Yesterday we announced our exceptional server move-in special for reseller clients. Tandem since its launch has been a great success as it focused on helping resellers have more control, sell more servers, and make better margins. However even if the grass is greener on the other side we understand that moving servers from where you are to SingleHop is no easy task.

So, to lend server resellers everywhere a hand we came up with a promotion that offers any client who RSVP’d to our Tandem program $250 for each server they move in. For the rest of you we announced a $100 per server credit that we are officially increasing to $150! This means that for every server that you move into SingleHop we will provide you with a $150 credit and we will help you migrate the data for free. If you like Tandem and want to enjoy its advantages but are unsure about making the move, we made this deal especially for you.

At SingleHop it pays to RSVP, it gives you insider information on new products and services and allows you to take advantage of exceptional offers like our $250 Tandem RSVP offer. Although SingleHop’s RSVP for Tandem has ended, we have alot of new and exciting products coming down the line and you can reserve your place by RSVP’ing to Sales@singlehop.com and having your email added to our upcoming product RSVP list.

For more info on SingleHop’s Tandem Server Reseller System go to: Http://Tandem.SingleHop.com

Greetings Singlehop Fans and Clients!  The new reseller hosting program is finally here and in full swing.  We’re all excited about the new launch of the Tandem Reseller program, but you might still have some questions— so I have created what I believe are the TOP TEN things to know about Tandem.  Please use this as a guide when signing up for the program.

1.)   You do not have to have a minimum number of dedicated servers to be a part of the program, or a to meet a specific quota each month.  The system is completely free for any reseller.

2.)   Just for signing up as a Tandem reseller, you are entitled to the following perks:

•Free Set of Demo Wolf Tutorials (Must contact Account Executive)
•Free Unlimited GlobalSign SSL Certificates (These are unlimited ALPHA SSL’s that will need to bound to the IP/s of the servers of your choice within your account.  This can be generated by you manually via your LEAP account or manually by your Account Executive)
•Free banner ad set (must have at least 1 paid server).  Sizes include 468×60, 160×600, 728×90, 120×60 and 234×60.  (Must Contact your Account Executive)
•Free Toll Free Forwarding Phone Number Service (Trail Service that provides a number of free minutes based on your location, contact an Account Executive for more details)
•eFax Trial Links (30 Day Trial and 180 Day Trial)
•MySpace $50 in Free Ad Clicks (Must Contact your Account Executive)
•Custom Tandem-front-end user guide, branded with your logo and style
•Free R1 Soft Agent Details.  (Must add R1 Soft via Account Executive and must pay $1.50 per GB of stored data including OS data.  Backups are billed on actual usage at peak time during the month Since R1 Soft backups are based on the hard drives used partitioned data.)

3.)    Some additional benefits that are standard for all reseller accounts can be seen in our tier discount levels:

•5% discount with 3-5 dedicated servers
•8% discount with 6-11 dedicated servers
•10% discount with 12-20 dedicated servers
•12% discount with 21-40 dedicated servers
•15% discount with 41+ dedicated servers

We are also, for a limited time, offering two new server Intel packages to get you and your business started:

i.)   Nehalem 5520 Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.26GHz 8MB cache (Second processor can be added for just $40/mo)

•12 GB of RAM
•1 TB Drive (can hold up to 4 hard drives in a Raid configuration)
•5 TB Bandwidth on a 100Mbps port
•CentOS 5.x 64-bit
•Unmanaged

Monthly cost:  $179/mo!!

ii.)    Xeon E3110 Intel Xeon Dual Core 3.0Ghz w/6MB l2 cache

•6 GB RAM
•500 GB Drive (holds up to 2 hard drives in a Raid configuration)
•5 TB Bandwidth on a 100 Mbps port
•CentOS 5.x 64-bit
•Unmanaged

Monthly Cost:  $119/mo!!!

Our management services are priced as follow on a per server basis:

•Take 2 Management Services: $49.95/mo
•Take 4 Management Services: $99.95/mo
•Take All Management Services: $139.95/mo

Management selections:  http://www.singlehop.com/managed/fully-managed.php

4.)   To sign up as a Tandem reseller and access all the Tandem user offers, use the following link:

https://www.singlehop.com/tandem/signup

5.)   Please note that upon signing up, you should use our default (totalservercontrol.com) as the base hostname to your Reseller URL.  This means that your Tandem hostname would be (your company name).totalservercontrol.com.  This will allow us to create the SSL certificate for that URL and cut time in getting you set up as a Reseller with your own White Label program in Tandem.

Login Screen. Your logo goes where the "Total Server Control" text is located.

Please note that, if you wish to use your own URL, you must use a sub-domain of your existing registered domain that does not have a website or SSL assigned to it.  An example of this would be “reseller.yourdomain.com.”  If you choose to utilize this URL form for your Tandem program, we will still supply the SSL free, but will need to create a custom IP for you to point the A record of your domain to, as well as generate an SSL certificate, which will then need to be confirmed and verified through an admin@ email for the domain you intend to have your sub-domain URL based on (any questions, contact a sales associate).

Tandem Control Panel- What your customers use.

6.)   Once you have completed the process, you will receive SingleHop LEAP account login credentials along with a Tandem email providing you with your URL.  The LEAP account is your control panel with us, which allows you to directly perform upgrades, downgrades, review invoices, and open sales or support tickets.  You may also access LEAP from your mobile device by going to singlehop.mobi from your cell phone’s browser.

7.)   Upon logging in you may see your Tandem Reseller account in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, this is where you will go to setup your clients under the User section of your account.

Please note that your account executive, once assigned, will have their contact information listed on the first Welcome Tab of the Tandem account.

8.)   Once you have signed up, you should contact our sales team to speak with your current Account Executive, or be assigned one if you have not had any correspondence with our sales team members. MVillegas@Singlehop.com; CLarkin@Singlehop.com; KKinder@Singlehop.com

9.)   Remember, this program is to provide a white label reseller account for you to assist your company in reselling Singlehop.Com dedicated servers.  You should have a billing system or your own website in place, and use Tandem as an addition to manage your clients’ server experience.  We do not offer website design, but have many resources and vendors that can assist with ensuring that your company, no matter how small or large, will have a successful partnership with SingleHop.

10.)  Please note that if you are selecting an unmanaged solution, then you will be assuming full admin responsibility for the server so you should be capable of handling all troubleshooting aspects of the system for your client.  But if you do wish for our tech support team’s assistance, we provide a “LET SINGLEHOP SUPPORT HANDLE IT” feature in your Tandem account at just $10 per issue that you wish to have our support members assist you with.

The goal of this program is to ensure that you are able to run a successful reseller business with Tandem  “Sell more servers, have more control, make better margins” isn’t just a slogan, it’s the principle around which the program features were designed—a service that we’re committed to providing for you.  I would certainly encourage all clients and potential clients alike to check out the saving we are offering with the program and reach out to myself or one of my colleagues with further questions.  Because at Singlehop.com, we manage dedicated solutions differently, and your input is always priority number one with us. Start reselling dedicated servers today!

Miguel Villegas
Account Executive
SingleHop, Inc.
Phone: 1-866-817-2811 ext. 104

My co-workers know this already, but I figured I’d share it here anyway. I’m a bit like a ‘kid on Christmas’ when the mail comes—I always run down to the mailbox and pick it up and then sort through it myself. Oh well, we all have our idiosyncratic little tendencies and this one is one of mine. Any way, every so often, I get a letter from the BBB in the mail. I don’t know why they don’t switch to E-mail, but that is neither here nor there. Their letters could be a number of things, like an advertisement from a fellow member company, our annual membership dues, or it could be a complaint from a customer.

Last February (2009) I got a letter from our local BBB chapter, which came at an odd time, and wasn’t a complaint, bill or ad. It was a certificate, made out to SingleHop. We were being honored by the BBB for a full calendar year (2008) without them receiving as much as a single customer complaint about us. Naturally, I was ecstatic about the certificate, and ran to my keyboard to post about it on this Blog. Then, I hung it proudly on the wall by the entrance to our office, front and center.

I’m very happy to announce that it happened again for ‘09, and now there are two certificates hanging on the wall. SingleHop has not been the subject to even so much as one BBB complaint in both 2008 and 2009, and that’s something that most web hosts, including almost all of our competitors, can’t claim.

Hello All,

Allow me to introduce myself, I am Kyle Kinder, and I am the newest member of SingleHop’s Sales Team.  I’m extremely excited to be working with such a talented and professional team here at SingleHop.  SingleHop has introduced me to a work environment that I have never been a part of.  Energetic, motivated, friendly, and knowledgeable are just a few of the adjectives to describe SingleHop’s staff, since day one I have been treated very well by the entire team!

I am a proud alumni of Purdue University where I earned my Bachelors Degree in Computer Information Technology.  Before coming to SingleHop, I worked as IT Manager and Internet Sales Manger for a RV Wholesaler in the RV Capital of the World, Elkhart, IN.  I also worked as a Technician Supervisor for a cable contractor in Lafayette, IN.

I have recently moved to a suburb of Chicago, and ride the Metra to and from work every day.  This peaceful train ride allows me to put my headphones on, throw on some Pearl Jam, relax, and prepare myself for a day full of supporting SingleHop’s greatest assets, its clients.  I can’t imagine another dedicated server company treating its employees and its customers as well as SingleHop’s support and sales team treats its current and future clients.  I feel honored to be working for a company such as SingleHop and I am proud to be selling their servers and services.

That’s all for now, I look forward to many blog posts to come.  And I look forward to serving all of your dedicated server needs!

Kyle Kinder

Account Executive

SingleHop, Inc. – Chicago

Office: 1-866-817-2811 x[106]

Local: 1-312-447-2580 x[106]

Fax: 1-773-305-1666

MSN, AIM, GTALK, Yahoo: SingleHopKyle

Here at SingleHop we deal with a lot of sites that are heavy in MySQL database usage and over time the dedicated servers end up with so much traffic that their MySQL service gets overloaded. There are many options we here at SingleHop utilize to expand their MySQL service and I’d like to go over the most common ones with you.
The first solution most customers will do is upgrade the processor, ram and hard drives on their dedicated server. There are many processors you can upgrade to which provide more speed and an upgrade from sata hard drives to SAS hard drives provides a significant increase in IO. The problem with these upgrades is that bleeding edge processors can be expensive and SAS hard drives are way more expensive than SATA.
The easiest way we have found at SingleHop to expand capability of a site is to use slave replication. Slave replication is where you have your old dedicated server which is deemed a master. All updates, inserts and deletes are replicated to the slave dedicated server so you have a 1:1 copy. You can then perform all selects on the slave dedicated server which reduces the amount of table locks you incur from traffic on your site due to select and database modification queries.
There are other methods like switching to a clustering storage engine but they don’t have the functionality that the two main storage engines have. If after you add a slave dedicated server you’re still having performance issues you should look into hiring a database architect to go over your database schema and work on improving the layout so it is as optimized as possible.

While not a common necessity, I thought it would be a good idea to bring up the availability of clustering in Microsoft’s SQL Server with Singlehop. This is a technology that is available from us for both SQL Server 2005 and 2008 and is an excellent way to ensure near 100% uptime for your database back-end.

The base of something like this requires at least two dedicated servers running Windows Server 2003 or 2008 Enterprise edition, and a SAN device of some sort to store the hosted databases on. The reason the Enterprise edition of Windows is required is due to the underlying clustering software that is included with the operating system, which is not available in the Standard or Web editions. It will also require an Active Directory, which needs to be hosted on a server that is not going to be used as a node in the cluster. This machine can be Standard edition, as it will only serve as a domain controller.

After setting up the clustering service in Windows, the SQL installation can begin. It will check both servers at the same time to ensure the needed requirements are there, and it will actually install most of the database engine to the shared SAN storage. Once everything is installed, the SQL server will actually operate on a virtual ip address, which is automatically routed to the active SQL server. The SQL servers will keep in contact with each other, and if the active server stops responding, the clustering tech automatically kicks in, the san storage is brought online on the secondary server, and then SQL is fired up. Usually the transition will take no more then 5 seconds, making actual downtime nearly unnoticeable. This allows a technician to work on the server with issues without causing any problems with the databases, and makes it very easy to run things like Windows updates without worrying about downtime while the servers reboot, as you can do them one at a time.

While it may seem like a lot of servers, it is important to take these types of things into consideration when looking into SQL hosting, and hosting your entire environment as a whole. We at Singlehop feel that moving forward with a clustered MS SQL hosting platform such as this is absolutely essential to ensuring your application is always online and stable.

If this seems like something that you might need, feel free to contact your account executive with any further questions or inquiries!

Ladies and Gentleman,
I wanted to take a few minutes and give you a brief introduction to our new, completely revolutionary, reseller hosting control panel that we lovingly call Tandem in light of our recent company skydiving experience and in the spirit of working together with our resellers. The program is currently undergoing beta testing and as soon as we work out the bugs, we are looking forward to releasing it to everyone.

Tandem works on two levels, first to our direct clients you get an amazing interface that lets you customize what your clients see when they login, it can be skinned with your company logo, so it is completely white label, and also allows our resellers to provide a ticketing system that is tied in with ours so if there is an issue that you want to pass to us to resolve, it can be done with the click of a button.

The other great feature that Tandem gives our resellers is the ability to order new servers 24/7, at their current reseller pricing tier, then, once the order is placed, the server is automatically provisioned. Our support team only has a hand in it if hardware upgrades need to be made! The pricing tiers also adjust automatically, and as the discount increases, it is also applied to all of the servers, not just new ones going forward.

The second level is that Tandem allows our resellers to leverage SingleHop’s size, buying power, and R&D budget. For example, our clients can give their clients the ability to see bandwidth graphs, hardware configurations, and also access to our mobile management platform via leap.singlehop.com and singlehop.mobi. This platform has been developed in house over the last few years, and we are continually adding new features. This is in addition to the many management features and partnerships that SingleHop has made, like re-bootless Kernel and OS security updates via Ksplice and design services from Despark.com amongst many others.

Shown below, for your customers use: 1) Tandem panel for Blackberry and iPhone; 2) Tandem web panel; For reseller use: 3) LEAP toolbar; 4) LEAP webtop; 5) LEAP widget; 6) LEAP mobile

Tandem is a truly revolutionary and SingleHop is very excited to be the first to offer such an innovative platform. Keep an eye out for a post from Miguel in the very near future with a more detailed run down of all that Tandem has to offer. Start reselling dedicated servers today!

This morning I arrived at work and to my surprise I found a stack of 9 awesome Thank You cards from the grateful children at Casa Central sitting on my desk. Decorated with drawings and words of gratitude, it instantly put a smile on my face….what a great way to start the day! It was just a little over a month ago that several SingleHoppers got together at our local Target to pick out gifts for their Christmas trees. We know this year has been difficult for a lot of families, and SingleHop just wanted to give back to those families in need, we never expected anything in return. Daniel Salcedo, VP of Communications, said it best when I asked him about the cards, “I was blown away, it made my day. I did not expect them at all and make me even more glad that I participated.”

For more information on the event, please check out our previous blog post, “SingleHop Gives Back By Helping Local Chicago Charity” (http://www.singlehop.com/blog/2009/12/22/singlehop-gives-back-by-helping-local-chicago-charity/)

To donate or learn more about Casa Central, please visit: www.casacentral.org