Cloud What is a storage area network? Whether it’s the hard disk spinning in your laptop or the rows of humming drives in a data centre, data storage is a critical part of computing. Computers and... read more
Security What is penetration testing? “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles.” It’s safe to say that Sun Tzu wasn’t thinking about... read more
Cloud Containers: history and benefits Containers are big news in the hosting industry, but where did they come from, and what are their benefits? Containerisation technology and containers-as-a-service (CaaS) may be some of the latest... read more
Servers MongoDB vs PostgreSQL databases In one of our previous articles, we compared and discussed the differences and similarities between the database management systems MariaDB and MySQL [https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/blog/mariadb-v-mysql-which-relational-database-should-i-choose/] . These... read more
Digital Kubernetes vs Docker Swarm vs Apache Mesos When it comes to container orchestration, the three big names out there are Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Apache Mesos. As explained in our overview of Kubernetes, an orchestration tool is... read more
Cloud How to improve Apache web server performance Thanks to its reliable features, open-source accessibility and community support, Apache is the internet’s favourite web server. While Apache regularly delivers excellent performance for a wide variety of websites... read more
Cloud Snapshots, images and clones When running tests or pushing updates or patches to your virtual machine, it’s good to have reassurance that any changes you make aren’t going to leave with you... read more
Cloud Why use a load balancer? You don’t have to be a famous actor or musician to get a high number of website visits. But when you do, you want to be sure that your... read more
Cloud Supercharged web hosting in the cloud Whether your website is taking a battering from too many users, or you just want to ensure smooth performance in the future, you’re probably thinking about upgrading your web... read more
Cloud What is Hadoop? Recently, we discussed big data and MapReduce. Hadoop is another method of dealing with big data that builds upon Google’s MapReduce algorithm. What is Hadoop? The software framework Hadoop... read more
Security OAuth: the gold standard for authorisation The internet is faster and more convenient than ever. Data can flow freely between websites and applications, saving a huge amount of time and effort for the end-user, all without... read more
Servers Hard disk health check We've all been there, one day our computer is working normally, the next its hard disk drive gives out and you're left scratching your head at... read more
Cloud What is thin provisioning? We previously wrote about the methods of data deduplication [https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/blog/data-deduplication/] and file compression [https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/blog/linux-compression-all-about-compromise/] for optimising storage space.... read more
