ServerBeach Blog

From left to right - Angela Ramirez - Manager of Client Loyalty, Allison - Customer Service, and Amy - Billing Department.

Employees of the ServerBeach San Antonio division partied it up and got their game on at Dave and Buster’s last Thursday to celebrate the ServerBeach 10,000 server milestone. Ted Smith, Vice President of Operations was able to join in on the fun while visiting San Antonio. We had food, drinks, gaming competition and ServerBeach Trivia. Congrats to Team #4 for winning the gaming competition. Jim Bair, DC Ops Technician and previous customer to ServerBeach, won the ServerBeach Trivia with only missing five answers out of 21. Congrats Jim! Some of the trivia questions related back to the beginning days of ServerBeach, such as:

1. What is the name of the person who founded ServerBeach?
2. What year was ServerBeach founded?
3. What was the name of building where the first ServerBeach datacenter and office were located?
4. What was the name of the first ServerBeach server?

All of the employees sported some cool limited edition 10,000 t-shirts (see pic). The purpose of this event was to recognize a huge accomplishment for ServerBeach and for the PEER 1 company. When PEER 1 acquired ServerBeach 3.5 years ago, SeverBeach had approximately 4,500 servers. We have now more than doubled our server count and tripled in revenue growth. This couldn’t have been done without the hard work from employees all across the PEER 1 organization.

See more pictures

I had the opportunity to attend the Dallas WordCamp 2008 this past weekend. Aside from the drive from San Antonio to Dallas, the weekend was great. Cold, but great. WordCamps brings the largest gathering of WordPress bloggers, podcasters, designers, programmers and aficionados to teach, learn, eat, drink and generally have fun with one another.

In the opening segment on Saturday March 29th, Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic and founding developer of WordPress spoke about WordPress 2.5 and the changes that were made from previous versions. The poor man just had his wisdom teeth removed and was in a little pain that day, but he was a trooper! While he spoke, he displayed the changes in WordPress 2.5 on the big screens. A couple of changes included a new Dashboard (many people learned of WordCamp 2008 through the Dashboard widget), new Gallery Features - upload feature: set thumbnail sizes, proportions of pictures, extracts all photo information from your digital camera (date, time, pixels, camera type), comments in 2.5 - editing has been completely re-designed, cookies are now encrypted and a couple more added security features.

The Mayor also popped in for a few minutes to thank everyone for coming, that was a pleasant visit.

Lunch was catered in from Rudy’s BBQ, thanks to Find My Host who funded it. It was the perfect opportunity to mingle with other bloggers, podcasters, and the like.

The majority of the event, we sat and listened to bloggers and podcasters speak about tips and tricks, how to drive traffic, security, and best practices. These people have done their homework. I was really taken in by some of the tips they were giving, things that had never crossed my mind. Did you know that Google Analytics only tracks people who have Javascript turned on? If someone has Javascript turned off (I generally do), they’re not being tracked - skewed numbers, not good.

After Saturday’s event, many people got together afterwards for a night out and had a great time. Sunday was a jam packed day full of a lot of Q&A and the weekend in general was a very good learning experience for all bloggers and podcasters. John P. moderated the panel and asked very real questions that companies face when looking at building a blog presence. Why should businesses have a blog? What if my employees post something bad? What if my customers post something bad? These are questions that companies have to take into account when making a decision to have a blog - just as ServerBeach did. One of the panel members, Liz Strauss, was dead on when she said, “a blog can turn the faceless company into real humans you can relate to.”

All in all, it was a great event. The city of Frisco, TX allowed WordCamp to use their city council chambers. Many thanks to those who made this possible and I look forward to attending many more in the future.

You can see some of the photos taken at WordCamp 2008.

We’ve reached the 10,000 servers mark! This is a big milestone for ServerBeach and we want to thank you for helping us get here! Below is part of the official press release that went out late yesterday:

The company has reached this milestone through its dedication to providing the kind of control and flexibility that customers expect, in order to grow their businesses and web presence.

“We are very proud to reach this landmark with our strong customer loyalty and support,” said Fabio Banducci, president and CEO of PEER 1. “This milestone also reflects the company’s continuous growth in the very competitive self-managed hosting arena. We strongly believe this has been accomplished in part because ServerBeach has maintained its commitment to go above and beyond what other self-managed hosting companies provide, with much needed resources and support that help our customers succeed.”

Unlike competitors, where service often ends once the server is connected, ServerBeach is focused on providing its customers with continued support as their businesses grow. ServerBeach offers 24/7/365 customer service and automation tools that make self-managed hosting as simple as possible.

Automation tools include Rapid Reboot(TM) and Rapid Rescue(TM), which are powerful self-management tools optimized in-house by ServerBeach and available to customers free of charge. Rapid Reboot(TM) enables customers to restart their web servers instantly and on-demand, without having to wait on a technician to reboot them. Rapid Rescue(TM) is one-of-a-kind, allowing customers to rescue their dedicated servers from potentially fatal errors without waiting for assistance from an onsite technician.

Strategically located across the U.S., in California, Texas and Virginia, ServerBeach takes advantage of the high performance, fully redundant PEER 1 network, with 15 state-of-the-art data centers in 12
cities and 20 network points-of-presence across North America and Europe. Customers can expect reliable service, minimal latency, disaster recovery, and geographic diversity.

“I tried and quit several hosting vendors before discovering ServerBeach,” said Mike Mitchell, CIO at Winnovate.com. “I’ve used ServerBeach almost exclusively for over 4 years now and am very happy with their pricing, reliability, and support. Finally, a web hosting company I can count on!”

Microsoft Corp. yesterday warned of a critical vulnerability that affects users of Word running on Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 SP1 — several weeks after one security company first reported an exploit and a day after a second vendor confirmed ongoing attacks. In an advisory posted Friday, Microsoft acknowledged “public reports of very limited, targeted attacks” that exploit a bug in the Microsoft Jet Database Engine, a Windows component that provides data access to applications including Microsoft Access and Visual Basic.

According to Symantec Corp., however, the attacks Microsoft described used malicious Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 documents, which in turn call up the vulnerable Jet .dll (Dynamic Link Library file).

For further infrormation on this, head on over to ComputerWorld and read the full story. You can find the Microsoft Security Advisory here.

A new kind of flash memory technology with potentially greater capacity and durability, lower power requirements, and the same design as flash NAND is primed to challenge today’s solid-state disk products. Fremont, Calif.-based Nanochip Inc. said it has made breakthroughs in its array-based memory research that will enable it to deliver working prototypes to potential manufacturing partners next year. Three investors, including Intel Capital, recently put $14 million into the company, which has been developing the technology since its founding in 1996.

“It’s a technology that doesn’t depend on Moore’s Law,” says Gordon Knight, CEO of Nanochip. “This technology should go at least 10 generations.”

Read more about this technology at ComputerWorld.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt will detail the company’s plans for Google-izing the health care industry at a health care trade show on Thursday morning, starting with a consumer destination site called Google Health. Schmidt is scheduled to give the morning keynote speech at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2008 annual conference here and will outline Google’s vision on tackling the next Internet frontier of medical data. The move, rumored for a few years, makes sense, given how much people use the Web to get health information and how much they spend on medicines and health care.

Google Health is being previewed at the company booth and gives a glimpse of what consumers participating in a trial in Cleveland will experience–a clean and simple interface where people can get to their health information in one place, share it with others, and search for information and care providers. Google Health will be available for anyone with a Google account to use later this year, said Missy Krasner, product marketing manager for Health Team Google.

Read the full story here.

Earlier on this month I posted about a promotion here at ServerBeach with a few details. Today, I’d like to share the press release that went out today that includes full details of our “Sandbox Servers” -

Developers explore and test a suite of Microsoft design and management tools within a secure, dedicated environment

VANCOUVER, BC – February 26, 2008 – PEER 1 Network Enterprises, Inc. (TSX-V: PIX), a leading provider of online IT infrastructure, has partnered with Microsoft to offer 50 free developer sandbox servers for a 30-day trial. Web developers now have a chance to work with full control on a collection of Microsoft website development applications in a dedicated server environment.

“We are pleased to offer this great program that meets the needs of developers who want to explore new applications and ensure that they work well before exposing them in a production environment,” said Robert Miggins, vice president of business development for PEER 1. “With the sandbox servers we give developers the platform and tools they require to build applications, test, and deploy, all with a seamless experience.”

The 30-day free period is a unique opportunity for web developers and agencies to explore both the internal and external aspects of testing and developing a website and other online applications using some of the latest Microsoft software that has been pre-loaded into the sandbox server and is connected into PEER 1’s extensive online network infrastructure.

“This program is a good opportunity for developers in any field,” said John Zanni, director of hosting for the Microsoft Communications Sector. “Working together in a more collaborative and supportive environment enables developers to build better applications and compatible offerings, which can better meet customer needs and increase both business and customer revenue.”

The developer sandbox supports IIS 6, .ASP.NET 2.0 and PHP 5 and provides the following design and management tools:

* Microsoft® Expression® Studio: Expression Studio includes Expression Blend, Expression Web, and Expression Design - The professional design tools and innovative technologies in Expression Studio give you the flexibility and freedom to bring your vision to reality.

* Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions: Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition – This is the ideal tool for productively building object-oriented applications for Windows on the .NET Framework.

* Microsoft Silverlight – A cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

* Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2005 – This tool contains features that will help your team develop data applications in a fraction of the time, helping to drive data to the corners of your business.

Microsoft and PEER 1 invite developers to apply to participate in the sandbox. Once approved developers gain free root access to a server set up in PEER 1’s San Antonio data center for 30 days with no contract and no obligation.

***As a bonus, developers who decide to order a server from PEER 1 at the end of the free sandbox server period will receive a Microsoft tool package, including Microsoft Expression Web ($299 value), Microsoft Expression Studio and Microsoft ASP.NET training ($1099 value), at no additional cost.***

Visit http://www.peer1.com/hosting/sandbox.php for more information.

About PEER 1
PEER 1, a leading online IT infrastructure provider, believes in the limitless opportunity of the Internet and the business growth and continuity it provides for its more than 9,000 customers. PEER 1 delivers highly scalable managed hosting and co-location solutions to ensure customers’ online presence is always fast, always available. Since 1999, PEER 1 has grown to include data centers and network points of presence in 17 major cities across North America and Europe. Serving a variety of companies, PEER 1 offers solutions that grow through every stage of web commerce, regardless of company size. The company’s headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and the stock is traded on the TSX Venture exchange under the symbol PIX.

For more information visit: http://www.peer1.com.

Mendacious machines controlled by hackers that reroute Internet traffic from infected computers to fraudulent Web sites are increasingly being used to launch attacks, according to a paper published this week by researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Google Inc.

” The paper estimates roughly 68,000 servers on the Internet are returning malicious Domain Name System results, which means people with compromised computers are sometimes being directed to the wrong Web sites - and often have no idea.”

And often have no idea. That is what bothers me the most about users on the internet. Most harm done to users is because of of their own lack of knowledge as well as just not paying attention. There are ways to protect yourself, your systems and servers, it’s just taking the time out to learn, pay attention, and do it.

Read more about “servers that lie” here.