Quality of Service

Server configuration is something we take very seriously at New Leaf. Hardware bottlenecks cause otherwise good computers to run much slower than their potential. Another way to put this is, we provide 'Quality of Service' where others choose to give you Quantity.

Typical Bottlenecs

Over Selling - This is too many websites hosted on one computer (Shared Hosting). The number of clients that hosting companies will cram onto a single server is highly classified. This is because the number is staggering, well into the hundreds if not thousands. Only the best of the offenders will actually monitor the server in an attempt to optimize their profits first, then the quality of service.

Disk Access - Ever wonder why an expensive laptop doesn't out perform a marginal desktop? One of the main reasons for this is the hard drive type and the speed at which it spins. Laptops use lower speed drives (4800 RPM, 5400 RPM) to preserve battery life at the expense of performance. Most hosting companies use the cheapest hard drives to 'drive' down cost. Even so, the drive typically spins at a robust 7200 RPM. The best hard drives spin at 10K and 15K RPM and connect to the computer using larger 'pipes' (IDE, SATA, or SCSI) than consumer hard drives.

Uplink - Hard drives connect to the computer using 'pipes' and computers connect to one another using pipes. The size of these pipes determines how many users can simultaneously connect to your server. 10 megabits per second is a respectable uplink port speed. 100 mbps is an upgrade a few hosting companies provide at a cost reaching into the thousands per year.

RAM - Secondary memory is used by a computer to store digital information fetched from your hard drive. Your hard drive finds the information (disk access) and returns it to the processor. The processor processes this data, shuffling it around in RAM. Think of your computer as an office with RAM as your desk. In order to get work done, you pull files from the filing cabinet and spread them around on your desk. If your desk is too small, you are forced to keep some files in the cabinet while you work on others. And, you have to keep filing and finding files because your workspace is too small to keep everything out on your desk. Having plenty of RAM keeps the processor from having to use the slower disk drives to shuffle 'files'.

Processor - Old processors do their jobs more slowly. Big surprise? Well it may be a surprise that many hosting companies use fairly ancient, consumer quality computers as servers in server farms. This keeps their costs low and profits high. Many dedicated server plans (where you get your own server) also use older technology and single core processors to do the work. Multi-core processors are able to 'multi-task' handling database queries and website requests simultaneously.

What Are the Specs?

Hosting at New Leaf IT gets you a huge slice* of this pie:

Processor - Intel Xeon 3060 Dual Core Conroe Processor
Hard Drives - Dual 146GB, 10K RPM SCSI
OS - CentOS Enterprise Linux - x86_64, Version 5
RAM - 4GB
Control Panel - Plesk
Uplink Port Speed - 100 Mbps
Bandwidth - 5,000 GB Monthly (5 Terabytes)

*Details regarding the number and types of websites sharing your system are available upon request.