Instinctive Software

Here is a number of software and services that I have had success with in the past,

Hosting – http://inetu.com , http://rackspace.com , http://rackforce.com , http://mediatemple.net

Backup – http://www.bacula.org

Monitoring – Nagios , WebSitePluse

Configuration – http://www.parallels.com/plesk/ Plesk

Virtualization – http://vmware.com and http://xen.org

Testing – WebTest http://webtest.canoo.com

Bot Net’s are very common, with out good software development one of your servers can easily become part of a bot net. Which can start bringing down your site at the most unwanted time.

It is a large enough problem that the FBI has gone after networks to shut them down.

http://newhaven.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel11/nh041311.htm