operation. The routers and switches XLHost employs are capable of switching 720Gbps per chassis or 40Gbps per slot.

Dedicated Servers

Over the past 10 years XLHost has become a leader in self-managed dedicated server hosting. XLHost provides a rock solid hosting foundation in every aspect of our service offering, which means you will spend less time worrying about your dedicated servers and more time focusing on the things that matter the most to you. XLHost empowers users to succeed in many ways from providing industry leading server hardware, including components and servers from brand names such as Intel, Seagate, and Dell to our no compromises network and datacenter.

Through many of our offerings such as remote reboot, KVM-IP, and the automated tools available in Grande (XLHost’s premier management system); XLHost has created a way to solve most problems without involving technical support. After all, the best technical support is the technical support you never need. However, if you find that you do require technical support XLHost is pleased to offer the most experienced technicians and system administrators available. XLHost offers free remote hands/eyes and incident based and hourly system administration is also available. XLHost recommends dedicated servers to any organization or individual who wishes to obtain the best performance, reliability, and value.

Virtual Private Servers / VPS

Virtualization is one of the leading technology trends in the world today and for good reason, it is estimated that between 50-70% of server resources go unused on a regular basis. XLHost’s virtual private servers (VPS) are similar to dedicated servers in that they allow full root/administrator access and isolation. The difference is that the system hardware (CPU, RAM, and DISK) is shared across multiple independent virtualized environments. Although the (CPU, RAM, DISK) is technically shared (pooled), slices are dedicated to each XLHost virtual private server customer. XLHost’s virtual private server hardware nodes are all multi-core, multi-processor servers with redundant (RAID) storage. XLHost is pleased to partner with Parallels (formally SWsoft) to deliver Windows 2003 based virtual private servers.

Some advantages virtual private servers (VPS) have over dedicated servers are cost, ease of migration, backup, and offline management. Due to the nature of virtual private servers, one can very easily migrate from a virtual private server to a dedicated server, backup their virtual private server, or even reboot it using the Virtuozzo Power Panels web interface. XLHost recommends a virtual private server to any organization or individual who does not require the performance and complete control of a dedicated server. Due to the shared nature of a VPS platform, XLHost does not recommend virtual private servers to any organization or individual who would not be able to sustain downtime due to updates/reboots of the hardware platform.

Dedicated SAN Servers

A Dedicated SAN Server is hardware configured with a RAID controller and large amounts of disk space which can be used for anything from backing up multiple servers to storing virtual machines. XLSAN servers utilize well tested open source Linux based software. XLSAN provides easy administration via a web GUI and an extensive set of features.

Below you will find our XLSAN pre-configured offerings, if you require a custom solution, please contact our sales department.

Please note that the traffic limits listed below are for the Internet only, the traffic sent on your private gigabit LAN is unmetered. XLHost strongly recommends leveraging private LAN access for best results.

XLSAN Hardware Features:

Gigabit NIC for Private connection between dedicated server(s) and SAN
PCI Express Hardware RAID controllers by 3Ware
Usable Disk space ranging from RAID-1 ~500GB to RAID-6 ~3TB

XLSAN Resource Management/Backup Features:

LDAP and Active Directory compatible
Multiple Accounts
Per Volume/Per User/Group Quotas
Volume Snapshots with scheduling

XLSAN Data Access Features:

CIFS (SMB)
NFS
iSCSI (Block Level)
FTP
WebDav/HTTP
rsync

Dedicated Server Advanced Services

XLHost Advanced Services (or XAS) are a best-in-breed class of managed services leveraging the best technology and professionals in the industry to deliver you the best service possible. Any combination of XLHost Advanced Services can be combined to deliver the level of service your small business or enterprise requires.

Hardware Load Balancing

While server technology continues to advance at a blistering pace; the growth of the Internet, and the ever growing demands of your customers to deliver always-on applications and services drives the need for highly resilient, reliable, and responsive hosting platforms. Working with Foundry Networks, XLHost can help you achieve your performance/reliability goals while keeping your costs under control.

A hardware load balancer (or Layer 4-7 switch) simply receives requests from the Internet on the VIP (or Virtual IP Address) on behalf of your dedicated servers, then based on the configuration of the load balancer the device makes decisions (in milliseconds) about which dedicated server would be best suited to service the incoming request. The load balancer also maintains health information regarding the services running on your dedicated servers and will avoid sending traffic to unresponsive dedicated servers.

There are 4 main standard load balancing algorithms:

Round robin: Every connection is sent to a different dedicated server regardless of how many connections/sessions that dedicated server is currently handling. Round robin is the default load balancing mechanism and is overall the safest choice in most instances.
Least connections: New connections are sent to the dedicated server with the least number of connections.
Least sessions: New connections are sent to the dedicated server with the least number of sessions.
Weighted: A weight is specified for each dedicated server, the total of all of the weights divided by the individual weight of the dedicated server controls how many connections that dedicated server will receive.

These are some of the more common protocols which can be load balanced:

FTP
SMTP
DNS
HTTP
HTTPS
SIP/Voice Over IP traffic

The most common use for hardware load balancing at XLHost is to balance/protect database driven dynamic HTTP applications. Many users leverage one or more of the faster multi-processor/multi-core dedicated servers as their database backend and then use low-cost dedicated servers as their http/https front-end dedicated servers. As needs change users can simply add or remove low-cost front-end dedicated servers and or database replica servers.

VPN (Mobile User/Tunnel)

Securing outsourced IT infrastructure can be a challenge, dedicated servers are often times connected directly to the Internet with no firewall between them and the bevy of threats that have surfaced over the last several years. Allowing direct, unencrypted access to services such as SSH, Remote Desktop, Microsoft SQL, FTP, and other brute-force targets gives attackers the opportunity to compromise the security of your dedicated servers by leveraging simple automated techniques. Managed Virtual Private Network services from XLHost provide the ultimate security for your dedicated server(s) and hosted infrastructure.

There are two types of VPN which are commonly used, mobile user VPN and tunneling.

Mobile user VPN is useful when you or your users are often in different places and you need to always be securely connected to your resources. Mobile VPN comes in two types SSL and IPSEC. Both types of Mobile VPN combine ease of use with industry leading security. Data sent from any user connected via Mobile User VPN in the world will be encrypted before reaching your dedicated server’s private network interface. Only the services you choose will be available via your dedicated server’s public network interface. The Mobile VPN client is easy to use and works with Microsoft Windows and Apple operating systems. Pricing for Mobile VPN is based on a per-user basis.

Some usage examples for Mobile VPN are:

Secure remote management (SSH, Remote Desktop, VNC)
Secure extranet access for users.
Secure corporate E-mail access for users.

IPSEC tunnels are useful when you have one or more fixed physical locations such as branch offices, or retail locations which you wish to securely connect to resources hosted by your dedicated server(s) at XLHost. All data sent between the remote location and the XLHost network is encrypted. Only the services you choose will be available via your dedicated server’s public network interface. XLHost’s IPSEC solution is compatible with virtually every remote-end solution including: OpenVPN, Cisco ASA/PIX, Watchguard, and more. Pricing for IPSEC tunnels is based on a per tunnel basis.

Half/Full Private Rack

An XLHost private rack offers the ultimate in versatility and functionality for users with multiple servers, resellers, or users who simply wish to employ shared storage across multiple servers.

Some benefits included in the XLHost private rack include:

A dedicated Cisco Layer 3 Gigabit Ethernet Switch
Customer or XLHost managed.
Access List control.
IP Routing.
Bandwidth Pool across all servers.
IP Address Subnet sharing.
Private LAN.
(optional) Share a single KVM-IP device on all servers.
(optional) Share a single Dedicated Firewall across all servers.

XLGuard

Choosing the right method of protecting your data can be a complicated task. Most data protection and disaster recovery plans are multi-tiered and offer both a hardware element and a disk backup element. RAID arrays are good for protecting your organization from disk failure, but what if a file is deleted or modified by either human error or malicious activity? Data backup is a vital part of any solid infrastructure plan, combined with RAID you can create a bullet proof dedicated server or virtual private server hosted infrastructure.

XLHost Is pleased to partner with R1Soft to deliver XLGuard. XLGuard combines CDP by R1Soft with XLHost’s No Compromises network to deliver a best in breed client-agent backup solution for both Linux and Windows.

Address

XLHost

3000 East Dublin Granville Road

Columbus , OH 43231

US
Work   :- (614) 794-5971
Fax      :-  +1 614 794 9016
 
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