Why ServInt Stands Beside Rackspace and You Should Too
The fateful night in 2004 when ServInt's fiber was cut
ServInt has been in business for nearly 15 years. In that time we have seen incredible success, we have seen defeat, and we have seen resurgence. We have had honest, healthy competition from friends and colleagues and we have seen disingenuous poaching by hundreds of companies who — surprise — aren’t around anymore. What we are seeing now is a reminder of how a responsible company handles a serious issue, and how some companies try to take advantage of that.
Rackspace has had a series of power related issues in their Dallas-Fort Worth Data Center that temporarily brought down a not-insignificant number of customers. From the beginning and throughout the ordeal, Rackspace was communicative, forthright, and responsive about the entire process on their corporate blog as well as on Twitter. Customers were justifiably upset, after all their business is on the line, and they vocalized it appropriately in phone calls, emails, and tweets. All respectable webhosts strive to provide as much uptime as humanly possible and while I won’t speculate on the causes of the very public outages, I will say that in our mind we feel Rackspace has been incredibly professional and an exemplary Industry peer throughout this crisis.
ServInt’s last network outage was in 2004 when our major fiber lines were cut in the last mile. These lines were supposed to be redundant. However, our provider at the time combined the two at the last mile for reasons that they have still never disclosed to us (though we have since ensured that the same problem cannot reoccur). Murphy’s Law struck, and the combined line was cut, leaving ServInt’s customers without service for a considerable amount of time. I was literally standing on the sidewalk talking to the ServInt team on the phone and ensuring that the line was getting restored as quickly as possible. I was not a happy man that day in the freezing Washington, D.C. winter, having to explain to ServInt’s customers that we had let them down. It is not a good feeling.
So now, 5 years later, ServInt has fought hard to maintain the best uptime in the business, and we’ve done so knowing full well the consequences of failure and knowing that our customers would hold us accountable.
Rackspace is there right now. The weather might be nicer in Texas, but the sentiment is the same. They had a bad week, but are holding themselves accountable and encouraging their customers to do the same. Ultimately, the true test of a company is not how well it does at the top of its game, but how quickly it gets back up. Rackspace will get back up and we look forward to it.
There are several companies, if you can even call them companies, who have been in business for less time than a stale pot of coffee and are throwing mean spirited, transparent promotions out to justifiably angry customers. We feel this is not only in bad taste, but it is unethical and an excellent testament to how they view their fellow hosting providers. You attract customers by providing great service and thereby earning it, not by bashing someone else’s.
To those who are seriously considering these services, how do you feel about a company that devotes its time and energy as a vulture? If something similar happened to them, would they be as communicative? Could they even survive it? Would you want someone who holds such contempt for other businesses to be trusted to host your own?
Karma, after all, is the great equalizer of men.
As there are parallels between ServInt and Rackspace — we are competitors on some levels — both of us understand the complexity of large-scale hosting. ServInt has been through this before, we have come out a stronger company because of it, and we know that Rackspace and its employees, customers, and shareholders will walk away with a stronger company too. We at ServInt thank them for their contribution and innovation to our industry, and we wish them the best.
And here’s the bottom line for those of you who are thinking about jumping ship on Rackspace. There are always reasons to leave any hosting provider, but make sure that your reasons are the right ones. You might just go from “problem today, none tomorrow” to “here today, gone tomorrow”.
Green is for the future
Today I have a few pictures I’d like to share. They are pictures of trees being planted on behalf of ServInt. The trees are pine, and part of a reforestation project we helped make happen. Not every tree planting we do is like this one but reforestation projects like this one help restore ecosystems damaged by wildfires, and that’s pretty cool.
And now for an announcement – ServInt has increased our tree planting program for 2009 by 40%! Why only 40%? Because throughout 2008 and on into 2009 we’ve really stepped up our game on reducing power footprints – converting a LOT of our systems to newer versions with lower overall power draws. Our vastly increased efficiency meant that a 40% bump was able to cover our new commitment levels. Exciting stuff.
Happy Earth Day Week everybody!
-Christian
Death of the low-end unmanaged server?
The State of The Union:
I don’t mean for this to sound like a total marketing rant. I prefer it be a bit of a wake-up call.
It’s April 2009, and there are hundreds of thousands of low-end unmanaged servers operating throughout the world — perhaps millions. Made popular in the ’90s as an alternative to colocation and faced with little price competition, low-end unmanaged servers certainly served their place in the market. Today, technologies and market forces have driven change in the hosting industry, blurring the lines between various service types and offering more (and better) choices to the consumer.
Typically as a company’s demand for hosting increases it will move from a shared hosting environment to a dedicated server. This move adds physical resources, isolation from other customers, and more cost. Most people are now aware of a different option — presumed to be a stepping stone — called the VPS. Not enough people are aware that in most cases the step from shared to VPS is a much better one than going shared to dedicated, a move that often ends up being a misstep.
A dedicated server has the benefit of guaranteed physical resources and root access, but the benefits typically stop right there. Entry-level servers are usually provided on low-end hardware which costs just a few hundred dollars. Having only one drive is typical, and having no backups included is equally common. When a server is outgrown, a tedious process of moving to a more powerful server is required which includes a fresh installation, copying data, renumbering IPs, and hours of labor. Perhaps worst of all is that most users don’t actually need all the physical resources of their server which not only results in wasted computing power, but also in wasted heat and power. In today’s ever-increasing culture of social responsibility, that point alone should make users question the decision to go with a low-end server solution.
The fact that most people who buy low-end dedicated servers have moved there from shared hosting packages and end up with an unmanaged service creates another set of issues. Having a server of any type requires a learning curve. Having a competent Managed Services team behind your server can make all the difference between frustration and satisfaction with your hosting experience.
A Vision for the Future:
To be honest, I was tired of people trusting their businesses to cheap servers that they wouldn’t even feel comfortable putting underneath their desks. I set out to enlist the help of the ServInt team to develop a true server-replacement VPS. I wanted a true Enterprise-class VPS that was clearly superior to any low-end unmanaged server In order to make sure it had all of these key differentiators:
- 1. Comparable resources on incomparable Enterprise-class hardware
2. Off-server backups
3. One-touch upgrades/downgrades
4. 80%+ energy savings
5. Managed Services
6. Less expensive, better value
We have been working towards these goal for years and have had great success, but it wasn’t until today that I could say with complete confidence that we truly had the best thing going. As far as I’m concerned, this (and any competitor’s products that follow in the wake of this) should effectively kill off the low-end unmanaged server for the smart hosting consumer.
As an experiment I recently went to a popular unmanaged hosting company and selected their cheapest server, starting at around $130/month. I then tried to match it as closely to ServInt’s Ultimate VPS as possible. I set the uplink from 10 to 100 Mbps, upgraded to a 74GB SCSI drive, added cPanel/WHM, and the price was around $200/month. Granted, they use an Intel Dual-core 3060 CPU, but the Ultimate VPS can use half a Quad-core 5400 series CPU. Both include 2 GB RAM, but the Ultimate can burst to 4 GB physical RAM. The server uses a single 74 GB 10k rpm SCSI drive whereas the Ultimate VPS benefits from 60 GB of RAID 10 storage on 15k rpm SAS drives, and even after setting the uplink on the server to 100 Mbps, it still only includes 1,000 GB monthly bandwidth, whereas the Ultimate VPS includes 2,000 GB/month.
Those who understand all the specs in the paragraph above are certainly still with me, and if you didn’t understand them, how about this: For almost $70/month less you get more power, more flexibility, more bandwidth, higher reliability, free backups, Managed Services, and Enterprise-class hardware. I’m not only biased because I am ServInt’s CEO, I’m also biased because I studied logic in college.
Global Change Fuels Internet Growth
The world is in the midst of profound economic, social and environmental change that is overturning conventional wisdom. The best course of action is to meet todays challenges head on with new ideas, fostering creativity and encouraging innovation.
That’s why I believe we are at the beginning of the Internets latest growth surge. With confidence in large corporations at an all time low, today’s entrepreneurs are creating new opportunities that will increase our reliance on the Internet for basic goods, services and entertainment.
As the economy shrinks, consumers are rediscovering the value of shopping online to secure better value, reduce travel costs and save time. As entertainment budgets constrict, consumers are scouring the Internet for new ways to spend their leisure time without leaving home. And, as travel spending disappears, people are using the Internet to stay in touch with loved ones via the latest video conferencing applications.
The ease, convenience and cost efficiency of Internet communications is helping to maintain existing relationships. It is also fueling the start of new online communities that can be cherished and cultivated. The economic downturn has served as a golden opportunity to make the Internet more vital than ever before.
At ServInt, we are working diligently to help e-commerce firms and other Internet companies lead the next major surge in the worldwide economy. We provide the high-bandwidth server capacity, security, continuity and around-the-clock support to ensure 100 percent uptime.
Over our 14-year history, we have helped thousands of customers in more than 60 countries worldwide. Our business has never been stronger. As a result, there has never been a better time to rely on our service to help enable your company’s growth.
Far from being intimidated by current economic conditions, at ServInt we are ideally positioned to help our customers maintain firm control of their destiny and create new economic success stories.
-Reed
Special Introductory Post
Welcome to The ServInt Blog!
Why is ServInt publishing a blog? Why now, when the world already seems saturated with blogs?
For starters, the entire blogging culture is built on a technology that we happen to be experts in. ServInt has been helping online businesses since 1995. Along the way, weve learned a thing or two about how hosting works. The blogosphere has grown up around us. It’s time for us to use the tools we have at our disposal to share our thoughts about the hosting industry and its many facets.
Blogs are a mainstream method of disseminating information and building community. We’ve been building a strong online community among our clients for years, using our private customer forums . ServInt customers have access to private forums that allow them to research and get answers to commonly asked questions. More importantly, they interact and learn from each others’ experiences. The communal aspect of ServInt’s private forums is invaluable.
We’ve had many requests from non-customers to open up our private forums to the public, but have decided against it. Webmasters (especially resellers) need continued access to a private haven that allows them to ask complex questions, or even simple ones, without the fear of public judgment.
Instead of opening the ServInt forums, we have decided to start this blog. It will engage our community, along with those currently outside our circle, in thoughts and ideas that matter to us all. This blog will allow ServInt executives, partners and customers to share ideas to make web hosting more productive, profitable and environmentally sustainable.
At ServInt, we believe our new web site and blog can demonstrate the value of a tight Internet community by encouraging frequent input and healthy discourse.
Together, we can discover and evaluate new methodologies in the Managed Web Hosting and Green IT sectors to help meet the business requirements of growing companies worldwide.
I expect regular postings from three main contributors. In addition to myself, we’ll see postings from our Vice President of Operations Christian Dawson and our Vice President of Technology Matthew Loschert. I’ve chosen these two because I believe both have unique perspectives on the topics well be exploring in the ServInt blog. Check in regularly!
-Reed
