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.

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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.

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.

We are proud to offer the MGuard Smart hardware firewall, the smallest security device available delivering amazing security and performance. *

With the growing problem of malicious activity on the Internet, security is a huge concern. To counter this growing issue, ServerBeach has released the mGuard Smart single server hardware firewalls on Category 3 and Category 5 servers.*
To order a mGuard Smart firewall, please contact an account manager or a sales representative at 1-800-741-9939.

* Available as a limited release starting February 25, 2008.
Available only in our San Antonio, TX data center at this time.

The MTRON MSD-SATA 6000 Series features high performance with sustained throughput reading at 100MB/s and writing at 80MB/s. The Access time is less than 0.1 mses!

The MTRON MSD-SATA 6000 has high reliability with

- Wear-leveling Algorithm
- BCH 7 Bit Error Correction Code (ECC)
- Bad Block Management Algorithm
- Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 1,000,000 hours
- Data Retention: 10 years at 25 degrees Celcius

A ServerBeach customer, Kevin Burton has been testing and running benchmarks on this drive and posting frequent updates on his blog. Thanks Kevin!

While this is still being tested at ServerBeach, we expect to be able to offer this to our customers in the near future. Be sure to keep an eye on our website and your future e-mails!

You read correctly! Get a Free PEER 1 Sandbox Server!

PEER 1 and Microsoft are offering 50 sandbox servers (valued at $1,000 each) free for 30 days, packed full with the very latest MS development software for you to work with. This is a limited time offer and available to qualified applicants only. To become eligible for this rare opportunity, please fill out the online application. If you are selected, a PEER 1 representative will contact you directly with details on accessing your server.

SANDBOX SERVER SPECS:

* 2 x Intel Xeon 5320 Quad-core CPU
* 2 GB RAM
* 1 x 250GB HD

Each sandbox server includes:

PLATFORM

* IIS 6
* .ASP.NET 2.0
* .NET 2.0

* PHP 5.0
* Silverlight
* SQL Server Standard

EXPRESSION TOOLS

* Expression Blend
* Expression Web
* Expression Design

VISUAL STUDIO EXPRESS EDITIONS

* Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
* Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
* Visual C# 2005 Express Edition

As a bonus, we are also giving away the following to each Sandbox user that establishes a new Microsoft dedicated hosting account with PEER 1 at the end of their sandbox server trial period:

* Microsoft Expression Web (valued at $299) - a professional design tool to create modern, standards-based sites that deliver superior quality on the Web.

* FREE Microsoft Training (valued at $1099) - A free one year online subscription for Microsoft® Expression Studio & Microsoft® ASP.NET training delivered by Total Training™.

Included in Your Subscription:

o Total Training™ for Microsoft® Expression Studio - 27 hours: Watch and learn as we show you how to take your creative possibilities to a new level using the professional design tools and innovative technologies in the Expression Studio.
o Total Training™ for Microsoft ASP.NET - 23 hours: These training videos will get you up to speed quickly, exploring all of the key features of AJAX and Building Web Applications, and then guide you to mastery level with advanced topics and techniques.

Check out the full details here!

We’ve read the articles, we’ve watched the news stories about the RIAA going after people left and right for illegally downloading music from the internet. Well, it seems that the RIAA also believes that you shouldn’t be able to go to the store and purchase a CD (or buy a CD online) and copy it according to this article.

“Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA’s perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become law.”

The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up for consideration in Congress. We’ve reported on the bill before, noting that Google’s top copyright lawyer (and the man who wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject of copyright law), William Patry, called the bill the most outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.”

So, if you’ve bought a new CD that holds several of your favorite songs. Want to copy it to carry in your vehicle or to work to listen to? Be careful as it may end up costing a heck of a lot more than what your favorite songs are worth.

I wonder just how far this one will go.

According to a “Sanity Check” article on TechRepublic this morning, the dependence of business on technology will continue to accelerate 2008, but not all of the trends are happy ones. They’ve created a list of which tech trends to keep an eye on during 2008 and how they will impact business and IT — for better and for worse.

1. Enterprise IT budgets will shrink in the U.S.
2. Utility computing will start a new wave of IT outsourcing
3. Mobile Internet will change the way people work
4. Green IT will gain legal momentum
5. Unified communications will unlock the business value of VoIP
6. Businesses will continue to avoid Windows Vista
7. WAN caching will save bandwidth and speed up remote users
8. Demand will grow for alternative form factor computers

A very interesting read.