ServerBeach Blog

There are many things that are not boldly announced when visitors view our website. There is also a lot of misconception around the internet when people look at ServerBeach and our support or policies. I’ve decided to list a few things here that many people just aren’t aware of when considering using ServerBeach.

Did you know -

* Technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

* Our Customer Service is available by telephone 24 hours, 7 days a week.

* At ServerBeach you have a dedicated Account Manager.

* Our DCops is available around the clock and there for all of your maintenance needs day or night.

* Server reloads are 100% FREE!

* Our forums are full of great people (both ServerBeach employees and customers) willing to assist other customers.

* By logging into the MyServerBeach customer portal you can

• Reboot your server
• Reload your server
• Rescue your server
• View Flash Tutorials on the different Control Panels that we offer
• Manage your own DNS
• View your payment history

…and so much more!

Have you ever submitted a ticket and needed it to be escalated or wondered what the status of your ticket was? Maybe you just want a quick update? Give us a call any time, day or night and find out instantly!

At ServerBeach, we are committed to customer satisfaction. If you have a question, give us a call. Or if you just want to say hello, give us a call! As a matter of fact, if you happen to be local to San Antonio, Texas or just visiting in town stop by our office, say hello and come meet the Teams!

I announce this a lot on our customer forums and I’d like to add it here as well - You can find me on the ServerBeach Forums as “QT” and I am always available via chat, private message on our forums, and e-mail. Don’t hesitate to share your comments, ask your questions, or just introduce yourself. All of us at ServerBeach look forward to meeting new people and building great relationships, so come say hello!

For a limited time only, get 25% OFF our Dell™ PowerEdge Series hosting plans. With these prices, you also get the ServerBeach ValuePack which includes:

* DIY tools
* Choice of data center
* 24/7 support
* The rock-solid, ultra-fast PEER 1 network backbone.

Click here to view these 25% off deals.

Life’s better at The Beach!

I’ve decided to re-post an article that I stumbled on this morning over at Computer World. If you have a funny (true) story that’s taken place in your IT world, feel free to send it my way and I’ll post it here.

This IT pilot fish works for a small, privately owned retail chain — and that means a tight ship, budgetwise. “All six of our servers were on one UPS capable of running the entire computer room for 20 minutes,” says fish.

“One summer afternoon we heard a zap and sizzle outside the building, and half of our electrical supply went out. Some lights and outlets worked, some didn’t. And, of course, the entire computer room was dark.”

The four-member IT department races to the server room and quickly comes up with a plan. First step: They’ll run a 100-foot heavy-duty orange extension cord to the one working outlet within reach.

Next step is attaching a UPS that, in turn, will have two power strips plugged into it. Into the power strips are plugged six more UPSes, one for each server and its attached peripherals.

One by one, the servers are shut down, connected to the new jerry-rigged electrical source and powered back up.

“About half way through this adventure, an end user poked her head through the door and asked if it was OK to continue to use the server applications during the blackout,” fish says. “We all glanced at each other, and the VP of the department answered, ‘Of course! We’re up on the B.O.C.!’

“The end user then proceeded to walk down the hallway, announcing in a loud voice to the other users that they could continue to work, as the B.O.C. network was up and running.

“We had to close the door tightly and stifle our laughter at this announcement, as we couldn’t let her know that B.O.C. was an acronym for ‘big orange cord.’”

If you’d like to see your story posted on the ServerBeach Blog, please send it to me at cpugsley@serverbeach.com.

(click on the pictures for a larger view)

I was taking some pictures around the office the other day and the staff decided to get together and have a little fun. I wanted to share a couple of the pictures that we took and give you a chance to see some of the people that you speak with from time to time. In this picture you will see our developers, sales and account managers, billing, IT, DCops, technical support, business dev., and marketing. If you’re one of our customers and you speak to us pretty regularly, or even just a couple of times - shoot me an e-mail with the name of the employee and I’ll be happy to point them out so you can put a face to a name: cpugsley@serverbeach.com.

How many of you are die-hard Firefox users? How many of you are constantly looking for tools, add-ons, or anything else to make your browser experience just a little bit better? I read an article today over at MakeUseOf.com that included 6 pretty cool extensions for Firefox that’ll save you some time -

1. Hyperwords 3.6 - Interact with all the words on the web, not just links!

2. Paste Email 3.2 - Paste your email address (or any other text) into text fields.

3. Read It Later - Save pages of interest to read later.

4. Shareaholic - Allows you to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser.

5. Next Tab - An add-on that improves the tabbed browsing.

6. TinyURL Creator - It takes a long URL as input, and gives you a short URL to use in it’s place.

Are any of you using some of these already? Do you have some neat add-ons or extensions to share? Let us know!