High availability
High availability is essential to web sites if they are going to be a profitable venture. With the world wide web accessible globally
every effort has to be made to make sites available virtually 24/7. Access 24/7 in not realistic but every effort should be made to get
as close to that standard as possible. Redundant hardware
systems and alternate hosting options should be employed to provide the greatest availability possible.
Uninterruptible power supplies enable sites to stay up and running for short periods of time if an establishment power systems fails.

Redundancy
Using redundant hardware systems is a relatively inexpensive way to increase availability. The cost of the "Iron" has gone down considerably over the past several generations of hardware. Besides the capital investment benefits the increased availability to customers and their enhanced satisfaction can only increase the bottom line profitability to a company.
Inexpensive, compact storage drives enable companies to mirror
information, using raids and balance data access, which improves performance and availability.

Webhosting.ca's hosting system for a large e-commerce site with load balancing, redundancy and backup servers.

Hosting options
A variety of hosting options are available today to companies today. The serious players on the web are generally using fractional T1 service for bandwidth and dedicated servers.
Networking devices like these enable fractional T1 support providing options for connectivity known as collocation. Powerful cost effective servers enable companies to have greater control and security.

Attacks

Attacks on web sites generally take shape in three forms. Denial of service, that performs a multitude of false logons generated by programs that prevent legitimate customers from accessing the site. Distributed denial of service which high jack the server(s). And tcp-syn attacks that spawn processes on servers.

Defense
Various defense methods have been developed to protect web sites from attacks. They include firewall's which block information from entering the site, network address translation, that transmit numerous addresses and demilitarized zones that contain less sensitive information that acts as a buffer.

Content filtering
Selectively eliminates certain types of information and files from being able to access the web site.

Virus protection
Prevents known software virus programs from gaining access to the site.

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