stunning websites - idiot proof editing
Managed Hosting Solutions
Reliable Industry Standard Solutions
We utilise Linux servers because of their level of security and reliability. Linux is a tried and tested solution and accounts for over 60% of web sites on the internet today. The nearest rival Microsoft runs under 25% of web servers internationally, we believe this is largely due to the need to update and restart Microsoft servers on a regular basis, they also seem, in our experience, to be more vulnerable to viruses and unplanned downtime.
Distributed Servers for Fail Safe Business Class Resilient Set-up
Hosting websites since 2002 has given us a lot of experience of what to do if anything tends to fail. Although the Linux servers we use are very reliable, the network connections are often the weakest link. We only utilise dedicated servers hosted in professional data centres, with large multi Gigabit connections, however we can't control who else is based in these data centres. From time to time it is inevitable that another server or website will be attacked, or a piece of hardware on the network infrastructure will fail. To minimise risk to our own sites we duplicate all of our sites so they always exist as an up-to-date copy on at least one other server in another completely separate data centre in another part of the country.
This technique means if one of our hosting company's has technical problems, or worse goes out of business, we won't lose a single byte of data and should be able to switch providers within five minutes of a problem being identified.
Belt and Braces Approach to Backup and Data Integrity
Creating websites that can be updated at any time from anywhere has it's own unique set of backup issues. It's often said that you should backup as often as how much time you wouldn't mind wasting. When you multiply that by the hundred or so CMS sites we currently host that turns in to potentially a lot of work wasted. To that end we backup our databases to another server within seconds of you updating your website. All files you upload are backed up within a couple of hours. In addition to this we take backups for roll back purposes every night and every weekend so we can roll your site back to a state of previous days. The final layer of backup happens monthly when we take a copy of our servers locally to our internal servers.
All in all we typically have 4-5 copies of your website at any one time. So to lose data with Duo you have to be working very hard!
Utilising State of the Art Data Centres
Duo utilises data centres based both locally in Manchester and in London. We spread this for the reasons stated above. We choose our data centre providers based on their ability to get back to us as soon as possible if there are any problems (usually under 15 minutes). Our providers all have service level agreements on connectivity, cooling and power supply. To meet these high levels of services they'll have back-up generators in case of electricity outage, an air conditioning system to regulate the temperature of the rooms where the servers are operating and multiple Tier 1 connections to the internet backbone.
Design, Programme, Host. If it's not working, ring us.
Because we provide an end to end service with our websites, hosting DNS, CMS, programming and developing, their is only one person to call if there is a problem with your site. We encourage all of our clients to let us provide them with an end to end solution because it's in their and our interest to resolve any problems quickly. Waiting for a third party to fix an issue which they can easily blame us for costs time and when every provider blames someone else it can soon turn a technical issue into a 'buck passing' exercise.