Different Managed Hosting Plans

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is suitable for small sites, using few resources. The basic principle is to share a server among multiple clients. This is the most affordable solution.

Virtualisation Hosting (VPS)

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. Virtualisation consists of slicing a powerful server into many independent “virtual machines”. This principle was a boom during the «many core shift», when processor makers began to stop increasing the frequencies of the processors in favour of an increasing number of cores. Thus, a processor six-core x5680 contains six cores, the same as before six single-core processors.

This system has experienced a second boom with the appearance of VT instruction games that allow optimising virtualisation and paravirtualisation on these processors. There are various virtualisation methods and different software. NBS System chose the system XEN and KVM and paravirtualisation for performance and security reasons.

A machine with a dual six-core is therefore able to host 12 virtual machines with a single-core each or three with four cores each. Both RAM and number of cores sizing and resizing are tailored and made on the fly.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated servers are the most common hosting solution on the internet. These servers are fully dedicated to one or more specific tasks. All servers are state-of-the-art machines that allow splitting tasks, resources and equipment, and provide high availability through redundancy.

These servers or server infrastructures are usually preferred for sensitive and/or high traffic systems.

Cloud Managed Hosting

The concept of the Cloud has emerged with the massive virtualisation of architecture made by various leading lights of the sector, including the best known: Amazon (AWS). The basic principle is to have an architecture consisting of multiple physical machines, divided into many virtual machines.

The size of the Cloud and the diversity of its clients’ typology allow not having all users at the same time, with the same use, and therefore making the use of these atoms profitable. Clouds are public or private and there are many types of them nowadays, all offering different features and more or less advanced APIs to interact with each other.

NBS System is based on a private Cloud and is connected via private fibre to it. Latencies are thereby lower than 1 m/sec (against 30 m/sec with Amazon AWS Ireland) and databases can be synchronized in Master/Master mode, which is essential for large eCommerce architectures hosting.

The basic principle of the Cloud is to provide flexibility to the infrastructures. If the power requirement increases or decreases, it’s then easy to allocate more or less resources, depending on the need. However, this flexibility has a cost: monopolising the equivalent power amount of a dedicated server in the Cloud is financially less attractive than owning or renting one.

So, the ideal solution remains to use the Cloud to absorb peak-loads, having a minimal presence but being able to strongly increase the power if necessary.

Hosting may be Full Cloud: that means it is not based on any physical machine or E.T.C (Extended To Cloud). In other words, it is hybridizing a physical architecture for the nominal need, with the flexibility of the Cloud when some reinforcement is needed.

Extend To Cloud (E.T.C)

Our engineers have built a solution that can absorb peak-loads of the different eCommerce websites topologies by hybridizing our physical architecture with our Cloud architecture.

In order not to charge a maximum capacity (the one necessary to absorb peak-loads) throughout the year while peak-loads are by nature temporary, they have created a system that enablesonly using the Cloud as needed.

Extend To Virtual (E.T.V)

The basic principle is the same as for the E.T.C, but in this case, VPS present on our servers are mobilised. Thus, E.T.V is available for a limited time, on a volume of limited virtual machines, and our team has to be informed in advance of the use of a booster (virtual machine).

The advantage is that unlike the other case, it operates without any specific preparation of the architecture and can be activated ondemand, 48H in advance. It is typically used for TV broadcasts, e-mailings, sales day operations that can be planned and that are exceptional enough to not require continuously the Cloud or server mobilisation.

Full Cloud Hosting

Technical interest

When the policy of our customers requires it, or it seems to be more appropriate, our team can work on fully virtualised Cloud environments. Data security is ensured by our backups and by the fact that machines run on system image stored on our SAN (file servers).

As the machines of the Cloud are installed in racks next to ours, our file servers are connected via optical fibre with the Cloud servers, enabling high speed but also to run directly on the SAN rather than running images locally, this way ensuring that your data is protected by our systems and stored on our disks.

One of the major advantages is that the hardware layer is completely forgotten for a slight additional cost. On a daily basis, owning equivalent servers would certainly cost 20% less, but on the contrary, this would mean providing more resources in case of growth, paying to manage them, recycling and warranty cycles.

In the case of Full Cloud hosting, no material is reserved or assigned: this is an anonymous resource that is invoiced. If the underlying hardware has to be replaced, if it is out of warranty or in case of any failure, apart from a possible reboot, there is no impact on the client in terms of management.

In the same way, the customer is not bound to an amortization period for his equipment and can be committed for only a year. A customer would commit for a longer period to benefit from a more attractive price, not because of material constraints.

Economic interest

The strength of this offer doesn´t lie in its economic interest since the contract is, in the end, slightly more expensive, but this is offset by the performance flexibility and the much shorter commitment period.

Architecture

The architecture consists of a Cloud, which is connected via fibre to our architecture:

E.T.C: Extend To Cloud

Technical interest

The E.T.C solution has the technical advantage of having a physical infrastructure that keeps buyers feeling safe and secure, allowing also a strategic retreat in case of unavailability of the Cloud.

Another key benefit lies in the possibility of choosing hardware on an infrastructure, which is not possible in the Cloud. Finally, each machine of the infrastructure is more powerful than a virtualised machine, due to the fact that 4 to 7% of performances are not lost.

Economic interest

Having a continuous Cloud system costs 30% more than a physical infrastructure. Having a physical infrastructure that can continuously absorb three times the normal volume is also a huge loss of money.

In short, NBS System has created a system that only uses resources as needed, in peak condition. The rest of the time, when traffic is normal, it absorbs the requests on the physical infrastructure in order to offer the most cost effective website.

Architecture

The architecture is the same as the one described in chapter Full Cloud.

Organisation and prerequisites

The high load period may vary from mid-November till the end of December and during the sales.

An initial set-up is required and the E.T.C system is only accessible to Magentis clients (infrastructure with at least two servers).