September eNewsletter

COMPANY NEWS

Annual IT Networking Event
A special thanks to all who attended our annual IT networking event last month. We had a great turnout and look forward to hosting the event again next year!

If you still haven’t had a chance to see our new customer lounge, give us a call and stop out and see us today!

DID YOU KNOW

September Featured Case Study
EarthLink’s featured case study in September is The National Baseball Hall of Fame.

National Baseball Hall of Fame: Cutting costs while moving to a highly available cloud environment, EarthLink was able to migrate the website from traditional dedicated servers to a cost effective, more redundant virtualized cloud environment. The team leverages virtualization software to provide a far more scalable environment to ensure 100% uptime.

Read the complete case study
Visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Website

BLOG-TIME
FEATURED BLOG POST

“Become Your Own Exchange 2010 Admin”
by Mike Salviski

With the EarthLink Exchange 2010 Hosted Control Panel, not only do you control costs but you can also control your Exchange 2010 environment. With our Hosted Exchange 2010 Control Panel, you can manage and edit your company’s Exchange options with the click of a button.

Our Exchange 2010 Control Panel offers you the ability to control…

Read More

SPECIAL PROMOTION

Your First Month is on Us!
For any new 1U colocation customer in September, receive the first month for free! Call and ask to speak to one of our sales engineers today for more details 800.957.4872.

Contact Us

If you’d like to view the complete newsletter, click here.

Comparing LogicalSolutions.net vs. Amazon Cloud vs. RackSpace Cloud

The primary reason most organizations look to cloud computing is the cost savings. So when you’re evaluating cloud hosting providers, it’s important to understand the price models of each vendor. It’s easy to get caught up in advertised entry pricing but be sure to compare apples to apples.

When comparing what is included with EarthLink against the Amazon Cloud or RackSpace Cloud, you’ll quickly discover how much EarthLink can save your company on their hosting costs.

Here is an example of a typical Cloud Server (or virtual private server) environment for one of our customers.

You can clearly see the cost savings that EarthLink’s pricing model provides. There are no hidden costs or other pay as you go expenses that can add up in a hurry. If you’re already with Amazon or RackSpace, or simply looking into Cloud Hosting options, contact one of our Sales Engineers today for a free cost assessment.

LogicalSolutions.net’s July eNewsletter

COMPANY NEWS
 
Mark Your Calendar 
EarthLink will be hosting our IT Networking Event on Thursday August 19th from 4-7pm. Join us for food, drinks, data center tours and networking! Invitations to follow.
 
Free Bandwidth Rate Quote
EarthLink continues to grow. As we grow we purchase more bandwidth to make available to our customers. This means we have been able to reduce our bandwidth costs, translating into lower costs to you! Get a free rate quote today! 
Free Bandwidth Quote  
 
Client Portal Expanded 
Our team has been working hard over the past month with a variety of network upgrades. Included in this is the capability for our colocation customers to view real-time data for their bandwidth and power usage through their customer portal.  
Read more
  
DID YOU KNOW?
Microsoft Hosted Exchange 2010
EarthLink now offers a managed Hosted Exchange 2010 enterprise email solution for as low as $12/month per mailbox! This comes with all the features including Outlook Web App, Outlook support, Active Sync, Mobile Support and more! Click the link below for the estimator calculator today.
Cost Calculator
 
BLOG TIME
Featured Blog Post
“Lower Bandwidth Rates”
by Casey Rohrer

As a leading data center services provider there are many factors that go into managing a successful enterprise class colocation and hosting facility. Each one is equally important and benefits not only our customers from a technology standpoint, but a business one as well. While building our new SAS70 Type II data center in Rochester, NY, redundancy was engineered into every component of the facility to provide the most reliable and cost effective data center services in the industry.      
Read more

SPECIAL PROMOTION  
Free VPS for a Month
For the month of July sign up for a free month of hosting services for your Virtual Private Server. Click the one of the links below to signup online and use the promo code FREEWINVPS for Windows or FREELNXVPS for Linux.
Windows VPS
Linux VPS

LogicalSolutions.net’s June eNewsletter

COMPANY NEWS
 
Mark Your Calendar 
EarthLink will be hosting our Technology Networking Event this summer. Keep your eyes open for more details and a date coming soon!

Free Virtualization Cost Assessment
Sign up today for a Free Virtualization Cost Assessment! One of our trained engineers will evaluate each of your current application servers and give you a cost and best practice recommendation on moving your servers to a virtualized environment. Dramatically decrease the number of servers you have using by server consolidation and reduce your support and overall operating costs.
Sign up now
 
New Windows VPS Remote Control Panel
We have recently launched a new feature with our Windows Virtual Private Server that includes an OS Level Control Panel that allows a user to self service their Dedicated Virtual Server remotely. Current features in the Control Panel allows you to reboot the server, hard reboot the server, start the server, monitor processor load and more!
Read more and sign up for a demo
 
DID YOU KNOW

Premium Disaster Recovery with Boston Data Center
Did you know EarthLink has a partner Data Center in Boston? We know the distance of your DR facility is important. So whether you’re looking for offsite backup, or full failover replication of your primary facility, EarthLink has you covered.
Click here for more information.

VPS Online Ordering
We now offer easy signup and configuration with online ordering for our Windows Hyper-V and Linux Virtual Private Server offerings. Simply click the link below to Build a VPS, follow the short few steps and you’ll be up and running within a couple hours! Click the links below to take a look.
Windows VPS Cloud Ordering
Linux VPS Cloud Ordering

BLOG-TIME
FEATURED BLOG POST
“Advantages of a VPS?”
by Anthony Giordano

Traditionally there have been two options when it comes to website hosting. You are either setup in a shared hosting environment or a dedicated server. Moving to a dedicated server can be costly preventing most from ever considering it. This is no longer the case. Now there’s something in between that provides most of the benefits of a dedicated server, but at a fraction of the cost. But how do I know if a VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is right for me?  
Read the full story.
 
SPECIAL PROMOTION
Double Your Hard Drive Space Free
Sign up today for a Virtual Private Server and we’ll double your hard drive space for free! Click the link below and mention the promo code “DOUBLE”.
Click here

Advantages of a VPS

Traditionally there have been two options when it comes to website hosting. You are either setup in a shared hosting environment or a dedicated server.  Moving to a dedicated server can be costly preventing most from ever considering it. This is no longer the case. Now there’s something in between that provides most of the benefits of a dedicated server, but at a fraction of the cost. But how do I know if a VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is right for me?

Here are a few advantages:

1. Performance – You have dedicated CPU, memory, hard drive, database, etc. allocated to your environment.  Your website won’t be sharing any resources.

2. Control – You will have complete access and control of your website and server environment. This includes, among others, Root access and the ability to run multiple websites or even additional software applications without incurring additional costs or hosting charges.

3. Customization – A common issue with shared hosting is the inability to customize. With a VPS you can add customer software, DLL’s or mailing programs not supporting by traditional web hosting.

4. Security – A VPS separates your website or application from all others. Keeping your database independent and all your information separated from all other customers.

5. Cost – You can get into a VPS for as little as $100/month. This is a fraction of what a traditional dedicated server can cost.

Still not sure if a VPS is the right move for you? Give us a call or send in a contact form and speak to one of our Sales Engineers today!

Virtual Private Servers and RAID Redundancy

When evaluating Virtual Private Server (VPS) vendors it’s important to compare apples to apples. One of the best benefits of our VPS environments is the built-in redundancy. Not every VPS will come with built in backups or mirrored redundancy.

You’ll often hear the term RAID or RAIDed drive thrown around, but may not know exactly what it means or what the different options are. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.  Essentially when a RAID is introduced there is a level of fault tolerance with data mirroring over multiple drives. Although be careful, not all RAIDs are created equal.

If you’re looking at an option that includes RAID 0, there is no mirroring. This isn’t a true RAID. Remember, the goal is to have redundancy or fault tolerance. This has none. But whether it’s RAID 1, RAID 5 or RAID 10, you’re going to be covered. EarthLink utilizes RAID10 for all our VMware VPS environments. A RAID 10 requires at least four drives with multiple layers of mirroring and redundancy. In addition to this, all our environments are then backed up on our SAN for additional backup protection.  Never leave your mission critical data and systems up to chance. Make sure your data center is providing the redundancy you need to keep your server up and running with zero downtime.

LogicalSolutions.net’s May eNewsletter

Company News:

We Launched Our New Website! 
You may have already noticed, but in April we launched our new website. Now the site is 100% focused on hosting and data center services. Easily navigate throughout our new sections for server colocation, dedicated servers and virtual private servers, premium hosting services and information about our company.

A great new feature is our Virtual Photo Tour . Take a virtual walk through our facility and schedule a in person tour.

Internet Cafe
A brand new Internet Cafe is coming soon! In the next couple of months, we will be providing our colocation customers a comfortable environment to relax or work.
 
Disaster Recovery Stations
We now have disaster recovery stations available to all our colocation customers. Each station is equipped with internet access, access to the network, and phone lines. EarthLink provides full hardware DR colocation, virtual DR, off-site DR, and customized disaster recovery plans.
Learn more here. 
 
Now Offer SugarCRM Hosting
Almost 80% of small business use Excel spreadsheets to track their orders and business intelligence. Did you know SugarCRM is a cost effective way to organize, measure, and analyze your customer relationships across your growing organization? 

Why pay more with Sales Force or other expensive CRM systems. Our SugarCRM hosting solution provides unlimited users and features full administrative access. You can even signup online! 
Click here for more information.

Interested in our upcoming SugarCRM Webinar?
Contact Us for details.

Featured Blog Post:

“Is Your Data Center ‘Green’?”
by Casey Rohrer

“Is everyone really going ‘green’, or has the term just turned into a marketing gimmick?

It seems like every time I turn around, another company is claiming to be ‘green’. While a lot of these claims may be true, I have a feeling that the term ‘green’ is not used properly. Wanting to improve our environment is one-thing, but truly making an effort to do so is another.”

EarthLink is making that effort. We are aware of the issues the environment faces and we have made a conscious decision to do our part.
Read the full story.

View the Online version of our eNewsletter Here

When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about

When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about:

1. Platform: Which is the most Suitable Platform?

There really are only three major competitors: VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Parallels Virtuozzo. Each one of these platforms offers Competitive advantages as well as different pricing models.  For Example, running Microsoft Hyper-V allows you to run unlimited Windows Operating Systems under a single License which would lower the license costs for your organization, but might it may not be the best candidate if you are a Linux based organization. 

2. Number of Containers: How many virtual servers can you fit on each Server?

This really depends on the current CPU/RAM usage of your current environments.  One commonly made mistake is overloading the host server with too many Virtual Instances which will cause poor performance. 

3. Domain Controller Placement

Another thing to take into consideration is failover and proper disaster recovery for your Domain Controllers.  Placing your Primary and Secondary DNS server on Separate Virtual Nodes is best practice as well as having enough failover machines to handle the event of a Virtualization Host Failure. 

4. Migration Strategy

Determine a Migration Strategy and evaluate all your current candidate applications to migrate to your virtual environment. Note that not all applications should be migrated to virtual environments.  For example, some versions of Microsoft Exchange are not supported on select Virtual Platforms.  Doing your homework  is one of the most important step that needs to be taken before moving to a new environment and/or platform.

5. Failover and Backup Plan

Now that you are running more environments on fewer servers, backup and disaster recovery become even more critical.  Setting up a proper backup strategy for all of your Virtual Environments is crucial.  On the disaster recovery side, even if you run your virtual servers in house, you should secure a failover Virtual environment.  At EarthLink, we offer failover Virtual Environments that will run your applications in the event of a failure.