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

One of the great aspects of being in a new operations role is the ability to take a look at policies and procedures with a fresh eye. As the new senior director of Data Center Operations at The Planet, that’s been one of my first priorities.

I have never been a fan of policies written by senior executives and then simply rolled out with a directive to follow. For any policy to be effectively implemented, I contend that the team that must follow these policies should have a hand in helping to craft the policies or at least understand why the policies were created. More importantly, these processes come together through the team, rather than from a single individual’s effort. The best method I have seen for this comes from the Six Sigma Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) methodology.

In our data centers, we have created a Continuous Process Review (CPR) team made up of technicians, supervisors and managers across multiple cities. This team is solely responsible for the review and creation of all operations policies, processes and procedures across our six data centers.

The results from our team’s work together have been outstanding. In the last two months, we have produced new and/or updated policies for operational functions like ticket prioritization, technical escalations and management escalations. Since all levels of the data center operations organization are represented, the response to the new policies has been fantastic.

I owe many thanks to all the people who have participated on this new CPR team. None of this could have been achieved without their hard work and dedication.

The Planet’s goal is to provide the best customer experience in the hosting industry, and the data center operations team plays a huge role in that experience. Our ability to adapt to the evolving hosting landscape and respond directly to customer feedback is instrumental in improving the way our data centers run, so if you have any suggestions with regard to our data center policies and procedures, please let me know.

-Scott