Being Candid About Being Green
Green is vital, but so is pragmatism
Right up there with “The Cloud”, Green hosting has been a heavily trafficked buzzword in our industry for nearly 3 years.
In 2008, ServInt began retrofitting its data centers and, in combination with a massive investment in reforestation projects all over the world, we became climate positive within one year. We strive to be green because we know we have to, we have a responsibility to do so as a growing business with international clientele who expect their hosting company to understand the impact it has on the world around them.
In other words, we get it and want to do our part for the right reasons.
More after the jump.
Hosting for Haiti
The internet is a market of ideas; a true democratization of knowledge. That democratization has also brought an unparalleled connection to the goings on in the world around us. On January 12th, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck just a few miles from the capital of Port-au-Prince, ravaging the capital city and killing an estimated 200,000 people while displacing millions.
The web of ideas brought us images of the suffering, social media provided context and stories of individuals and families who have been directly affected by this disaster, and individuals and organizations worldwide opened their hearts to those affected through innovative donation mechanisms and sheer generosity.
However, many of those donations are unable to be distributed for 90 days. That means 3 long months of toil and recovery in the face of frustrating bureacracy. As an industry that truly understands how investment and resources are utilized on the web we knew we could do better and we’re proud to announce this unprecedented initiative.
In an effort to give back as effectively as possible, the most influential players in webhosting have banded together with the American Red Cross to give aid directly to those suffering in Haiti right now. Along with our friends at Rackspace, The Planet, Peer1, and GoGrid, all of us at ServInt are urging our supporters, customers, friends, families, and employees to donate to Hosting for Haiti.
There are no ulterior motives here. YOU can choose precisely how your tax-deductible gift will be used. You can donate directly to the relief fund in Haiti or you can help the American Red Cross’ International Response fund, as we have done. The choice is yours.
ServInt is proud to stand side by side with our esteemed colleagues in the webhosting world in encouraging you to join us and consider making a donation. Every little bit counts and we feel honored to do our part helping this small nation in a big way.
Please visit HostingforHaiti.com for more information.
Data Centers and Your Hosting Business
Free Tip: Invest in cable management.
The data center is the most important tool in a web host’s arsenal.
That might sound painfully obvious, and it is, but for those looking to get into this industry it’s an important item to remember. Competitors brag about which bits of software they use to push product out the door but they often forget to mention the necessity of maintaining a powerful, scaleable, stay-in-business-able data center to actually store that information.
After our most recent expansion into ServInt LA, I thought I’d share a few insights into the choices we had to make when building our infrastructure to give folks a better understanding of our corporate goals as well as offer advice to those looking to get into the hosting biz.
Here goes.
More after the jump…
Sometimes Sometimes Redundancy Redundancy Fails
Redundancy is as complex as it is necessary
Stuff happens.
Of course, we all know that. Everyone has bad days where everything seems to go wrong and businesses are no different.
In our case, the hosting industry relies on thousands of pieces of ever-changing, ever-evolving hardware that need to be married with new standards and updated software. Problems do happen, even to those who plan carefully while building their infrastructure, but how a company responds when problems occur is far more important than whether problems happen at all.
At ServInt, we have always prided ourselves on being the kind of company that plans extensively. That being said, we are still faced with a serious, and slightly philosophical question:
Why do problems occur and how do we prevent them?
Our industry has always loved to tout how easy it is to be up all the time, immune to problems, and how technology can solve just about anything. Because the industry has been so successful at selling this message, we frequently hear comments like, “Well, if my server has RAID and you have redundant routers, how can anything go wrong?” Many assume, and justifiably so, that if something fails, the redundant resource should take over automatically.
More after the jump…
Google Chrome OS – Eating Words and Raising Eyebrows
“We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror.”
- Marshall Mcluhan
It's the only way to go.
Now that the hype has died down a bit, and now that I’ve had a chance to play with very early builds of Chrome OS myself, there are some interesting questions about the new OS that arise as they pertain to the web, and to web hosting in particular. I’ll start by saying this, what Google is doing through Chrome OS will eventually change the way we use computers forever. Bold statement, I know, but here’s my take.
For those who aren’t knee deep in the geeky tech news world, Chrome OS is a new operating system by Google. The premise behind the open-source project is simple, it’s an extremely light-weight operating system that is nothing more than a web browser on top of Linux.
Its file system would be largely inaccessible to the user, its applications would be web based, and again the actual OS would be the Chrome web browser itself. Your documents and preferences would primarily be stored online by Google, in “the cloud” (take a drink), so that if your device were ever lost your data could easily sync back to a new device or to a different computer. By eliminating the distinction between a web browser and an operating system, Google is banking on the idea that most people only use their companion computers to surf the web.
More after the jump…
Dear Asia, We’d Love Your Business
From the Streets in Downtown Hong Kong
Nearly half of our customers are overseas.
That’s pretty staggering when you think about it. After all, we don’t do a tremendous amount of advertising, our ad campaigns are fairly modest compared to some of our competitors. In fact, we began advertising earlier this year after nearly a decade of going ad-free and focusing entirely on support and word of mouth referrals.
Needless to say, we’re proud that folks around the world love our service. In light of this, I thought I’d make a few points about why Asian entrepreneurs should consider hosting with a U.S. provider, and especially us at ServInt.
More after the jump…
Why America isn’t the bad guy on the Internet
The grass isn't always greener on the other side.
If you use the internet for leisure, do business on the internet for profit, or count on the internet to spread your message, you are at a disadvantage if you are not doing so in America.
There, I said it.
That wasn’t meant as a slight to our friends and colleagues abroad. I don’t mean this as an attack on any one country or continent. Rather, I’m simply challenging the assertion that the United States is somehow the bad guy when it comes to freedom of speech on the web. I read countless stories that argue that sites that are critical of the government, large corporations, industries, political figures, etc., should host offshore in Canada or Europe because their sites are simply unsafe in the U.S.
This is little more than classic FUD.
Among bloggers, particularly in the tech world, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is loathed for its supposed coziness with the recording industry and the MPAA, among other content organizations. As a consumer, and as a geek, I personally share a lot of the same concerns and frustrations other users do when it comes to the principles of fair use. Believe me when I say I find DRM as annoying and intrusive as everybody else does. I also can see plainly that the “anti-circumvention” aspects of the DMCA are genuinely bad for consumers.
But the bigger picture here is that significant portions of this law, particularly Article II as it pertains to our industry, are actually well written. The DMCA isn’t perfect, it does a lot of annoying things but it also does a lot to protect the rights of ISP’s, online services, publishers, and users alike.
More after the jump.
We Are Held To A Higher Standard
Sometimes a "quick fix" won't cut it
The iMac I use for work died a fiery death yesterday afternoon. I got a ‘grey screen of death‘ and that was the end of that. After some tests, all signs were pointing to hardware failure so I grabbed the machine and headed up the road to the local Apple Store.
I showed up without an appointment and waited for about 40 minutes to sit with somebody. He was friendly and helpful. He told me that indeed it did appear to be hardware failure, and that they could take the computer and get it back to me, fixed, in 2 to 4 days. I was out of the store within an hour and a half, and I was thrilled with my overall customer experience.
And then I started thinking about the hosting industry, and how that perfectly acceptable customer experience would be utterly unacceptable in this environment.
Waiting for 40 minutes to talk to a tech? A solution in 2-4 days?!?!
Our customers wouldn’t stand for it!
This is in no way a criticism of Apple, who I am still pleased with. I simply want to acknowledge that the hosting Industry is held to a completely different standard than the rest of the computing Industry. We’re expected to have quick responses and even quicker solutions. We’re expected to have anything and everything at the ready to solve any problem, and to not make our customers wait.
Just like in the personal computing Industry, hosting hardware fails. Software fails. Things go wrong. Those of us who do hosting right are prepared to deal with that. We’ve proven it over the years. We compete against kids in their basements trying to undercut us on price, and a lot of them gain traction for awhile and then fall off the map when met with the challenges of real problems, because they are unprepared to be held to the high standard that is required from the stars of this Industry.
I regularly read a couple of the more popular hosting forums out there, and I have had fun over the years watching people list their ideas of who the ‘top hosting providers’ are. I am honored that we often get placed on that list. I have also noticed that every couple of years the people we share the list with tend to change. It’s hard to sustain great service in an Industry that expects you to be able to respond to anything in an instant. I’m proud we’ve been able to meet that higher standard for almost 15 years now, and I wouldn’t ask our clients to ask any less of us. These are people’s businesses we are managing – their livelihoods. We SHOULD be held to a higher standard.
I promise we’ll continue to rise to that challenge year after year, as other ‘top hosting providers’ come and go.
-Christian
Photo by netream.
BoingBoing, Web Hosting and the First Amendment
MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow
I want to share with all of you a letter that I sent to The Rachel Maddow Show this weekend. She had Xeni Jardin on, who writes for BoingBoing.net, which I love. My big problem with the segment is that it left viewers with an overall impression that the DMCA was anti-free speech and that people should host offshore. I don’t agree, and to be fair I don’t know if Xeni does either, as it wasn’t even the primary focus of her appearance and they only discussed it briefly and in too little detail.
But our industry doesn’t land in the news all that often, and to appear in this context is what some would refer to as an ‘epic fail’. I understand that given the short time available on a news segment like that to explain our industry, the laws that govern it and the different types of players within it, a lot was left unexplained. But that’s exactly why I needed to take the opportunity to set the record straight.
Video and more after the jump.
We’re at cPanel!
You may have noticed a quieter ServInt Source recently.
That’s because Christian and I are in Houston, TX for the cPanel Conference! It’s been a blast so far and we’ve met a ton of great people. For now, most of our communication is going on on our Twitter feed and on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ServInt.
We’ll keep you posted there throughout the week!
