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Adhost Approved for BizSpark Hosting
Posted in Company News,Industry
Adhost is pleased to have been selected to join the Microsoft BizSpark Program as a Network Hosting Partner. The BizSpark Program is a global program designed to accelerate the success of early stage Startups by connecting them to Network Partners: active members of the global software ecosystem who can provide mentorship, guidance and resources to BizSpark Startups. BizSpark creates an ongoing, mutually beneficial ecosystem between Microsoft, Startups and Network Partners.
As a Network Hosting Partner, Adhost provides Windows Web Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 hosting on our Cloud Servers and/or Dedicated Servers. All services are provided in our secure data centers located in Seattle and include:
- No extra charges for Windows Web Server® 2008 and SQL Server® 2008 Web for three years, compliments of Microsoft
- Secure data center with SAS 70 Type II certification
- Multiple Tier-1 bandwidth providers
- 24x7x365 expert technical support
- 24x7x365 client access and monitoring
Microsoft is committed to helping entrepreneurs to transform their ambitions into sustainable, dynamic businesses and to foster innovation and entrepreneurialism. To this end, the BizSpark Program provides Startups with software, support and visibility at a time when they are most valuable and least affordable—during their first three years, with no upfront costs and minimal requirements.
Startups receive fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies as well as production licenses to bring to market innovative and interoperable solutions for the next generation of user experiences. To be eligible for the Microsoft BizSpark Program, a Startup must be actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that is a core piece of their business model, have been in business less than three years at the time of enrollment, and have less than USD$1M in annual revenue.
For more information about the program and our application form, visit adhost.com/bizspark.
permalink | digg this | technoratiFree Hosting for WebMatrix Beta
Posted in Company News,Technology
Today Microsoft launched WebMatrix Beta – a tool for developers to to build, test and deploy web applications. We’ve been working closely with the Microsoft IIS team on testing this new tool and making it easy to deploy a site at Adhost to try out the features. Here’s how Microsoft describes WebMatrix:
WebMatrix is everything you need to build Web sites using Windows. It includes IIS Developer Express (a development Web server), ASP.NET (a Web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database). It streamlines Web site development and makes it easy to start Web sites from popular open-source apps. The skills and code you develop with WebMatrix transition seamlessly to Visual Studio and SQL Server.
You can learn more about the features and then sign up for free beta hosting at Adhost. The beta hosting offer includes 1 GB of space and 100 GB of monthly data transfer.
permalink | digg this | technoratiAdhost Virtualization Case Study on Microsoft.com
Posted in Company News,IndustryToday Microsoft posted a case study on how Adhost chose to build our cloud solution using Microsoft virtualization and cloud technologies, with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager as the foundation. You can read the entire case study at: Cloud Service Saves Hosting Provider 65% on Hardware Costs and Increases Revenue.
permalink | digg this | technoratiASP.NET 4.0 Hosting is Live
Posted in Company News,TechnologyWe are excited to announce that Adhost now offers Microsoft’s newly released ASP .NET 4.0 on all of our shared Windows hosting plans. ASP.NET 4.0 is the newest version of Microsoft’s web application framework and allows programmers to build dynamic web sites and web applications. You can learn more about ASP.NET 4.0 on this ASP.NET blog.
Existing sites for Adhost clients will remain set to 2.0. All new sites will be set to 4.0 (there is no 3.0 or 3.5 selection, that functionality is included in 2.0 and 4.0). We do not plan to install 4.0 on our Windows 2003 servers, and clients on our Windows 2003 servers desiring 4.0 will need to be migrated to our Windows 2008 servers. Contact support@adhost.com with any questions.
permalink | digg this | technoratiAdhost East Data Center Update from Adhost CEO
Posted in Company NewsDear Adhost Clients:
I am writing to you to update you on the status of the power infrastructure supporting the Adhost East Data Center located in Fisher Plaza East. Adhost is committed to providing a fault-tolerant, highly available environment to support our data center operations. We are working closely with Fisher Plaza, other tenants and vendor engineers and electricians to get our data center operations back onto that footing as fast as possible. This letter is meant to provide a synopsis of both the actions taken to date as well as a synopsis of short and long-term steps that Adhost and Fisher Plaza are taking to achieve our commitment.
As many of you know, on July 2nd, 2009 there was a significant event in the main electrical switchgear room located in the parking garage. While we are still awaiting final forensic analysis of this event, at this point we know that two 5000 amp bus ducts were severely damaged and that enough heat was generated to activate the pre-action sprinkler system in this room. Of course, the introduction of water into a live electrical switchgear room had predictable results – namely that all of the gear in that room became inoperable. Unfortunately this room was where the automatic election is made between utility and generator power. The loss of this room resulted in a loss of power to the Adhost East Data Center for approximately 27 hours.
The Adhost West Data Center was unaffected during this event and remains in its standard operating configuration of utility power backed by N+1 generator plant.
For approximately one month following the event, our East Data Center was powered by generators as its primary source. We announced several maintenance windows to upgrade the reliability of that generator power including moving from the single-riser/single generator configuration that we initially brought the building back up on to an N+1 generator plant that allowed for continuous operation and accommodated a regular maintenance schedule for the individual generators.
On August 1st and 2nd, we announced and successfully completed another maintenance window to switch-over to a temporary configuration that features utility power as the primary electrical source backed by the N+1 generator plant for emergency backup.
Meanwhile, we are working to develop a long-term permanent solution that will take this event into consideration and which will allow Adhost to operate continuously through a similar loss. This solution entails the following components:
- Diversifying the Adhost East critical equipment loads across the two switchgear rooms that service (or will service) Fisher Plaza East.
- Working with Fisher Plaza to ensure that catastrophic loss of one room will not inhibit our ability to operate.
- Working with the various regulatory agencies to put into place non-water-based fire suppression systems in all critical electrical areas.
These solutions take time to engineer and they also take time to source and install the appropriate equipment. Right now we are working to have the permanent solution in place by the end of October. As we get progress down this path, we will have better timelines which we will make available to our customers.
One other lesson that we have learned and which we are addressing is to implement a better emergency communications plan (ECP). Our previous ECP was shown as inadequate during this event and we already have implemented parts of this plan. Highlights of the plan include:
- An off-site (completely outside of the Adhost network and facility) maintenance mailing list server which is automatically synchronized with our main maintenance mailing list. We will also be introducing three primary lists over the coming months:
- East Data Center Operations
- West Data Center Operations
- Shared Hosting Operations
Once in place, we will announce to all lists events that impact the entire infrastructure such as power, cooling, network, DNS, and email. We will also announce major events that primarily impact one of these subgroups to all three lists with follow-up details being posted to the affected lists.
- Adhost is committed to using Twitter as a quick, off-site communications tool to announce not only information on major events, but also other Adhost news. You can follow our tweets at http://www.twitter.com/adhost
- An off-site Web server which will act in several capacities:
- Allow customers to get status messages on our major services.
- Provide a chat-style interface for customers with status questions and support needs.
- An off-site phone number that will give status updates to callers.
- Moving our phone systems to a more fault-tolerant system that will allow us to communicate via phone with customers during significant events.
Once again, we apologize for the extent of this event. We want to assure you that we are integrating the lessons that we learned from this event into our on-going operations and policies and procedures.
We appreciate your business, patience and understanding as we work to improve our services. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email support@adhost.com.
Will Riffle
President and CEO
Adhost Internet
IPv6 Web Hosting
Posted in Company NewsAdhost is pleased to offer dual stack IPv6/IPv4 hosting in our Unix Farm architecture. This means you get the same reliability, redundancy and resiliency with your IPv6-enabled site as you do with your present site. Any site on our Unix farm can be IPv6 enabled upon request at no additional cost to you.
IPv6 is also now available to all of our colocation customers as a complimentary service, and we can help you configure your systems for IPv6 if you require assistance.
Learn more about IPv6.
permalink | digg this | technoratiWindows Server 2008 Hosting Launch
Posted in Company News,IndustryToday is the official launch of Windows Server 2008. According to our sources at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer is using a quote from Adhost’s very own Mike Graves during his keynote speech at the Los Angeles Convention Center today. The quote is from a case study interview we did about our experience as a beta hoster for Windows Server 2008. Learn more about our Windows Server 2008 dedicated servers and Windows Server 2008 hosting packages.
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