TECHNOLOGY

From an Old PC to the Cloud

A technological journey of moving from an old PC to a fast Cloud Server.

Back in the early 1990s, I felt like I was crossing a new threshold of technology when I bought my first personal computer (PC). It was a 386-SX, with a 120 megabyte hard drive.

I thought that was so much space, I’d NEVER fill it up. The Disk Operating System (DOS) made me feel like a programmer when I’d type in some DOS command to create a directory or copy a file. I was ready to drive into the future with both my 5.25-inch, AND 3.5-inch floppy drives!

Portable storage, as it was back then, meant it would take 85 3.5-inch disks, or 333 5.25-inch floppies to back up my whopping 120MB hard drive. I knew I’d never fill it up… right? Well, that’s what I thought back then. Today a small USB drive (which didn’t exist then) can easily hold 20x that amount today and some single files are bigger than my 120 MB hard drive.

When Windows 3.0 arrived, I was no longer looking at a DOS prompt asking me to enter a command. There was a new Graphical User Interface (GUI). With expanding technologies, I was learning an entirely new acronym language.

I had some familiarity with computers as my first book was a mainframe diagnostic manual for weapons system computers. While that might sound impressive — save the applause… It’s not. That system was an octal-based structure that weighed over 500 pounds, had only 49 kilobytes of memory, and launched the program with an 8-inch reel-to-reel tape.

Talking to the World

When I got my first email account, it was exciting getting an email… ANY email. Today, when I look at my email box and see over 4,700 emails I still hadn’t gotten to, it somehow lost that sense of excitement.

Somewhere along that time, I found out about a Bulletin Board System (BBS). With my high-speed 1,200 baud modem, I could connect via the phone line and keep my teenage daughter from hanging out on the phone all night.

I’m pretty sure as a teenager, she wasn’t happy with me. 😊

I’d connect to the modem, and it would squeal like a screaming cat. Yet, that was the sound of technology! It was an exciting time and I still had some technological innocence.

Being a guy that’s all about using technological innovations, I created and maintained a BBS to support a technical project for the Coast Guard. I felt like I was on the edge of a new technological world.

Some Humor

While I’m an “efficiency” guy, I like to have fun once in a while. During my Coast Guard time with the BBS, there were some folks that spent some of their days on the PC playing computer golf. To me, that impeded the actual work. I decided to create a short script based upon a scheduled task.

This is how it worked: While they played an 18-hole computer golf game, my script would turn on. The “Blue Screen of Death” would pop up and a series of text lines would display, showing it deleted all files. Three or four guys would go into a panic mode, asking each other what to do. Someone would say, “Turn it off… turn it off!!” when the text line would say,

“DO NOT TURN OFF THE COMPUTER. DOING SO WILL CAUSE THE HARD DRIVE TO SELF-DESTRUCT!!!”

It forced them to sit there and watch the ending line of text: “All data deleted. Have a nice day!” I’d sit in the corner watching this, trying to hold my internal burst of laughter. When this scenario played out a couple more times, they gave up and opted to get back to work.

The Internet and Publishing

When this thing called the “Web” came about, I was still making sense of what I knew so far for the technological future. I learned the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and started a series of new websites that NO ONE ever visited… ever.

Then came 9/11. Because of the work I was doing around that time, I created an online resource to keep law enforcement and security managers talking to one another. Starting with 50 local readers, it eventually grew to a huge nationwide readership. This experience showed the potential for online publishing.

The problem was that web servers can get overloaded when lots of people connect. Plus, hosting companies were there to make money — not support me when things went bad. One day, I went to my site to see someone totally took it over and my front page had a radical Islamic scheme with music and well… it wasn’t good.

The hosting company didn’t have a recent backup of the site, so I had a lot of rebuilding. I moved to another well-known hosting company, and they wanted to charge a lot of money for every little thing.

That was getting expensive when they wanted to charge me almost $800 to move the sites to a cPanel setup.

Even though they agreed to do that for free years earlier, they somehow never got to it and decided it was better to charge me. Plus, with that move, all of my sites would be down for days. I opted to not go that way, and shortly afterward, all of my SSL-encrypted sites kept crashing. That meant all my sites were down. The SSLs were also a separate charge which brought my costs up high for inconsistent service.

Then there was the Malware problem. This became a big issue with the last hosting service. I noticed my traffic was declining. I did some research and I found there were 35 redirected sites (coming from my site) that pointed at a Viagra reseller.

Apparently, hackers got in and injected malware in the form of .php files. The files would redirect my traffic to their places. It became a game of cat and mouse as I would have to search my files each day and delete newly implanted malware and then block their IP addresses.

I reached out to the hosting company and asked them about malware protection. “Sure” they said. “There’s a fee for that.”

I asked, “Don’t you protect the server you are using to ensure you are not getting stuff injected?”

“Sure. We check the files of people that pay for it.”

It was time to make a move… but where?

The Cloud is the Best Thing I’ve Found

I’d heard of cloud computing but really wasn’t sure how it would work for my sites. I found a cloud hosting company and I began talking with them to get all the details. These folks are amazing. I wish I’d found them earlier.

Within hours (not days), all of my sites were up and running. They all have SSL encryption that comes free with the hosting. There are daily backups, everything is available with the cPanel platform, I have SSLs, emails, metrics, malware protection and more for less than half of what I paid at the other place.

There are some neat things about the cloud:

• Cloud servers have redundant systems. If something happens to a server in California, they can switch to one on the east coast and within a few seconds, everything is back online.
• They are easily scalable. If I need more capability during a marketing push, they can upgrade and it is ready.
• They operate with a secure firewall to protect my sites.
• Malware removal. Since moving to this company, I have never had to worry about that issue again.
• Then there is the HUGE speed increase. At the other place, I grew used to clicking and waiting while the system was talking back and forth. My sites are the fastest that I’ve ever seen them.
• Customer support. While writing this, I put in a tech call to the old place to see how long it would take. There was a recording telling me they expect a wait of at least 39-minutes. I reached out to the new folks on their customer support panel and I had a reply in a couple minutes. I understand that customer response can differ from place to place. I read a lot of reviews about the new company and everyone said they are great.

I agree.

I believe it’s important to share the differences between my experiences on a typical server and the advantages of the cloud server. Depending on your needs, you might find this useful. In my search for options to host my websites, I found my current provider by accident.

It was a happy accident.

If you have an Internet business and are selling services or products online, time and consistency = money gained, or money lost if you are not supported properly as in my scenario with the previous hosting company.

Because my sites are so fast, I’m in the process of revamping them all to allow greater functionality.

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Note: This article includes an affiliate link to my current provider.

⭐️ About Anthony M. Davis

Anthony M. Davis is a Leadership, Success & Stress Coach, Board Certified Therapist, and Top-100 International Travel Photographer. His free book, “Keys to Your Success” is available now.

For Coaching availability, email me at: [email protected]