The Planet Blog

A month ago, Urvish posted that Orbit 2.0 was live and available for all customers. As we reach the halfway point in the roll-out and transition process, it’s rewarding to look back at all the great feedback we’ve gotten from customers and the improvements we’ve been able to incorporate as a result.

With recommendations touching on everything from design and layout changes to functionality and feature requests, the portal’s social web “2.0″ suffix is well deserved. Comparing the portal release from 30 days ago with the current release is like night and day … or maybe more like dawn and noon. With the hard work of our development team, we’ve been squashing bugs and tweaking the system to be the extremely fast and easily usable resource our customers expect it to be.

That being said, we still want your feedback as we head down the home stretch of this transition. On August 17, we’ll be closing our legacy Orbit 1 and ServerCommand portals, and we want to make sure every one of our customers is comfortable with Orbit 2.0 before we get there.

If you’re a customer and you haven’t had an opportunity to visit https://orbit2.theplanet.com, take a few minutes and click around to get familiar with the new system. Imagine you’ve got to create a new ticket on one of your hardware objects … Is it clear to you how to get to the screen below?

What about if you need to change your credit card? How do you add a new user to your account? Can you check the bandwidth usage on one of your servers?

By clicking through the portal to execute these common tasks, you’re bringing a new set of eyes and a different perspective … and you’ll have great feedback that we want to hear. Are the sections logically laid out? Are additional descriptions or explanations required to make the portal more usable? Do our legacy portals offer better handling of a given task?

If you’ve got any ideas for improvements or you note any inconsistent performance, don’t be bashful in using the “Report Portal Issue” link at the top-right of the header. We want to hear from you so we can make Orbit 2.0 feel like home for you.

-Nadja

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

Hi there. It’s me again. I’m still in the trenches, trying to find a decent Reuben sandwich in the tunnels.

Daylight saving time ended last month in Texas, and as I changed my clocks, I dutifully replaced the battery in my smoke alarm, just like the public service announcements advised. As I balanced on a chair on top of my coffee table, I pondered: Why is the smoke alarm running on a battery and not, say, plugged into the wall?

Well, in a fire, power can get interrupted, so it’s best to have the smoke alarm running on an independent source of power that you can test and replace when necessary. In a way, this applies to your server, too.

Since my previous post, I’ve counted up a total of 18 incidents where a customer did not get notification of an update to a ticket or a critical message regarding a change to our services. Every one of those missed communications could be traced to an e-mail address residing on the affected server. Each one of those customers suffered downtime because they either didn’t receive an alert in a reasonable amount of time or they didn’t respond to a technician who was ready and waiting to assist them.

And those incidents were just the ones that I fielded … there’s no telling how many folks out there have their “server smoke detectors” hard-wired into the wall.

It’s critical that you keep your contact information up-to-date in Orbit and that you provide us with an external e-mail address. Same thing goes with the monitoring system: Use a contact address that will work if the server goes down.

The best solution I’ve found is to use a third-party provider like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, and forward those contacts/alerts to your primary mailbox (which can be on your server). By setting your contact address to a third-party provider first, you can ensure that you will always be able to access any important notifications. If you use a mail program like Outlook or Thunderbird, you can have the program check your third-party mailbox in parallel with your primary mailbox, eliminating the need to set up an auto-forward rule.

My advice: Do both.

Yes, I know that means you’ll get two messages for every one delivered to that emergency line, but in the end, isn’t it better to be over-notified of a potential emergency than to not hear about it at all?

-Laurence