Why we use High Availability to ensure the reliability of our Shared Web Hosting platform

25 Oct 2024, by Slade Baylis

When it comes to Shared Web Hosting (SWH) services, there’s no shortage of different hosting companies that you can choose from. They range from sole traders that operate a single virtual server out of one of the many public cloud providers, all the way to much larger hosting providers that have many different servers hosting thousands and thousands of websites for their clients. 

However, whilst these hosting providers may seem similar to an end-user at first glance, behind-the-scenes their services vary wildly in terms of how secure, fast and reliable they are. This is because some providers choose to cut corners in order to save on costs, so that they can provide their hosting services as cheap as possible. Whilst this is fine if it’s all transparent and agreed to by customers, however, often these providers do not make it easy to find out exactly what their customers will be missing out on.

Here at Micron21 we take a totally different approach - we instead look to have the platform be as reliable, robust and secure as possible for our customers.  We do this so that our customers can reliably have their websites online and working as expected.  This thinking and approach starts right from our entry-level services, being implemented into our Shared Web Hosting (SWH) platform to protect it from downtime with “High Availability”.

What is High Availability?

Without getting too technical, High Availability (HA) is simply any system that’s been designed with the goal of being able to operate continuously, even if components within the system fail.  The term “High Availability” is closely related to the concept of  "fault-tolerance" because for a system to be a HA system, it needs to have redundancy built into its design to be able to remain online, even if one or more faults were to occur.

HA is a technology and approach that’s relatively commonplace for more enterprise-grade solutions - with various different approaches available once you get to that scale, quality and cost. This sort of protection can be implemented through configuring containerised infrastructure with load-balancers configured to distribute load between those containers. Alternatively, there are also solutions that automatically replicate workloads between different physical servers - and even geographical locations - with automatic fail-over when issues occur. 

For those who want to know more about HA, we’ve gone into more detail about it in our previous Protect your mission critical systems with Hyper-Convergence article.

Due to the cost and complexity of implementation, HA protection is almost exclusively used for higher-end services with equally high-end cost.  However, here at Micron21, as mentioned above, this level of protection starts with our entry-level services, including Shared Web Hosting (SWH).

How do we protect our shared hosting services with High Availability?

As we’re a holistic data centre, we offer everything from entry-level hosting solutions for entrepreneurs just starting up, all the way up to highly reliable cloud infrastructure for government and enterprise organisations. You might be surprised to learn how uncommon it is for hosting providers to own the data centre that they host their systems within, as most instead just lease space within data centres managed and controlled by third-parties.  That’s not us though – we own the highly secure data centre that our systems are hosted in!

There are many advantages for Micron21 to have services that range from entry-level platforms all the way up to high-end enterprise solutions.  The first is that we have the knowledge and expertise to support many different types of systems for our clients. Another advantage is that due to economies of scale and our existing investments into infrastructure – we’re able to leverage that knowledge and investment to make all of our systems more reliable.

To put that in more concrete terms, the reason we’re in a unique position is due to the fact that we’ve already invested in fault-tolerant data centre infrastructure, as well as the hardware, knowledge and technology required to create and run highly reliable, HA cloud platforms. With this being the case, we’re able to – at relatively little extra cost – provide that same reliability and High Availability protection that starts right from our entry-level services. 

That’s right, our entry-level Shared Web Hosting (SWH) services are protected against downtime caused by hardware faults, using the same types of technology that usually cost thousands of dollars per month!  Not only that, but these services are hosted out of our data centre, which has been accredited as “Tier IV” - the highest possible certification for data centre reliability.

For more information on Tier IV specifically, check out our Deep Dive – What is Tier IV? article, as it explains the different possible tiers and how we’ve gone over and above and even exceeded the highest criteria!

Why do we do it?

That’s what separates us from the rest! We have an ethos of always wanting to provide the best solutions for our clients. Whilst other Shared Web Hosting (SWH) services from other providers are sometimes chucked haphazardly onto a small Virtual Private Server (VPS) - or worse yet, placed on a small and unloved physical server in the corner of their office - we choose to treat SWH services as seriously as our high-end systems. Because at the end of the day – everyone needs protection – big or small!

It’s due to our unique position as a holistic cloud services provider and data centre that we’re able to provide something that no one else can do - which is to offer Shared Web Hosting (SWH) that’s also protected by High Availability (HA).  Whilst protecting this platform from issues of hardware-caused downtime doesn’t guarantee protection against all causes of downtime – as issues can still arise within the website itself or at the Operating System level – it does however provide much greater protection than what SWH services would normally come with.

What might surprise you is that the cost of added protection from these hosting services isn’t that much more expensive than other hosting offerings out there. And yes, there are always going to be services out there that offer hosting for “cheaper” – however their real cost comes to you in the form of the reliability, security and support that you’ll be sacrificing! 

We’ve actually touched on this in our previous Avoid “budget” hosting - use these criteria to ensure you’re with a good hosting provider - we highly recommend this article for anyone looking for criteria to use when choosing between providers.

Overall, when choosing between providers, we recommend factoring in the reliability of your service, the security that’s in place, as well as the quality of the overall service and support that your business will require.  You'll need to have a clear understanding of how much your organisation would be impacted and affected by downtime if the services were to fail.  Meaning, if this was to happen to you, how much of an impact would this really end up costing your business and its reputation?

Have any questions about our Shared Web Hosting (SWH) platform or High Availability (HA)?

If you’re looking for a new hosting provider that takes the uptime of your websites seriously, let us know!  We’re happy to answer any questions you have and help you choose the best cloud solution to meet your needs. 

You can reach us via email at sales@micron21.com or via phone on 1300 769 972 (Option #1).