Describe a good, bad, funny, or interesting experience you had with FastServers.Net in 2004.

“These guys are always right there taking care of me. I appreciate it. When somebody hacked into our server they had a new security level installed within about 24 hours. Thanks!”

“Okay, so I’m not the greatest sys admin in the world. I admit that. Thank goodness for Defcon 2. When it comes to supporting customers I can’t always find the solution in an efficient manner. I have relied on the support staff of FastServers.net to help me out. I feel like I have an extra super sys admin working for me 24×7. Every challenge that has come up has been quickly and (seemingly) easily solved by one of your technicians. Keep it up. I’m very happy.”

“We where working on my crashed server between 4AM and 5 AM… it was funny. btw, it was my fault, thanks, guys!” -EDITOR’S NOTE - FastServers.Net does not condone or support the concept of a server being down as “funny”!”funny”!-

“So far I have really enjoyed the new datacenter, and hope that you all continue to making it better. And on the other foot, I can say, I have had the worst time with the nLayer datacenter… and I say good bye to using them. ( thanks for help in getting out of there )”

“In September of 2004 I started talking with Aaron Phillips at FastServers. I was looking for an affordable solution, whether it was co-location or a dedicated server. He set me up with one of their dedicated servers and am enjoying the speed, reliability, and support that comes with FastServers.”

“It has been two good years working with you people and it has been a wonderful time working with you. Prompt replies at all times. A solid system given to me with all the possible security patches. Time to time guidance and a true professional approach.”

”The best thing I can say is they have a WONDERFUL support staff who have helped me learn far more than I would have on my own about linux and how my server operates. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU and we need more auctions — I am an auction aholic we need more auctions :)”

”Good: your telephone support (0800 from Portugal) Bad: migrating a database when upgrading to a new server Funny: taking your newsletter too seriously (I go everyday to your website to find the announced Velocity AX is still not there…)” -EDITOR’S NOTE - By the time you read this newsletter this will already be a part of reality-

If FastServers.Net went out to a Chinese Restaurant and you had the ability to insert a custom fortune cookie message, what would it say?

Confucius says: Man with no downtime need to get out more

404: Fortune Cookie Message Not Found

Do good and good things will come upon you

You will reap love and affection from your many customers.

Lucky Number: 100%

You’ll be happier with more memory in your servers

The danger comes from Qmail !!!

Wise man say good service is a blessing

Confucius once said: You will soon find yourself giving per-GB bandwidth to co-location users.

You will live a long and prosperous life.

All things are possible as long as you remember the customer.

Wise men double shake

May your new datacenter bring you much good luck in the future.

You’ll make the future bright for many.

Taking clients out to Chinese Lunches often results in more server sales!

If you speak with a FastServers.Net Employee on a regular basis, write a physical description of them based on their voice.

Drew, a smooth, handsome guy who truly likes his job.

Tall and fat

Ok lol since Jeremy is the one I usually end up with — sorry Jeremy gotta do this lol I will make an attempt to describe him. He is tall but not overly so. Possibly wears glasses - probably the wire framed ones that flexx (safer for working on the computers). He has dark eyes brown or dark blue with flecks of green in them. He is toned but not a muscle bound freak - a nice build with a wonderful smile. He takes pride in his appearance - maybe looking for that special lady is why he takes extra measures to double check things. He is a neat freak, a perfectionist of sorts. I could go on but that is enough .

—EDITOR’S NOTE - This wins the 2nd to closest submission we received.- -

Down to earth polite clean shaved yellow hair 5′10″ tall handsome young man.

Tall, no glasses, buzz cut, skinny…

Aaron must have very dark circles around his eyes, that’s for sure. Morning, evening, he ALWAYS happens to be available and to answer within the hour, if not minute! And apparently he’s in charge of a million other things besides answering our incessant questions. Hmm, I don’t think I spoke with him directly though. We’re in the 21st century now, it’s all about EMail!

However, based on written communications from tech support I’ll guess that Drew is 10 feet tall with a cranium of 100 inches in diameter. He must have at least 4 sets of hands because he’s fast too.

5′-10″, slight bulge at the waist, 27 y.o., nice-looking, glasses, close-cropped hair, reads voraciously.

I think Aaron looks like Matt LeBlanc. I think Matt looks like David Schwimmer. —EDITOR’S NOTE - Bull’s-eye;, customer that provided this answer will receive a guest appearance on the next “Friends” syndicated episode. We’ll “Photoshop” you in. Somehow.-.

big, fat, ugly.. joking, couldn’t tell you. they’ve all been men and, only swinging one way, i don’t visualize unless it’s a female voice….

Aaron would be 5′11″ and enjoy letting the company pay for dinner

hmmm now quite sure what this means… but I am sure AP is a solid athletic guy even though I never heard his voice lol.

If you were the owner of FastServers.Net what big changes would you implement in 2005 to make it the best year ever?

Give Aaron a raise.

Follow the fortune cookies advice (less than 4 Gigabytes of memory on any server is simply too little for any serious database)

si la ayuda técnica de la necesidad de cliente él mejor a enviar por lengua del cliente y a jugar de nuevo a él en inglés si soy el dueño que es la mejor cosa se puede hacer en 2005 años (translation provided by http://world.altavista.com/tr)

If I were the owner of FastServers.net I’d buy out EV1 to make them a better company.

-EDITOR’S NOTE - At no time during this letter was Robert Marsh contacted or damaged, we do not condone the mistreatment of anyone who sponsors BOWL Games!

Implement a “consolidated” ticket / support center like “My RackSpace”.
-EDITOR’S NOTE - How about something like https://pentagon.fastservers.net ?-

Remove setup fees for long term purchases and stop folding the existing mailed news letter so weird.

I would take the things further from here. I will double the bandwidth for high end packages. A $128 and $256 package cannot have the same bandwidth. No revision in bandwidth limits for a lot of time. I would like to see what other successful companies are doing around me and take good success tips from them. I would add high end customers with good competitive packages where margins are high too. I think Fastservers have everything in them to make a business leader in their domain, yet they lack the ability to attract high end customer because of poor packages on xeons system. I would like to check that area of my product catalogue.

-EDITOR’S NOTE - By the time you are done reading this newsletter you’ll see quite a bit of new servers including a QUAD Processor server capable of supporting 32GB of RAM!

In 10 words or less describe your experience with FastServers.Net in 2004!

Always been good.

Uneventful, which is all I could ask for.

Superb support, that’s what separates you guys!

FastServers.Net service is professional, efficient, accurate & fast

Nice to have business with you, guys

Wicked Awesome!

Additional servers for us= good growth!

I feel very safe with FastServers

My pontification exhumes hedonism for the adeptness ascribed to your cadre.

Caring, professional, courteous, human.

Outstanding service

Whether you are a new to Microsoft SQL Server or have multiple years of experience working with RDBMS, it is imperative to keep a close eye on your server. Believe it or not, there are still hundreds of servers on
the Internet at this time that are plagued by the Slammer virus that struck well over a year ago. Administrators discover that their SQL Server instance is hit only when either they notice a severe degradation in service or they have been contacted by other companies that recognize the attacks on their respective networks. It is imperative that Administrators take time to review their SQL Server instances to ensure that they have applied the necessary updates and hotfixes that are put out by Microsoft.

The recommended hotfix level for SQL Server at this time is: 8.00.878 or SQL Server 2000 SP3 + 0838166. All new installations of SQL Server that FastServers deploys to customers have this installed by default. As you already know, FastServers takes security very seriously and we want to not only educate our customers. but provide them with the tools/resources needed to successfully implement secure SQLutions for their clients and so on. FastServers would like to recommend the following:

* Subscribe to Microsoft Security: http://www.microsoft.comltechneUsecurity/signupldefault.mspx
* If you administer your SQL Server remotely, or on the server, change your default port from 1433 to something else.
* Develop/schedule routine maintenance for your server: patch management, continual updates for your server, etc.
* Limit administrative access only to those members of your staff that
need it
* Never give out your administrator account to any consultant, third party
vendor
* Implement routine SQL Server backups, integrity checks, scheduled
jobs to truncated unused transaction logs
* Review SQL Server Security for the latest information on SQL updatesfhotfixes:

Implementing these administrative tasks. ideas can save you timeenergy down the road — especially with the threat of new attacks beingdiscovered on a daily basis. To our customers that do not have a IT department, systems administrators, or the time to manage their solutions please speak to a technical associate about the benefits ofhow DEFCON support can alleviate some of the security burden from your hands. Take security seriously and take the time to know what yourSQLution is truly doing — inside and out.

The Obvious.
All payments are due the day of renewal and services are pre-paid. payments due on 12/1104 are for the pay period of 12/1/04-1/1105.

Ever met Grace?
Each client is allowed a 5 day grace period from the day there server(s) renew until the servers risk deactivation for late payment. Therefore using the same example as above, your server payment would have to be received no later than 1015/04 in order to avoid deactivation for nonpayment. Any package or service not paid for during the grace period is subject to deactivation at will. Once your server is deactivated,
payment will be required in full in order to reinstate the server.

Personalized E-Mail from your friends at Billing@FastServers.Net.
You wi!! always receive email notifications letting you know of an impending deactivation. These are sent to the contact email address on file. Don’t forget to keep this up-to-date via https://pentagon.fastservers.net.
It’s because we like to talk on the phone.

If you are within the US we will attempt to call the number on file for you as well. It is vital that you maintain accurate contact information in your online billing account in order to ensure that you receive all
notifications. FastServers.net cannot be held accountable for  deactivations that occur because we did not have correct information for contacting you. If you need assistance logging into your online account to update your contact information please contact the billing dept at HI66-753-3278 or by email at billing@fastservers.net

Doomsday.
Once a server is deactivated for nonpayment you have a maximum of 15 days to contact the billing dept with payment to reinstate the server. Payments not received during this time period will result in the
cancellation of the server.  When a server is cancelled all data will be wiped off of the hard drives and the servers will be reformatted. After the server has been cancelled there will be no way for to retrieve any of your data.

My Dog Ate my Credit Card?
If due to extenuating circumstances you know your payment will not be made during the grace period that is provided. it is vital to contact to billing dept to inquire into a payment extension. Payment extension will be granted only for clients that provide a reasonable reason as to the late payment and are granted at the discretion of each billing representative. If payment is not made by the agreed upon date the server is eligible for deactivation at will. Clients who are habitual late payers will not be eligible for a payment extension.

With a goal of centralizing many of our standalone systems, FastServers.Net is developing a single point of communications that includes billing, online quotes, help desk interfacing, and general server information. Dubbed “Pentagon.FastServers.Net” you will be able to use your billing login and password to login to this central location by the time you read this newsletter.

Pentagon.FastServers.Net - will be the central location for billing, server support, inventory, upgrades, IP Address Requests, and an interface for updating your contact details. This is due to the latest upgrade in our
billing software which is allowing us to centralize all of our systems into a single entity. Overall a few changes have already started including a new look and feel for https://accounts.fastservers.net. Login and check it out.
One of the newest features is the inclusion of your server information which includes the ability to update your passwords, review your hardware information, DEFCON levels, and gain an overview of the servers
you have hosted with FastServers.Net. After logging in, click on “My Server”, “Server Extranet” and check it out.

Upcoming features will be added daily including the integration of our help desk, knowledgebase, IP Address requests, and hardware upgrades. It is our hopes that by providing you a centralized location, managing your services will become an increasingly painless process. I wanted to take this chance to cover a few important aspects of keeping your information up to date and what happens when we don’t have
proper information….

Server Passwords - It’s 2AM, your servers HTTP service fails, our techs are alerted via our monitoring system, they go to login to the server and don’t have an updated password. They try calling & emailing you with no
response, they try resetting the password to get into the box, and finally as a last resort they power cycle the server. If you are lucky the server comes back online with no issues, but the simple process that should
have taken 2 minutes ends up taking 20-30 minutes of time. Moral of this story: when you update your server password, immediately update our technical staff and let them know. If you are a DEFCON customer
and we don’t have access to your server, monitoring is removed from the server until we have an updated password.

Contact Information - Billing Address, E-Mail Address - Well… If you don’t have an updated address you probably are not reading this newsletter so I won’t preach too long on the subject, but keep in mind that if you move or your address changes to update this. The same goes for your e-mail address- it’s good to login at least once every 2 months and make sure things are up to date. This can be done via https://accounts.fastservers.net 24 hours a day, if you have problems logging in open a ticket at https://support.fastservers.net (which will all be consolidated within https://pentagon.fastservers.net) in the near future.)

Billing Username/Password - you can change both your username and password via our billing system- (https://accounts.fastservers.net) - and having this available to you is your key to getting support. Used as the primary authentication method for providing you support, this should be included with every support request you send in. We have probably mentioned this a dozen times in past newsletters, but it is important that you include this with your communication to the FastServers.Net staff.

Keeping your information up to date will reduce downtime, increase the quality of communication, and streamline processes we have developed to make your stay at FastServers.Net an enjoyable one. We are always looking for ways to communicate better with you and the upcoming changes that will centralize our various satellite systems will help by providing you a single login for all FastServers.Net related communications.

First, I’d like to give a shout out to the customers that endured the Midwest NOC migration this past weekend. Yes, we pushed the envelope and got quite close to the 12-hour “cataclysm” clause that I initially
floated out there. The entire FastServers squad would like to once again extend our sincere thanks for your patience as we completed the build out of the datacenter resources here. It’s one of those times where I can
confidently say, without flinching, that such an event will not be required for years… and likely decades. Frame this and mount it on your wall!

Now, let’s talk briefly about our common linux operating system flavors and the harsh reality over the horizon. FastServers’ network segments are home to a plethora of linux entities, many of which are actually sportingEnd-Of-Life (EOL) operating systems. Fortunately, despite the EOL rating by the original developer, organizations like FedoraLegacy (www.fedoralegacy.com) are continuing to produce software updates for *particular* RedHat versions, as well as Fedora Core 1, which recently went EOL. Will those updates last forever? Not on your life.

This poses an interesting issue for our customer base, and from our perspective it is going to be a lengthy, though certainly manageable, upgrade process. Many of the popular control panels available for Linux
systems are usually lagging behind as far as stable releases for usage on the latest ‘n greatest builds of popular operating systems - case in point, Fedora Core 2.

Here at FastServers, we’re considering a number of options, the frontrunner being the integration of CentOS (http://www.centos.org/) as a major player in our linux environment. CentOS is a superb solution for
us as it includes the sources & packages of RedHat Enterprise under the protective umbrella of the linux general public license (GPL). Basically, that provides our customer base the power and flexibility of RedHat’s
commercial OS without the support contracts and other unnecessary commitments. That’s good stuff!

Timetables on network-wide upgrades for particular operating system flavors are a bit fuzzy right now though we’re aiming to have RedHat 7.x & 8.0 finished off during the 1st Quarter, 2005, with RedHat 9 and
Fedora Core 1 handled during the 2nd Quarter of next year. Needless to say if you are anxious to speed the process along, we’ll be more than happy to work with you! That said, please rest assured that critical
updates for the abovementioned operating systems will continue to be produced through the first half of 2005, at the very least.

We will be in touch as this situation develops, and will pull the trigger sooner on migration processes, if necessary, to ensure network-wide security and stability. More specifics to come when we have them!