Everyone, this is Mike Crosse SingleHop’s Channel Program Manager, aka as Tandem Reseller System Manager.

I have always claimed to be a fan of autumn in Chicago, but this year, spring is really working for me!  Joining SingleHop has been invigorating, refreshing, and a nice change to the dreary Chicago winter.

I joined one of the best and certainly fastest growing dedicated hosting providers around, and am excited with the challenge of taking Tandem, our revolutionary hosting reseller service, to the next level where it continues to offer breakthrough benefits and advantages far above and beyond anything else in the industry.  If you are reselling dedicated servers, or reselling web hosting, we have what you need, right here:  Tandem

The hosting reseller market is constantly growing and evolving, and our goal thus far and in the future is to redefine the market, and make Tandem the hosting reseller leader worldwide.  With your input, we will get this task completed.  I am an open door kind of guy, and am reachable at most times, so please feel free to contact me when you have a question, need, or suggestion(s).  I can be reached at mcrosse@singlehop.com or (312) 447-2580 x 108.

I’m here to help, and look forward to making Tandem the #1 choice of web hosting resellers!

A lot of folks have a misconception about web hosting. They presume that it is a field that exists purely digitally. This is understandable, since most people are not privy to the underbelly of the beast—the data center and the work that gets done in it. In this post I hope to show the world the work that goes into providing a dedicated hosting service.

It’s been no secret that SingleHop has been growing at an exceptionally rapid pace. Our double, sometimes triple, digit growth puts a lot of strain on our data center teams – who handle it gracefully and work long and hard to make sure our customers are online. Late last week we took a large shipment of servers from our suppliers and the SingleHop team mobilized to help our DC staff get the servers racked and ready for customers. The below photoset is from our rack-a-thon and show the process from start to finish.

I was there personally, as was Zak Boca, our President & CEO. From our sales team, Jim Tremmel our Director of Sales, Mike Crosse, Miguel Villegas, and Kyle Kinder all attended and lent a helping hand. From our data center team, Will Briggs, Eric Nilson, David Sczcur, Chris Wille, Brandon Ewing, Vladi Gueorguiv and Sam Bowling helped (please forgive me if I missed anyone.) Remotely, a number of our other employees helped keep support and operations going as we racked-and-stacked servers into the wee hours of the night.

Will Briggs and a stack of new E3110s to be installed.

Andy Pace and Mike Crosse screwing in servers while Jim Tremmel and Kyle Kinder 'supervise'

Giant stack of power cables as Dave plugs in the servers.

Eric Nilson, one of our new DC techs, working the configuration station with a crash cart.

An attempt by myself to be artistic in my 'photography' work

The completed rear-hot side of the a server rack.

MySQL bills itself “The World’s Most Popular Open Source Database,” and with good reason.  Although an open source database solution might not be the choice for every enterprise, MySQL does provide high performance, scalability and flexibility for only a fraction of the cost of other database servers solutions.  There are three major ways to leverage the power of MySQL in central business functions—developing online applications, data warehousing, and enterprise-level custom applications.

Online Applications:  Powering Web 2.0

As part of the LAMP open source stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, & PHP/Perl/Python), MySQL has been foundational in developing many of the world’s fastest-growing social applications.  By facilitating performance, scalability, and reliability, MySQL and the LAMP stack enable transactional and interactive web-based applications to scale-out and meet the needs of growing users and data.  Some of the biggest names on the net are harnessing the power of MySQL for their Web 2.0 applications:

Online worlds—Neopets, Second Life
Web syndication & feeds – Digg, Feedburner, Google Reader
Blogs – Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal
Social Networking – MySpace, Friendster
Wikis – Wikipedia
Customized search engines – Craigslist, Trulia, Technorati
File sharing – YouTube, Flickr, Snapfish

Data Warehouse:  Keeping Information Safe

Of course, one of the primary functions of any database is to keep your data stored, organized, and safe for easy access.  MySQL offers an array of storage engines, both developed in-house and externally, which allow you to create, retrieve, update, and delete (the CRUD acronym—the four basic functions of persistent storage) your data as needed.  MyISAM is a common internal storage engine from MySQL developed specifically for data warehousing applications, although it is non-transactional.  InnoDB is a popular externally developed search engine, which supports both ACID-compliant transactions and foreign keys.  Other storage engines, such as Archive, Memory, CSV and Merge from MySQL are designed towards specific data warehousing functions.  Choosing the best storage engine for your given database application is essential to successful data warehousing.

Enterprise-level Custom Applications

MySQL is also a remarkably flexible database for a variety of custom enterprise-level applications.  MySQL has been effectively utilized in the IT industry and others for a variety of client, employee, and operational functions— even those that have traditionally been handled by proprietary database software.  MySQL Enterprise provides many of the features and support necessary to facilitate transactional and customer relationship management applications such as:

Call centers
Helpdesk applications (including support ticketing systems)
Financial applications (including automating loan applications and asset management)
Research, documentation, and testing
Human resources applications (including absence management and vacation tracking applications)

Unfortunately, all-too-often databases are a source of headaches, with lost and corrupted data and inefficient functionality.  But, when effectively utilized, your database can be foundational in the execution of your business’ most central functions, from HR to customer relationship management to value-driving operations.

If you are looking for complex hosting solutions, including hosting your own MYSQL database, look no further than SingleHop. With hundreds of complex MYSQL systems running on our network we understand what is needed to make your database run fast, smooth, and secure. For Mysql hosting, go with SingleHop.

SingleHop is an awesome dedicated server and complex hosting solutions company. I have been here a year and I couldn’t be happier. So many changes have taken place that I just can’t believe they have all happened within the last 12 months. SingleHop has grown immensely, not just in the number of clients and dedicated servers but also in employees. So much so, that we have now extended sales hours to 7 days a week! The sales team is quickly expanding, leaving us very little room left in the office. We’ve also added new signs to the front of the building as well as in our office along with a testimonial wall.

Not only is the SingleHop hosting team expanding, but so are the services we offer. We are now offering R1Soft to backup your data and our newly-released Tandem Reseller program that has been an incredible success with numerous sign-ups each day. In the past year, we have added several enhancements to the LEAP system, including LEAP mobile, LEAP widget and LEAP toolbar. Of course, we can’t forget our stunning, state-of-the-art new data center facility, which now houses a majority of our servers.

With all this success, SingleHop has still found time to give back to the community by donating thousands of dollars to local and global charities- We provided dozens of families at a local charity called Casa Central with Christmas gifts, and sorely needed shoes, jackets, and clothes. We are also making sure our clients are happy, too, and it shows:  this year marked the second year in a row that SingleHop received a perfect score from Better Business Bureau complaints. Looking over this last year, we have accomplished so much and have had fun doing it:  from working in the office day-to-day, to spending Friday summer evenings on the deck, to whirlyball in the park, to the most terrifying of all – skydiving! I can only begin to imagine what the next year will have in store for the ever-expanding SingleHop team.

SingleHop launched its Tandem Reseller Program a month ago and it has been a great success as a lot of new resellers have been added daily!

Why has it been so popular? Well, the program is designed to redefine what reseller hosting looks like. It has taken each of the big “pain-points” of reseller hosting and turned them into an advantage for the reseller. The Tandem system is composed of a front, end user control panel, as well as a back-end reseller panel with data-center grade control.

Tandem Reseller control panel has revolutionized the reseller hosting experience, streamlining client & server management to give resellers more control, better margins and ultimately, to sell more servers. Over the past month, we have been working diligently to get the word out about Tandem Reseller, so if you want more information on the reseller program check out some of our recent blog posts or take a look at our new Tandem Reseller Demo at http://www.singlehop.com/resellers/ .

As more clients use Tandem, the more feedback rolls in about what they think about this innovative program. With overwhelming agreement, clients love Tandem. One client said, “A very good concept; a central management area for servers, ordering, tickets, managing customers, and the works. It’s hard to think of ways to improve a service that already seems so perfect.”

Of course, with any new product or service there is always room for improvement, so if you have any ideas on how we can make Tandem even better, we’d love to hear it!

If you’re looking for disaster recovery services, there are a lot of “solutions” in the market … but few of them offer the flexibility, transparency and ease of use as R1Soft. Whether you’re running a hosting company, a dedicated MySQL service, or backup hosting – R1soft is a top-rated choice.

We’re now offering R1Soft backups for free, with the install and configuration done automatically.

Will it impact the performance of your dedicated server like most others’ backup solutions? No!
R1Soft’s disk-to-disk CDP software works by reading data at the sector level and only recording data that has changed since the last backup. This type of backup allows our clients to backup their data as often as every 15 minutes without seeing a harmful impact on server performance.

The common use of the R1Soft solution is backup hosting, such as offsite MySQL backups and disaster/backup recovery solutions for Linux and Windows servers.

You’ve likely had a moment in your life when you said, “I wish I could restore only this one file” or “I wish I could backup partition tables,” but your current backup strategy doesn’t provide those capabilities.  R1soft, however, features single file restore as well as full server restore, or a single partition recovery. Yes, it is that flexible.

In fact, it does even more: you can choose a regular backup schedule, set the number of recovery points you wish to be kept and let it run in the background without any further configuration!

You’ve probably been looking for a solid way to backup MySQL service data without interruptions to the service itself – R1Soft has a solution for this, too. Simply input the MySQL credentials in the R1soft form and set the schedule to backup all MySQL databases.

With the security of a regular backup strategy, should you run into any problems with your production server data, you can enjoy easy restores of any part of the system.  In fact, all restore options are available to you from inside our famous LEAP control panel.  Your data can be restored with a few clicks of the mouse.  The options within LEAP include:

Case #1 – single file/folder restore.

Case #2 – mysql database restore.

Case #3 – Partitions table restore.

Case #4 – Full server restore (known as “bare-metal restore”)

With free R1Soft backups from SingleHop, disaster recovery is now a breeze!

As we hit spring in Chicago we leap ahead one hour.  As we change our clocks we are told to check our smoke detectors and change the batteries in them at our homes, it is also good at this time to review an emergency plan if a fire was to happen.  We in the business world should also take this time of year to look at our disaster recovery plans and make sure we are taking good care of the data that is so precious to us.

This is a good time for our clients to look at our R1soft Backup programs along with other managed services to go along with your SingleHop dedicated server.  The time you take now to review your hosted server strategy can save time and money down the road.

If you are a current client, your account executive or account manager would be more then happy to review the services that you have with us and look over how else we can help you manage your dedicated servers. If you are not a client we believe in building relationship and coming up with the best solutions that meet your needs.  Our dedicated managed services complement our servers powered with our Leap technologies.

Spring is finally creeping into Chicago and with it comes one of SingleHop’s most exciting announcements to date. Today, we officially announced our cloud hosting platform, Cascade.

While we must keep the details slim, we can assure you that what you love about your dedicated servers will not change, and what you yearn for in cloud computing will be a reality. We know this all sounds a bit too good to be true, yet our world-class technicians and engineers have created what we believe is the best combination of dedicated server technology and cloud hosting advantages. This blending, or “cascading” of technologies, to create something faster, more stable, and more capable is what we set out to do and have been able to accomplish.

At SingleHop we like skydiving a good bit. In fact, the majority of the company recently jumped out of a plane in celebration of growth last year. Earlier this year, we launched our breakthrough reseller system named Tandem, as in tandem skydiving. Today we take another cue from skydiving in naming “Cascade”:  when you blend two parachute lines into a stronger and more efficient one you are “cascading” the lines together. And when it comes to dedicated servers and cloud hosting, our new platform cascades both technologies into a more powerful, efficient, and effective solution.

It pays to RSVP with SingleHop.
If you would like more information on Cascade, we promise that it pays to RSVP. Just send an email to Sales@singlehop.com with the subject title “Cascade RSVP”. We’ll make it worth your while, we promise.

The future of our economy is directly related to the health of the technology sector. And how healthy a technology sector really is depends on how quickly and effectively bright new ideas can become reality. This is why, at SingleHop, we are committed to helping and fostering the start-up sector through a multitude of scaled solutions and services- such as an on-demand firewall, free R1soft backup agent, and exceptional prices on powerful dedicated servers. We also offer a number of management services tailored to allow clients to pick and choose based on their level of expertise and competency.

In keeping with this theme, SingleHop is the lead sponsor of MidVentures 25, a local Chicago competition focused on fostering the best and smartest high-tech ideas.  Http://midventures25.com/.  Having gone through the whole startup process ourselves, we are keenly aware of the unique challenges and needs of any burgeoning IT company and are excited to partner with whomever this year’s MidVentures 25 winner is with a full year of hosting and management solutions.

One of the things that our startup clients always thank us for is our personal focus on each clients unique needs. This starts with every client having their very own Account Executive whom they can bounce ideas with and choose the perfect hosting setup, but we also provide a personal focus with all the multifaceted service options we offer, such as our backup services and the LEAP technologies that give clients the opportunity to control every aspect of their server remotely. This is what makes SingleHop the perfect choice for a company on the move.  When we see clients of ours taking off, we are proud of them and like to feel that we helped a bit in their success.  So don’t go alone:  take the first hop to success with SingleHop.