Customer Service in Hosting, Part 2: The Scope of “Support”
In the world of hosting customer support, “supported software and applications” is a phrase on the minds of many potential—and current—customers. Does my host support the software I am running on my server? Will they help me if it’s not working?
Truly supporting applications doesn’t simply mean supporting the software itself, though. It means managing the complex interaction between disparate software. This is way more important than any simple list of software that a web host can back away from in a pinch.
Let me give you an example: A lot of our customers use WordPress. At our suggestion, many of them install a caching plugin such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. Caching engines basically optimize server requests—decreasing the time it takes a page to load—on websites high in dynamic content by serving up flat data that looks dynamic. In our example, the client is running WordPress with WP Super Cache installed. So far, so good!
A few months after initial setup, the customer sees his traffic increasing, slowing down the server. He reads independently about the benefits of the PHP caching software APC and installs it himself. Not only does the site not get any faster, but it is now throwing up fatal errors left and right. So what happened?
In this case, the client didn’t realize that the default configuration for WP Super Cache does not interact with APC. He needed to configure both of these caching engines to work together. Also, months ago, he was worried about his PHP code being stolen so he installed Zend Optimizer, not knowing that APC and Zend Optimizer are completely incompatible. We’re now talking about the interaction of four pieces of software and how they work together and against one another on a server.
So: what’s ServInt’s responsibility here? Who “owns” the problem?
LEED versus PUE
At ServInt, we take our commitment to the environment very seriously. If you read the ServInt Source you’ve seen me periodically write on our green initiatives, and I am happy to report that some of the efforts our industry is making seem to be having a positive effect. EPA predictions of data center power usage made back in 2007 have not come to pass. This is in no small part due to increased efficiencies in data centers and server technology.
It is perfectly reasonable for people to be skeptical of green initiatives in data centers. The phrase “lipstick on a pig” is practically custom-built to describe data center efficiency initiatives. Energy consumption is a growing environmental and geopolitical problem, and data centers just plain use an incredible amount of energy. But let’s get real – if something new gets built these days and it creates jobs and commerce around it, the chances are good that it’s either Internet based or has a large Internet component. That requires infrastructure. And for those of you thinking that ‘the cloud’ is going to solve all that I hate to burst your bubble, but ‘the cloud’ is still computers plugged into power outlets living in a datacenter, just like before. And an incredible number of additional computers are getting added every second.
So since data centers aren’t going anywhere and are just getting bigger, it’s better that infrastructure folks focus on efficiency and on doing what they can to make their footprint as small as possible. But how do customers know their servers are housed and powered in facilities as Green as hosting providers promise?
When people think of green initiatives in data centers within the United States they usually think of the LEED program, run by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”. The USGBC people who run LEED have done a great job of getting their names out there, and you see a lot of building projects these days that tout Silver, Gold & Platinum LEED building projects.
USGPC does some great work, but people have started using LEED certification as shorthand for whether data centers are ‘green’ or not, and that’s really a mistake. LEED programs have historically only certified new construction. So if you’re building a brand new data center, LEED is great and provides a set of guidelines to aspire to, but if your servers are housed in a facility that was retrofitted as data center space—as many data centers are—then LEED certification does not apply. USGBC is trying to fix this with their LEED for Existing Buildings rating system, but LEED-EB only works for certain types of buildings and ends up being—along with LEED as well—fairly process- rather than results-oriented.
Simply put, LEED is a set of green building best practices, but does not measure the actual environmental impact of the data center after it is up and running. That’s why I don’t tend to pay attention to LEED, as cool as it is. Instead I go straight to the PUE number for a data center space and the efforts taken to lower that number.
PUE stands for Power Usage Effectiveness and was developed by an organization called The Green Grid.
PUE is a results-oriented metric that quantifies how efficient a data center is when it comes to cooling and infrastructure. And aside from the electricity used directly to run the servers, when we’re talking about power usage in a data center, we’re talking about cooling.
We get asked whether we’re LEED certified in our data centers. We’re not, simply because our data centers are housed in facilities that predate LEED. But a good PUE-optimized data center in a repurposed building can trump a Gold certified datacenter if it’s done right. This is part of the reason we have partnered with Coresite for our main private data center builds in Northern Virginia, DC, and LA. Every Coresite facility maintains a low PUE number with some as low as 1.3.
There’s nothing wrong with LEED, it just doesn’t measure everybody. And it’s an indicator of process, not results. For results you need to ask about PUE.
Photo by Wonderlane
Privacy, Public Policy, and the Future of Hosting
Editor’s Note: In advance of his appearance at HostingCon 2011 our COO, Christian Dawson, today published the following blog post on the HostingCon blog. If after reading, you want to learn more and find yourself in the San Diego area on Monday August 8th, use the discount code “AssociationPlanMonday” to register for HostingCon and receive $60 off either a full conference pass (with or without lunch) or $60 off a single day pass for Monday. Hope to see you there.
The hosting industry in the United States, and the security of private data in general, is under threat. Legislation that is making its way through Congress represents a sea change in the way our government has regulated data in our country. HR 1981 – for instance – would dramatically increase the logging and data retention rules for hosting companies, allowing the government access to the online habits of countless Americans.
The status quo up to this moment is represented by 1998′s Digital Millennium Copyright Act and 1996′s Communications Decency Act, which are not without problems, but which have been generally very beneficial for our industry. Throughout its history the hosting industry has mostly been allowed to operate under fairly business-friendly legislation, including of course 1998′s Internet Tax Freedom Act, which is up for renewal in 2014.
It’s easy to see how lucky we were to have had Internet legislation forged in a period where lawmakers saw the tremendous potential of the Internet economy and were able to develop pro-Internet business policies to foster and protect the industries that were propping it up and giving the Internet economy life. Lawmakers didn’t sit down with hosting providers, but they were careful not to over-regulate the industry, likely out of fear that if they did the Internet would never realize its great potential.
Fast forward to today and you can see that the landscape has changed. What do most people think of when they think of the Internet? They think of Amazon, Facebook and Google and companies like that – hardly the small mom-and-pop that needs to be protected from over-regulation. And indeed today we are older and wiser about the real threats that the Internet poses regarding security, privacy and the management of intellectual property. It isn’t 1996 or 1998 anymore.
But the hosting industry isn’t made up of Googles and Facebooks, it’s made up of small to medium service businesses. So as new bills hit the floor of Congress, such as last year’s net neutrality bills or this year’s PROTECT IP bill, we need to start getting worried – because we have no voice at the table.
S 968, the so-called PROTECT-IP Act, contains Safe Harbor provisions for the credit card and advertising industries, but no Safe Harbor for hosts. This means that even if hosts do comply with the provisions of the bill, they still may be sued. Further, the bill uses words like ‘expeditiously’ that are so open to interpretation they are simply invitations to litigation. And other bills, primarily security breach bills, don’t take into account the hosting industry at all, and as a result create regulatory gaps that will likely lead to significant confusion about enforcement and enforcement targets.
Those of us in leadership positions within the web hosting industry must come together and find ways to make our voices heard, or we will have only ourselves to blame when legislation gets passed that destroys our businesses.
But could that really happen? All we really need to do is look at what has happened already, both here and in other countries.
In the United Kingdom web hosts actually have a solid collective voice in the public affairs arm of the London Internet Exchange, or LINX. When Parliament implemented the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations of 2007, they used their collective voice to explain what role the hosting community could play in the government’s data retention efforts without setting a prohibitively expensive bar to providing hosting services within the UK. The law as originally written could have put most web hosts out of business. Not only were the web hosters able to help walk back an untenable piece of legislation, but their success in doing so is being used to shape the EU’s efforts in data retention as well.
It’s not hard to see government regulation coming in and resetting the bar so that only those with deep pockets could fund a web hosting operation. I’m not saying we’ll end up with a hosting landscape that looks like Australia’s broadband market with Telstra at the top and everybody else regulated out of existence, but we do need to be careful. Cloud in particular has lots of lawmakers worried, especially because it promises to untether data even from a physical location. One reaction is likely to be regulation designed to foster data protection.
While there’s definitely a need to talk about data protection or even data retention in a legal context, I’m afraid those charged with the task of regulating our industry simply don’t understand us well enough to do so. That’s why I firmly believe that we need to come together with a collective voice so that we can weigh in on these issues that will so greatly affect us.
I’ve been in the hosting industry for well over a dozen years now, and I’ve been a vocal public advocate for and against various pieces of legislation in the past. This year, I had the honor of being asked to testify on Capitol Hill. Google invited me to come and speak out against the proposed COICA law that was then making it’s way through Congress. I was sadly unable to attend, but for a moment I was pleased that somebody was out there advocating on our behalf.
But here’s the thing – big guys like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have their advocates lobbying Congress. Their voice is being heard. What happens when their business interests don’t align with ours? And what will come of that?
From August 8th through August 10th the web hosting industry will have its big yearly conference down in San Diego – HostingCon. On Monday, August 8th at 10:00 AM I will be moderating a panel discussion, “Small Business & Big Government: Public Policy and the Hosting Industry.” We will be discussing public policy and the future not only of the hosting industry but of the freedom of content on the Internet.
I am excited to have 3 fantastic panelists who will join me for what I think will be an enlightening hour for all attendees:
David McClure – President of the US Internet Industry Association
Suzy Fulton – General Counsel for Softlayer
Abigail Phillips – Senior Staff Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
These people know the threats that are in front of us, and it should be a great talk.
Directly following the panel discussion, I will be facilitating an open discussion in a meeting we’re calling “Help Found A Hosting Industry Association” at noon. This will be the start of the ‘Save Hosting’ movement, an idea that I look forward to debuting there at the show.
We’ve already seen a ton of early interest in this meeting, and I hope that everybody will show up and join the initial working group to get things off the ground.
The hosting industry is important. It is one of the most overlooked engines for our global economy, driving business productivity and visibility. But we’re invisible right now on a national political stage. That’s why I think the time is right for a hosting industry association to make sure that we don’t become victims of the continued growth of the Internet economy as others with deep pockets step in to make sure their voices are heard.
So what hosting providers should do, honestly, is come to my panel at 10 on Monday, August 8th at HostingCon and then to the working group later that day at noon. Get involved and help us get this started. I hope to see you there.
-Christian
Cloud Hosting Series, Part 4: With Cloud, the Era of Overselling is Over
In my last blog post for ServInt’s Cloud Series I talked about some of the true potential of Cloud Hosting. But how do you know if the Cloud hosting provider you’ve chosen will be able to make good on their promises for scalability, bandwidth, reliability, etc.?
One of the reasons non-Cloud hosts fall short in our industry is overselling. Not all hosts oversell their products—ServInt never has and it never will. But many hosts, especially in the shared space, buy resources and then resell multiples of those resources under the assumption that most people weren’t going to use everything they were being sold. Read more
Cloud Hosting Series, Part 3: Making Hosting Better… Not Just Bigger
In part 2 of our Cloud Hosting Series, ServInt CTO Matt Loschert made some interesting comparisons between VPS and Cloud Hosting. One of the things Matt said was “Cloud Hosting creates a world in which server instances are transient and disposable. The instance is no longer important — the communication and cooperation between instances is.” Pretty dense. Still, it got me thinking because this notion is at the heart of the promise of Cloud Hosting.
I was still thinking about it when I showed up to the local deli for a sandwich yesterday. I usually go around 2pm. Yesterday I went at 12:30. The place is tiny and normally sleepy-quiet. It’s just the owner at the counter and her son working the register. Frankly, I’ve sometimes wondered how they stay in business. But yesterday, an hour and a half earlier than I usually go to lunch, the joint was packed – and three times while I was there I saw groups of people come to the door, look at the line and walk out. Most of the time the owner’s just sitting on her hands when I come in. I realized that at 12:30, her business is made – but it’s not maximized.
So what does this have to do with Cloud Hosting? Well, the number one goal of Cloud Hosting seems to be the ability to achieve new levels of scalability. My deli experience serves to remind that the challenge of scalability to a business is not new. Read more
ServInt’s New Data Center and Our Green Commitment
We just announced the opening of our newest data center, and as I write this, I’m looking at some pictures of the new facility. Next to these are some other photos of trees being planted. We just completed our 2011 carbon footprint reassessment and have upped our commitments to reforestation through our partners at American Forests.
There’s something funny about seeing pictures of trees being planted next to shots of our new data center in Reston, VA: on the one hand, I’m looking at tender young saplings lovingly held and planted in the soil; on the other, I see stark, white walls, massive industrial cooling units, and rows and rows of server racks.
By the visual alone, you might think that data center space is the most un-Green part of a hosting company’s operation. And while this can be true for a company without a serious commitment to the environment, choice of data center facility and build-out has some of the greatest Green potential of anything we do. That’s one of the reasons we chose to build out our private data center the way we did.
In previous posts, I’ve gone into detail about how the server hardware choices ServInt makes have a huge impact on decreasing our carbon footprint. This is true now more than ever. As a basic example, in the last five years the number of cpu cores we can pack into a single rack of data center space for about the same price has multiplied roughly five-fold while the power consumption and cooling needs for that same rack have remained constant. (And this example does not even factor in the increased processing power of each core!) Committing to purchasing and deploying this new, more efficient hardware greatly reduces out power-to-customer ratio and keeps our carbon footprint in check.
But hardware is just one step. As we maximize the processing power in a rack, we also have to efficiently house and cool that rack. This is where the design of a datacenter really plays into shrinking our carbon footprint. As a general rule, the power required to cool and house servers is typically equal to 30 to 50 percent of the power needed to simply run those servers. Once you’ve picked your hardware platform, keeping the electrical requirements of cooling and infrastructure down is a central Green goal for environmentally sensitive hosts.
In most circles, air conditioning is not simply the punching bag of the Green movement, it is the devil itself. Nothing captures the essence of un-Green like the notion of cooling the interior of a building by literally pumping heat into the outside air… using fossil fuels… and leaving the windows open. But in intelligently designed, purpose-built data centers, we’re talking about well insulated, windowless rooms that are far more efficient than normal office or residential space. Still, when these rooms are filled with servers they can demand more than 40 times the cooling as the same amount of space in a typical residential home. There is simply no other way to keep servers from literally melting down than blasting cold air at them. Our business is hosting, but our byproduct is heat.
The modern data center facility helps greatly in minimizing the build-up of heat and efficiently removing it. From hot and cold aisles and forcing air directly to racks under raised floors to huge heat exchangers that tap into the cold air on a winter day and smart cooling units that are adaptive and work in sync to spool up or down as needed throughout a facility, engineers have come up with some downright ingenious solutions to efficiently deliver cold air to hot servers. And all these improvements have one goal: to reduce the electricity it takes to keep those cpu cores cool.
All of these and many other factors went into our decision about what type of new data center we would open. And they are just a few of the elements of our much larger Green Hosting Initiative, including the trees American Forests is continually planting to offset the carbon we cannot reduce directly.
If you’d like to see some pictures of our datacenters or some of the tree planting we have sponsored in recent years, check them out in our photos section on Facebook.
ServInt COO and VP of Marketing to Attend SXSWi — solidifying our cred as the coolest host around ;)
For the first time, ServInt will be attending the Internet industry trade show/conference South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) next week. We do a lot of tradeshows, but most are unlike SXSWi. This is one of those events where all the hip and trendy kids hang out, and I wonder how well we’ll fit in. Within the web hosting industry, we’re a company that’s kind of known for keeping our head down and focusing our energies on making sure our customers’ online businesses run like clockwork. Does that make us “cool”? I don’t know — and maybe I don’t care! The fact is, though, we have a lot of very cool customers that are doing very cool things with their web sites — folks like androidandme.com, for example, who’s actually got a really cool SXSWi party planned! — and we’re going to SXSWi to watch and learn, but also to say hello and shake some hands. So if you’re one of our very cool customers, and you’re planning on being in Austin next week, we’d love to see you! Let us know by responding here, or hitting Fritz and me up at our Twitter accounts, @mrcjdawson and @servintfritz.
See you in Austin!
Happy birthday to us: ServInt turns 16!
Ladies and gents, today is ServInt’s Sweet Sixteen!
It’s amazing to think how far this company has come. We’ve been through a lot, and we’ve seen our industry — as well as the Internet as a whole — change dramatically over the past decade and a half.
In just 16 years, the Internet has become the default way to do business. Even so, explaining the concept in plain English can be difficult. The Internet is, in a lot of ways, an incredibly abstract idea. It is quite literally everywhere all the time; that’s a paradigm that can be tough to condense in a sentence or two.
Last week, the video embedded below made the rounds across the Internet. It reminded me of how hard it can be — collectively I mean — to wrap our heads around an idea as vast as the Internet.
Is There Really An Internet “Kill Switch”?
Everybody is talking about the Internet being shut down in Egypt, both in terms of how it was done and what the event really meant — and, quite frankly, I’ve been surprised and disappointed with the level of misinformation out there about this issue. I have nothing political to say, other than perhaps to just generally reiterate my belief that censorship of the Internet is a bad thing. What I want to do today is look at what happened in Egypt and use it as an opportunity to talk a little bit about whether such a thing could happen to the Internet as a whole.
So: How does the Internet work, and can it actually be “shut down”?
Haiti in Perspective
A year ago this past week, an unspeakable tragedy befell the people of Haiti.
A devastating earthquake ravaged the small Caribbean nation, destroying most of the nation’s infrastructure and leaving millions of men, women, and children homeless. Millions of people all over the world pitched in, and we in the hosting industry tried to do our part as well.
Last year, along with several industry colleagues and competitors, ServInt was a founding member of Hosting for Haiti, an initiative designed to raise funds for the American Red Cross’ work in Haiti. We also co-sponsored an indie music benefit concert in Washington, D.C. benefiting Voice of Haiti. Voice of Haiti is an organization that focuses on building sustainable infrastructure, job training, and on providing basic agricultural and sanitation improvements to Haitians in the greatest need. Voice of Haiti is the only NGO in many of the most impoverished regions of Haiti, and its projects are managed and executed by local Haitians. 95% of all money donated to Voice of Haiti is actually put to work “in-country” — a remarkable amount. It truly is an incredible organization and we are proud to do whatever we can to help them.
ServInt also co-sponsored the creation of IndieMusicforHaiti.com, a site that enables musicians from all over the world to spread a positive message in support of Haiti. Musicians are still uploading their music to the site to help keep the plight of the Haitian people in the hearts and minds of those more fortunate, and we are proud to help ensure they stay online.
This past week, I’ve been reflecting on just how fortunate we really are in this country and elsewhere in the world. Haiti may only be a few hundred miles off the coast of America, but it still feels very far away.
I can say unequivocally that the aftermath of the earthquake helped put my personal and professional struggles in perspective. Things that all of us take for granted, like plumbing and irrigation, running water and basic hygiene, the availability and ubiquity of food and agricultural resources…well, there are still people in our own backyard who struggle without these basic comforts. So many of the challenges we face in our personal and professional lives pale in significance to what many Haitians must endure every single day and, frankly, it’s easier to simply not think about it.
But we have to keep thinking about it — because the sad truth is that the crisis isn’t over. We owe it to ourselves and to each other to remember what happened, to step outside of our comfort zones and put our personal problems in perspective. Right now in Haiti, cholera is rampant and a steady barrage of devastating weather has made development even more difficult. Right now, in Washington, D.C., we’re complaining about traffic. Perspective can be a powerful thing.
If you can, please consider giving back to help those in need and keep the suffering in your thoughts as we move ahead in 2011 and beyond. Here are some groups that we think are doing a good job for Haitians in need. Help them in any way you can.
- Christian
Photo by Blog do Planalto.
