KVM virtualization, Intel Xeon 6-core processors, automatic failover, and state-of-the-art network safeguarding — a blur of letters and buzz words for hosting newbies, but for the more savvy VPS shopper, these features are exactly what you're looking for in a cloud-based server. A Small Orange cloud hosting includes the latest in performance technologies, so you can expect enterprise-level hardware and expert-level help to secure and monitor it. Ryan, Matt, and Zach introduced us to their VPS hosting infrastructure, talking through the tech and the team behind it.
Cloud Spectator conducted performance testing on A Small Orange and other providers and reported 100% uptime for A Small Orange Linux hosting in February 2016. When comparing the response times coming from various datacenters, the results for February 2016 ranged from 297 milliseconds to respond to a low 100-millisecond load time.
| Cloud Spectator Report: A Small Orange Linux Hosting Response Times |
|
Feb 2016: |
Lifetime (Aug 2014 - Feb 2016): |
| West North America: |
101 milliseconds |
473 milliseconds |
| East North America: |
136 milliseconds |
458 milliseconds |
| Mid North America: |
100 milliseconds |
454 milliseconds |
| Europe: |
297 milliseconds |
603 milliseconds |
ASO promises 99.9% uptime, which isn't jaw-dropping in the hosting space; however, they were one of three providers with 100% uptime in February 2016, according to the results of the Cloud Spectator performance review.
While discussing A Small Orange's hosting offerings, Zach told us the cloud product in particular is "one of a kind." This piqued our interest immediately. "The way we have it set up is pretty cool," he explained that the entire platform is SSD-powered with RAID solid-state drives and several "cool caching technologies" in place (e.g., PHP-FPM/FastCGI Process Manager and other PHP-level caching tools).
"One of the things that really differentiates our cloud platform and that really enables us to provide a higher quality of service than other providers on the market right now is that all of our templates for different operating systems are homegrown," Matt said. "What I mean by that is that instead of downloading a template from the developers of our virtualization software, we create them based on what we've learned about what our customers are actually doing in the real world; then we optimize the templates around that research."
As an example, the A Small Orange team built a WordPress-optimized template using NGINX to deliver faster content loading for customers' site visitors. "These templates offer a great deal of flexibility, because we’ve created them in house ourselves," Matt said. "We’re able to offer certain performance bonuses that you can’t find with any other provider." Customers can seamlessly switch between various templates as their hosting needs fluctuate.
"From a marketing side, cPanel’s included," Zach said, "so anyone who wants to get started with VPS is not faced with that incremental charge." Ryan added that many of the in-house tools we discussed are integrated with cPanel, "so if someone wants to get these performance enhancements, there are cPanel integrations that we’ve done in house that are a part of those stacks as well."
In addition to cPanel hosting, A Small Orange VPS customers benefit from SSD speed-boosting, resulting in screaming-fast response times. To protect your precious site data, A Small Orange conducts daily site backups, with options for rolling back to previous versions over a 7-day timespan. They also offer R1Soft's Bare-Metal Restore (BMR) backups for all of their servers, along with RAID 1 disk mirroring.
Recognizing that no hosting solution can be one-size-fits-all, the A Small Orange hosting support team is there to help iron out the setup and security details. They offer free migration assistance, 24/7 network monitoring, and a "personable" support experience, to use Matt's words. "We treat the customer like we would want to be treated," he said. They have around 100-or-so support employees and Zach told us those folks make up the "bulk" of the ASO staff. "Support has always been a big deal at ASO and I think the customers recognize that," Matt said. "It really shines through in all of our support channels."
To sum things up: VPS requires flexibility and that power warrants a need for relentlessly reliable support; that support needs to translate from the chat portal to the network of servers — servers which need to be online. A Small Orange's cloud hosting for Linux yields screaming-fast response times, the team offers support you can count on, and the company promises 99.9% uptime for your site. That's a virtual deal you can literally feel good about.
