Tools to Prepare For Your Windows Cloud Server Migration

Windows 2003 is coming off of life support in the next two years, which puts businesses in an unstable position. Until you update to a newer version of Windows Server, you will experience security, server management and performance issues that will cost you time and money. Switching doesn’t have to be painful when you plan ahead for a safe and successful migration and take advantage of utilities designed to help you migrate to the newest Windows Server.

Why now is the time to switch

If you’re still hanging onto your Windows Server 2003, put it to bed in 2014. The last service pack for Windows Server 2003 was released 6 years ago, and Windows Server 2012 has been on the market for a year already. Switching now means you’ll get in on the ground floor of the new Windows Server, while skipping the initial buggy release. Although you are used to your existing Windows Server, the fact that Microsoft will only offer 24 more months of Windows Server support should really have you preparing for a switch in the months ahead.

Windows Server 2012 offers critical support for cloud infrastructure and truly modernizes and transforms the data center for customers. Find more storage for a fraction of the cost, support for hybrid cloud capabilities, software defined networking for increased agility and flexibility, BYOD-support including a device registration process, and Java application monitoring. These are just a few of the exciting features found in the newest release of Windows Server. Windows Server 2012 truly meets the demands of a modern workplace — and if you are still scraping by on an older edition of Windows Server, you are not working at capacity.

Tools that can help you plan

If the thought of switching from a tool you may have used for the last 10 years to a new Windows Server brings on a cold sweat, don’t worry. There are many tools to help you plan the switch, including:

• Cloud Assessment – Plan for the cloud you need without running the metrics yourself using Cloud Assessment. This tool analyzes and reports on server usage and generates a custom set of recommendations for enterprise cloud resource needs.


• Website migration tools – Website mover tools simplify the migration process, saving you time and reducing your stress level. A website mover can assess your system requirements, cloud environment, infrastructure, workflow and assets, then work to ensure the smoothest migration.


• The Microsoft MAP – Microsoft offers a MAP (Microsoft Assessment and Planning) to help businesses transition to Windows Server 2012. Secure inventory, assess and report on your Windows Server environment, then use the data gleaned to prepare for a move. MAP can even assess your IT environment’s readiness for the transition, engineering a to-do list that ensures your move comes off hitch-free.

Chances are the nervousness you are feeling about migrating to Windows Server 2012 is worse than the move itself. For many businesses, winter can be a slow time. Transitioning now ensures that you can acclimate to your new computing power before the demands of the busy season tax capacity.

Tools to Prepare For Your Windows Cloud Server Migration

5 Great Plugins To Install On Your Blog

To add plugins had become a really important part in the terms of business when it comes to the blog thing. The fact is not true that having a number of plugins will make your blog work slower. It is just a simple myth that is prevailing between the bloggers. If you want to make your blog run faster than there are many ways and have nothing to do with plugins. But there is a little attention needed. We have mentioned here some plugins that one can opt to.

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  AKISMET:- We see really good to see a number of comments on our blog, but when we come to realise that the more than half of the comments were spam our happiness vanishes away. Akismet is one such plugin that helps to analyse all the comments and also at the same very time keep us refrained from the spams. If you are having this plugging than definitely you will have its advantage as well. Once you have installed Akismet then all you need to bother about is to take your blog to heights than bothering about fake comments.

  
  


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  GOOGLE ANALYTICS:- If you want yourself to be able of tracking your blog easily than you should install Google Analytics for your WordPress. This is not its only function, in the same time it also provides you a bucket full of information about the level of your blog on the search engines. It is a very important fact for any website to know how it is working on the search engines. No doubt we have analytics offered by Google but to have a look of the entire performance from our blog itself will ease our task.

  
  


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  DISGUS:- If you want to manage out the entire BlogSpot then it is the best plugin so far. You cannot get a better thing from disguise. This plugin has everything against Commentluv. Commetluv is a common plugin that allows a person who is commenting to leave a link of their latest post, but disguise disables this activity and hence makes it a unique plugin.

  
  


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  WORD PRESS SEO- YOAST:- If you are publishing your blogs without ensuring that it is at the perfect level of SEO then surely you have failed as a blogger. If you optimize your post with good SEO then only you will be able to see it on higher ranks on the search engines. Word SEO is one such plugin that allows us specific keyword and Meta description for each post and hence making it unique every time. It will help in rating our post with that keyword in specific colours.

  
  


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  W3 TOTAL CACHE:- It is a perfect plugin for the one who wants to increase the speed and performance of the blog. It says that by the time you are ready to launch out your blog you will read will 15 other posts. We all know that the speed of the website keeps on reducing as we keep adding up the content and this plugins helps to maintain a good level of performance and speed.

  
  

More details on plugins and any other topic regarding IT solutions are best provided by the SEO Company Bristol.

5 Great Plugins To Install On Your Blog

Keeping WordPress Running Smoothly

If your webpage takes more than 4 seconds to load, 25 percent of viewers will abandon it for a site that loads faster. While WordPress may at first seem like an easy to use, out-of-the-box website platform for small business owners, WordPress sites can have a very slow load time that will affect your bottom line. Learn to spot signs of trouble with WordPress sites and to fix slow-loading pages.

Causes of slow WordPress sites

Too many plugins are the top cause of a super slow WordPress site. Take a look at your index and see how many plugins you’ve loaded down your site with; if the number is really high, this is your problem. Ideally, you would use a smaller number of plugins that performed only the necessary functions. So-called SEO plugins sound like a great idea in theory, but do little to affect your site’s SEO and can cause slowdowns. Delete any plugins you are not using simply disabling them isn’t enough. This should increase site speed. Consider using the Plugin Performance Profiler or P3, a free WordPress utility that examines plugins and rates their performance. This can clue you in onto which plugins are affecting site performance, or demonstrate that your plugins are working fine and your problem lies elsewhere.

While you’re cleaning out your plugins, make sure you are using the latest WordPress release and that the plugins you do use are up to date. Note that rarely updated, out-of-date plugins can be a security risk. If some of your plugins have never been updated, you may want to consider finding a different, more current plugin that performs the same task.

Your WordPress theme could be causing the site slowdown, especially if it’s a free theme that you downloaded from a random site. While it’s okay to use free themes, limit your free theme use to those from the WordPress repository, since these are vetted for security threats like malware.

Finally, your problem may not lie with WordPress at all. If you host your WordPress site on a shared host that operates slowly, no amount of improvement to your WordPress site will speed up the page. Consult your web host for more information on website speed, bandwidth and site uptime. You may have to switch to a more reliable WordPress host to improve your page’s load time.

Improving a slow page

The suggestions above will help speed a slow site, but are certainly not comprehensive. If you aren’t already using a cache, implement a cache plugin. This stores frequently-loaded pages and calls them up faster than normally so your website users experience your site as faster.

Storing plugins in the functions file (functions.php) can also improve speed. By dropping all of the relevant plugin code in here, your back-end won’t have to work as hard looking for relevant code and can perform functions faster. From your own favicon to Google Analytics and AdSense, the code you paste here drives your site’s performance, function and utility.

The WordPress Support forums offer tips and tricks to diagnose performance issues and speed up a slow site. While this may seem like a lot of work, it is ultimately worth it to improve website speed, stop turning off potential customers and boost your return on investment.

 

Keeping WordPress Running Smoothly

Little known benefits of managed servers

For companies with a small IT budget and limited IT staff, using a managed server may be the best option for your website and other network platforms. That was the experience of Peter Yagecic, director of technology for Situation Interactive, a digital marketing agency.

“For years we had a hybrid approach where we used a managed server provider for our production servers but kept our development environment in house,” he said of his experience. After further considering his staff’s needs, he moved to a managed provider for everything. Then it happened. “A few weeks ago one of the drives in our RAID went bad in the middle of the night. By the time I read the support ticket log at 7 a.m. the next morning, the issue was resolved with no downtime.”

Using a managed server provides many benefits for a business looking to stay current with technology, while reducing the overall total cost of ownership for technology investments, according to John Luludis, president of Superior Technology Solutions.

Turning the managing server has quite a few other benefits that you may not realize. At the top of that list is security. As The Atlantic.Net Blog stated, “The company in charge of hosting your server will continuously maintain the equipment and debug the applications as necessary in order to keep your website protected against viruses and unauthorized attacks.”

The managed server also makes the backup routine easier. In the case of a server issue, a backup of data and pertinent software configurations is necessary to be able to quickly (if not instantly) replace the physical hardware or corrupt software of the machine as required, Dan Abbate, CEO with Robotation, which helps SMBs implement technology, pointed out. With higher end managed server implantations, the network itself can also be backed up by instantly routing traffic to a mirror server (located on another network in the same data center or on another network in another data center) somewhere else in the world. Either way with proper backup systems in place when there is an issue, it has minimal effect on uptime.

Another benefit of the managed server is flexibility. Most managed server vendors will have utilities that make it easier for businesses to spin up new server/application instances than if they host it themselves, said Vann Abernethy, senior product manager for NSFOCUS, an Internet security company. “The ability to scale quickly and within a pre-determined cost range is significant,” he said. “This gives the business the ability to know exactly what the cost will be for growth and helps management plan more effectively.”

The managed server can be a budget saver, Abernethy added. “Managed server vendors utilize economies of scale to offer their services, which is generally less expensive than a business operating the server internally as it saves them from having to purchase the server, hire and train staff, and find the space for it.”

Overall, the most important – and perhaps most hidden – benefit of using a managed server is the peace of mind you’ll have knowing that your data is secure, there is a regular backup routine in place, and it isn’t a budget buster. Instead, you can let someone else manage the technical side of things while you can concentrate on managing your business.

Sue Poremba is a freelance writer focusing primarily on security and technology issues and occasionally blogs for cloud service provider Rackspace Hosting.

Little known benefits of managed servers

Database Efficiencies Within the Cloud

A primary motivator for a business is beating its competitors to market in every way: with innovation, products and customer service. As cloud computing has developed, it’s been a means for businesses to outsource responsibilities to a cloud vendor so that they can better focus on running their companies and making themselves more competitive. When it comes to storage, cloud databases, which involve storing data online instead of on physical servers, are simplifying database management and giving businesses that sought-after competitive edge.

Businesses are also embracing cloud database management because of its efficiencies in performance and cost. A cloud database allows businesses to take advantage of its architecture as a shared online resource, while benefitting from pay-as-you-go pricing. They can also utilize these services without having to constantly train and hire IT staff with the right skills, or invest in new on-site hardware. Cloud databases are becoming so prevalent throughout the IT field that 2013 was predicted as being the year of the cloud database.

The cloud strategy for databases

Traditionally, businesses have had to maintain multiple databases covering different aspects of their activities. For example, a business may handle a high volume of merchant accounts, a highly geographically dispersed sales force and a complex payments program. The weight of this database management could very well impede a company’s competitiveness.

A cloud database, however, can organize company data together on a single, uniform and scalable platform. It can help employees and management work cooperatively, reducing delays and miscommunications. Colleagues can better share information, with the end result being improved operational efficiencies.

Businesses can even choose between different types of storage, which offer distinct kinds of performance and price. Standard volumes of cloud storage target everyday storage needs, which are typically large volumes without speed requirements but with great performance demands. A strategy that uses solid state drives, or SSD, is better suited to applications with quick access as their top priority. Additionally, cloud database applications are scalable to accommodate new products and services.

Cloud databases gain strong backers

Although businesses may already be sold on the benefits of cloud database applications, they may be more willing to join in as industry giants affirm the technology with new commitments. Tech leaders Oracle and Microsoft recently gave cloud databases a strong vote of confidence by banding together to ensure Oracle’s software runs on Microsoft’s platform, Azure. Before that, Oracle put aside its rivalries with cloud provider Salesforce.com and they’ve fused the Oracle platform’s applications with Salesforce’s finance and human resource cloud-based applications.

Benefits outweigh risks

Despite all the advantages of shared Internet computing, enterprises place a premium on their data. The risk of having this data breached keeps some businesses from taking the cloud database plunge. However, certain methods can be used to secure this cloud database, and cloud hosting providers are implementing the best available security practices. To reduce the threat of risks, enterprises can use a combination of private and public clouds, using each for different storage needs.

As businesses discover the efficiencies of cloud databases, the technology will not only help them get to market faster, but create new business opportunities. Cloud-based databases mean more innovative applications that allow businesses to improve their competitiveness, and pay-as-you-go models allow businesses to start small and progress as their needs dictate. The point is to get started.

Database Efficiencies Within the Cloud