The Planet Blog

Over the past few months, several thousand customers have already started using The Planet’s new customer portal – Orbit 2.0. Orbit 2.0 consolidates and improves upon our legacy ServerCommand and Orbit 1.0 portals by providing a functional superset of features and controls, along with an improved user interface. Thanks to the continued testing and valuable feedback from our Orbit 2.0 beta customers, we are ready to release the new customer portal to our entire user base.

Today, ALL CUSTOMERS have full access to Orbit 2.0.

Because we want to ensure you have plenty of time to get acclimated to the new portal, the transition to Orbit 2.0 will span two months. During this time, you can access both Orbit 2.0 and the legacy portals.

On August 17, 2009, we will terminate access to Orbit 1.0 and ServerCommand.

We are committed to making this transition as painless as possible and to ensuring that it will not impact your servers hosted at The Planet. If you’re interested in learning a little more about the transition to Orbit 2.0, here are the answers to the common questions we expect.

What is Orbit 2.0?

Orbit 2.0 is a new version of our customer portal. Orbit 2.0 features an improved navigation structure and layout, allowing easier access to commonly used features:

• Home Tab: By default, this page contains your current account balance, a view of recently opened tickets and any announcements from The Planet.
• Account Management Tab: Provides detailed views of statements, current billable services and payment methods, along with a full interface for managing users and sub-users within Orbit.
• Hardware Tab: Accesses all of the critical management features for your hosted servers, as well as products and services like load balancers, backup and Storage Cloud.
• Domains Tab: Manages your domains, SSL certificates and DNS.
• Network Tab: Allows you to view the health of our overall network, along with bandwidth utilization graphs for your individual servers.
• Tickets Tab: Provides an interface to manage all of your sales and support tickets.
• Orders Tab: Serves as the launch point for you to order additional products and services

How do I log into Orbit 2.0?

You can access Orbit 2.0 at https://orbit2.theplanet.com with your current username and password.

How long will I be able to access my current portal (Orbit 1 and ServerCommand)?

You will be able to access Orbit 1 and ServerCommand through August 17, 2009. On that date, we will terminate access to the legacy portals.

How do I get support for Orbit 2.0?

Orbit 2.0 is our production portal. Support is available through all standard support channels (phone, ticket and chat).

What do I do if I find an issue or have a suggestion for Orbit 2.0?

If you find a bug or have a suggestion, you can contact support or simply press the “Report Portal Issue” link at the top of every page of Orbit 2.

I am an Orbit 1 user, how will I migrate?

No migration is required. Simply log into Orbit 2.0 and use it. You can use both portals interchangeably through August 17, 2009.

I am a ServerCommand user, how will I migrate?

All features, except DNS management, are available in both portals simultaneously. No migration is required for those features, and you can use both portals interchangeably through August 17, 2009. DNS administration is available either through ServerCommand or Orbit 2.0, but not both. Our support team will help you migrate your DNS zones to Orbit 2.0 to allow for the exclusive use of Orbit 2.0. Migrations are not expected to have any DNS downtime, and access to the portal should not be interrupted.

If you have any more questions about the transition to Orbit 2.0, please visit our Orbit 2 Launch Announcement.

Welcome to Orbit 2.0!

-Urvish

After reading our last few posts, you know all about “the cloud” now, right? Well, yes and no. You know about the cloud in a general sense, but when it comes to current applications of the cloud, we need to drill down a little deeper.

The hosting industry is abuzz about cloud computing and cloud storage. Based on some completely fictional research*, 7 out of 10 hosting customers do not differentiate between the two. *The numbers may be fictional, but based on my experience working with customers, the sentiment is entirely true.

Virtualization and Abstraction

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane … back to the days of virtualization. Why? Because the work put into developing virtualization has been a springboard for cloud technologies – specifically with regard to abstraction, the ability to present computational power and/or storage space without theoretical limits. Through abstraction, a single physical server can be divided into several distinct virtual servers, which function as independent physical servers that have their own dedicated resources.

Cloud computing and cloud storage take the principle of abstraction and tweak it. Instead of taking one physical server and creating several independent virtual servers, the development of the cloud takes multiple physical servers and creates virtual servers that freely move between physical machines as though they were all a single server. Naturally, that’s attractive to a hosting customer.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing allows access to theoretically limitless computational resources. A user can scale from one Web server and one database server, to five Web servers and three database servers on the fly, with no upfront capital expenditure. Cloud computing essentially makes one large virtualized server that spans the entire available hardware infrastructure. Instead of having 20 servers with 4GHz of processor power each, the cloud shows 80GHz of processor power.

Cloud computing customers purchase a part of that cloud computing platform, and if no other customers are using resources on a given installation, that customer has the can use all 80GHz of process power one minute and scale back to almost nothing the next minute. The technology is in its infancy, but it’s helping to redefine the concept of a server: It’s not a black-and-white matter of physical resources anymore.

While the hardware abstraction is impressive, the greatest potential benefit of cloud computing is its use in Software as a Service (SaaS). It’s revolutionary to have an office application that scales from 10 users to 10,000 users and also available to anyone or any device with a network connection.

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage can be an amalgam of SaaS and HaaS (Hardware as a Service): Straightforward user interfaces combined with a solid hardware storage infrastructure. Because a cloud storage installation is dedicated to access, protection and serving data, the key component is hard disk space. Being able to pay for the space that meets your specific needs at a given time has significant advantages over a traditional solution like building out a storage area network in your local office. Your storage can be available to all of your satellite offices in London, Asmara and Santiago. Moreover, your company isn’t responsible for repairing file systems, replacing drives, or dealing with Nick Burns (your company’s computer guy). Brilliant!

We’ve launched a very successful cloud storage solution, and if you’re interested in seeing what the cloud can do for you, you can sign up for our Storage Cloud Test. On the cloud computing side, our team has been evaluating the most powerful, reliable and cost-efficient cloud computing solutions, and we plan on launching a computing platform as dominant as the storage platform in the near future.

Cloud computing and cloud storage have come a long way in the past year or two, and with the hosting industry’s focus on the development and enhancement of the platforms, the sky is the limit for the clouds.

Pun intended.

- Chris

Last week, Bruce Eric Anderson visited our H2 Data Center in Houston with a team of colleagues from Dell to check out the unboxing and installation of a new rack of Dell’s PowerEdge710 servers, which feature Intel’s Nehalem processor. As any great evangelist would do, he posted an article about his visit on Dell’s “Inside Enterprise IT” Blog, including a video from inside H2 with The Planet’s General Manager of Dedicated Hosting Urvish Vashi.

Urvish explains the wide array of product and service options available at The Planet and how our close relationship with Dell helps us meet our customers’ needs. Check out the video below to get a sneak peek of the install of the new Dual Xeon 5530 computing powerhouses.

All of the server geeks in the audience are probably drooling right now.

-Kevin

On Monday, Kevin touched on a pretty hot-button topic in our industry when he focused on the hype surrounding “The Cloud.” It reminded me of an interesting chart that plotted where various hosting technologies sit on the “hype cycle.”

Gartner, Inc. is the technology resource and advisory company that created the five-phase hype cycle to track new technologies. Because it’s much easier to understand each of the phases if you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, take a moment to visit Gartner’s explanation of the five phases. Once you’re done there, come on back and we’ll take a look at a hosting-specific version of their hype cycle:

“The Cloud”

Cloud computing and cloud storage are hot and are getting hotter. With the Utopian promises of the cloud making every other hosting platform obsolete, Gartner places “Cloud” between the technology trigger and peak of inflated expectation phases. In its current incarnation, regardless of what you’ve heard, the cloud is not going to do your taxes, balance your checkbook or give you a massage. I’m pretty sure that you’ll hear that it can change your car’s oil and run a marathon for you before we hit the peak of inflated expectations for the technology, but don’t quote me on that yet.

In reality, cloud-based solutions are good for delivering on-demand services with utility-based billing. This is often misrepresented as being cheaper than dedicated alternatives, but the flexibility — of being able to use as much as you need one day and then dropping to zero the next — comes at a price. Your overall spend at the end of the month may well be less than a dedicated alternative, but your $/resource used may be more. If you have a relatively constant computing workload or storage needs, you will be better off with a dedicated device or a cloud product that offers discounts for commitments on usage.

Other important tenets of cloud services are scalability and elasticity. This means the ability to get as much as you need of a certain resource – whenever you need it – and then the ability to revert to your previous usage when the demand spike drops off. Elasticity – the ability to grow and shrink provisioned resources on the fly – is probably more important than scalability for most customers. Every cloud customer benefits from the on-demand management of provisioning additional resources to accommodate unanticipated traffic spikes, and very few will ever push the limits of the system.

Virtualization

Virtualization – the use of software to create independent virtual environments on a single server – is quietly falling from the peak of over-inflated expectations. We’ve realized that the virtualization model isn’t necessarily a complete game changer, but as we head toward the trough of disillusionment, we’re starting to see the real value it can bring.

Virtualization is a great enablement technology in achieving specific business goals: cost savings through higher utilization rates and resource consolidation – plus power and space savings – are achievable, as are cost-effective disaster recovery solutions. Not everyone can save money with virtualization. To begin, you need enough servers so when they’re consolidated, the virtualization technology spend is less than the cost of the decommissioned servers. In fact, a typical outcome is the infrastructure is made far more resilient because of the inherent values of virtualization – and costs don’t drop significantly … A good outcome overall, but not the panacea that was promised a few years back.

Hosting

While the dedicated hosting model has been around for a while, it’s still growing and evolving. As an offshoot of colocation, the model seemed pretty straightforward. One might assume that the hype has plateaued, but we’re still seeing flashes of enlightenment.

We’ve realized that hosting doesn’t just apply to Web servers, but is relevant to the rest of the back office. Multiple service levels have evolved in the hosted environment, so customers can choose exactly what they need – from completely self-managed dedicated servers to fully managed hosting solutions. Many who have long outsourced their Web hosting needs are starting to push email and collaboration applications to hosting providers. Email is a great example of an application well suited to hosting– while everybody needs email, does everybody need an email server or email administrator? Many hosting companies offer email as a service too, removing the need to even plan capacity on a single dedicated server.

Colocation

Colocation has found its groove, and we can safely say it’s on the plateau of productivity. It’s tough to misrepresent the expectations and the utility of the agreement: space, bandwidth and power to your server.

One sign that colo has found its place in the market is that we can easily define who it does suit: larger customers who own their equipment and have permanent IT staffs. It allows them to save money on data center acquisition and maintenance costs, while still allowing them to control over the infrastructure they desire. On the flip side, colocation is not necessarily suitable for a small shop with zero IT resources looking for regular maintenance assistance on a couple of Linux servers.

Caveat

Just because technologies like cloud and virtualization are apparently on their way to the trough of disillusionment doesn’t mean they are of any less utility than hosting or colocation … it’s just important to understand their popularity in the context of something like a hype cycle. Heck, we just released a storage cloud platform that is going to make hard drives obsolete.

Oh … did I just inflate expectations a little more?

-Rob

The Planet has five core values. We are quizzed about them at companywide meetings, and they permeate our daily operations. I recently came across a passage when rereading “The Art of War” that may serve as a secondary set of core values for the team that handles The Planet’s new Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers offering:

Now there are five matters to which a general must pay strict heed. The first of these is administration; the second, preparedness; the third, determination; the fourth, prudence; and the fifth, economy.
– Wu Ch’i (430 – 381 BC)

Each one of the elements Wu mentions can be interpreted differently depending on the situation. Given that I work with the team that recently launched Alpha Professional, I can’t help but draw parallels. If you missed our press release on January 12, let me recap this new service offering:

Staffed around the clock (24×7) by dedicated and certified (RHCE, MCSE, CCNA) system administrators, The Planet has created a new business-class service offering that our clients have been asking for. The Alpha Professional feature set includes:

• First-call resolution: When you need a certified team of experts to take personal ownership of support incidents for your most important servers, Alpha Professional is ready to respond. You make one call, and the issue is resolved.
• One-hour hardware replacement Service Level Agreement (SLA): The Planet’s one-hour hardware replacement SLA provides you with peace of mind. If your server or any of its hardware components fail, we will replace them within one hour.
• Managed Backup: If you require a restore or you’d like to modify your backup scheduling, our team is available to assist you around the clock. Twenty GBs of high-availability redundant storage is included with Alpha Professional, and plug-ins for MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Exchange and SharePoint are available at no additional cost.
• Server Monitoring and Reaction: Our team of monitoring engineers is constantly on standby, watching for service notifications from your server. If a critical fault is detected any time of day, they immediately jump into action to resolve the service issue. In the event the service issue is lasting longer than anticipated, our team will reach out to your designated contact(s) to provide updates and guidance on a correct course of action and ETA on a resolution.

The Alpha Professional service package is available on virtual and private racks or on a per-server basis at $125 per server per month, so you can buy the service for the servers that are critical to your business. Other hosting providers require this kind of coverage on your entire installation, but we understand that you might not need us to monitor or run regular backups on your sandbox environments or your development servers, so you shouldn’t be required to add the service to those servers if it doesn’t fit your needs.

Managed Dedicated Servers or Managed Hosting?

So now we have Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers and Managed Hosting. They are two very distinct offerings linked by the generic-yet-fitting-in-both-cases term “managed” in their names. Managed Dedicated Servers is focused on your infrastructure. Managed Hosting is focused on your environment.

Managed Dedicated Servers ensure the uptime of your critical hosting infrastructure — including servers, firewalls, load balancers, etc. — and we allow you to manage everything from the operating system up.

Managed Hosting is a complete soup-to-nuts service offering in which your dedicated team has an intimate knowledge of your applications and databases. The Planet’s team will maintain a continuous conversation with you to tweak your systems, scale your installation and plan for the future. If you have database issues or you find your application is loading slowly, the Managed Hosting team will work through these issues with you. For a complete side-by-side breakdown of features by service type, visit http://www.theplanet.com/hosting-services/.

If you haven’t done so already, you can find complete information on Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers at http://www.theplanet.com/managed-dedicated-server/.

-Todd

Over the last few days, you may have read about a server’s complete data loss that resulted in the demise of blog hosting provider Journalspace.

In their assessment of the disaster, Journalspace found they had been replicating data to a second hard drive in their server via RAID to provide both backup and disaster recovery abilities. The data disaster occurred when the data on the first drive disappeared: this condition was immediately replicated to the second drive, resulting in total data loss. In turn, Journalspace users lost all their blog entries, ultimately leading to Journalspace’s decision to close its doors for good.

Now, it’s very easy to point the finger and say that these guys should have had a better backup strategy in place, but I’ll leave that to the experts on Slashdot … I’m more interested in using this as a proof point for the many hosting customers I know who are in the same position or worse – considering the fact that many don’t have even a second hard drive. If you are in this category, please use this as a cautionary tale, and let it remind you that you need a proper backup solution to protect your business.

A common misconception is that “real” backup solutions are prohibitively expensive. While the costs of storage solutions were relatively high in the past, prices have come down dramatically in recent years, which makes backup products correspondingly cheaper. Today you can have your data backed up – off your server – starting at just $5 a month.

It takes just one of these potential data-loss instances to make years of investing in a backup solution worthwhile.

Naturally, my preference would be that you buy a backup solution from The Planet. We have a range of competitively priced products and services for any size company. But really, I would prefer that you buy a backup solution from anywhere rather than stay unprotected … after all, the survival of your business could depend on how you decide to back up your server.

-Rob

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed an interesting trend: “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year … Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.”

Moore was initially noting the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit at a relatively constant minimal cost. Because that measure has proven so representative of the progress of our technological manufacturing abilities, “Moore’s Law” has become a cornerstone in discussions of pricing, capacity and speed of almost anything in the computer realm. You’ve probably heard the law used generically to refer to the constant improvements in technology: In two years, you can purchase twice as much capacity, speed, bandwidth or any other easily-measureable and relevant technology metric for the price you would pay today and for the current levels of production.

While I never questioned these assertions, I can’t say that I really investigated to see if Moore’s Law actually held true in the world of storage, especially with regard to the two key storage characteristics: capacity and throughput. Sure, prices for the same technology get lower over time – we all know that – but that’s just because no one wants the old stuff, right? Does Moore’s observation about the doubling of transistor density actually relate to hard drive capacities? What about throughput rates?

Once I started looking into historical storage-related statistics, it became clear that Moore’s Law doesn’t completely explain the evolution of storage technology. The primary driver for hard drive capacity – the disk’s areal density – has been increasing at 60 percent per year (or around 1.6x every two years), so that key metric of storage appears to correlate with Moore’s transistor observation, but drive speeds and seek times have not improved in a similar exponential manner.

This dichotomy may seem a little strange, but I think capacity limitations have been a more significant problem for the industry as a whole than throughput rates, so drive manufacturers have thrown more of their R&D budgets into improving that key characteristic first. The proven, constant increase in storage capacity reflects a focus on meeting user demand for that storage capacity, and if the incremental value of an additional gigabyte of storage decreases, I think we’ll see a similar improvement in throughput rates as manufacturers turn their focus to that other key storage characteristic. Moore’s observation focused on manufacturing with the single goal of more transistors on an integrated circuit, so we can’t really say Moore’s Law “doesn’t apply” to storage since hard drive manufacturers have several key measurements to improve at a given time.

Thanks to the trend Gordon Moore recognized 48 years ago, we were recently able to drop the prices on several of our backup products. EVault Backup is now priced at $1 per GB, down from $2, and Network Backup product is now priced at 50 cents per GB, down from $1, and they are both free for 90 days. If you’re interested in learning more about our data protection and backup options, check out my “What is Data Protection?” blog or leave me your questions in the comments section here.

-Rob