News from Simple HQ

Dedicated and cloud customers can now add and edit  DNS records directly from the Simple Servers client area.

This will only work for new DNS zones. Look for for ‘DNS admin’ in the admin client menu after you have logged into our client area

As of today we are pleased to announce that Simple Servers have officially partnered with R1Soft backup

We will be offering Continuous Data Protection® Enterprise Edition free for all shared accounts and as an option for cloud and dedicated customers.

Today’s mission critical Linux servers demand efficient backup software that reduces backup windows to minutes and replicates deltas efficiently at the block-level, impacting precious storage bandwidth as little as possible. CDP Enterprise Edition delivers high performance Linux server backup for the data center that accomplishes all this and more.

Backup MySQL databases online with minimal disk I/O load and impact using R1Soft’s Continuous Data Protection for MySQL.

Key Benefits:

• Online – No interruption to MySQL Databases During Backup
• Supports MySQL on both Windows and Linux Servers
• Central Administration of all MySQL Backups
• Shortest MySQL Backup windows Possible
• Reduce load on MySQL Databases from Backups
• Improve MySQL Recovery Point Objectives with Hourly Backups
• Backup multiple database instances per physical server
• Flexible Backup Policies: Hourly, Daily, Weekly

Continuous Data Protection

Online Backup – Zero Business Interruption Backups for Even the Busiest MySQL Servers.  Snapshots of databases are typically created in less than a second using proprietary Linux disk Snapshots using the R1Soft CDP device driver on Linux.

Protect MySQL databases on Linux as frequent as every hour using CDP’s asynchronous replication backup technology.  Archive up to thousands of recovery points.

Objects Protected and Restored

• Databases
• Tables
• Indexes
• Constraints
• Triggers
• Events
• Views
• Stored Procedures
• Functions

Storage Engines

• MyISAM
• InnoDB / Innobase
• Memory (schema only)
• Archive
• CSV
• Blackhole (schema only)

We will be adding R1 to all shared accounts over the next 3 weeks.

http://www.r1soft.com/

New Dns admin system is now active for dedicated and cloud customers.
After many months of development the Simple Dns admin is now active and available from the client area.

This is only for dedicated and cloud customers and currently only supports new zones.

Our dev team is working to improve the functionality of this over the coming months.

 Here are some top tips to make magento fly

All of the server work is done by us for our clients, as standard we use Xcache, Nginx and Litespeed

1. Get a SSD  dedicated server Or SafeCloud VPS
2. Host your site in the country where your customers are.
3. Don’t host files on your web server that you do not use, large or small.
4. Goto MySQL Admin and select all the tables and repair and then optimize them.
5. Use  Xcache.
6. Only install necessary Apache modules.
7. Use Apache mod_expires and be sure to set how long files should be cached. You could use the example below for your Apache virtualhost config:

   # Turn on Expires and set default to 0
                   ExpiresActive On
                   ExpiresDefault A0
   
                   # Set up caching on media files for 1 year (forever?)
   
                           ExpiresDefault A29030400
                           Header append Cache-Control "public"
   
                   # Set up caching on media files for 2 weeks
   
                           ExpiresDefault A1209600
                           Header append Cache-Control "public"
   
                   # Set up 1 week caching on commonly updated files
   
                           ExpiresDefault A604800
                           Header append Cache-Control "proxy-revalidate"
   
                   # Force no caching for dynamic files
   
                           ExpiresActive Off
                           Header set Cache-Control "private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform"
                           Header set Pragma "no-cache"

8. Enable Gzip Compression in htaccess.
9. Compress output, use zlib.output_compression or mod_deflate.
10. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for parallel transfer of static content. There is a Magento extension that can help you do this with category and product images: the One Pica Image CDN. But… (see next tip).
11. Don’t use too many different external sources (for images, iframes, (twitter)feeds etc.) because every DNS lookup takes extra time.
12. Enable Apache KeepAlives: Make sure your Apache configuration has KeepAlives enabled. KeepAlives are a trick where multiple HTTP requests can be funneled through a single TCP connection. The setup of each TCP connection incurs additional time, this can significantly reduce the time it takes to download all the files (HTML, JavaScript, images) for a website. More info  at Apache.org.
13. Minimize redirects.
14. Make your output W3C compliant. Errors slow down the browser.
15. Swap Apache for NginX or Litespeed. If this isn’t an option, then go for Zend Server (ideally the non-CE version so you can use full page caching).
16. Turn off or at least reduce web server logging (reduces disk writes).
    • Disable Access Time Logging. Magento Wiki: For Linux servers, if you have access-time logging enabled on any of your mysql, web server or cache partitions, try turning it off for a performance boost. If you’re using ext3 or reiserfs there may be faster journal write methods you can use. For more info see Linux.com.
17. Compile MySQL from source instead of your OS’s package manager.
18. Always upgrade to the latest Magento version. Not only will you get more features and bug- and security fixes, but with every update Magento performs better.
19. Query Cach size: Magento Blog: Modify the configuration for your MySQL server to take better advantage of your server’s RAM. Most Linux distributions provide a conservative MySQL package out of the box to ensure it will run on a wide array of hardware configurations. If you have ample RAM (eg, 1gb or more), then you may want to try tweaking the configuration. An example my.cnf is below, though you will want to consult the MySQL documentation for a complete list of configuration directives and recommended settings.
20. set ‘php_value memory_limit 128M’ in your php configuration or add it to your .htaccess file to ensure you don’t run out of memory.
21. Use a memory-based filesystem for dynamic data. If you store dynamic data (var/cache, var/session) on RAMdisk or tmpfs, the disk I/O is decreased.
22. Change realpath_cache_size in php.ini.

    realpath_cache_size=1M (careful, this is per apache process) realpath_cache_ttl=86400 (ok for production site) 

23. Memcache (for the hardcore) is documented inhttp://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/9037/ and more tips from http://alexle.net/archives/275 to get you up and running.
24. Disable the PHP open_basedir directive.
25. Eliminate directory structure scans for .htaccess files.
26. Recommended innodb_buffer_pool_size.
    • Combined web and db server, 6 GB RAM:  2-3 GB
    • Dedicated database server, 6GB RAM: 5 GB
    • Dedicated database server, 12 GB RAM: 10 GB
27. innodb_thread_concurrency.
    • 2 * [numberofCPUs] + 2
28. Query Cach: query_cache_size: 64MB, query_cache_limit: 2MB
29. Use sa seperate backend server to handle admin users, process backend activity (cron), pre generate full page caching and to handle media queries.
30. Use multiple web nodes (frontend servers) to handle browsing and checkout.
31. Use Varnish reverse proxy caching, Magento explanation by@alistairstead: Varnish your Magento store, make it fly!.

1. Optimize all your (template) images- Most if not all should be at least below 10kb.
   • Crop the white space using your image editor.
   • Use PNG8 Files or GIF files rather than Jpegs and don’t use transparency (depending on how many colors you use and how large the image is, but try for yourself).
   • Scale images: make images in the dimensions you need and not resizing them in the editor.
   • Use image compression (you can use smush.it to do it for you).
   • Use CSS Sprites, there even are CSS Sprite Generators.
2. Minify your Css, remove unused code.
3. Minimize Javascript use.
4. Use a lightweight template as a basis for your template. For example: the Yoast Blank SEO theme.
5. Specify Image dimensions.
6. Use Block cache and HTML output in your extensions.
7. Apply Javascript Lazy Loader for prototype.

1. Uninstall any extensions that you don’t actually use.
2. Disable modules that you don’t use: System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Advanced
3. Enable all Magento Caches: System -> Cache Management. 
4. Use an offsite Stats Tracker like Google Analytics and not an onsite one. Most of this will use Javascript, host the Javascript yourself.
5. Combine Javascript and Combine CSS files: System ->Configuration ->Advanced ->Developer -> ‘Javascript settings’ and ‘CSS Settings’. You can also consider using an extensions to do this like the Fooman Speedster extension, whichever works best for you.
6. Try some of the Magento performance extensions.
7. Enable the Magento Flat Catalog, only helpful for very large catalogs to feel the improvements.
8. Don’t use layered navigation if you don’t really need it, it’s resource intensive.
9. Use Magento’s Compilation feature. It’s reported to give you a 25%-50% performance boost: System > Tools > Compilation.
   Edit: Yoav Kutner (Magento CTO) let me know that “in later versions since we optimized the catalog EAV, Magento Compilation is not really needed if you have byte code caching and if it is configured correctly“.
   
10. Use the correct session storage, choose file system or database (during setup). Most installations should use “file system” because it’s faster and doesn’t cause the database to grow. But if your site will run on multiple servers, you should select “database” so that a user’s session data is available regardless of which server his/her request is served from. More info about this from Ashley Schroderat Magebase.com.
11. Limit the number of products on a product overview page.
12. Set only those attribute frontend properties to ‘Yes’ that you’re actually going to use. Set all other to ‘No’. Don’t use in quick search, advanced search compare, etc etc.: Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Atributes -> Frontend Properties.
    
13. Disable the Magento log: System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Developer -> Log Settings (default is disabled).

1. Test your Magento site with Magento Speed Test (by Ashley Schroder)
2. Run your site through websiteoptimization.com.
3. Use Google Page Speed Firefox extension or Yahoo Yslow for some tips from Google and Yahoo.
4. Implement Google Speed measurements in Analytics: Measure Page Load Time with Site Speed Analytics Report
5. Speed monitoring and downtime alerts.
   • Mon.itor.us
   • Pingdom

We have another six solid state cloud nodes delivered, further expanding our enterprise level SafeCloud solution.
We only use the latest Dell Sandy Bridge servers, with 32GB ram, all running Samsung SSD 830 drives.
These really are quick servers , showing a 20% performance gain over our old nodes, with much faster bus speeds. Each one boasts 2 x 3.30 GHz quad core Xeon cpu’s.

Super Resilient

Unlike a lot of other clouds our exclusive SafeCloud auto fails over as standard, so if the node your site is on fails, it will respawn on our redundant node farm in about 30 seconds. We can also enable auto scaling, if your site gets busy the resources will resize dynamically.

We just have to get them installed and fired up now!

One for all budding web designers!
Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and Javascript for popular user interface components and interactions.
Built for and by nerds
Like you, we love building awesome products on the web. We love it so much, we decided to help people just like us do it easier, better, and faster. Bootstrap is built for you.

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/index.html

These will go into RocketBox Dedicated servers, delivering killer speeds for the most demanding Magento and eCommerce application.

Multitaskers rejoice. Lag-free performance in multitasking.

Samsung’s fast random read speeds (up to 80000 IOPS) maximise performance when it matters most.

• Samsung SSD 830 Series
• Capacity: 512GB
• Form Factor: 2.5 inch
• SATA 6Gb/s (Compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s)
• GC (Garbage Collection): Auto
• Samsung Magician software for SSD management
• Samsung Toggle DDR NAND Flash memory
• Samsung 3-core MCX Controller
• Samsung 256MB DDR2 SDRAM cache memory
• Dimension 100 x 69.85 x 7mm
• Weight: 62.5g

LiteSpeed Web Server is the leading high-performance, high-scalability web server. It is completely Apache interchangeable so LiteSpeed Web Server can quickly replace a major bottleneck in your existing web delivery platform. With its comprehensive range of features and easy-to-use web administration console, LiteSpeed Web Server can help you conquer the challenges of deploying an effective web serving architecture. LiteSpeed Web Server has superior performance in terms of both raw speed and scalability. Our benchmarks demonstrate that it is more than 6 times faster than Apache. When serving static content, LiteSpeed surpasses well-respected content accelerators including thttpd, boa and TUX. When it comes to dynamic content, LiteSpeed is more than 50% faster in PHP content delivery than Apache with mod_php. Don’t just take our word for it. Download the LiteSpeed free or trial version and experience it for yourself. Since its 3.0 release, LiteSpeed Web Server works flawlessly alongside web hosting control panels including cPanel, DirectAdmin, etc. as a drop-in Apache replacement. Easily increase PHP performance and security while doubling server capacity. LiteSpeed is the best choice for shared hosting service providers.

Litespeed Enterprise is free with all our shared cpanel hosting accounts and an option on Cloud Servers and Dedicated Servers

We have updated all of our Cpanel Hosting packages, all come with Litespeed enterprise as standard with optimsed php caching and tuned MySql engines also.

Here at Simple we try to make our customers experience as smooth as possible from order to a fully functional e-commerce website. Here is some useful information regarding our one click installer.

Simple, yet powerful.

Targeted towards website owners that may be unfamiliar with the traditional process of installing web applications, the Installatron user-interface has been refined over the years to provide an experience that is intuitive for even the most inexperienced website owners.

Standardised one-click workflow

The workflow of all tasks, from installing to upgrading and restoring, use a standardized “one click” navigation and workflow. Instantly intuitive to new website owners, this model enables tasks to be completed rapidly and without navigating through multiple steps or pages. Standardization across all tasks gives Installatron an almost horizontal learning curve.

Time-saving multi-select options

Using multi-select options, tasks can be grouped so that, for example, users or administrators can perform a series of upgrades or backups as a single process.

Background processes

All tasks execute in the background, freeing users up to perform other tasks or even logout of the control panel while a task completes.

Only The Best Applications On The Web

To ensure a high-quality, trouble-free website owner experience, Installatron strives to provide only the best applications on the web.

New applications are evaluated regularly

New and unique web applications are evaluated regularly for inclusion into Installatron. However, applications that are complicated to use and applications that do not offer unique functionality complicate the website owner experience and are avoided.

Quick and reliable application updates

The applications provided by Installatron are regularly updated as new versions are released. Priority is given to critical security releases and the most popular applications. Updates are tested and made available within minutes to hours of release, depending on the amount of testing required by the update.

Multilingual applications

Most applications are available to be installed and upgraded in different languages. Some applications are even available in 40+ languages.

Here is a list of our most popular downloaded one click installs:

• Magento
• Joomla
• Elgg
• WordPress
• Drupal
• PhpBB
• Cube Cart
• Open Cart
• Zen Cart