After much procrastination, we have decided to take the leap and go ahead with revamping our primary website (www.diadem.co.in) with the following objectives in mind:

  • Revamp our key service sections and make it relevant to our current offerings (VPS, Value Added Hosting and Dedicated Servers).
  • Upgrade the CMS platform which is being used for the site backend to its current version.
  • Keep the UI of the site simpler with less graphics and color and a greater focus on providing relevant content to our users.
  • Enhanced navigation menu and other small tweaks across the site

Here is a preview of the last approved wireframe and we are aiming for a soft launch of our site by the end of July 2010.

Wireframe of the new Diadem Tech Homepage

Wireframe of the new Diadem Tech Homepage

This is going to be the fifth major revision of our site over the past decade and improving a large website like ours with just a couple of developers requires considerable planning, persistence and numerous obstacles to overcome before you can reap in its benefits. I am hopeful that the upcoming version would last us for atleast a couple of years before we rework it again and I will keep posting more updates as we make progress.

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Posted by hriday under News & Updates
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Keeping in view the ever growing needs of our clients for faster and higher performance web hosting servers, we have recently provisioned our first 64 bit Linux Web Hosting Server which is deployed with the 64-bit RHEL 5 Enterprise OS.

64 bit web servers are a significant step up in computer architecture and deliver higher performance, security and reliability of hosted web applications on such servers.  Here is the hardware configuration of our new 64 bit Linux (RHEL 5) server:

  • Quad Core Intel Xeon 5520 Processor
  • 6 GB DDR 1333 Registered RAM
  • 64 bit RHEL 5 OS and applications
  • Raptor 300 GB 10K RPM HDDs
  • RAID 10 Disk Array
  • Plesk 9.5 Control Panel

This shiny new 64 bit server is ready to host your website and unleash the power of the 64 bit computing platform for your website, email and hosted apps. You can view our 64-bit Linux Hosting Plans online get in touch with us for any queries on our plan features.

Reference: Wikipedia – 64 bit

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Posted by hriday under Linux
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iSCSI or Internet SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities, developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances. The iSCSI protocol is among the key technologies expected to help bring about rapid development of the storage area network (SAN) market, by increasing the capabilities and performance of storage data transmission. Because of the ubiquity of IP networks, iSCSI can be used to transmit data over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), or the Internet and can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.

In computing, the iSCSI (for “Internet SCSI”) protocol allows clients (called initiators) to send SCSI commands (CDBs) to SCSI storage devices (targets) on remote servers. It is a popular Storage Area Network (SAN) protocol, allowing organizations to consolidate storage into data center storage arrays while providing hosts (such as database and web servers) with the illusion of locally-attached disks. Unlike traditional Fibre Channel, which requires special-purpose cabling, iSCSI can be run over long distances using existing network infrastructure.

iSCSI can run over existing Ethernet networks. A number of vendors, including Cisco, IBM, and Nishan have introduced iSCSI-based products (such as switches and routers).

Although iSCSI can communicate with arbitrary types of SCSI devices, system administrators almost always use it to allow server computers (such as database servers) to access disk volumes on storage arrays. iSCSI SANs often have one of two objectives:

Storage consolidation

Organizations move disparate storage resources from servers around their network to central locations, often in data centers; this allows for more efficiency in the allocation of storage. In a SAN environment, a server can be allocated a new disk volume without any change to hardware or cabling.

Disaster recovery

Organizations mirror storage resources from one data center to a remote data center, which can serve as a hot standby in the event of a prolonged outage. In particular, iSCSI SANs allow entire disk arrays to be migrated across a WAN with minimal configuration changes, in effect making storage “routable” in the same manner as network traffic.

iSCSI Fundamentals

Initiator

An initiator functions as an iSCSI client. An initiator typically serves the same purpose to a computer as a SCSI bus adapter would, except that instead of physically cabling SCSI devices (like hard drives and tape changers), an iSCSI initiator sends SCSI commands over an IP network. An initiator falls into two broad types:

Software initiator

A software initiator uses code to implement iSCSI. Typically, this happens in a kernel-resident device driver that uses the existing NIC and network stack to emulate SCSI devices for a computer by speaking the iSCSI protocol. Software initiators are available for most mainstream operating systems, and this type is the most common mode of deploying iSCSI on computers.

Hardware Initiator

A hardware initiator uses dedicated hardware, typically in combination with software (firmware) running on that hardware, to implement iSCSI. A hardware initiator mitigates the overhead of iSCSI and TCP processing and Ethernet interrupts, and therefore may improve the performance of servers that use iSCSI.

TARGET

iSCSI refers to a storage resource located on an iSCSI server (more generally, one of potentially many instances of iSCSI running on that server) as a “target”. An iSCSI target usually represents hard disk storage. As with initiators, software to provide an iSCSI target is available for most mainstream operating systems.

Common deployment scenarios for an iSCSI target include:

Storage array

In a data center or enterprise environment, an iSCSI target often resides in a large storage array, such as a NetApp filer or an EMC Corporation NS-series computer appliance. A storage array usually provides distinct iSCSI targets for numerous clients.

Software target

In a smaller or more specialized setting, mainstream server operating systems (like Linux, Solaris or Windows Server 2008) and some specific-purpose operating systems (like StarWind iSCSI SAN, FreeNAS, iStorage Server, OpenFiler or FreeSiOS) can provide iSCSI target’s functionality.

Diadem Technologies provides iSCSI storage solutions to clients who host VPS or dedicated servers on its network. To know more about iSCSI storage options , pricing  and how it can ensure greater availability and redundancy of your mission critical applications, please write to us at info@diadem.co.in for more details.

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Posted by anirban under Web Hosting
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In Drupal websites, the login and registration is already integrated by default. But in one of our sites, our requirement is to add some custom fields in the drupal registration form. E.g., Full name, address, state, postcode, etc.

To fulfill our requirement we will use profile module. Once, the profile module is installed and enabled you can add custom fields from administrative menu/user management/profile as shown in figure below :

Custom Fields

Custom Fields

Firstly, you will have to choose the field type from the list like text field, multi text field, checkbox etc.

Secondly, give a category name to make a group of your custom fields.

E.g., If you are giving “category name”=Contact Information to the fields then those fields will become a group and show under Contact Information tab.

Finally, Give the title of the field and a machine readable name. Check this option “Visible in user registration form” from the form. If this option is not checked then this field will not show in the user registration form. If you want to validate the field then check the option ” The user must enter a value “.  Click Add field button to save the field.

In our example, we have added some custom fields like registration type, full name, firm, etc. as shown in the figure below.

Registration form

Custom Drupal Registration form

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Posted by mithun under Drupal CMS
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You don’t need any database or snmp connection to monitor all of your client with bandwidthd an open source application for monitoring bandwidth usage on Apache and IIS. All you need just libcap, libpng, libgd and apache/IIS installed on your Linux/Windows system and you can monitor all your connected clients per IP and per connection protocol.

Installation and configuration in windows

Download the packages below and install them prior to installing the bandwidthd software

For installing gd-latest extract the zip archive and place it in a directory in C drive say “gd”. Navigate to the directory C:\gd\bin and copy the bgd.dll to c:\windows\system32 directory.

  1. Download the “Bandwidthd” software from the link
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/bandwidthd/files/
  2. Extract the zip archive and place it in a folder say c:\inetpub\bandwidthd.
  3. In IIS create  a virtual directory either to your existing website or under the default website and point the home directory to “C:\Inetpub\bandwidthd\htdocs”.
  4. Open the file C:\Inetpub\bandwidthd\etc\bandwidthd.conf and  provide the correct subnet of your network.
  5. Now navigate to the directory C:\Inetpub\bandwidthd and execute the batch file “Install Service.bat”. This will install a service for bandwidthd. Make the service start up type as automatic and start the service.
  6. Now point your web server as http://<server IP>/bandwidthd and you will now be able to view the graphs containing the bandwidth statistics.

Installation and configuration in Redhat/Centos/Fedora Linux

  1. As a prerequisite please ensure that you have libcap, libpng, libgd and apache installed in your computer.
    # rpm -qa | grep libcap
    # rpm -qa | grep libpng
    # rpm -qa | grep gd
    # rpm -qa | grep httpd
  2. Next download the bandwidthd RPM according to your Linux distro from the link
    http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3 (Search with “bandwidthd”)
  3. Install the RPM as below
    # rpm -ivh bandwidthd-2.0.1-9.el5.i386.rpm
    This will install bandwidthd under /var/www/bandwidthd
  4. Next open the httpd.conf file
    # vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
    Add the lines as below to it and save:

    Alias /bandwidthd “/var/www/bandwidthd/htdocs”
    <Directory “/var/www/bandwidthd/htdocs”>
    Order Allow,Deny
    Allow from All
    </Directory>

  5. open /var/www/bandwidthd/etc/bandwidthd.conf and provide the correct subnet for your network.
  6. Restart the webserver
    # service httpd restart.
  7. Start the bandwidthd service
    # service bandwidthd start
  8. Now point your browser to http://<server IP>/bandwidthd and start checking the bandwidth statistics graphs.

Few screenshots

Posted by anirban under Virtualisation
4 Comments

Virtualisation Hosting Services

Virtualisation alongwith cloud computing are the hottest buzzwords in the online IT world today. Both these technologies are very promising and on a long term basis it would help lower the TCO (total cost of operation) for the consumers and ensure a scalable service infrastructure where the underlying hardware becomes a virtualised commodity.

At Diadem, we like to be on the leading edge by deploying these technologies on our network infrastructure and enable our clients to benefit from such services. Our Virtual Private Server offerings is the result of over six months of dedicated effort in research, testing and deployment to enable implementation of stable, reliable and cost effective VPS offerings for our clients.

So what is a VPS and why do I need one?

Virtual Private Servers is an offshoot of OS virtualisation, which allows you to run more than one operating system simultaneously or singly on a single machine by sharing the same hardware resources. While OS virtualisation has been existence since the 1960′s, it has evolved rapidly over the past decade, thanks to the explosive growth of the Internet requiring ever more servers online and the need by businesses to cut down their  IT spend and consolidating multiple OS for different functions, within a single server. Server virtualisation is now a proven and accepted technology which enterprises of all shapes and sizes are embracing rapidly for their server deployment needs to ensure that their server infrastructure is well utilised and generate a higher ROI from their IT investments.

Here is my non technical description of a VPS:

“A Virtual Private Server is a ‘server within a server’ which allows you to have your own memory space, HDD capacity and CPU resources and enables you to run your own Operating System within a dedicated server. Consider it to be your own apartment within a multi-storied building. Every apartment owner has their own living space, bedrooms and other areas which they could beautify and update as per their individual needs but they also share a common entrance to the building with the rest of the apartment owners, a common heating and sewage system, electrical wiring and other such features to reduce the cost of the apartment per individual.”

Benefits of a VPS in comparison with dedicated servers or shared hosting is highlighted below:

  • A virtual server is significantly cheaper to run than a standalone dedicated server in which an entire server is dedicated for a specific client.
  • It allows clients to experiment their application on a smaller scale without having to make upfront investments on a dedicated server.
  • Businesses can run multiple servers with different operating systems from within the same physical server, thereby reducing the cost and increasing the utilisation of a dedicated server.

Compared to a shared hosting environment, here are the key benefits of a VPS:

  • It is a secure environment dedicated for the client to run their websites online and retain complete control on the server.
  • Server OS settings can be tweaked and optimised as per the requirement of a specific application.
  • Corporates can run their own mailing servers in a secure VPS which would allow them to create unlimited email ids, web space for individual users with customised antispam and mail archiving solutions.
  • Clients can consolidate multiple sites on a single VPS and manage them from a single OS.
  • Web design firms can operate their own hosting services without having to share credit with a web hosting firm.

Our VPS Story

While we have been dabbling with virtualisation for the past year, we seriously got into delivering it as a service to our clients towards the end of last year. There were three main contenders for the virtualisation platform, Windows HyperV, VMWare ESXi and Citrix XenServer and we gave them a fair evaluation from our end.

While each server virtualisation platform has its own pros and cons and new features are being developed and deployed for all these hypervisors on a rapid scale, we found Citrix XenServer to be the most suitable for our needs. Following are the primary reasons why we choose XenServer over the other hypervisors:

  • The Citrix XenServer is FREE for personal and commercial use.
  • It is packed with tools and features which are available as paid options or are non existent in other hypervisors.
  • Citrix XenServer is based on the industry standard Xen hypervisor which is an open source virtualisation platform.
  • There is a large community backing Xen and it is a well documented system.
  • It has a small memory footprint which makes it less resource intensive on the server.
  • It is stable, easy to deploy and is supported by Citrix Systems which is a leader in virtualisation technologies.

Now that we have done the heavy lifting in putting our virtualisation infrastructure in place, we would like you to benefit from our VPS offerings, which is available in both Linux and Windows platforms. Checkout our Linux VPS and Windows VPS plans which are specially developed considering the requirements of the Indian market and are available from a low monthly cost of Rs. 1999 per month.

We would be putting up more resources, howtos, offers and updates highlighting our VPS services over the next few months so watch this space!

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Posted by hriday under Virtualisation
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For businesses considering our dedicated server options, one of the questions you’ll need to answer about your server configuration is whether to utilize a RAID disk configuration or not.  For our shared hosting customers, all of our shared server hardware utilizes a RAID disk configuration as a measure to help ensure maximum server uptime. With a single hard disk, you cannot prevent a significant downtime against a disk failure, which includes:

  • The time required to obtain and install a replacement disk
  • Reinstall the operating system
  • Restore files from backup locations and
  • Restore all the data entry performed since the last backup was made.

With multiple disks and a suitable redundancy scheme, your system can stay up and running when a disk fails, and even while the replacement disk is being installed and its data restored.

An Overview of RAID

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.  The purpose of RAID is to provide redundancy for hard drives in the event that a hard drive is lost due to mechanical failure.  Hard drives are the most susceptible component in a server to fail, just by the nature of it’s design.

RAID solves this problem by copying data from one drive to another in real time.  For every bit that is written to one drive, it’s also written to it’s “mirror” counterpart.  So, in the event that one drive is lost, the other drive is available to continue reading and writing data without any interruption to the server.

RAID 0 (Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance)

A non-redundant disk array, or RAID level 0, has the lowest cost of any RAID organization because it does not employ redundancy at all. This scheme offers the best performance since it never needs to update redundant information. Surprisingly, it does not have the best performance. Redundancy schemes that duplicate data, such as mirroring, can perform better on reads by selectively scheduling requests on the disk with the shortest expected seek and rotational delays. Without, redundancy, any single disk failure will result in data-loss. Non-redundant disk arrays are widely used in super-computing environments where performance and capacity, rather than reliability, are the primary concerns.

  • Does not provide fault tolerance
  • Minimum number of disks required = 2
  • Usable storage capacity = 100%
  • This is the fastest of the RAID configurations from a read-write standpoint
  • Is the least expensive RAID solution because there is no duplicate data
  • Recommended use for temporary data only

RAID 1 (Mirroring)

The traditional solution, called mirroring or shadowing, uses twice as many disks as a non-redundant disk array. Whenever data is written to a disk the same data is also written to a redundant disk, so that there are always two copies of the information. When data is read, it can be retrieved from the disk with the shorter queuing, seek and rotational delays. If a disk fails, the other copy is used to service requests. Mirroring is frequently used in database applications where availability and transaction time are more important than storage efficiency.

  • Fault tolerant – you can lose multiple disks as long as a mirrored pair is not lost
  • Minimum number of disks required = 2
  • Usable storage capacity = 50%
  • Good read performance, relatively slow write performance
  • Recommended for operating system log files

RAID 5 (Block Interleaved Distributed Parity)

Consists of three or more hard drives.  RAID 5 requires a minimum of at least three (3) drives.  Redundancy is provided by “striping the parity” across all drives.  This means that any one drive contains the “redundant” information.  If one drive is lost, the other two drives continue reading and writing data without any interruption to the server.

  • Fault tolerant – can afford to lose one disk only
  • Minimum number of disks required = 3
  • Usable storage capacity = subtract 1 whole disk from the total number in the array (i.e. 3 60Gig hard drives would provide 120Gig of usable disk space)
  • Generally good performance, and increases with concurrency – the more drives in the array the faster the performance
  • Recommended for operating system files, shared data, and application files

RAID 10 (A Stripe of Mirrors)

RAID 10 uses more disk space to provide redundant data than RAID 5. However, it also provides a performance advantage by reading from all disks in parallel while eliminating the write penalty of RAID 5. RAID 10 requires a minimum of at least four (4) drives In addition; RAID 10 gives better performance than RAID 5 while a failed drive remains unreplaced. RAID 10 offers faster data reads and writes than RAID 5 because it does not need to manage parity. Under RAID 5, each attempted read of the failed drive can be performed only by reading all of the other disks. On RAID 10, a failed disk can be recovered by a single read of its mirrored pair.

  • Fault tolerant – you can lose multiple disks as long as both are not part of a mirrored pair
  • Minimum number of disks required = 4
  • Usable storage capacity = 50%
  • Generally good performance, and increases with concurrency – the more drives in the array the faster the performance
  • Recommended for operating systems, shared data, application files, and log files

We would recommend RAID 10 to all dedicated server owners for performance, uptime and disk redundancy. You do lose 50% of the total cumulative disk capacity, but the performance, redundancy and security of data makes up for it.

To know more about our RAID Hosting services and how your business would benefit from it, visit our RAID Hosting Services page.
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Posted by hriday under Web Hosting
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The big boys of the free email world, namely Google, Yahoo and Hotmail have zero tolerance towards users who abuse their mail accounts and use it to send UCE (unsolicited commercial email) to other email users. Here are a list of links which can be used to report such spam incidents so that their accounts can be permanently disabled by these providers.

Feel free to share any other resources which can be of use to report spam to other such providers of free email services.

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Posted by hriday under Web Hosting
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If you want to redirect all incoming TCP traffic on port 80 to a custom port say 8089 on the local machine, then xinetd is a good option. Xinetd, the Extended Internet Daemon, is an open-source super-server  daemon which runs on many Unix-like  systems and manages Internet-based connectivity.

Follow the below steps redirect to the 80 port.

Login to your Linux server as super user i.e. ‘root’.

Create a file under /etc/xinetd.d/ folder as http_redirector

# vi /etc/xinetd.d/http_redirector

Now add the following entries in the files.

service http_redirector
{
type = UNLISTED
disable = no
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
user = root
wait = no
port = 80
redirect = 127.0.0.1 8089
log_type = FILE /tmp/httpredirector.log
}

Restart the xinetd service.

# service xinetd restart

That’s all you are done.

Posted by ankur under Linux, Web Hosting
0 Comments

power backup solution for diademThis year, I am expecting a power crisis in Kolkata for the following reasons:

  • Summer has crept in earlier this year and therefore ACs will start gobbling up energy sooner than expected.
  • Salt Lake, which was supposed to be a VIP area is not going to get preferential status with regards to power outages and would have to face the heat like the rest of the city.
  • Overall energy consumption has grown considerably over the past couple of years and would continue to soar. In comparison the supply of additional energy has crept at a slow pace and the deficit only seems to be widening.

Keeping the above factors in mind, we have invested in our own power backup solution, a Honda 2.8 KVA diesel powered generator which should keep our office humming with activity in the event of a power outage or “loadshedding” as its more commonly known in the city.

We were earlier planning to install a large rack of batteries with an online UPS but it was a relatively expensive solution with limited power backup availability. It would have also taken up additional storage space in our office along with periodic replacement of batteries, i.e. higher maintenance costs.

We arranged for a demo of the Honda generators and the Honda salesmen were very efficient and prompt in handling our request and provided us with a live demo which ensured that it would run our PCs and office equipment and scale up as our load increases. This little baby is also environment friendly with restricted CO2 emissions and low running noise, so it should keep our neighbors happy as well!

This is a small step in our continued efforts to ensure that our support services are available round the clock for your business :) .

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Posted by hriday under News & Updates
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