We all know SSL certificates. We know that they’re good, and we know that they can take a real dent out of any business’ budget. After seeing the incredible response to our free SSL offer for Tandem resellers, we’ve decided to temporarily extend it to all retail customers as well. During the months of August and September 2010 all SSL Certificates from GlobalSign that SingleHop normally sells (Alpha SSL, Domain SSL, and their wild-card variations, for periods up to 5 years) are free as long as you install them on a SingleHop IP Address.

Enjoy!

One thing I see way too often in this business is inexperienced clients getting themselves into trouble with unmanaged servers.  Some clients have never run a server before but feel that they can wing it, while others have a limited budget and decide that server management is not a worthwhile investment. Either way, they always end up regretting their decisions.

Taking on a unmanaged server means you are taking on full admin responsibility for your server, with no assistance needed by our tech department. That’s a tall order. Unless you have the expertise and resources necessary to configure and manage a dedicated server, you’re almost certainly better off choosing a managed server for your business.

I do have clients who have worked with dedicated servers their whole lives or have a support team which can handle troubleshooting on an application level, and in those cases, unmanaged systems might make sense. But even then, many of those clients utilize SingleHop’s semi-management plan to help alleviate their technical support teams’ constraints. Our server management tiers are designed to let each client choose the level of management which is right for their unique circumstances and business needs.

Choosing a managed server also gives you an opportunity to learn how to manage your own servers sucessfully. If you are new to using a server, or you’d like to learn how to admin your own system, than selecting a managed server is one of the best investments you can make. Our tech engineers are available 24/7, 365 days a year to answer questions and assist with troubleshooting.

If you are not interested in learning to administer your own server, that’s perfectly OK—we offer convenient “take all” packages in which our support team handles all of your monitoring and security needs.

So, whether you’re new to owning a server or already have a rock-solid support team, take a look at our support packages and ask one of our Account Executives how we can help you.

A few weeks ago we received one of the most cherished pieces of mail that has ever come to SingleHop (pictured below).

It was Inc. magazine’s package to officially welcome SingleHop to the legendary Inc. 500 list! While you may have heard that we are one of the fastest growing companies around, now we can officially prove it and quantify it for you! Between 2006 and 2009 SingleHop’s sales grew an astounding 3895%. This makes us the:

-#1 fastest growing web hosting firm in the nation

-#1 fastest growing IT firm in Chicago

-#3 Fastest growing IT firm in the nation

-#58 Fastest growing firm in the nation

We are extremely excited to have been included in the Inc. 500 list, and to have reached such an exceptional rate of growth. It is a testament to the dedication, hard work, and  ingenuity of our founders and all of our employees. SingleHop is growing like crazy and has done so for several years in a row because we have genuinely focused on offering excellent products and services, and backing them up with the best customer service and tech support in the industry.

So if you are a SingleHop customer, congratulations. You are part of us and this prize belongs to you too. If you are thinking about becoming a SingleHop client? What are you waiting for?

When I first started here at SingleHop, over two years ago, one of my first tasks was to overhaul our aging DNS system. We had been creaking along using zone files, but their number was quickly growing out of control. Also, we rely heavily on automation here, and using scripts to automatically edit files can be quite error-prone.

So, back in April of 2008, we migrated to BIND-DLZ and moved all of our DNS records into MySQL databases. I released a DNS zone parsing script you can use to do the same thing in May.

This system has been incredibly stable. After a few initial kinks, we haven’t even had to think about our authoritative DNS servers at all. During our recent internal DB overhaul, however, we discovered that the version of MySQL hosting the DNS records was too old, and it couldn’t be updated because our DNS servers were still running CentOS 4.8. We were gonna have to migrate to an entirely new operating system, and to do that with the least downtime required setting up new servers.

Today, we finished setting up the new DNS servers and switching our infrastructure over to using them. When it came time to decommission our old nameservers, I decided to see just how long they had been running:

[root@ns1 ~]# uptime
16:55:01 up 593 days, 03:12, 2 users, load average: 0.11, 0.06, 0.04
---
[root@ns2 ~]# uptime
16:53:45 up 626 days, 10:40, 3 users, load average: 0.10, 0.08, 0.09

Like many unix nerds, I tend to get obsessed with uptime. For instance, my own personal server has been up for 99 days, and even my laptop hasn’t rebooted in over a month. So it was not without a heavy heart that I destroyed the epic 626-day uptime on ns2 when I shut it down today.

These long-running servers got me to thinking: how many of our other internal servers have been running for a really long time? It turns out, having servers that run for years isn’t unusual here at SingleHop. For instance, here is the uptime from our Quick Reaction monitoring server: 20:50:11 up 578 days, 1:30, 2 users, load average: 1.06, 1.25, 1.36; our customer database server: 20:33:42 up 647 days, 17:35, 1 user, load average: 0.29, 0.53, 0.63; the singlehop.com web server: 20:53:00 up 317 days, 12:40, 4 users, load average: 0.05, 0.07, 0.07.

However, the champion among all the servers I checked today is one of our oldest backup servers:

backup02:~# uptime
 20:44:48 up 899 days,  6:41,  1 user,  load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.07

Considering that SingleHop is not even three years old, a two-and-a-half-year uptime is pretty impressive indeed.

All of this is possible thanks to the magic of Linux. Software updates happen automatically, and the computer does not need to be rebooted to take advantage of them — only the affected applications need be restarted. And, thanks to our KSplice service, we don’t even have to reboot our servers to do kernel updates! We can just keep our infrastructure humming without a care, for years at a time!

So, what’s YOUR longest-running server? Share your story on SingleHop’s community forum: http://community.singlehop.com/general-discussion-introduce-yourself/403-what-your-longest-running-server-we-just-reluctantly-rebooted-899-one.html#post2409

Is The Hokey Pokey really what it’s all about?  The Hokey Pokey’s 70-year claim of  ’that’s what it’s all about’ may have seen its final days.  Single Hop’s excellent support, customer service, and dedicated server management, has catapulted itself as the most reliable dedicated server provider.

Awards such as Best Dedicated Host (July 2010), Best Quality of Service (March 2010, Nov. 2009),  Most Reliable Hosting Provider (Oct. 2009), Best Dedicated Server Provider, Best Managed Server Provider, and many more have made SingleHop the number one choice of many independent reviews.

Combine that with the fact that SingleHop has never received a better business bureau complaint and you’ll begin to see what makes SingleHop really ‘what its all about’.

-Excellent Support – 24/7 toll free expert technical support through phone and ticketing.

-Customer Service – The sales and customer support system at SingleHop is known as the best in the industry.  The secret to this success starts with focusing our support model on providing every client with personalized, timely, and expert advice regarding their dedicated or complex hosting solution.  All SingleHop clients are assigned a team made up of an Account Executive and one or more Account Managers. While the entire SingleHop team is always happy to assist clients, the Personal Assist Method allows us to meet each client with a focused and thorough approach, based on their specific needs.

-Dedicated Server Management – At SingleHop, we understand that each client has different business needs, and as such, management services should not be not be lumped into a “one size fits all” package. How much management assistance you need will generally depend on the application that you are running. Other factors to consider include you or your staff’s level of expertise, and even how much available time you have.  The cornerstone of SingleHop’s managed hosting program is our à la Carte Server Management Program, which offers you a full array of transparent management services that you can tailor to your specific needs and goals.

With all this, it is easy to see what has made SingleHop the most reliable dedicated server provider.  Join the SingleHop family today and be a part of the fastest growing and best dedicated server community!

At SingleHop, We Manage IT Differently, and that’s really ‘what it’s all about’!

Kyle Kinder
Account Executive
SingleHop, Inc. – Chicago
kkinder@singlehop.com
Follow me on Twitter: SingleHopKyle
Join me on Linkedin: KinderKyle
Office: 1-866-817-2811 x[106]
Local/Direct: 1-312-447-2585
Fax: 1-773-305-1666
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As summer begins to wind down, Singlehop is incorporating the new Cascade system into our lineup of services.  Cascade is a unique cloud hosting system which will provide both the security of dedicated servers and the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing.

When you add the Cascade service to your dedicated server, you will have the ability to create virtual environments for your applications and customize your server resource usage on the virtualized LAMP platform.  Your data will be  stored within the Cascade failover environment. If the hardware running your web solution were to fail, your systems and data would be automatically transferred to another dedicated system within the cloud.

Cascade provides instant scalability. You can allot as much server resources as you wish on your system,  and if you need to expand,  you can add additional resources instantly.  No matter how much you customize your system, you’ll always be able to count on Cascade’s cloud-based data storage (cloud storage service coming later this year).

Cascade is designed for high-performance web applications and currently is not optimized for high-volume shared environments.  The system will be offered on the Debian and CentOS Linux platforms and will incorporate Xen for the virtual environment.  Pricing for Cascade will be available later this month and can be expected to be under $100 per server.

Currently, we have dozens of beta testers who are enjoying the benefits of Cascade already. One of the most exciting new products on the web, Mobi-cart.com, is already prepping up to continue its fast growth on the Cascade platform.

For more information on Cascade make sure to RSVP and receive extra insider news on Cascade, along with coupon codes redeemable after Cascade’s public launch.

http://www.singlehop.com/cloud/request_beta_access.php