FastServers.Net the fastest growing, award winning, fully managed dedicated service provider, has selected Switch and Data’s Chicago data center for its expansion and continued growth. Switch and Data, a leading provider of Internet exchange and colocation services, will provide FastServers.Net with up to 15,000 sq ft of space, power and interconnection services. FastServers.Net will continue to provide its full range of services – from customized single server solutions to enhanced Enterprise-level cluster based solutions.

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Back in 2004, FastServers.Net was approached by AMD (Advanced Micro Processors), to provide an advanced colocation solution to host their online forum (http://forums.amd.com). In only a few weeks, a full scale load balanced cluster solution was deployed including massive servers provided directly from AMD. Ecstatic and enthusiastic about having AMD as a featured client, we decided to take our partnership with AMD to the next level by offering FastServers.Net customers an AMD Dedicated Server solution.

This unique and special setup included both the Barton and Opteron processors and provided a foundation for what became a substantial product in the FastServers.Net line of servers. In addition to the first AMD Dedicated Server solution, they also gave us a price point we couldn’t refuse as well as some performance boosts to enhance the already powerful server setup. As that helped us reach new levels in customer satisfaction and overall quality for FastServers.Net products, we are extremely honored to be listed on the AMD website as an official partner - http://forums.amd.com/partners/.

Moving forward to 2005, FastServers.Net made a huge leap from providing AMD servers to providing 100% Dell PowerEdge servers. Since Dell had been a long time Intel only provider, the AMD offering slowly faded away. We often heard from various Dell Reps and Technical Support Engineers that Dell will never offer AMD based processors due to better pricing from Intel if they used them exclusively.

Things have certainly changed since 2005. About 60 days ago, Dell announced they would have an AMD offering and will be replacing a key server solution from Intel to AMD. What does this mean to FastServers.Net and our customers? Well, we can start offering Dell servers with the AMD processors and continue our indirect two-way relationship. Overall, this is great news and it increases the performance level of our products and offerings. We couldn’t be happier with this announcement.

Also, in late December, 2006, we retired the Dell PowerEdge 1425 and replaced it with the Dell PowerEdge 1435 using AMD Opteron processors. The Dell PowerEdge 1435 is similar to the 1425 model, but with a few exceptions other than using AMD chips. One is the new and improved Dell PowerEdge 1435 requires identical memory for each processor. This translates into the new minimum memory standard being 2GB on the Velocity DX.
To further show how the AMD chip outranks the Intel chip, I found an article by Patrick Thibodeau on Neal Nelson and his comparison tests between AMD and Intel. Patrick’s article states, “Neal Nelson, an independent computer consultant who sees himself as being on a Ralph Nader-like mission, has started running tests that compare the performance of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron processor against Intel Corp.’s Xeon chip. And, according to Nelson, the Opteron delivers twice the throughput of the Intel processor.”   Patrick continues by stating “Nelson said his initial test was limited to two older single-core chips, a 2.4-GHz Opteron and a 2.4-GHz Xeon with Netburst architecture. The Opteron delivered 115% more throughput at peak, he said.”

If you would like to read the entire article by Patrick Thibodeau on Neal Nelson’s AMD vs. Intel testing, visit http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007541

FastServers.Net introduces OSC, or Outside Sales Channel, to the Chicago area as a new sales division to enhance our current sales division. The goal of OSC and its core team members is to focus on presenting FastServers.Net products and services to the Fortune 1000 businesses located in the Chicagoland area. Members of the OSC team will visit prospective clients in person to discuss their specific technology needs and requirements.

Leading the OSC team is Mark Luptak, Executive Sales Manager. With over 16 years of experience in outside sales and sales management in the Chicago marketplace, Mr. Luptak is the ideal candidate for taking OSC by the reigns and building a sales channel that will cater to clients requiring the ultimate in custom server solutions. Mark will be developing OSC by implementing procedures, goals, and an overall structure well suited to the FastServers.Net customer-centric philosophy.

“We want to be able to leverage our presence in the Chicago area by demonstrating to companies that we have a solid offering”, said Luptak. “It only makes sense for us to go out and meet people downtown, and in the outlying areas, and let them know our capabilities. We feel this is an important step in reaching customers in our area that need solutions designed to meet and exceed their expectations.”

FastServers.Net has selected Switch and Data, a leading provider of Internet exchange and colocation services, as an additional data center location provider. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the new FastServers.Net colocation site brings the total number of data center footprints to three.  This third data center footprint in the FastServers.Net roster is in line with our continued growth and expansion for the 2007 year. Expanding into Switch and Data’s location in the Loop area of the city will leverage space, power, and meet-me-room services to enhance FastServers.Net’s operations within the Midwest region.

Prior to selecting Switch and Data as the third data center, FastServers.Net evaluated numerous colocation and data center providers in the Chicagoland area. After extensive reviews and thorough investigations of many data centers, the obvious choice was Switch and Data as its facility met all of our technical, power, and HVAC requirements, while providing the on-site support and interconnections options to a multitude of networks. With room to grow and a facility that caters to our own beliefs in providing high quality solutions, we feel our partnership with Switch and Data will also enhance the level of services our customers have come to expect from FastServers.Net.

Plans have been implemented to enable FastServers.Net to begin offering our core services in the newly expanded Switch and Data facility sometime in February. Our data centers in Fremont, CA and Cedar Falls, IA will also continue to offer solutions.

For more information, or service availability, feel free to contact us at sales@fastservers.ne

The other day I stumbled upon a fascinating article at www.techworld.com on the growth of servers running business applications using Linux. Of course, this is based strictly on predictions by CIO’s in the tech industry, but nevertheless, is actually very surprising. What’s more is they predict that by the year 2012, 50% of all Enterprise level companies will be running mission-critical applications on Linux based servers! This is a significant jump from previous years as Microsoft has been the dominant leader by cornering the market with their flagship product – Windows. Personally, I think this is great news for the industry as a whole.

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