In the ever-changing world of bigger, better, and faster, Intel has once again outdone itself. Intel recently announced its Intel® Pentium® processor :: Dual Core Edition, featuring an Intel dual-core processor, which can provide immediate advantages for people looking to buy servers that boost multitasking computing power while improving the throughput of multithreaded applications. An Intel dual-core processor consists of two completely separate execution cores in one physical processor, both running at the same frequency. That said, both cores share the same packaging and the same interface within the chipset/memory. Overall, an Intel dual-core processor offers a way of delivering more capabilities while balancing power requirements and drastically improving the performance of your server. These enhancements will introduce a new era of server performance and flexibility, providing businesses like yours with platforms that can better handle complex, simultaneous transactions and escalating workloads.

So what does all of this mean? In short this system will behave as a dual processor web server, though at the cost of a single processor machine. More bang for your buck one might say. Through our testing we found the dual-core machine to be significantly faster then standard P4 3.0GHz machine, and it allowed us to run several programs simultaneously with out having a large impact on the CPU load. We are very excited to put these new machines in production and feel confident you will be very impressed by the overall performance of this new technology.

The dual-core processor will become part of out standard offerings with in the next 30-45 days and will be featured in our Velocity PX server fleet. Our current Velocity PX server, which is a Dell PowerEdge 750 P4 3.0Ghz machine, will be retired as we rollout the new state-of-the-art Dell PowerEdge 850 server featuring a Dual-Core Intel® Pentium® D Processor 830 at 3.0GHz/2X1MB Cache, 800MHz FSB. The best part about this is we’ll be offering this new technology at the same price as our current Velocity PX price. As a foot note, we will also be dropping the Dell PowerEdge 750 Celeron 2.4Ghz machine and replacing it with the new Dell PowerEdge 850 machine with a Celeron-D 2.53Ghz processor, again without any price increase.

With the added performance boost and bleeding edge technology, we have renewed our overall commitment to the Dell PowerEdge servers which bring a new level of reliability, performance, and proven technology to our family of products.

If you have any questions about dual-core processors or about any of our new server offerings please feel free to contact me as I am always happy to help. Until next time have a great fall season and more importantly… GO BEARS!

As a company, our networking goals this summer was to increase redundancy at both locations (Midwest Datacenter and Fremont Datacenter), receive an initial IP allocation, and join the global routing community by obtaining an ASN (Autonomous System Number).

The first goal (increasing redundancy through multi-homing) took a little longer than we expected, we have finally confirmed delivery of a second circuit to our router at Hurricane Electric Fremont, and have started utilizing it as a secondary connection. With the advent of the second circuit we are officially the “MOST” redundant provider utilizing the Hurricane Electric facility (including the data center itself)!

We took great pains to reduce the chance for multiple failures with our new line, ensuring that the fiber used by the transport provider not only had a divergent path (meaning it is delivered on unique fiber optics) from the majority of Hurricane Electrics lines, but also had a separate entrance point to the building. The new bandwidth provider (yIPes – www.yipes.com), we have enough transit to continue to carry all of our traffic in the event of a failure with either line.

In addition to multi-homing our Fremont location, we have been working to improve redundancy in both locations – adding additional connections to our router at TEAM in the Cedar Falls Datacenter, adding redundancy options to all of our routers, and increasing the amount of replacement network hardware on-site. With these changes, the network is robust enough to handle equipment failure with a minimum, and in some cases, a total lack of downtime.

As part of the process of multi-homing, we have also asked for (and received) our own direct IP allocation and ASN from ARIN, the American Registry of Internet Numbers. This new allocation is being used in the Midwest Datacenter. With the new allocation, we are able to tell the world routing information, to ensure that the network is reachable, even when the primary connection is down. Within minutes of a failure, routers all over the world will update their routing tables with alternate paths to our locations.

With our new initial IP allocation (64.38.0.0/19, or 32 class-c networks), our IP allocation policy will be changing soon. Since our allotment is direct from ARIN, we have to have on-hand much more justification information, in a format that ARIN can easily examine to ensure that we are using the space responsibly. As we finalize our new policies, we will be sure to let our customers know what the changes are, what effect they will have, and how to use them to their best advantage!

All of this work has been part of our promise to decrease the amount of network downtime our customers experience, and recover from total systems failure faster. As we continue to grow, these policies will be maintained, and expanded, to ensure the best possible network quality of service for our customers.

On a yet to be specifically determined date in mid-October, FastServers.Net will begin offering escalated turnaround time on setups: thoroughly configured new servers in 24 hours or less, sporting many of our most popular hosting platforms. In the past, we have worked hard to produce servers as quickly as possible, but in an ever-changing industry we are upping the ante on server turnaround times. This procedure has been in the works for a few months while our engineers have been fine tuning the processes involved and setting the parameters behind this service enhancement. We are very excited to launch this new service and believe that both new and existing customers will greatly benefit from it.

The servers that will be included in this initial 24-hour turnaround phase will include all of our standard Velocity Servers: CX, PX, DX, Enterprise DX; as well as any other servers we have in stock… (http://www.fastservers.net/offers/). 24-Hour setup will be available for both Linux and Windows dedicated servers, including plain (no-panel) systems, cPanel, Plesk, and HELM environments.

24-hour setup guarantee will require that our default partitioning schemes remain untouched, and any custom configurations of any particular medium (as determined by our administrative staff), can and will nullify this guarantee. Otherwise, the clock will begin the minute our Sales Department processes the order, meaning all orders received Monday through Friday from 8AM-11PM should be processed within a couple hours and available 24 hours after our support engineers receive the server order.

To make this service rollout more engaging we are including a “guarantee” that if we do not deliver the server within the 24 hour threshold, your 2nd month of service with FastServers.Net will be free of charge. That’s right, we’re crazy like that.

I would like to take a few minutes to thank the various team members that had a hand in producing this service. In an industry and business which is as fast-paced as the hosting community, integration of a service like this requires a ton of extensive planning and dedication from FastServers.Net’s entire staff.

Shane Reisner (Sales Department) spent many hours formulating an inventory system for keeping servers in stock. This procedure included many hours on the phone with Dell, calculating various trends, and coming up with the exact hardware needed to make this happen.

Terrance Bush, Brandon Ewing , Jeremy Along (FS Technical Group) have spent the past three months producing an server imaging & management environment in place to provide mass rollouts of servers. They have run into a plethora of technical challenges and through a lot of investigation and troubleshooting have produced a server installation procedure that is twice as efficient as the previous one.

Travis Schaffner has been deeply involved with the policies, procedures and overall supported systems, through documentation and approval of the upcoming enhancements. By managing this project he has been in communication with both teams working on the final project and putting together the precise policies and procedure for our customers and our Technical Support Department.

By the time you receive this newsletter a major hardware order from Dell will have been and a semi truck full of servers will be in transit to our Midwest Data Center. Once on-site, we will be going live with this service and making it public on our website. If you have any feedback that you would like to share please feel free to drop me an email at ap@fastservers.net.

“Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive.

The question was posed; “How can we do it faster and better than the competition?” and after months of hardware the end result is our entire FastServers.Net is doing just that. With a brand new server line just around the corner, added redundancy, and 24 hour “guaranteed” setups the entire team at FastServers.Net is looking forward to a very busy fourth quarter victory in the dedicated server game. This issue covers the introduction of 24 hour setups, Dual Core Processors, and the announcement that we are crowning ourselves “the most redundant provider at the Hurricane Electric facility”. Everyone at FastServers.Net enjoys putting these monthly newsletters together, if you get a moment during your next phone call, email, or help desk ticket please be sure to ask questions and let us know you read the latest issue.