Security OAuth: the gold standard for authorisation The internet is faster and more convenient than ever. Data can flow freely between websites and applications, saving a huge amount of time and effort for the end-user, all without... read more
Servers Hard disk health check We've all been there, one day our computer is working normally, the next its hard disk drive gives out and you're left scratching your head at... read more
Cloud What is thin provisioning? We previously wrote about the methods of data deduplication [https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/blog/data-deduplication/] and file compression [https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/blog/linux-compression-all-about-compromise/] for optimising storage space.... read more
Servers Data deduplication When it comes to computer, storage space is a hot commodity. More often than not, many of us tend to find that we need far more storage space than we... read more
Servers Phusion Passenger: a new web app server With its anime robot-inspired logo and feature rich design, Phusion Passenger is clearly keen to present itself as the newest sleek and innovative tool for web hosting and development. But... read more
Servers Config management: Puppet or Chef? For any organisation bigger than a bedroom start-up, the days of running a couple of servers in a cupboard are long gone. In the era of multi-server, decentralised cloud infrastructures,... read more
Servers What is blockchain? The idea of cryptocurrency has been around for a while now but gone are the days of Bitcoin being your only crypto investment option. Since Bitcoin came on the scene,... read more
Websites What is GraphQL? We previously discussed the difference between REST and SOAP for building APIs and web services. But there is an alternative solution that is becoming increasingly popular. Better than all the... read more
Websites Moving to a microservices architecture Alongside containerisation, ‘microservices’ is very much a software development buzzword. But just like with containers, the innovative and far-reaching technology behind the buzzword makes the microservices concept far more than... read more
Cloud Container orchestration with Kubernetes Hosting a small number of containers on a single server is no huge undertaking, especially with easy access to container images on the Docker platform. But hosting hundreds or thousands... read more
Cloud Getting started with Docker containers If you have anything to do with web or app development, you’ll almost certainly have heard of containerisation and the benefits it can provide. But if you haven’t... read more
Digital Continuous integration tools: Jenkins vs Travis CI Software development can be complicated, especially when things go wrong. Say two developers are working on a project. They are each coding on separate branches of the master code in... read more
Cloud Nagios server monitoring Managing a server is a 24/7 job. Traffic can spike, systems and applications can go offline, updates need to be installed, and RAM needs to be managed around the... read more
