Overview of the Shared Web Hosting Service
The shared hosting environment began as the Ohio Server Project in 1995 offering site development and hosting services to state agencies. Shared Hosting now focuses on Website hosting and Web Application hosting. Site development and content management is fully under the control of the individual agency. Agency staff members are provided with individual FTP accounts which they then use to load files to the hosting environment through a secure FTP site.
Load Balancing & Session State
The hosting environment includes three production servers which receive requests from a load balancing switch. A session state server is provided for those applications or sites that need to track session state for a given user in a load-balanced environment. To ensure that the session can be accessed regardless of the server, the session state address is referenced via a domain name.
Database Options
The Shared Web Hosting service includes two database environments and supports connectivity to agency owned database installations. The two in-house environments are SQL Server 2008 and MS-Access. Within certain boundaries connectivity can also be provided out to agency owned databases such as Oracle.
Web Usage Reports
The usage reports are ran against the log files generated for the websites in the hosted environment every 2-3 months when a customer request a report. These reports are available to hosting customers at webstats.das.state.oh.us:81. Reports for the current and previous year are maintained on this site. Hosting customers are encouraged to view these reports on a regular basis. Please contact us to request assistance with any missing reports. Log files are not maintained beyond a few months and once the log files have been deleted missing reports cannot be generated.
Support Services
Hosting staff will be available during business hours to troubleshoot the hosting environment to isolate problem areas and ensure that the hosting environment is functioning within established standards. Hosting staff will not be able to assist with application code issues beyond making basic recommendations and providing best practices information.
Video
Hosting customers are free to use RealVideo, WindowsMedia, or QuickTime to provide video content on their sites. These products support a form of serverless "http streaming" (aka "progressive download"). For streaming video services, please contact Dan Shellenbarger of Ohio Government Telecommunications at 614-466-3798 or send email to danogt@aol.com. The OGT website can be seen at http://www.ogtv.org/.