Category Archives: Backups

When Do We Need MySQL Databases With Our Web Hosting?

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Whenever you buy web hosting, your hosting provider is sure to include an option called “Databases” in his price quotation or package details. But not many of us know what are databases and why we need them when setting up a website. This article aims to explain a couple of reasons why we use databases and when we need them for our website.

The database systems we usually get with our web hosting accounts are all relational database systems or RDBMS. If we take a Windows hosting server we usually get Microsoft SQL aka MSSQL and if we take a Unix based system we usually get MySQL. Both these systems put your website data into tabular layouts for fast and easy retrieval.

Databases are a collection of rows and columns, where each row or column is related to the others in some way. Due to this relation, information from this database can be retrieved quickly and efficiently as compared to if the data was stored in any other unstructured format. You can consider a database as a collection of multiple spreadsheets which are all related to each other in some way or the other.

Security

A major advantage of having your data stored in a database is the ability to protect the database from unauthorized access, or the ability to protect a database record from being tampered with. A simple example would be the storage of login credentials. In a simple way, login credentials can be stored in a simple text file and be read by your script which does the authentication. However, your file will always save the password stored in plan text, making it vulnerable to anyone who has access to it. Databases have the ability to encrypt the entries using a hashing algorithm to obscure them. Further, to read or write to the database, you need to specify login details, something which is not easily possible with an ordinary text file or spreadsheet.

Efficiency

Due to the manner in which data is stored in the database, retrieval and storage is most efficient. Unlike a spreadsheet, where anything and everything can be stored in any cell, SQL restricts the type of information stored in each row or column based on certain conditions. This validation is inherent in the properties of SQL and is an added advantage for a programmer or developer. Due to the various inbuilt mechanisms that are present in RDBMS systems, they are the most preferred method of storage and retrieval of data.

An article on the DatabaseJournal Blog explains this in a lucid way:

“…The problem with text files is during a read, if the text file is large, it can take quite a bite of time to open and scan the contents of the file looking for what we want. Also, if we wanted to see all the sales to a specific customer, the entire text file would have to be read, and every line occurrence of the customer name would need to be saved in some temporary place until we had them all. If we saved to a spreadsheet instead of a text file, we would have a Sort feature built in. So we may be able to find all the sales to a specific customer quicker, but again, if the file was large, opening the spreadsheet could take a great deal of time.”

Administrative Control

Database systems also have various control mechanisms which allow easy administration of the database and tables within it. The most important part is user management. Each user can be given specific rights to the database, thereby allowing limitation in access so as to secure the data from being tampered, modified or altered. Database Administrator’s can tweak many settings of the database thereby restricting the flow of data, the connection speeds, maximum number of connections to the server and even adjust what hardware resources should be allocated for performing a task.

Taking a backup of your website in cPanel Paper Lantern

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We all should regularly take backups of our website, whether we like it or not. A backup is like a flashlight, you never know when you may need it. You may never need it or may need it once in 365 days. But if you do need it and don’t have it, you will regret it.

1. Login to your cPanel account (For more see this article)

2. Select the Backup option in cPanel

3. Under the Partial Backups option, you can choose which parts of your website to backup.

The Home Directory option will allow you to backup all files in your account, except for the MySQL databases and the cpanel account configuration. This option will download a .tar.gz file i.e. a compressed tarball which contains the entire folder structure and files inside your hosting account.

The Database Backup will allow you to download a backup file for each individual database. The file format for the database backup is dbname.sql.gz i.e. it is a compressed file, which contains a .sql file of the database.

You can also download domain wise email forwarders, in .gz format by clicking on the Email Forwarder option.

 

Do note: If your internet connection is interrupted or there is some download issue, your downloaded file may be incomplete or corrupt. Always verify downloaded backups before relying on them.

Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

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Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

Tips To Prevent Failed Backups Of Your Website

Most of us keep regular backups of all our important data, especially which is on the internet. Websites should also be backed up regularly as a safety measure in case of a disaster and also as a version tracking mechanism. This ensures that in the event of our website being hacked or becoming corrupt, we can quickly restore it to a prior version. Most of us have automatic mechanisms to take a backup. But little do we realise that taking a backup doesnt really end there. We need to ensure that it is a workable backup and not a dummy file which has not value. This article explains how we can prevent backup file failures and how to ensure that our website backup will be of use when we need it.

Elements

An important aspect of taking backups is not to forget any of the elements that make up your account. Your web hosting account has several elements which need to be backed up so that you can restore your entire account. This means that you need to backup things like Email, Website Files, Databases, Configuration Files, Web Statistics, Email Forwarders and any other customizations that you may have done with any of these elements. Hosting Control Panels like cPanel or Plesk may allow you to take backups of these elements separately or compile them into a single compressed file. Forgetting even one part of your account backup may render your website useless. Many people forget to take a backup of their database files since the backend is not something that the users interact with. Similarly, the small configuration files and customizations can also boost the speed and efficiency when you attempt to restore the backup.

Disk Space Shortage

The in-built backup options of your web hosting control panel will usually save your backup in the home directory of your account. This means that the backup will also consume hosting space within your account. If you are on a limited space plan, you should have atleast 50% free disk space before you backup your account. If you do not have enough space, the backup may not complete fully or may get corrupt. This can be disastrous when you are dependent on it and when you want to restore the account. Ensure that you have enough free space so that your backup is not stuck.

Failed Download

One of the most common failure points when taking a backup is the download to your local machine or onto the media you are ultimately backing up on. Very often, when the backup file is being downloaded on the media or machine, the network connection may drop or the process maybe terminated. This may indicate that the file has been downloaded, but actually the file is only partially downloaded. A client of ours who was switching from shared hosting to a dedicated server was taking a backup of his website on his own. He started downloading the backup file from his hosting account. The size of the backup file was about 600 MB. On his internet connection, it indicated that about 8 minutes were left for the download to complete. In between the download process, his internet connection dropped. He noticed that the file transfer had stopped and file was on his hard disk. However, he did not notice the file size and assumed that the entire 600 MB has been downloaded. The backup file was corrupt and had downloaded only 350 MB. Luckily he noticed the mistake and was able to retrieve the backup file. You may not always be so lucky.

Integrity Check with the Checksum

The best way to ensure your backup file’s integrity is using a checksum tool to verify the checksum of the file before and after it is downloaded. Ideally this means that you get a unique hash value of the file from the web server. This unique hash value is tied to the file and is almost impossible to reverse engineer. Then, after you have downloaded the file, retest for the checksum of the downloaded file on your backup media. The checksum of the file should be exactly the same. If the file is corrupt or tampered or has not downloaded properly, the checksum will mismatch and you will get to know easily. This ensures data integrity and provides assurance of a healthy backup file.

 

A Simple Explanation Of What Big Data Is

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A Simple Explanation Of What Big Data Is

Big Data has become a new buzz word in the IT industry. Everyone is talking about it and repeatedly using it to impress others, even if they themselves don’t really know what it means. Big Data is often used out of context and more as a marketing gimmick. This article aims to explain what Big Data really is and how it will be useful in solving problems.

Physics and Mathematics calculations can give us the exact distance from the East Coast of USA to the West Coast, accurate to about 1 yard. This is a phenomenal achievement and has been applied to various technologies in our daily life. But the challenge comes in when you have data which is not static, which is constantly changing and changing at a rate and in volumes which are humongous to determine in real time. The only way we can process this data is by using computers.

IBM data scientists break big data into four dimensions: volume, variety, velocity and veracity. But there are many more aspects of Big Data. Big data can be described by the following characteristics:

Volume is the size of the data which determines the value and potential of the data under consideration and whether it can actually be considered as Big Data or not. Variety means that the category to which Big Data belongs to is also a very essential fact that needs to be known by the data analysts. This helps the people, who are closely analyzing the data and are associated with it, to effectively use the data to their advantage and thus upholding the importance of the Big Data. Velocity refers to how fast the data is generated and processed to be useful. Variability of the data can also be a problem for the analysts. Veracity is the quality of the data being captured. Accurate analysis depends on the veracity of the source data.

Analogies

An article on the Tibco Blog provided a very simple analogy to understanding what Big Data really is. Their blog says that:

“One analogy for Big Data analysis is to compare your data to a large lake… Trying to get an accurate size of this lake down to the last gallon or ounce is virtually impossible… Now let’s assume that you have built a big water counting machine… You feed all of the water in the lake through your big water counting machine, and it tells you the number of ounces of water in the lake… for that point in time.”

A better, more visual analogy is presented by Paul Lewis of Hitachi Data Systems. He often explains about Big Data by showing a picture cartoon filled with hundreds of people who are doing different things in the picture, looking busy. He explains:

“You need to find the person with the suitcase of money (Value)…but there are many people (Volume), all walking at various speeds running to work (Velocity), from all walks of life (Variety), some are crooks (Veracity).”

Importance and Benefits

One of the major reasons why we need Big Data is for prediction and analysis. One of the best examples where Big Data can be seen in action is the Large Hadron Collider experiment, in which about 150 million sensor deliver data 40 million times per second. After filtering and refraining from recording more than 99.999% of these streams, there are 100 collisions of interest per second. Another important example is Facebook, which handles over 50 billion user photos.

Healthcare is another area where Big Data can play a significant role. One of the most amazing example is Google Flu Trends, which analyses search data from various locations and uses the Big Data Analysis to identify patterns of Influenza epidemics and endemics around the world. Although this data is not necessarily accurate or may have a lot of false positives, it highlights the potential of what Big Data can show you.

A key benefit of Big Data is that there is no specific format in which it is stored. Crudely put, it is a raw dump of data i.e. it is unstructured. The system uses complex algorithms to classify and process this data, which makes it very special.

Please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks - Suspicious Mail

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We often receive mails from our clients regarding a suspicious mail which was received by them from some Chinese company called Asia Registry or something similar which sounds authoritative. This article aims to clarify what this mail is about and why you should not respond to it and treat it as junk.

The mail in question:

From: “Albert Liu” <[email protected]>
Subject: (clients domain name) CN domain and keyword
To: (the domain name holder)

(Please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks)

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Shanghai, China. On Jan 8, 2015, we received an application from Huabao Ltd requested “(client’s domain name)” as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it’s necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?

Kind regards

Albert Liu
General Manager
Asia Registry (Headquarters)
3002, Nanhai Building, No. 854 Nandan Road,
Xuhui District, Shanghai 200030, China
Tel: +86 21 6191 8696
Mobile: +86 138 1642 8671
Fax: +86 21 6191 8697
Web: www.asiaregistry.org.cn

What is this mail really about?

This mail is basically just spam mail, which is being sent to you to scare you into believing that you may lose your domain name or somebody else is trying to use your trade mark. The ultimate aim is to get you to respond to them, and show interest in purchasing the .cn variant of your domain name from them. Eg: If you own garbagelogistics.com then they will suggest that someone is trying to register garbagelogistics.cn and to prevent them from registering it, you should book it first.

How did they get my email address?

They mostly looked up your email address from the public WHOIS record of an existing domain name that you own.

What should I do with the mail? Should I respond to it?

Do NOT respond to the mail. Just delete it.

Read more here:

  • http://www.welivesecurity.com/2012/07/24/asia-domain-name-scams-still-going-strong/

Web Hosting Account Cleanup For The Christmas Season

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Web Hosting Account Cleanup For The Christmas Season

Ever heard of spring cleaning during the winter? There’s no better time to do some maintenance and keep an eye on your web hosting account, than the Christmas season. With a string of holidays at your disposal and lots of time to spare, it makes most sense dedicating a bit of this time to keep your website in good health. This article deals with a couple of things that you should do to take care of your hosting account this Christmas. These are things which are often neglected round the year and can help to avoid a major issue in future.

Email filter and forwarders

Every vacation we setup automatic responders to let people know that we are on vacation, but we rarely remove them after we are back. Auto Responders are set to expire automatically after a designated period, however, the auto responder is only deactivated and not deleted. These can pile up and be a nuisance in future. Similarly email forwarders can also accumulate over time and be forgotten even after they are no longer needed. Regularly reviewing these options to ensure will help you to keep your account organized. Since we don’t get time round the year, it’s best to start this season.

Scan your hosting account for malware

Malware and Virus scanning can be a time consuming process which is why most people with large accounts keep putting it off for later. While there maybe nascent threats sitting in your folders, these will never get discovered until you do a full scan of your account. You maybe surprised to note how many infected filed your account was harbouring all the while. All it takes to scan for a virus is the click of a button. Simply start the scan and head out for that Christmas Day lunch. By dinner time you will be presented with a list of threat files and actions to be performed to clean them up.

Take a Backup

Although this should be a weekly task to perform, most of us haven’t even done this in 2 years. It’s time you get down to making your first backup. You will need to clear up some space in your account to accommodate your backup, but once you have enough free space, you can backup everything in a jiffy. Most control panels allow you to perform a full website backup in just 1 step. You don’t need to do any manual file transfer or copy pasting. Might as well get something done over the long break. You will be surprised at how easy it is to get done and will get you into the habit of regularly taking backups.

Upgrade your software

Content Management Systems drive more than half of the World’s websites. Not many people are even aware that a new version of their CMS exists or that they need to urgently upgrade their website software. Keeping your core files, plugins and themes regularly updated is a good practice from the security perspective and even from a continued progress point of view. This Christmas, give your website what it deserves the most - an upgraded Content Management System! Not only will you be securing your site from vulnerabilites, but you will also avoid getting those pesky reminders everytime you login to your system.

Take a look at visitor traffic

Your control panel will usually have your website statistics installed and activated by default. The information will let you see visitor data of the past days and will allow you to know about how your website is being accessed. Visitor stats can also reveal important information and indicate abnormalities in your websites performance. Most statistics software show you a graphical representation of your visitor data. They also show you location and bandwidth consumed by your visitors. Attacks on your website or error pages can be detected by analyzing the patterns of your website statistics. Better to be safe than sorry and it is best to keep an eye out atleast once, if you haven’t done it this year.