Welcome to the autumn of 2006, friends and neighbors… That’s right, the Cardinals are in the playoffs (at least at the time I wrote this…), the weather here in Chicago is no longer “balmy” and really, and ’06 is expiring a little too quickly for my taste. Wouldn’t you agree? There are a truly massive array of changes going on in the background here at FastServers.Net, all of which are sure to tickle your fancy as we head towards the start of ’07. New service offerings to make your webserver safer, faster, stronger, for start-ers, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg, considering!
First though, there is always that incessant nagging at the back of your mind in respect to your server’s operating system being legitimately up-to-date. Ah yes, the battle that never really ends, regardless of how many years you contribute to the hosting realm! Fortunately, the FastServers.Net Technical Group *wants* to help migrate your legacy linux or windows system(s) to our offi cially supported, *current* releases. Thankfully, that list has never been so straightforward. What’s considered current in the parallel-di-mension that we call FastServers.Net? CentOS or RHEL 3.x and 4.x, and all flavours of Windows 2003 Server. Say what? Ahem, Fedora Core. And isn’t RedHat 9 still receiving support errata?
It’s true, Fedora Core does exist, and we’ll have a stable FC 6 before too long— but the window has closed on the limited “stop-gap” status that we allowed for this family of linux operat-ing systems in the aftermath of RedHat’s decision to pseudo-commercialize a few years back. The push of Fedora Core has been increasingly “cutting-edge” as opposed to “stable”, as both aspects are mentioned officially in their mission statement. This Geri realizes that work is important but family is a priority as well. After work and on the weekends Geri spends time with your 1 year old reading stories and chasing him around the house. The second addition to the Sales team is Monmini Kabre. Monmini, known to us as Mo, recently moved from Kansas City, Missouri where he attended William Jewell College and the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Studies included a major in Computer Sciences with an emphasis in Network Design and Implementation and a minor in romance languages. Mo’s career includes sales po-sitions with Circuit City (Technology), Sumo Productions (Market-ing) and most recently involved in Retail Banking at Harris Bank. First on his list of goals is increasing his knowledge of the man-aged hosting market and FastServers.Net products and services. He maintains a strong desire to use his background to design perfect solutions for customers. Mo has native fluency of the French language and written profi -ciency in the German language which allows him to relate to dif-ferent culture and helps him meet customer needs both nationally and to our overseas customers currently at FastServers.Net.While in college, Mo played competitive soccer in the NAIA Divi-sion for 2 consecutive years and still has a passion for the game and plays occasionally with The Chicago Soccer Pickup team. On a normal weekend, you will find Mo catching a European Soc-cer League game or cheering for the Chicago Fire. You will communicate with Mo and Geri on a daily basis via phone, through live chat, or through our ticket system so feel free to drop them a hello and introduce yourself by emailing sales@fastservers.net. Until next time have an excellent Fall Sea-son and best of luck to all in the fourth quarter of 2006! New Technical Support Engineers Added in Chicago! By Jara Andrusyk (jara@fastservers.net) Hailing from Round Lake, IL Todd Hendricks comes to FastServers with a breadth of knowledge of computers dating back to the earli-est PC’s. Practically growing up with an 8088 XT in his crib, his in-nate understanding of technology enables him to approach his role with a solid foundation of the most basic principles that the newer technology is built upon. Todd has run several BBS’s and websites. When not at work, you can find him spending time with his family at the park, out to eat, or at home watching Law and Order, Family Guy, and Mythbusters. developmental approach is not a sane solution for mission critical webserver environments… the Enterprise-level releases that RedHat and CentOS (the cloned, free, and perfectly legal spin-off) provide aim to extract the absolute best performance out of your server’s hardware while enjoying the stability of a rock-solid linux operating system. Let our expertise in automa-tion and panel environments here at FastServers.Net provide the extra bells and whistles you require: you don’t need the core OS that drives your linux webserver to be overburdened with “advances” that bog down the environment and open up a plethora of potential headaches elsewhere.
FastServers.Net goal: Phase out remaining, dangerously un-derpowered (and increasingly vulnerable) legacy RedHat (7.3/ 9) systems by the end of 2006. Fedora Core family systems (regardless of legacy or current status) will be phased out by the end of the first quarter in 2007. DEFCON-ranking will likely have no bearing here: though we’ll deal with our “Managed” clients first of course, we will not allow for elderly, exploitable entities (that’s E-cubed, haha…) to exist within our critical hosting networks. It’s time to *get current* people! Did you realize that RedHat Enterprise 5.x family’s fi rst offi cial release is only a couple months away?
Elsewhere, any incarnation of Windows 2000 is a legacy product. If you’re using it at home or for any type of hosting you’re living quite dangerously. Sure, Microsoft is still pushing updates your way, but these attempts are the very defi nition of the bare minimum… multiple hotfix rollups and service packs have been cancelled over recent years and any machine driven by this OS is essentially a sitting duck *especially* if a webserver, mailserver, or related services are inhabiting said system. Migrate to 2003. We can help. Seriously.
FastServers.Net goal: Phase out any remaining 2000-ish fi lth by the end of quarter #2, 2007. No job is too big, no fee is too big. And I’m done channeling Venkman. Google it if you need to.
Basically, we’d like our networks as airtight as possible, and we’re only as bulletproof as each webserver hosted within our jurisdiction allows! Do your part by being proactive: when you have a window of opportunity for an upgrade, get in touch with our Technical Group and make it happen. Your customers will enjoy the added peace of mind and performance boost, and you’re likely to get more out of your hosting applications and related functionality (did I mention efficiency?) by sporting a *current* release of your favourite OS genre. We’re standing by to assist. Always. Especially when it makes the whole of us safer.
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