The High availability clusters are computer clusters which are implemented mainly for the purpose of improving the availability of the services. The high availability clustering detect hardware/software faults, and instantly restart the application on another system without requiring administrative intercession, this process is commonly known as a Failover process. It has functionality that provides failover from one node to another if the current node becomes unavailable, a failover cluster appears on the network as a normal application, but it has additional functionality that increases its availability in case one server fail.

The clustering software may configure the node before starting the application on it. To run the system smoothly it require appropriate filesystems to be imported and mounted and  to set-up cluster rules that enable a common set of configurations also network hardware may have to be configured, and some supporting applications may need to be running as well.

Diagram: HA Cluster network (2 node)

The purpose of HA clusters to utilize all available techniques to make the individual systems/shared infrastructure as reliable as possible. The high availability clustering should include the following;

* Build redundancy into a cluster.

* Redundant network connections so that a switchover or network interface failures do not result in network outages.

* Disk mirroring to avoid system crashes in case of failure of internal disks.

* SAN data connections.

* Redundant electrical power inputs.

The high availability  clusters usually use a critical clustering in private network connection which is used to monitor the status of each node in the cluster. Such clustering are often required for critical databases,  business applications, file sharing on a network and customer services such as e-commerce websites.

Quake is the first game in the popular Quake series of computer and video games, here is the quake family tree showing the growth phase, I hope the game programmers would love to take a look. Quake and its four sequels, sold over 4millions copies combined together. Image source: wikipedia

Media streaming grown to be chiefly a powerful vehicle for audio-video broadcasting, teleconferencing, group chat, radio & weather relay station and moreover extended to different level of services. If you’re planning to build  a website for streaming services for broadcasting audio-video media over the internet, you will need a level headed web hosting services who are capable to offer you shoutcast dedicated server and provide you  direct, fast and secure access to your users without any interruption.

If you wish to install shoutcast on linux here is the process to install in easy step;

SHOUTcast consists of a client-server model hence you should not run it as root because it can create security issue, instead you should create a shoutcast user:

Follow these steps;
1.) Login to root through SSH on the server.
2.) adduser shoutcast
3.) passwd shoutcast
Login as the new shoutcast user, or you can su to the user.

su shoutcast

Download shoutcast from nullsoft:
1. http://www.shoutcast.com/downloads/sc1-9-2/shoutcast-1-9-2-linux-glibc6.tar.gz
Lets extract shoutcast:
2. tar -zxvf shoutcast-1-9-2-linux-glibc6.tar.gz
Lets tidy up the directory:
3. rm -rf shoutcast-1-9-2-linux-glibc6.tar.gz
mv shoutcast-1-9-2-linux-glibc6 shoutcast
cd shoutcast
Shoutcast has now been installed!

configure shoutcast on following step;

Now edit the configuration file.
pico sc_serv.conf
or you can use vi which I prefer, a bit more advanced to use.
vi sc_serv.conf
You can set some important configureation options. Change these settings in the file:
MaxUser
Password
PortBase
uncomment AdminPassword and set an admin password.

Now going through the settings, you can change them to what you want or you can save and start shoutcast and it will work now.
to save crtl+x (if using pico) or :wq if using vi
Now you can start shoutcast here;

./sc_serv sc_serv.conf

Dedicated Hosting reduces your need to share hardware or software with other websites on a server. Dedicated hosting is extremely flexible, and often fits the needs of the more sophisticated users for their high traffic websites.

Due to constant growth in the hosting industry and surrounding competitive environment the rates of the servers declining day by day but obviously you’re going to look for the service provider that provide reliable service and 24×7x365 monitoring of the server and network availability. Also there are tremendous growths of online presence of small and mid-sized businesses that are the reason the level of service are in high demand.

Looking through the benefit of dedicated hosting, “Control and Reliability” this two major factor generally attract the online business owners towards dedicated server since the user is able to make changes and updates on software installed on a server because the users get full root access to the web server. In addition the users get the option to install the software and other resources they need for their websites and optimize page loads speed and allocation of resources on server that truly helps to run a server efficiently in its most optimal configuration throughout the secure environment.

Dedicated server increases the website’s overall presence and also it helps you in performance drives customer retention. If you start realizing that your site is growing in success, and you’re getting more and more interaction and traffic, then dedicated servers start to make more and more sense to go with.

The Game servers are locally or remotely ran dedicated server which are used by game clients to play league matches in a game enthusiastic community. Normally the data are being sent from game client to the game server remotely from where the game server process the data and send it back out to the clients. These game servers generally require large amount of bandwidth since there are incessant flow of data as all players are connected at a time. Generally a host providers set up a Dedicated servers on a separate machine which are often hosted in a data center, the aim are to provide high bandwidth and a secured platform since it does not have to share CPU, that is the reason dedicated servers are more preferable for large game servers and to keep it 24/7 up time technically.

Apart from individually hosted dedicated servers there are companies which are called Game Server Providers (GSPs), those lease dedicated game servers out for a monthly fee where these game server providers use Dedicated servers to host Massively multiplayer online games however in general Massively multiplayer online games are all run on dedicated, usually these providers develop and owns the game title, as this allows them to control and update content and few of them usually run on clustered servers to allow for huge environments and large player count.

In general there are two main types of game server provider which are based on Windows operating systems or Linux or FreeBSD, some game server provider provides both. The dedicated server providers frequently offer web based tools to help control and configure the individual game servers and throughout technical support. If you’re looking for a game server try to find one those provide you full tech-support and those having proven track record of game server hosting and offer you 99.99% uptime.

Greetings,

If you have a new VPS or a dedicated server with cpanel and are looking for some document on guidance how to set the name server for it the here is the step by step to do it.
The hostname must be FQDN - Fully Qualified Domain Name
hostname is the your server’s name that you want to set. For example if you want to set it server.domain.com. Always set the hostname with the DomainName that you owns.

1. http://IP/whm edit dns zone .. select your domain

server IN A YourSeverIPHere
www.server IN A YourSeverIPHere
OR
if you are using shell then you can simply append following lines there in
# vi /var/named/domain.com.db

server IN A YourSeverIPHere
www.server IN A YourSeverIPHere

Save the file
#service named reload
#rndc reload domain.com

2. WHM >> Basic cPanel/WHM Setup >> Hostname
or
Login to shell /server as a root and fire this command the second parameter will the hostname that you want to set.
hostname server.domain.com

3. Check /etc/hosts file that it is set properly.

Just confirm from some expert that you have set that properly, cause changing the hostname will affect few services on your server if you have not done that properly or have done any spelling mistakewhile setting hostname of your server.

4. Fire hostname on your server if it shows the hostname then you have set it properly.

You have set the hostname now.
Cheers..!!

Jason