This post is about a service FastServers.Net has been offering for almost 5 years.    As part of our management service portfolio, we have helped 1000’s of dedicated server owners move into their new platform by offering migration services.    In May of 2008 this service was put to test and a special team was assembled to review the process, enhance it, and develop what we consider the best migration services available.

As many managed hosting providers offer great services the potential problem is actually getting your website, applications, databases, and special server configurations up and running.   This process can take weeks or months even if you have a technical group in charge.   The FastServers.Net team collaborated and conquered this with the new offering now available for both current and new customers.    I wanted to take a few minutes and put up some general information and let the world know that it will soon be published on the website!

Enterprise Migration Services Overview
The Enterprise Migration Services (EMS) is an important service offered to client of FastServers.Net and provides a “special project” team to perform server migrations.    This hybrid service pulls together an assigned team of engineers that will evaluate, plan, and execute the migration of your current server to the new server.

More Than Data Transfer
The goal of the Enterprise Migration Services is to fully migrate applications, databases, configurations, and website in working order to their new site.    This process includes the review of the current setup and then estimates the overall time needed to make the migration happen.    Once the process is started an assigned engineer will work one on one with your organization to evaluate your technology and provide ongoing communication through the process.

Your Responsibilities!
The most important items you will be responsible for during the migration are as follows:

Scheduled phone calls to discuss the migration and coordination and if available any technical engineers that have participated in your current server administration.

Review and acceptance of the Enterprise Migration Quote

Final Testing of Website, Applications,  and databases – followed by approval

Final Name Server (DNS) Updates

Enterprise Migration Costing
Each Enterprise Migration service is a custom quotation and proposal and based on the estimated number of hours associated with the project.   After the initial phone call and the ability to review your current server, a final project quote will be sent out.    This final quote will be the fixed price you pay for your Enterprise Migration and is derived from the total number of hour’s experience engineers will require to make it happen.    The final proposal you receive will be the final price of the project with no risk of overages!   Our teams are that confident in their ability to properly evaluate all aspects of an Enterprise Migration!

How to Get Started
Your Account Manager will help start the process.    Direct administrator level or root level access will be required for the proposal.      A project help desk ticket will be generated and sent to our Enterprise Migration Team who will evaluate and schedule a call with you.    After the initial call the final pricing will be delivered to your Account Manager and a proposal developed.    Once this proposal is completed you will be able to process the order online for the execution of the migration.    The Enterprise Migration Team will receive notification and schedule a date and time to complete the project.

First and foremost a great big thanks to all who attended the show and had a chance to stop by our booth or visit with us at various networking events.   This event provided a venue for us to meet clients, visit with vendors, and of course meet a series of new people in the industry.    Don’t hesitate to give us a call or email to discuss any of your dedicated server, grid hosting, or virtualization needs, now or in the future!

The setting was once again The Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois and HostingCon 2008 brought some familiar faces and new faces to the event, which provided an unusual surprising and great event for those that attended.   This year also brought prizes, giveaways, drawings, and even a board game that was introduced by TechPadAgency last year called “ServerMania“.

HostingCon started it’s pre-show game show by announcing that it had been acquired by iNET Interactive.  iNET Interactive is the company behind such properties as WebHostingTalk.Com, Hotscripts.Com, and a series of other tech related properties.    The show was sprinkled with iNET Interactive staff members and I was informed that next’s years show will be held in Washington DC.    I am speculating that the keynote will be either Obama or John, but only time will tell.     I recently read, Obama loves to hang out on WebHostingTalk to keep up on the latest trends in the Web Hosting Industry and his plan for offshore drilling, might also include some offshore data centers!

As expected a line up of super star speakers took the stage with a change in theme.   Last year at this time the buzz of the industry was Software As A Service and a shift has taken place to discussions centered around Cloud, Grid, Elastic, and Virtualization platforms.    John Pozadzides, CMO of LayeredTech spoke on these technologies with a session called “Every Cloud Has a Silver Linking” and booth #301 engaged with ongoing conversations about this technology.

A few companies stepped up the schwag wagon with Nerf guns, game console giveaways, champaign, root beer floats, cash money, beer tickets, and even a chance to win a Harley Davidson motorcycle.    The conference hall was filled with WII’s, Playstations, and XBoxes with live games including RockBand, Basketball Shootouts, and WII Sports.      LayeredTech also brought some a console, which consisted of a Live Grid Demo, and giving away the best prize of all:  KNOWLEDGE (just a quick plug and opinion here).

For the second year in a row the night ended with a rooftop networking event that included fireworks and yet more games! My night ended with a very competitive game of ServerMania, a board game focused on acquiring the most money and highest number of servers possible.    While I was defeated in my quest to conquer the board game as I had the least amount of servers and money, I did notice that the winner seemed to have a distinct advantage over his competitors as he CREATED the game!

Live GRID/Cloud Computing DEMOS at Booth #301

This year “Booth #301″ will be stocked with something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Something OLD, Something NEW…

Returning to HostingCon for the 4th year in a row (OLD) will be some familiar faces from FastServers.Net. However, they will have a new-found image and a glitzy new booth sporting the (NEW) LayeredTech brand. Combined, you’ll see the latest “hosting vendor of choice” providing both self-managed and fully-managed hosting solutions as well as innovative virtualization and utility-based offerings.

Something BORROWED, Something BLUE…

Leading the way in technology innovation focused on virtualization (BORROWED term) is LayeredTech’s primary focus. In conjunction with our standard hosting solutions, we’ve been deemed the pioneers in on-demand virtualization offerings including Grid computing, Hyper-V, Citrix, Sun Solaris, as well as many others. All this taken into account, LayeredTech’s recent rebranding efforts include a new (Yes, BLUE) logo which reflects the layers of products, services and innovation being offered today. So stop by and CHECK IT OUT!

Witness the power of the GRID with a live demo!

Booth 301: The Grid is ready. Are you?

Stop by Booth 301 and learn more about LayeredTech’s unique “GRID/CLOUD” computing solution, the ultra reliable multi-server configuration that is scalable, affordable, reliable and yes, simple to use. Come by, ask questions, see a live demo and let’s talk about the technology that can enable your organization to offer GRID/CLOUD Computing.
Wed 8:30am Presentation: “Every Cloud has a Silver Lining” by John Pozadzides, CMO, Layered Tech

Have you ever wondered how Cloud Computing is going to change this industry? If yes, then grab your coffee and come listen to John Pozadzides, CMO of LayeredTech, who will be presenting WEDNESDAY from 8:30am to 9:15am. He will bring to light key trends in hosting virtualization. After this AM session, you’ll walk away smarter and more stimulated (ahhh coffee!). If you miss it, stop by Booth 301. We’ll be happy to answer your questions.

We’re looking forward to this event - seeing friends old and new. If nothing else, stop by, say hi and pick-up some of our cool free schwag.

If you are not attending HostingCon 2008 and want educate yourself on GRID/CLOUD computing you can schedule a web demo and one of our highly trained GRID Experts will walk you through the features and benefits.

Schedule a GRID DEMO NOW!

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Every year the FastServers engineering team conducts major upgrades throughout all of our facilities for ongoing stability, network enhancements, and some consolidation effort.

The time has come again for us to make our annual review of all our environments and on the docket: Fremont, CA. Therefore, beginning August 1, 2008, and throughout the entire weekend ending August 3, 2008, FastServers will be performing mandatory datacenter floor maintenance to our Fremont facility. These activities will consist of the realignment of all FS-owned and operated servers, switches, and routing cores within the hosting facility in question. The purpose of this dispatch is to alert all of our Fremont customers, dedicated or co-located, of these planned events occurring at the beginning of August 2008.

It is imperative that all customers are aware of this maintenance as there will be multiple outages that will occur during our planned maintenance within this facility. At this time we cannot schedule around any particular customers’ server operations, nor minimize the amount of downtime for a specific client; it is almost impossible to say when, precisely, we would handle a client’s server during this operational window. FastServers will do its best to ensure that any downtime that occurs due to our mandatory maintenance shall have the least amount of impact on customers’ hosting environments.

Customers who are interested in migrating to one of our other facilities, to ensure operations stay online for their hosting needs, should speak with a sales representative immediately to begin collectively working on a migration plan for their hosting needs. Our sales representatives will provide all of the necessary elements for customers wanting to upgrade/migrate to another facility to continue operations before this maintenance period is upon us. Please note that that if you choose to migrate to one of FastServers’ other facilities, existing IP allocations will *not* be portable. This means that new IP addresses will need to be distributed to your solution within a new facility. Again, this is only for customers housed within our Fremont datacenter: by receiving this email, it’s apparent that you have one or more servers housed within our Fremont hosting environment. In addition, customers running outdated operating systems, control panels, etc., will be *required* to upgrade to the latest releases supported by FastServers; co-location customers excluded, if a migration to an elsewhere facility is preferred.

If you have any additional questions about the migration, please contact a support representative who will forward your request to a FastServers.Net administrator for further clarification. If you are interested in migrating your solution prior to the outlined maintenance, please speak with a sales representative immediately.