Right now we are running successful intensive alpha tests of our new WMS service, which we would like to introduce to you today. An open beta test is planned during August, which could then seamlessly transition into a fully functional service. The data and individual settings would remain on the servers for the testers.
From VMS to WMS
VMS (Virtual Managed Server) was a service we have wanted to include in our offer for a long time. It was supposed to be a classic VPS (Virtual Private Server) completely under our management. We worked on three concepts that reflected current customer demand over a period of about 4 years. One of the concepts has already been worked on by our programmers and a lot of time and effort has been invested in it.
Last year, however, after a detailed market and demand analysis, we found that there was basically no interest in a VMS service that could do everything. Respectively, only a fraction of customers want all that advanced stuff. Most customers require (basically) only web hosting and database server management. So we simplified the whole concept, improved it according to the current advanced hardware and software possibilities and started again.
We have abandoned the original concept of using a fully virtualised solution. We even had a functional solution ready with LXC containers.
In the end, we did everything on Docker and Kubernetes. We currently find these technologies to be the best and we are preparing other services based on them.
The result is not VMS but WMS – Webhosting Managed Server, or if you want WEDOS Managed Server.
What is WMS and how it works
The service is designed as a very powerful multi-domain web hosting with the possibility of scaling up to the level of a dedicated dedicated server. It is therefore a completely new service. A service for anyone who needs a high performance VPS or even a dedicated server, but doesn’t want to worry about server management.
If you can handle our NoLimit web hosting, you will literally experience a new level of performance that is completely subordinate to your requirements.
If you have at least a basic knowledge of webserver setup, you will literally have a new dimension of total control and configuration of webhosting compared to NoLimit. And don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about SSH 🙂
Our WMS service is designed as an administration interface for managing an unlimited number of web hosts with essentially unlimited parameters (the limit is actually the very powerful physical server itself).
You create individual web hosts and set their parameters – such as disk size, number of PHP threads, memory they can use, etc. How and what you set up is up to you. This makes it easy to control the hardware resources assigned to your projects or directly to your customers.
Once you have a web host set up, it has a standard NoLimit configuration. If this configuration suits you, there is no need to change anything else. But if you would like, say, a bit special settings – for example, to extend the script runtime to 1800 seconds (or even longer), so you can parse hundreds of megabytes of large files, it’s not a problem…
You can create a dedicated web host for the purpose you need and then use it as much as you want. Because all the purchased server power is reserved for you.
Example of some settings
- PHP version settings from historical PHP 5.3 through current to future new versions (beta, RC)
- PHP priority, where you give one web host more priority than the others
- Number of CGI slots – so called. number of PHP processes (you can have 100 for one web host)
- Max. number of connections
- Control over our HTTP proxy Cache
- max_execution_time
- memory_limit
- post_max_size
- register_globals
You can find a complete overview on the WMS offer page.
Other things WMS can do compared to NoLimit
We expect the service to have SSH access. Yes, you will finally be able to use SSH with WEDOS to manage your applications and upload data!
SNI/HTTPS and certificates will be included. However, only a limited number of Let’s Encrypt certificates can be added and modified at once. As the largest web host, we are “somewhat” hitting the limits of the Let’s Encrypt project. That’s why we need you to beta test. We need to set realistic numbers that suit everyone.
Unlike NoLimit, you won’t have to (but you can 🙂 )deal with aliases like with webhosting. One price will include an “unlimited” number of separate and distinct web hosts. Each webhosting (domain) will have its own separate directory, its own user under which it will run. The individual web hosts will not see each other and will be completely separate. You can also divide your customers in this way and give them limited access and set each of them completely different PHP parameters or a different number of PHP processes.
Occasionally with NoLimit we have encountered cases where some CMS required specific .htaccess settings due to aliases. With WMS this is not an issue. We have set everything up to be as common and versatile as possible. Practically, you don’t even need to use .htaccess or you can have your own completely.
Technically, it will not be possible to overload the WMS with external influences as is sometimes the case with NoLimit. Although we have implemented a number of re-routes and we can migrate sites that overload the server at the click of a button without the owner knowing it (no service outage), with shared web hosting there is always a risk that you will have a “demanding” neighbor. This is not the case with WMS. The only one who can overload the service is the customer himself. These are the benefits of the dedicated (and non-shared) power you purchase.
Given that each physical server has a 2x 10 Gbps connection, we have quite large reserves to handle any load. In the case of WMS, there won’t be many people on the physical server with you, so there will be 1 Gbps connectivity for everyone.
We consider higher connectivity than 1 Gbps for customers who buy the whole server. 2x 10 Gbps can then be arranged with our VIP/B2B department. But nothing is certain yet. We will probably fine-tune the final pricing after the beta test.
Our DDoS and IDS/IPS protections will of course be in place for the service. That way, we’ll protect your site honestly and no one will attack you. We also significantly reduce the load on the service by blocking all malicious bots that, for example, look for security vulnerabilities, try to guess passwords or collect marketing data for private purposes. In the future, we plan to make additional services connected with protections, where individual settings will be possible. For WMS we expect them to be free or at a significant discount.
Data backup will be included. The databases are operated in master-slave mode. The data on the WMS uses storage where the data is distributed across the network. It’s basically a network RAID. Restoring a complete backup will of course be free of charge.
For WMS only full performance Hardware without compromise
We will only offer WMS with dedicated resources. No sharing, no aggregation, and you won’t be sharing hardware with anyone. And we’re talking about super-fast 3.4GHz processors that will overclock to 3.8GHz if needed and super-fast NVMe SSDs. All server components are branded and designed for continuous load. We also use these servers for NoLimit. Web hosts on individual separate servers have several million accesses per day.
Everything you buy will be yours. There is even an option where you buy the power of the entire physical server for yourself. So you will have your own managed dedicated server for web hosting and/or databases. You can also connect these servers to each other as needed. You can have web hosting on one dedicated server and databases on the other (also dedicated to you). The databases are running with replication from the beginning, in master-slave mode.
The limit for individual servers will be about 60GB RAM (part of RAM is needed for the system), 1TB disk space and 8 threads of superfast 3.4 GHz CPU with the possibility of overclocking according to the current load. If you want you can have one such server for webhosting and another for the database. You can also order more of them and thus increase the performance as required.
That’s an extreme amount of power and all of it is reserved for you. In addition, all WMS will be provided with our proxy servers free of charge and without limits. All the content you put in your cache will not put any load on your WMS. So there is another incredible power and advantage in proxy servers. In the following chart you can see what a proxy server can do with a large and heavily visited eshop.
With a good cache setting, you can handle several times more traffic. In theory, we are talking about tens of millions of requests to the server per day.
What about emails
Running and setting up mail servers is a challenging task, so the email service will be completely separate from your WMS. It will be available in the same form as NoLimit web hosting.
Each WMS service will receive 5 GB of space, which you will be able to share or split between the individual domains you have with us (assigned to the WMS service). Additional space will be available for an additional fee, as is the case with web hosting.
We have not yet decided what the rules will be for the mail() function. We deal with spam from web hosts on a daily basis and it is a challenging task to keep our mailservers off the blacklists. There will definitely be higher limits for the service and we will increase the limits for customers as needed. Technically, it will be possible to run anything on the service, even in terms of emails.
We are also preparing a service for sending bulk mail. More on that another time.
Price
From the beginning, we conceived WMS as a luxury service with dedicated power. No sharing of hardware resources as in the case of NoLimit shared web hosting. All the power will be yours and no one else will be limiting you. Of course, this also means a higher price.
WMS is for people who aren’t afraid to pay for dedicated performance on quality servers with high-end server components. We are talking about an exceptional service, with exceptional parameters and exceptional (and not shared) performance.
The future of the service
This is just the beginning. The service will be further developed and improved. Since it is designed to be compatible with NoLimit, most of the innovations we will prepare for NoLimit will also work for WMS.
We plan to enable some PHP modules that we do not offer now.
The service will be able to run git. It won’t be in test operation yet.
We are also considering other setup options and other things you want us to do. If there’s interest, we won’t resist anything. The service, thanks to the chosen technology, will be quite flexible and we can respond to some requests from customers quite positively.
For example, you can look forward to our anycast service (CDN with advanced protection), which is planned for the Czech Republic in the first phase, as well as Europe, North America, Asia and one more point that we have not decided on yet. So from all over the world, your WMS will be protected by a system of 225 physical servers 🙂 . So there will be not only anycast DNS server, but also anycast DDoS protection, anycast IDS/IPS protection and anycast CDN. In a few days we will have new IP addresses and a new autonomous system dedicated to this service and we will start testing.
A failover solution is also planned for the WMS, where instead of one WMS you will have two, between which the data will be synchronized. In the event of an outage, the second one is activated or the load can be evenly distributed between them. Of course, one copy can be in one datacenter and the other in our other datacenter.
VIP/B2B services
For very demanding customers we are able to provide individual VIP services. For example, up to 10 Gbps dedicated connectivity. Of course, the condition is that the entire physical server is purchased.
In the future, then for failover solutions for more than 2 physical WMS to spread the load. For example, in the mode of 3 webservers + 2 database servers and so on.
Conclusion
So this is how our new WMS service looks and works 🙂
Beta testing will begin in a few days. Of course, as with previous new services, we are looking not only for demanding beta testers, but also for bloggers to write reviews of our new service. If you are interested, please contact us via the contact form from the administration.
We anticipate that the service will begin its live operation in September.