The Planet Blog

Smack dab in the middle of downtown Houston’s theater district sits the somewhat ambiguous – and intriguing – structure we call The Planet HQ. Just walking into the place is an awe-inspiring undertaking. It’s an old conference center that has been completely renovated with offices, conference rooms and catwalks. At this very moment, if I look to the right I see a neon blue-lit Ferris wheel spinning at the Aquarium restaurant complex across the road, and I can’t help but feel a little intimidated by the environment.

I recently joined The Planet as a Sr. Technical Support Specialist, so part of the intimidation might be the “new job” aspect. The place looks nice and the people seem great, so there has to be a catch. I’ve been around the block in the IT industry’s call centers and their ilk, and my honest expectation was to be hurled into the important, but somewhat soul-sucking, role of being a nameless cog in a corporate machine. That isn’t the case at all here.

I’m amazed by the depth of effort each of The Planet’s departments puts into interconnectivity. Yes, I answer phones, take care of customer concerns and work on servers, but what makes the real difference is the fact that everyone – and I mean everyone – has the opportunity to participate in the inner workings of The Planet as a whole.

My primary focus is helping our customers get the results they want, and at the same time, I have the opportunity to research, develop and contribute to every aspect of The Planet’s business. If I think something could be done better and have an idea on how to fix it, I won’t be dropping a card into a bottomless suggestion box … I’ll be contacting the person in charge – even up to the CEO – and presenting it myself. From what I’ve witnessed, those recommendations are taken seriously. Employees are empowered to make their jobs better and make customers happier. That’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

I’m still pretty new here, and the natural intimidation I felt when I first walked into this building hasn’t completely worn off. But as I start to feel a little more comfortable, I can’t help but be proud that I have the opportunity to work with a company that treats its employees the way The Planet does. Not only does the environment give me the enthusiasm to do what needs to be done, but I honestly believe this approach will take the company to the top. If you ask me, that’s the kind of company I want to be a part of.

This may all sound like a PR spiel, but I can’t think of any other way to be more honest about my impressions as a first-month employee entering the fray. In the coming months, I hope to elaborate more on some of the actual operations happening here and talk about some of the services we’re building and providing. There’s definitely some exciting stuff in the works, and I’m looking forward to diving in head-first and giving you all a sneak peek.

-Ryan

What defines “value” in hosting for you? Is it all about price? The quality of the server? The quality of the network? Is it an intangible peace of mind? Where do great service and support fit in?

In 2010, The Planet is raising the bar. We are on a quest to bring our customers the best hosting value, and we’ve started making some big changes. We’ve lowered many of our regular server prices and added new server lines to our product catalog, including a low-end model with Intel’s newest Pentium G6950 processor.

You shouldn’t need a special deal to get a great server at the best price, and our new approach to pricing guarantees that for you.

While lowering prices is a good first step in becoming a leading provider of value hosting, it’s just that — the first step. We know that you want to run and maintain your server with as little interference as possible, so we just launched a value bundle program to empower you with the tools you need: With every new server you purchase from The Planet, we’re going to provide a free control panel, 10 GB of free cloud storage and free Symantec antivirus software. That’s not for a limited time — it’s a permanent value-add.

Thus far, we’ve only talked about a few of the server-side changes we’ve made, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Value hosting is not defined by bottom lines and add-ons. The most valuable hosting offering is the one that provides the best data centers, network and support for a given budget, so we’re investing in those areas of our business.

Since value is perceived on a customer-by-customer basis, your experience is our focus. In the coming weeks and months, you’ll hear about some of the huge investments we’re making to increase your satisfaction. The Planet has always been known for the quality of our service, and we’re not resting on our laurels. We want your experience to be even better.

If you’re interested in learning more about our new offerings and Twitter-exclusive deals, be sure to follow @ThePlanetSales.

2010 is already an exciting year at The Planet!

-Kevin

On January 12, Haiti was rocked by a series of devastating earthquakes. In the past week, people from around the world have come together to provide supplies and support to the Haitian people and their ravaged nation. More than $24 million has been pledged via text message to the American Red Cross International Response Fund , and groups like Doctors Without Borders, Shelterbox, AmeriCares and International Medical Corps have been working around-the-clock to provide as much help as possible.

With all of the ongoing relief efforts, it has been difficult to decide how we could be involved and make the biggest difference without making our involvement seem like it’s about us. It turns out we’re not alone in that sentiment. Over the past week, The Planet has been working with other hosting companies including Rackspace, PEER 1, GoGrid and ServInt to create an industry-wide campaign to provide relief:

We know the power we have as a group exceeds the sum of the contributions we could make on our own, so we’re putting aside our fierce competitiveness for the greater social good. If you’re able to help, you can be sure you’re making a difference.

Visit HostingForHaiti.com to learn more about how you can help by donating to the American Red Cross and spreading the word about this effort.

If you’re a Web host and you’d like to join this industry-wide effort by posting a blog and spreading the word to your social network, e-mail info@hostingforhaiti.com to be included.

Follow the progress of the effort on Twitter by following @hostingforhaiti or searching for the #hostingforhaiti hash-tag.

We hope to make a difference through our unified efforts by providing immediate assistance to the tens of thousands of Haitians in need. Please join us to expand our reach.

In “The Art of the Start,” Guy Kawasaki references the importance of operating under mantra rather than a mission statement. He argues that there’s no need to loquaciously explain your goals and practices to others (and yourself) if you instead pinpoint the key driving force behind your business and make it self-evident and unifying in everything you do.

Guy cites the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator as one of the best resources in creating a meaningless, buzzword-filled mission statement to rival those created by teams of consultants. The tool (now offline) allowed you to enter a few key phrases and select your favorite fancy words to create a mission statement like one he included in his “The Art of the Start” session at the Houston Technology Center:

We exist to professionally build long-term high-impact sources so that we may endeavor to synergistically leverage existing effective deliverables to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world.

The mission statement medium almost begs for $10 words when you really need to express a simple thought.

Take a look at The Planet’s Mission Statement … Notice anything interesting about it? Take a look at the heading:

Our Mission: Be the Best Host for You.

You don’t have to read beyond the first line of the page to know what we’re about. The sentiment might not be revolutionary, but what it loses in originality, it makes up for in sincerity:

To be the best host for you, we need to keep your business online and your Web sites fast. To be the best host for you, if you ever need to get in touch with us, we need to be available, friendly, honest, open and helpful. To be the best host for you, we need to have affordable prices and flexible solutions to fit your business.

The cynics in the audience are probably waiting for someone to break out a guitar to lead a sing-along at this point, but that’s not where we’re headed.

This post is a challenge to everyone reading it: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reach out to us any time that mantra does not permeate your experience as a customer of The Planet.

Will you take us up on the challenge?

-Kevin

Hi everyone! I started working at The Planet a few months ago in the technical support department, and I’ve really enjoyed my experience here. I’ve been on the customer side of technical support calls for most of my life, so I’ve never understood what it was like to be on the supporting side of the call. Now that my perspective has changed a little, I’ve noticed that the best customer support occurs when the support provider and the support requester work together to create the best experience possible.

Shelves of books have been written about providing great customer support, but I haven’t seen many written about how to get great customer support. When you work with a service-based company, you’re likely going to interact with customer support representatives regularly. During these interactions, your experience will not be defined by your question or the issue you have. Instead, it will be defined by how you present your issue to technical support.

It can be extremely frustrating when a server goes down or a script isn’t working the way it should. When this happens, my gut reaction is to get upset and throw my keyboard. I’ve also noticed that when I am angry, I have a difficult time trying to explain my problem to technical support. I’ve come to realize that I’m not alone in that regard, and with my newfound perspective, I came up with a few tips that might help you get the most bang for your buck when you work with customer support:

1. Remember there’s a human on the other end. It doesn’t matter where the customer support representative is; they’re human, and their responsibility is to help you. I don’t have any empirical data, but human nature tells me it’s easier to be nice to someone who is nice to you. Once you realize there’s a person on the other end of the phone trying to do his/her job, it’s a little easier to thank them in advance for their help. It may seem insignificant, but if you thank me in advance for my help, I’ll subconsciously work harder in an effort to deserve that gratitude.
2. Don’t assume your request will be ignored. I’m surprised by the number of people who start or end their e-mail with, “No one will probably see this, but …” or “Not that anyone cares, but …” Don’t assume that you’ll be ignored. That assumption is more of an overarching negative sentiment than it is a “reverse psychology” play. The support process can be defined by the expectations you set for it, so get started on the right foot and expect that your questions will be answered and issues will be resolved.
3. Don’t start with a threat. “If you don’t do this, I’m going to report this to my bank and other authorities,” or “If you don’t respond within 25 seconds, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer” … It’s not uncommon to hear things like this in the first message in a ticket. Starting with a threat never helps your cause. It’s much easier to help someone who seems easy to help. Invoking lawyers does not make your ticket seem easy to address.
4. Provide useful, descriptive and relevant information. This tip can be tough since it’s hard to understand what information is relevant, but think about it before you send a support request. If you are having trouble logging in, then “I can’t log in. Any ideas?” is not quite as clear as “Whenever I try to log in, the login screen just reloads without an error message. I know my username and password is correct. Any ideas? Thanks.” That extra information will help considerably and will reduce the number of back-and-forth e-mails between you and the support representative.
5. Don’t write overly detailed, wordy support requests. The longer your e-mail, the more difficult it is to read, diagnose and to respond. A representative has to read the entire ticket to find what’s meaningful and figure out exactly what’s wrong. Since they’re trying to help you, you want to reduce their burden. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to help you. So, be clear, concise and brief. If you’ve got a couple different issues for support to look at, break them out into individual tickets … different issues may need to be addressed by different departments, so multiple issues in a single ticket can lead to delays in responding to specific issues in the ticket.
6. More Tickets ≠ More Support. Don’t create multiple support tickets for a single issue … While it seems like you are drawing more attention to the issue and creating a sense of urgency, you’re really slowing down the support process. Support representatives might be addressing the same issue in parallel or information might be lost between tickets, elongating the time to resolution.
7. Escalate your tickets smartly. If you think a ticket should be handled differently or if you would like a supervisor to look into a specific issue, you should always feel free to request escalation to a manager or a supervisor. The best way to make that request is to update your open ticket, initiate a live chat or place a call into the technical support phone line. If you aren’t satisfied with your support experience, then we aren’t either, so we want to hear from you.

As you can see, the prescription is not too complicated: Prepare yourself to receive the best support, and you’re much more likely to receive it.

- Sean

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen … we’ve got a new installment of our adventures in microwaveable cuisine.

Given the lapse in vending-free content since Clayton Spivey’s cheeseburger, you may have feared the worst, but all is well … Clayton is still working hard in development for our managed hosting group, and we still have plenty of cheeseburgers in the vending machine.

In this episode, you’ll meet Arnold Ybanez and his meal of choice: hot wings. Arnold is a senior manager in our call center, and he’s been very involved in improving our customer-facing departments. We discuss our support organization’s desire for continuous improvement, and he explains several of the ways we’ve built and changed processes to improve The Planet’s customer experience .

Because the introduction to this video would not be complete without a ridiculous pun, I’d like you to observe that the video is split into two bite-sized portions to best satiate your hunger to learn. You may notice a few anachronisms in our discussion because this video was actually recorded around six months ago … archaeologists recently recovered the original footage, and it has been faithfully restored to its initial glory for your viewing pleasure.

-Kevin

“What counters are important when troubleshooting SQL Server with Windows’ Perfmon (Performance Monitor)?”

As a database administrator architect, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten that question from Windows administrators and new database administrators, and it’s a pretty daunting question to answer. When a SQL instance is installed on a server, there may be more than a thousand new performance counters added to Perfmon and to the Performance Monitor section of the Reliability and Performance Monitor in Windows 2008, so where does one start?

When it comes to performance tuning and troubleshooting, SQL Server has not changed much over the years. In a nutshell, it is all about CPU, memory and I/O. To reduce the time it takes to determine the bottleneck in a given environment, we should isolate the counters to these specific areas.

Of the many performance counters that can be selected when troubleshooting a SQL Server, these key indicators can help to quickly isolate bottlenecks and direct your investigation to the appropriate resources for corrective action:

At the Operating System Level

CPU Counter

Server Work Queues > Queue Lengths
Description: Queue Length is the current length of the server work queue for this CPU.
Value: A sustained queue length greater than twice the number of CPU cores might indicate processor congestion.

Memory Counter

Memory > Pages/Sec
Description: A page fault occurs when the operating system (OS) cannot find the requested information in its physical memory, forcing the OS to seek the information at the disk level. A soft page fault is when a page is found elsewhere in the physical memory, and a hard fault requires disk access. Most processors can handle large numbers of soft faults without significant consequence. However, hard faults, which require disk access, can cause significant delays.
Value: This value should stay below 20-25 pages per second.

I/O Counters

Physical Disk > Average Read Queue Length
Physical Disk > Average Write Queue Length
Description: Avg. Disk Queue Length is the average number of read or write requests that were queued for the selected disk during the sample interval.
Value: The value for this counter should always be under 2. This is the most reliable counter to use when the SQL instance is using external SAN storage for its databases.

Determining Application Resource Usage

Process Counter:

From Perfmon, select “Process” then select the application in question – in this case, sqlservr.

This will add all of the operating system counters associated with the application.

For SQL Server, the counters usually reflect information about the internal operations of the SQL instance that may not show up as a problem at the operating system level. For example, a customer might call to report that the server hangs for several moments throughout the day, but there are no errors in the application or system logs, and the OS Performance counters show all counters within normal limits.

These SQL performance counters can provide deeper insight into how the database engine is working against the customer’s application to help in your investigation.

SQL Server

SQL Server: General Statistics > User Connections
Description: Number of users connected to the system.
Value: This number will vary between applications on a given server.

SQL Server

SQL Server: Locks > Lock Waits/Sec
Description: Number of lock requests that could not be satisfied immediately and required the caller to wait before being granted the lock.
Value: This number should be near 0. If the value is greater than 0 for a sustained period, the “system hanging” as described by the customer is most likely due to locking and blocking issues within the database.

SQL Server

SQL Server: Buffer Manager > Buffer cache hit ratio
Description: The percentage of database pages that were found in physical memory. SQL Server stores information inside of 8KB data pages.
Value: The buffer pool cache hit ratio should be 100%. Values below 90% indicate that SQL Server is experiencing memory pressure.

SQL Server

SQL Server: Buffer Manager > Page life expectancy
Description: The number of seconds that a database page remains in physical memory.
Value: Values under 300 seconds indicate that the SQL instance is experiencing memory pressure.

SQL Server

SQL Server: Buffer Manager > Page reads/sec
SQL Server: Buffer Manager > Page writes/sec
Description: These values show the number of database reads and writes requested.
Value: Values for these counters will vary between database applications, but this information is useful when determining if SQL Server is the primary application using the disk. If the Buffer Manager page read-writes are low but disk-queue lengths are high, there might be a disk bottleneck. If the Page read-writes are higher than normal, a memory shortage is likely to exist.

SQL Troubleshooting Summary Chart

The performance counter suggested may not help resolve complex situations that involve application-level performance issues, but in my experience, it is a great starting point.

-George