When I first started with SingleHop, I thought a dedicated server was a really awesome waitress that gave you fast and superb service … okay, only joking, but I will say that I’ve learned a lot in the past few months.  I’ve gotten to know our sales team pretty well, and we’re all a great group.  Learning the ins and outs of the server business has been very interesting.  While my job is completely opposite than the techs who work wonders on our machines, I wanted to get personal with one of the guys upstairs, Eric Schrombeck.  Eric is one of our system administrators and is often referred to as the “Windows god”

How long have you been with SingleHop, and where were you working before?

“I’ve been with SingleHop since May 2007, and before that I was working at The Majestic Star doing warehouse work; and prior to that, doing tech support and CSR stuff for a little ISP in Hebron, Indiana called NetNITCO.”

In your opinion, after being here for a few years now, what would make a person want to be a SingleHop customer?

“Our guys know what they are doing, and we all feel good about doing a good job.  We have a great network with a darn good tech team.  Also, we have all-American support, and don’t outsource anything, which is very positive to our customers.”

What do you enjoy most about working here?

“The atmosphere. Everyone is pretty cool, and the work as a whole is challenging at times, which is something I like.  I can’t stand being bored all the time, and this job really keeps me on my toes.  I communicate technical information to an audience daily, and since I am pretty much the ‘go-to’ person for all things Microsoft here, I have to help a lot of people with a lot of things, and I find myself pretty good at making complex issues easy to comprehend.”

What is your level of experience with software used in your job?  What resources do you use when faced with a PC problem?

“There is so much software used in this business that my experience ranges from very experienced, with things such as Exchange server, to absolutely clueless when it comes to, for instance, Red5 media server.  The most important asset to this job is Google, by a mile.  We, of course, have an internal knowledge base and management tools, but given the amount of issues one of us sees in a day, we spend a very good amount of time digging resolutions out of Google. It’s a lifesaver.”

What do you see for the future of SingleHop?

“Well, so long as the good old “cloud” doesn’t take hold like everyone thinks it will, we will continue to grow exponentially.  I think that our support and sales staff are top notch, and everyone is committed to making sure the client is happy, which pays off.  In the time I have been here, we have grown from a <400 server company, and that may even be overshooting a bit, to one that supports over 2000 at this point.  I think it’s great to be a part of that, and hope I did my part to contribute to the growth.”

I aim to learn as much as I can about every aspect of the company.  Up next, I am going to interview my boss, Jeremy Miller, who has been an Account Manager with SingleHop for a while now.  I want to learn to learn a little more on his point of view from the sales angle at SingleHop.  Stay tuned!

We’ve had a great year at SingleHop, and all of us have been incredibly fortunate to experience immense growth and success in numerous ways. At the same time, we are very well aware that many in our communities have faced hardship during 2009, and so my fellow SingleHoppers and I decided to give back in a big way this holiday season.

We partnered with Casa Central, a local Chicago charity which helps families that have lost their homes get back on their feet again.  This past Saturday, December 12th, we met at our local Target to buy gifts and necessities for 16 boys and girls from Casa Central, ranging from 8 to 16 years old.

Dan Ushman, Cassie Odor, Zak Boca, Chris Larkin, Kate Larkin, Liz Salcedo, Stephanie Ostheimer, Daniel Salcedo (camera man!)

Warm winter coats are a must-have in the Chicago winters, but charitable organizations across the city have been suffering from a coat shortage in the past few months. So, heading into our shopping spree, we knew that above all else we wanted to provide every child with a thick, warm winter coat to keep them protected during the harsh Chicago winter. Along with coats, we bought everything from shoes to toys for the children, including gifts on their wish list such as Pokemon cards, stuffed animals, Transformers, and even toe socks to keep their feet toasty warm!

Casa Central did an excellent job in assisting us with information on exactly what these kids needed and wanted. We had sizes of coats, shoes, socks, and most exciting of all – for the kids, no doubt – what toys they wanted! On Christmas morning, these children will wake up to many gifts that they might not have otherwise had, and we’re glad to have the opportunity to make their holidays a little more special. When Account Executive Chris Larkin was asked how he enjoyed the volunteer trip, he replied, “Being able to help out, even with just a few children, is a very rewarding experience, and I am very happy that SingleHop is in a position that allows us to give back.” We wish the very best to these families, and hope that, with a little help this holiday season, they will be able to be back on their feet in the new year.

For more information about Casa Central or how you can get involved, please visit www.casacentral.org

Below: Daniel Salcedo, Chris Larkin, Dan Ushman, Stephanie Ostheimer, Zak Boca

Dear Clients,

At the end of a good but long-fought year we want to send our Holiday greetings to all of you. We trust that 2009 was a good year for you, and that 2010 will bring you many blessings. As for us, we are excited to partner with you and continue bringing you more control and exceptional value in all of your hosting solutions for 2010.

A quick note about our Holiday hours. As always, our team of expect technicians will be available to assist you 24/7/365 via, phone, chat and email.

However, Sales & Finance will have limited hours, as these departments will be closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day & New Years Eve and New Years Day.

Again, we wish all of you Happy Holidays and an excellent start to 2010!

Microsoft has recently launched a few initiatives such as their BizSpark and DreamSpark promotions that are aimed at providing startups and college students respectively access to software licensing and support at little or no cost. The idea being to promote Microsoft products and instill loyalty in the brand. A number of clients have joined the BizSpark program and based on what they have told me, the initiative has been a great success.

On the heels of that success, Microsoft has launched a new initiative, WebsiteSpark. This time they have taken aim at web professionals. The requirements necessary to join the WebsiteSpark program is that your business needs to primarily provide website design and development services and have ten or fewer employees. If your company qualifies you get access to such benefits as:
* Free online training programs
* Microsoft’s network of managed newsgroups
* Microsoft web development software such as:
- VisualStudio 2008
- Expression Studio 2
- Expression Web 2
- Windows Web Server 2008
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
* Listing in the WebsiteSpark Partner Catalog

While rather new, the WebsiteSpark program has had over 5000 small business join and Microsoft is expecting up to 15,000 more. Overall WebsiteSpark seems like a great opportunity for small web design professionals looking for dedicated or managed hosting solutions and is definitely worth checking out if expanding your Windows development capabilities will grow your business.

We at SingleHop believe that staying fresh and being able to offer exciting and useful tools is the key to happy clients.  We are constantly brainstorming to find new ways to improve the overall experience, and some of these brainstorming sessions brought you LEAP, our web-top portal developed in-house and with our customer in mind.  LEAP gave you the ability to manage almost everything in your account, reboot your server, SSH or RDP, allocate more IPs, turn on or off our SnapShield On-Demand Firewall, check bandwidth charts, and order new servers — and believe me, we have much more to come from the development pipeline.

These brainstorming sessions also brought you LEAPmobile and LEAPwidget.

LEAPmobile brings you all of the control of LEAP Web-Top, but can be easily accessed from your phone or PDA. So imagine being stranded in the middle of the desert … but, on top of being stranded in the middle of the desert, you find out your blog server is down!  Now you can whip out your mobile device and get your server back up by submitting a priority ticket straight from your phone. If the previous situation actually matches your current situation, please call for help first.

LEAPwidget allows you to submit tickets, view server status, and view billing all from the comfort of your desktop. No longer do you need to open up your browser, navigate to SingleHop, login, and submit a ticket. You can do that now with a few clicks of your mouse right on your desktop.

We also like using the phrase if “its not broke don’t fix it,” and with that being said, we are always on the lookout for great companies that can provide useful tools already created that we can integrate into our systems. That brings me to Ksplice. Ksplice offers a new tool called Ksplice Uptrack that will automatically update your servers kernel, and numerous other patches, without having to reboot the server when the update is completed. We are an exclusive partner with Ksplice, which means that no other hosting company will be offering this any time soon. Keep an eye out for a great video we put together explaining this fabulous new tool.

Innovation is key, and we guarantee that we are always working on new exciting things that will make an already enjoyable experience an even better one at SingleHop. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to put new ideas in your comments — we have only gotten this far with the support from all our clients. Happy brainstorming, or as we call it: “wouldn’t it be nice if … time.”

Hello, fellow Singlehop clients and bloggers!  It is Migzzy V, coming out to give you the skinny on some of our firewall features that have rolled out at the hop.  After a long October of festivities, awesome final third-quarter closing, and company-wide sky diving, Singlehop has rolled out our new SnapShield firewall feature.

The SnapShield Firewall was released at the end of September and is only available in our Dupont Data Center at this time.  This cost effective, shared Ciscso ASA 5510 firewall is only $39.95/mo per server.  Designed as a shared service, it offers a 10Mbps port and is our solution for clients that are working with a specific budget in mind.

We also offer other firewall options, such as our software base firewalls ($5/mo) and our dedicated Cisco ASA 5505 firewalls housed only in our CIMCO facility ($129/mo).  What’s the difference between them?  Essentially, they all perform the same way, which is to block unwanted access on the dedicated server it is connected to.  However, there are some benefits to choosing a hardware firewall like the Snapshield and Cisco ASA 5505 firewall: unlike a software firewall, no server resources are being used during their process because they are physical devices that are placed in front of your server.  This helps prohibit intrusions, but does so away from your server, as opposed to a dedicated server like that of a software base firewall.

I would also stress that if you are operating a system that does not require more than a 10Mbps port and only protecting 1 dedicated server, the Snapshield shared firewall is an awesome option at only $39.95/mo. For those clients with larger server configurations that might have multiple solutions and need larger port speeds, the Ciscso ASA 5505 dedicated firewall can support up to 7 servers on one device and will include a 100Mbps port.

If you have any questions about what options will best suit you, than you certainly should speak with one of our account executives.  I, as always, welcome any questions or requests you may have at Miguel@Singlehop.com.

One of the most frequent questions that I receive from potential clients looking for their first dedicated server is, “What is the difference between a managed and an unmanaged server?” My first thought is always, “If you don’t know, you need a managed server,” but I always try to be a little more helpful than that and explain the difference to them.

Generally, with an unmanaged server, we setup the hardware, install the OS and a control panel if one is ordered and maintain the network and hardware. Things like installing scripts and software, troubleshooting configuration issues, setting up firewall rules, etc. are all up to the client. Many of our clients have years of experience working with servers and have no problems with this: I hear from them maybe once or twice a year when they put in a ticket for a reboot and that is it. Even for those clients I recommend our monitoring services, but as far as support goes, they don’t generally need it.

The clients that come to me for their first dedicated server are often in a different boat. Some are developers that have written a web app they are looking to launch, some are growing e-commerce sites which have surpassed the resources of the shared hosting accounts that they started with, and some are businesses just looking for a stable platform to host their company website. This type of client wants a platform that just works so that they can do their thing, and they are the perfect candidates for our managed services.

With our managed servers, we provide four major services and several other optional services. The main four are:

• General Managed Services: General Managed Web Hosting Services is designed for organizations that do not have 24-hour IT staffing, and need support for web hosting services, as well as control panel troubleshooting.

• QuickReaction™ Monitoring Service: QuickReaction™ Monitoring is designed for organizations that need immediate assistance whenever your dedicated website hosting server is down. By selecting QuickReaction™ Monitoring, your managed dedicated server will be added into our monitoring systems; which are run 24 hours a day, and are additionally viewed by our administrators. If your managed server hosting and dedicated website hosting appears to be down, our administrators will troubleshoot, to the best our ability, your managed server, and attempt to bring everything back online to ensure uninterrupted service.

• Kernel and OS security updates:  Whether you select a Linux Dedicated Server or a Windows Dedicated Server, our Kernel & OS Updates Managed Service will constantly keep your server up-to-date, which is essential for security. It’s important to both the integrity of our network, and particularly the reliability of your managed web hosting server to always have the latest updates and patches applied to the software that you’re using.

This service insures that your software is always up-to-date and secure. While we cannot protect against weak passwords or insecure scripts running on the server, it will insure that the operating system is patched to the latest released version of the Kernel which SingleHop considers stable.

By being Open Source Community Sponsor of Kernel.org, Cent OS Foundation and a mirror sponsor for cPanel, we are able to have access to the latest versions of the Linux Kernel, cPanel, and other products quickly — and we are able to update your dedicated servers software via our internal network, saving time and bandwidth.

• Event Notification Monitoring Service: Event Notifications are conducted by a custom configuration of Nagios monitoring system, which is an open-source monitoring application used by some of the most critical organizations in the world. This advanced Dedicated Hosting monitoring system is used in our network operations center, and will alert you when services for the dedicated hosting server you specify are unreachable.

Overall, when compared to an unmanaged server, SingleHop’s comprehensive managed server solutions can provide an easy, nearly hands-off approach to your dedicated server. That brings me to my final point: the term “Managed Server” has no real definition, it is defined only by the services offered by each company — so make sure that all your hosting needs are being fully met by what your webhost provider is offering.

At SingleHop, we are always humbled by our customer reviews. It makes us very happy and very glad that our hard work DOES make a definitive difference in peoples lives all over the world, and even in our own backyard. One of our newest clients, thelocaltourist.com, a guide to getting anything fun done in our fair city of Chicago, recently wrote a very candid review of our firm and thanked us for our hard work. So without further ado, here is what they said:

“Over the last year The Local Tourist has seen phenomenal growth. While this is wonderful, it’s also meant some growing pains. More users, more traffic, more content, and more community mean more resources are required to keep the site running smoothly. You might have noticed that over the last week it was down – a lot. In an attempt to make the site move faster we had switched to a fully managed dedicated server at a new webhost, and from day one there were a multitude of problems. Support was inconsistent: some were responsive, helpful and polite; others were rude and adopted the what-are-you-stupid attitude. I had to ask them to reboot the server multiple times daily. Finally, after five days of crying, begging, cajoling, and terse responses to their lack of a solution, they told me the hardware was bad.

AAGGGHHHH!!! Guess what I did? Called SingleHop. I should have done that right off the bat and I don’t know why I didn’t think of them originally. Their support has been fantastic, and since I have someone dedicated just to me (poor guy), it’s also consistent. I put in a ticket and barely have time to refresh Outlook before he’s responded. I can also – and this is where the geek in me comes out – reboot the server myself. From my iPhone. Fortunately I haven’t needed to yet, but after the last week of feeling tethered to my computer the idea that I have control from anywhere at any time makes me happier than Joan Crawford in a closet full of wooden hangers. Bonus? They’re in Chicago!”

Thanks for the kind words, thelocaltourist.com!  We’re excited to be working with you.