Does our server in Canada affect us (in US) negatively?

[Artdude]

Hi,

Our server is in Canada, yet we live in the US.
Does this affect anything in a negative way?
Thanx for any info..

Tim

[andyf]

If you are talking about SEO then location of hosting server affect ranking so better to choose a host who have their servers located in same geographical location.
I mean if you are targeting US traffic and would like to top in SE then you should choose a host who have their servers in US.

[chrishirst]

No it won't.

If it was the other way around. Server in US, target audience in country X, now that can make a difference.

[Danny]

I agree with Chrishirst

In this case there will be a positive effect in google.ca, but no effect in google.com

[Artdude]

Thanx guys. I think i'm going to go with FutureQuest down in Orlando, FL, which is only two states away from me.

[IncrediBILL]

Thanx guys. I think i'm going to go with FutureQuest down in Orlando, FL, which is only two states away from me.

I don't recommend hosting on the hurricane coast, or in places that tend to flood, have blizzards, tornadoes or earthquakes.

Doesn't leave a lot of places but I tend to prefer parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as the least likely to have such a nasty natural disaster that my servers risk going offline.

Of course, when that big asteroid slams into Arizona...

Seriously, I used to host in Florida and California, neither were good for reliability. California tends to have electrical grid problems in the summer which are all sorts of fun and Florida is one huff and puff away from a week of darkness.

Although my hosts all had contracts for emergency fuel to run their generators in the event of a disaster, you have to keep in mind that most of those sources need electricity as well to pump that fuel. Katrina was a real eye opener because a really nasty disaster like that means your servers will never come back online any time soon when other places need that fuel such as hospitals.

Think before you host ;)

[Artdude]

I didn't EVEN think about that. Thanx for the eye opener.

Of course, when that big asteroid slams into Arizona...

Or that hugh lava build up under "Old Faithful" blows.

Tim

[Blue]

Any good host will have a disaster/disaster recovery plan in place that re-routes traffic, or re-routes servers, if not instantly then nearly so, from one location to another that is far far removed. And one shouldn't need to nor does one have to pay extra for it.

If any host you are looking at doesn't have disaster plans in place (and you should enquire), look elsewhere.

So really, location does not matter.

[IncrediBILL]

My recommendations were to just avoid problem areas as I've been knocked offline more than a few times even though I always use top notch providers.

The best laid plans can still run foul when the disaster recovery equipment fails which happened to one of my servers just this summer. Part of the emergency generator system failed to engage when a storm knocked out power and about 20 minutes later banks of servers went down when the UPS's all ran out of juice that were on the circuit with the failed generator.

I used to own a hosting company for a few years and know other hosts and I know we weren't the best but we also weren't the worst! It was just a non-stop nightmare of daily equipment and software failure which is why I finally sold out and never looked back but I know from experience where I would and wouldn't host just because of the problems I ran into based on geographical issues and service responsiveness from some of the backbones we used.

FWIW, I've never been overall happier with any provider, including when I ran my own hosting company, than the PEER1 company I'm currently using.

They rock.

YMMV.

[Blue]

LOL!

Looks to me Bill like you're still hosting in CA and FLA, along with a host of other susceptible cities across the globe. :)

I've been (and am currently) in the hosting biz for over 11 years now, so I understand your concerns.

Having hosted in CA though for many many years I can say I've never experienced a millisecond of downtime due to power grid issues. That is probobaly due to my choice of data centers though.

Do all PEER 1's clients get to utilize redundancy, or do you have to pay extra for that? I found no pricing info other than a contact email adress.

I also found no info on PEER 1's site about their backup policy. What's that like?

I'm not trying to find faults (being a Californian, I already know where those are) with PEER 1, just more of a curiosity thing.

[SEFL]

Wow...this is a first. An American using a Canadian web host.

As a Canadian, I can't help but ask...why?

The service is inferior.
The pricing is "beter" than it waas, but it's still generally 20-30% higher.
Not one Canadian web host knows how to configure a web server properly. I've had script-based emails blocked within the same server.
I've had ASP-based hosts not even be able to handle Access databases (or charge for the privilege.)
I had one Canadian host cancel a client's site (before I got my own server) for "pornographic content on the home page". It was a Christian website.
I've seen a Canadian host only allow PHP-Nuke for site building.

You must have found the one good Canadian host out there, Tim.

[Connie]

My host has data centers in Houston, and Atlanta. They made this move a few years ago to ensure sites would be up regardless of which data center they are located in if a disaster happens.

Their plan may or may not work. It has not been fully tested under disaster conditions. Hopefully it never will be.

Like Bill I would be hesitant about hosting in FL. Not that those host do not precautions. If the phone lines are down, or fuel trucks cant get in to refuel the generators, then their plans are worthless IMO.

[IncrediBILL]

LOL!

Having hosted in CA though for many many years I can say I've never experienced a millisecond of downtime due to power grid issues. That is probobaly due to my choice of data centers though.

Do all PEER 1's clients get to utilize redundancy, or do you have to pay extra for that? I found no pricing info other than a contact email adress.

I also found no info on PEER 1's site about their backup policy. What's that like?


Nope, I'm not hosting in CA or FL, I'm using servers in TX and VA at the moment and the VA server will be moved this year.

The problem with CA, when I was a host here, is some of the voltage surges in the summer down in So Cal were strong enough to jack up our surge protection and trigger alarms which I thought was a bit much. The constant power issues resulted in the UPS's dying prematurely and well, you get the idea. Not sure what the problem was exactly but the electric company was never able to help.

Not to mention that little nasty outage a few years back when Gray Davis bought our own electricity back from Enron and left us babysitting a generator in shifts for a couple of days.

Not to mention I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER host anywhere under Level 3's control (out of LA) again and wouldn't be terribly unhappy if a sinkhole opened up beneath their offices. The last time they had a major outage which was the straw that broke this camels back was when some big circuit blew that cost (so I was told) about $100K to replace. We sat around for almost 8 hours waiting while some flunky had to drive to the center of the state to pick up the redundant component since they were too expensive to have on site.

Not like anyone where the part was could being it LA, noooooooo, they had to go get it....

Yes, you have to pay for the redundancy on Peer1 but it's not terribly expensive. I actually use their Server Beach subsidiary for 3-4 years now and it's been rock solid, very impressive.

I use all dedicated servers so the backup policy is MY backup policy, and they offer a backup service for an additional fee which I don't use.

I personally have all my software and data on my local machine, a secondary hard disk, DVD and my servers are redundantly backed up to each other so if one goes down I can make the other sites hot on the alternate server within minutes.

At least that's the theory ;)

[WebSavvy]

My host has their servers in TX, too.

I have to say, I agree with a lot of what Bill has stated so far. Right after Hurricane Katrina, we were doing our monthly deadlink check on the directory and there was a whole bank of sites (about 500) that were suddenly "dead."

Turned out, those sites were on hosts that were taken out by Katrina. It was an awful lot of dead sites. They all had to be moved to 404 queue.

I checked back on a weekly basis to find out when each site might be live again, but more than 90% of them never did come back online.

[IncrediBILL]

I have to say, I agree with a lot of what Bill has stated so far.

You say that like it's an infrequent occurrence!

Wonder what parts she doesn't agree with... :lol:

FWIW, I see whole banks of sites vanish about once a month.

[Blue]

Yup. Those are all problems related to hosts that don't utilize multiple data centers/backbone providers, nor have comprehensive disaster plans.

[WebSavvy]

LOL @ Bill. :D

[IncrediBILL]

Yup. Those are all problems related to hosts that don't utilize multiple data centers/backbone providers, nor have comprehensive disaster plans.

Blue, I've even seen those hosts drop dead.

Wasn't it WestHost (http://www.westhost.com/datacenter.html) that used to host WebmasterWorld (http://www.rogerd.net/articles/webmasterworld-outage) when they went down in flames a couple of years ago, cables cut or some nonsense?

Look at their data center security and disaster recovery plans, useless.

I worked in a high-tech office complex in Silicon Valley when some
idiot chopped through a bunch of fiber optic cable with a backhoe and took out most of the area. The disaster plan quickly became calling colos until we found one unaffected and then shoving servers in the backseat of all our cars and driving as fast as possible to the colo to get 'em back online while the fiber optics were fixed for the next 3 days.

You start learning about why you want a 3rd party DNS service at that point in your life....

Obviously there's no fool proof solution but having redundant copies in redundant data centers with 3rd party DNS seems to make it easier to recover quickly.

[Blue]

Obviously there's no fool proof solution but having redundant copies in redundant data centers with 3rd party DNS seems to make it easier to recover quickly. That is more or less what I've been trying to say.

I look at true redundancy as having data on multiple servers where the instant one server (call it server A) goes down, server B transparently takes over. Server B should ideally be located in a far away geographic region from server A (like in two different states). This is called load balancing.

The other way some hosts do it, is to create mirror data centers, again in far removed geographic areas. Then when one data center is affected, the other is ready in a heartbeat.

[SEFL]

Actually, load balancing only requires two separate servers, not necessarily two servers in two separate locations....just so we're technically correct (and to take away the opportunity for some egomaniacal blackhat to come in and show how smart they are...egomaniacal whitehat just beat you to it!)

As far as hosting goes, there is one thing that should be made clear: there is no preventing against natural disasters, no matter where you host your site. I learned this the hard way about a month and a half ago, and I was a little bit smug about the issue since my server hadn't gone down in four years. Flooding in Chicago and tornadoes in Holly, Michigan took care of that smug in a big hurry.

So hosting in an area that isn't prone to natural disasters doesn't necessarily mean you're safe. But you can't really obsess over it, either. I guess that's all I really wanted to say.

[Dave Hawley]

One can only reduce risks in life, escaping them completely is not possible.

Reducing risk is, in large, down to common sense. The problem with "common sense" is that it's not as common as one would think...............................unfortunately.

Automatic daily backups to a another server in another building (at least) are done by reputable hosts.