With a rash of recent security updates, patches, and critical hot fixes released by Microsoft over the past few months, the senior administrators at FastServers took a hard look at our patch management strategy for Windows 2000/2003 servers, along with other Microsoft enterprise-level applications. As productive as our maintenance periods had been in the past we knew that we were still lacking the automation of releasing these updates from Microsoft in a timely, effective manner to our customers to secure their dedicated hosting solutions.

FastServers is pleased to announce that we have partnered with St. Bernard Software to improve, secure our patch management solution going forward for our customers. St. Bernard’s UpdateExpert will be the flagship for all patch management for Windows 2000/2003 and all backend Microsoft applications beginning March 2006 for all of the FastServers datacenter environments. UE has received countless accolades and awards for its patch management solution that greatly speeds and simplifies the patching of systems no matter how small or large an enterprise operation can be. UE automates the time-consuming tasks involved in accurately scanning and patching operating systems and applications.

What does this mean for our customers? Overall this will mean a more trusted and effective way of securing your servers, ensuring updates are applied in a timely fashion, while being confident that the updates that are applied to your servers have been tested, verified and approved before installation- providing additional peace of mind in that the patches that are deployed will not hamper productivity or cause any conflicts with existing environments. This service is only available to DEFCON 1 through 3 customers; DEFCON 4 and 5 customers, please speak with your sales representative for special pricing to add FastServers UE service to your solution or upgrade to a new DEFCON support package to not only receive UE, but all the additional quality benefits of our DEFCON services.

What is UpdateExpert?

Simplified and Speedy Patch

Management for Windows Servers

UpdateExpert is critical for ensuring dedicated server protection against debilitating threats, costly data loss and legal liabilities associated with regulatory compliance. Most malware leverages known vulnerabilities that have simply been left un-patched. With several major software vulnerabilities discovered each week it is imperative to keep dedicated servers updated. Combine this with the increasing speed at which exploits follow vulnerability announcements and you have a crisis in the making. UpdateExpert simplifies and speeds the patching process across your network. The complex and time consuming tasks involved in accurately and reliably patching are automated so you can handle multiple patches across multiple distributed systems quickly and easily.

In an attempt to diffuse any future catastrophes or loss of business for our valued customers, we are proactively reaching out to certain server owners, to work with you alongside a manageable migration phase. You will be contacted as your particular dedicated servers have been declared to be supporting “legacy hardware” and likely, a post-legacy/out-of-date operating system. Such systems are a higher risk to the FastServers.Net hosting environments as a whole, in terms of an increased risk of compromise and subsequent attacks or other malicious activities being instigated by third parties. An even more substantial risk is present in the aging hardware in question: the expected life of the motherboard and/or hard drives in all systems is likely already past their expected lifespan, and we would definitely like to assist in avoiding major downtime in light of the increased risk of an emergency.

It’s a win/win situation for both of us: the safety of our networks are enhanced when dedicated servers are upgraded to “supported” (current) operating system builds, and the chance of hardware failure is vastly diminished once elderly components are retired. Did we mention the performance increase you’ll be providing for your customers after your hosting solution is migrated to an updated hardware solution? Great strides have been made in the past year to get the most out of dual-processor/dual-core systems, as compared to their now-legacy counterparts. Our sales engineers will be standing by to assist you with pinpointing a solution that is best for your environment, while working closely with our Technical Group to streamline migrations and keeping you informed every step of the way!

Please do take this notice as seriously as we are. FastServers.Net has fought through a plethora of nasty hardware failures in recent months (especially at our Fremont, California location), and we’ve decided on a more proactive approach to avoiding these types of unpleasant situations, as we help you to safeguard your business going forward.

Yes, we are investing in our lifelong relationship by replacing your hardware at no additional costs. Yes, we are making the first step in contacting you and scheduling a migration. Yes, we are assisting in a mass migration of your server environment and teaming you up with seasoned engineers that have a vast background in server rebuilds/migrations. And yes, in the end you will be setup on a superior server with enhanced Dell PowerEdge hardware backing your organization’s goals.

In the very near future, certain customers that fall within the guidelines set forth by our administrative team will be contacted by a helpful Sales Engineer. Everyone here at FastServers.Net looks forward to working with you and providing you the outstanding support you deserve as we work through these mandatory migrations together!