We recently upgraded our shared firewall offering, replacing the SonicWall units with dual Cisco PIX 515e firewalls. This upgrade affords the servers behind the shared firewall solution with a number of advantages over the previous units, but today I’ll be focusing on only the core reasons for our upgrade of this particular aspect of our environment.

The major reason for the upgrade was an increased range of rule flexibility due to the tried and true IOS software offered on CISCO-branded firewalls. We now have the capability of easily and sanely modifying access lists to prevent and allow individual IP addresses and ranges of IPs access to specific services, something the SonicWall offered though only in a vastly limited manner. Previously, it was extremely difficult for us to block access to all but a certain IP (for example, if the service only needed to listen to a specific IP it was extremely taxing of the unit to listen for this single address while blocking connections from all others), whereas now, it is a single configuration line on the new equipment.

The other primary reason for the upgrade was the built-in, automatic failover configuration of the unit to the secondary 515, in the case of an emergency. The second PIX 515e, which we hope we never need to utilize, automatically grabs all configuration data from the master 515. In the event of a hardware failure on the primary 515 the secondary unit will immediately take its place, allowing seamless failover while ensuring continued operation for all servers located behind the units.

As always, if you have additional questions, comments, or concerns in regards to whether your server is as secure and protected as it could be, our technical support department is always standing by to discuss these items with you. It’s as simple as logging a support ticket in your Pentagon interface, and simply asking if you could benefit from the added protection of a hardware firewall sitting between your server and the rest of the increasingly hostile Internet.

FastServers is excited to offer a new connectivity service for our customers that demand extremely stable networking conditions. Designed to be wholly fault-tolerant, and with 99.999% uptime in mind, this new offering is perfect for customers that demand the absolute highest possible reliability from their hosting environment.

In order to ensure clean, dependable bandwidth for this new network service, FastServers has ordered and delivered new bandwidth sources that are utilized solely for this new network segment. Engineered to be able to survive the failure of any single device or cable, customers can be confident that their solution will be online, no matter what happens.

Utilizing redundant internet connections, routers, and even distribution switches (optionally using NIC teaming technology available on all our Dell servers), two clear paths for data to enter and exit the network are always present, although only one is in use at any given time. Use of routing protocols and failover technologies ensures traffic is quickly routed around any failed device in the network.

Currently, this service is being offered to customers that have low bandwidth requirements, stable service environments, and low-risk, easily-maintained applications. FastServers administrative staff members will review and approve each solution deployed on this network segment to ensure that the solution is not oversubscribed, and that a low risk of DDoS-based traffic is continuously maintained. If you are interested in more information on this brand new FastServers offering, please contact your sales representative.

This solution *is NOT* to be confused with the enhancements which are already well underway, in relation to connectivity and stability at our Iowa Datacenter. This offering is simply an intermediate and *immediately available* option for particular customers that have been impacted by service fluctuations in recent months, available ahead of the timeline of the final upgrades at our Iowa facility. The improved routing environment at our Midwest-based datacenter as a whole will dovetail precisely with the redundancy and service quality factors discussed above- only, on a much, much larger scale. Please do check out the “General Announcements” area at http://forums.fastservers.net/, if you haven’t already, for all of the latest details on these ongoing upgrades.

Another year at FastServers.Net has come and gone and 2005 was definitely an outstanding year for us. Not only did we achieve a high rate of growth we also established many new relationships throughout the world. As 2006 gets started, the management team at FastServers.Net remains focused on enhancing services, reliability, and especially, the quality of everyday support.

If you have not had the opportunity to visithttp://forums.fastservers.net/ you should really check it out! The News and Announcements section contains late breaking information directly from Chief Technical Officer (Travis Schaffner) on a regular basis. You can even subscribe to particular threads and receive new posts in your inbox. Additionally, if you have not had a chance to login to https://pentagon.fastservers.net in the past few months there are a couple of new mailing lists available within for distribution of important connectvity-related announcements, depending on the datacenter you’re hosted at with FastServers.

FastServers.Net has been working directly with a highly-respected data protection company, and by the time you read this article, the provisioning of new backup hardware & related software will be well underway. This new solution will provide an enterprise-level managed backup environment in a very cost effective manner. Teamed with one of the largest and most respected backup service providers, FastServers.Net will provide a “total package”, thoroughly covering backup & recovery processes inside of this new service offering. I promise a series of articles on this new solution once its available.

The FastServers.Net network is getting bigger and better. In the upcoming months FastServers.Net will be expanding the current Midwest Network operations center to increase capacity and redundancy across the board. Our team is working night and day to make this a reality. At the time of writing, direct fiber optics have been establish, routing equipment is in place, and we are nearing the final stages of preparation which include testing and failover assurance. As mentioned above, please don’t hesitate to check out our online forums for more precise technical details on these exciting developments!

The two great enhancements that are part of this newsletter include a major upgrade to our “shared firewall” services and a new network segment dedicated to enterpriselevel customers. Our first release of the “firewall service” was released almost 18 months ago and utilized a pair of SonicWall 4020 firewalls. Throughout the process this solution did well, but as our team of engineers and expertise began to expand so did the need to standardize and upgrade our technology. In November of 2005, the SonicWalls were replaced with CISCO Pix 515e(s). The transition of customers from the SonicWall to the shared PIX environment went through without a hitch. Our team of network engineers performed a perfect migration which resulted in essentially zero downtime for every hosting environment utilizing this service.

Throughout 2006, FastServers.Net will remained focused on improving technologies and related offerings, while continuing our commitment to provide you, our existing customers, the highest level of support and services in the industry. With improvements to existing environments, combined with the overall service advancements we have planned, ‘06 is slated to be another outstanding year!