Posts Tagged ‘service’

Security is not a thing to be taken lightly. Think about the information that is stored on your server; think about how many months or years worth of data is stored in your databases. Your account information holds a master key to all of this data on your server. This is the very reason this information is protected so closely by the SoftLayer staff.

All companies work very hard to make sure that their products and services are as easy to use as possible. While on the other hand, security works as hard as possible to, seemingly, make the product or service difficult to use. While it is never our intention to make any service difficult to use, it is our intention to make them secure. This is the very reason why, when we are presented with any questions via phone that are sensitive to the operation of your server or account we ask the inconvenient questions to make sure the person on the other end of the phone line is authorized to make the requested changes to the account or the server.

Up to this point this article has not been as light hearted as I had originally intended, but it’s all about being prepared. The point is, everyone deserves a vacation at some point or another (or believes they do), and according to Murphy’s Law, something will inevitably occur that requires immediate attention. When you’re enjoying that time on the beach, your mind a million miles from bits and bytes, and you miles from anything that can be used to properly manage your server or your account an issue can occur.

While you are out, have you made proper provisions to ensure someone can manage your hardware in your place? Your staff may have the passwords for the servers, IP addresses, and may be able to drop your name; but, I assure you this is not enough information for the SoftLayer support staff to submit a ticket, reboot, or log into your server on your behalf. Have you made sure that in a panic situation someone will be able to provide us with the answers to the security questions on the phone? Are you sure whoever is left in charge has been given the proper permissions in our management portal? Making sure these points have been thoroughly covered prior to your vacation, or even leaving for the day, will help you minimize risk while maximizing your beach vacation.

Everyone always says it’s a good idea to have a backup plan just in case your primary plan bites the dust. I couldn’t agree more. Recently my personal Xbox 360 failed and this has caused plenty of grief in my household. I used my Xbox to stream content from Windows Media Player on my desktop to the TV (via Media Center edition of Windows XP). This has worked great and has been able to provide me with a means to entertain my child. Of course, this going out has caused a screaming baby because now she can’t watch her “movies”.

Now, had I had a proper backup plan, this wouldn’t be an issue. See, I put all of my trust into a single device and/or single method to accomplish something. When this device failed, my operation came to a halt. I didn’t listen to the advice I’m always telling our customers… have a backup or backup plan. This is where our “extra services” come into play. Not only do we offer backup solutions (eVault, NAS…) but we also offer solutions that allow you access to high-availability configurations (Citrix XenServer, for example). With XenServer you can configure a cluster of systems and setup automatic failover. This would prevent any major outages of your website/services. If this isn’t something you think would work for you, utilizing eVault backups might. We now offer eVault Bare Metal Restore. Now, the problem is somehow applying these to my Xbox so my kiddo can go back to watching her movies… Long story short, don’t rely on a single solution. Always have a backup plan or system in place to prevent headaches in the future. You won’t regret it if you do.

I work in the support department at SoftLayer, and I can tell you that a day of answering phone calls and tickets is not what you might expect. SoftLayer customers are a little different from customers of other companies.

I know from my own experience dealing with cable/internet providers, electric companies, delivery companies, online stores, etc. that the only time I ever call is when I have received sub-standard service and something needs to be fixed. I am usually met with a person on the phone that either does not know the answer to (what seems to me) a simple question or simply does not hide the fact that they don’t care about my issue. I have always chalked this up to a company that has grown to the point that the original people who cared about their company are no longer in touch with the end user (customer). So, I wade through mountains of sludge to get to someone who can actually give me the information I need or maybe even fix my problem. Then, in the case of cable/internet, I wait… and wait… and wait… and…………………. wait for a technician who knows what they are doing to fix the actual problem. And, yes, it has taken three technicians on three different days and a supervisor being called out to my house to fix a problem in the past.

I was just talking to my manager, who related a recent experience in which he ordered the game “Rock Band” along with the Beatles CD from an online seller. The game arrived promptly, but the CD never came. It was shipped via the US postal service, and he simply received notice that they could not deliver it per their policy… What? When did the USPS stop delivering CDs per policy? Anyway, he called the USPS “customer service” and they denied everything up to and including the fact that they are still in the delivery business (huh?). He finally made it to a “supervisor” who denied they had the package, but stated that she would take down his information and have someone call him in two days to tell him what she already knew….that they did not have the package. Wow. That is amazing customer service! The story does end well. He contacted the online seller, who sent another CD immediately via another shipper free of charge. They even sent it overnight and simply asked that he return the first CD should he EVER receive it from the USPS.

SoftLayer is growing at an astronomical rate; and yet, I am proud to say we have maintained consistently superb customer service. As I said above, the only time I call a support line is when I have a problem needing a quick solution, and my unhappiness grows as I receive poor customer service. I continue to be amazed at how happy most of our customers here at SoftLayer are when I answer the phone. Even when they are experiencing a problem, they are generally in good spirits when I speak to them on the phone or reply back and forth through our ticketing system. I find this amazing. Of course, we deal with unhappy customers occasionally. But, on average, we deal with happy customers on a daily basis. I can only attribute this to the fact that they call or submit a ticket with the firm expectation of receiving excellent and timely support. They could only have this expectation because of their past experience with us. I honestly do not call my cable/internet company with any expectation other than long waits on the phone, uninformed support, and days of waiting before a problem is solved. I am NOT happy when I am forced to call them. This is the reason it is actually a pleasant experience to work in the support department at SoftLayer. Besides working around people who know their jobs, I get to speak with customers who are in a good mood even when they are experiencing problems. I love meeting their expectations by resolving whatever issue they may be experiencing quickly and completely—thereby helping them to continue on in great spirits throughout the rest of their day. I know that customers will be happy the next time they call. I would not enjoy working for the USPS customer service line or in the support department of that cable/internet provider as I know I would get nothing but unhappy people with an expectation of poor service. This is one way in which SoftLayer customers are different.

It’s the holiday season, and that means everyone is getting busier. On top of all the existing responsibilities, millions of people are going shopping for gifts, decorating their houses, and navigating the bad weather. On top of all that, many people take their time off during the holiday season!

With this kind of time crunch, it’s best for your business to lie low until after the new year, right? Not so! With all this buying, selling, and giving going on, there’s a lot of extra retail data to process. Plus, it’s the end of the calendar year, many businesses have to get their finances in order too. ALSO, all these newly purchased electronic devices are soon going to be turned on and hooked up to the Internet, where they will almost surely put a new load on your servers.

Systems and network administrators need to be prepared for this influx of new traffic. Sometimes, this means purchasing new servers. However, it’s inefficient to buy the servers so far in advance when you don’t yet know what you will need. It’s best to wait until you’re sure you will need more servers and how many to order. At another hosting company, that would be a problem. People in our industry take the holidays off, too. Lowering the number of sales people and technicians and raising the number of new server requests would normally result in a disaster.

Luckily, SoftLayer does automatic provisioning. As soon as you order your server, it will be provisioned in two to four hours. Day or night, June 3rd or December 31st, if we have it, you can have control over it in two to four hours.

And therein lies the beauty of the SoftLayer system. You don’t have to wait for US to scale your business. If you need another server, get it. When it’s ready, it will automatically be added to your account’s private network and be available to you. You can even automate your server configuration and setup. Depending on the amount of data you need to transfer to a new server, you can have another server up and running your website less than 5 hours from the time you realized you needed it.

In fact, by using the SoftLayer API (and some clever configuration scripts on your servers) you can do live scaling on your website. Using the API, you can provision new servers exactly like the ones you already have. Once they’re available, a script can mirror the configurations from an existing machine to the new machine. Use the SoftLayer API once more to add the new servers to your load balancer rotation, and you’re in business! All without relying on any humans, even yourself! Treat yourself to some R&R this holiday season, while your website continues to get things done for you.

I have been working at SoftLayer for 2 + years now as a CSA and it has been quite the experience! Imagine working at a place where you get to put your hands on the latest technologies, where customers can manage servers as if they were in their own datacenter, and where innovation is a daily norm. Welcome to my job at SoftLayer. I have seen this company grow at an amazing rate, and to whom do we owe the credit? YOU – The customer! Everything that we do, offer and build is a testament to the customers that use our services. This helps make us a forerunner in the industry and allows the customers that use our services to grow and achieve anything that their business requires. I am going to list just a few of my favorite capabilities we offer below:

VPN – The ability to control your server through a private, secure connection and to use our backend services without incurring usage against bandwidth.

IPMI – Having the power of a local console attached and with some cards a virtual dvdrom to install any operating system of your choice.

OS Reloads – We offer several types of operating systems to choose from and keep up to date with the latest versions.

Secondary DNS – You can host your own DNS and allow zone transfers into the SoftLayer Portal and use our resolvers as secondary failovers.

Content Delivery Network – This Feature is awesome as you can deliver your site or video from the closest point to an end user geographically to ensure a great viewing experience.

Support – 24×7 support that truly cares about the customer’s needs. We love what we do and this attitude shows in everything we do.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and barely touches on what we offer our customers. If you are not yet a customer I would strongly encourage you to speak with one of our Sales representatives as they are here and ready to help and will guide you in building the platform you need to get the job done.

The concept Single Point of Failure refers to the fact that somewhere between your clients and your servers there is a single point that if it fails downtime happens. The SPoF can be the server, the network, or the power grid. The dragon Single Point of Failure is always going to be there stalking you; the idea is to push SPoF far enough out to where you have done the best you can with your ability and budget.

At the server level you could combat SPoF by using redundant power supplies and disks. You can also have redundant servers fronted by a load balancer. One of the benefits when using load balancer technology is that the traffic for an application is spread between multiple app servers. You have the ability to take an app server out of rotation for upgrades and maintenance. When you’re done you bring the server back online, the load balancer notices it UP on the next check and the server is back in service.

Using a NetScaler VPX you can even have two groups of servers—one group which generally answer your queries and another group which usually does something else—with the second group functioning as a backup against all of the primary servers for a service having to be taken down through the Backup Virtual Server function.

Result: no Single Point of Failure for the app servers.

What happens if you are load balancing and have to take the load balancer out of service for upgrades or maintenance? Right, now we’ve moved SPoF up a level. One way to handle this is by using the NetScaler VPX product we have at SoftLayer. A pair of VPX instances (NodeA/NodeB) can be teamed in a failover cluster so that if the primary VPX is taken down (either by human action or because the hardware failed) the secondary VPX will begin answering for the IPs within a few seconds and processing the actions. When you bring NodeA back online it slips into the role of secondary until such time as NodeB fails or is taken down. I will note here that VPX instances do have dependency on certain network resources and that dependency can take both VPX instances down.

Result: Loss of a single VPX is not a Single Point of Failure.

So what’s next? A wide-ranging power failure or general network failure of either the frontend or the backend network could render both of the NetScalers in a city unusable or even the entire facility unusable. This can be worked around by having resources in two cities which are able to process queries for your users and by using the Global Load Balancer product we offer. GLB load balances between the cities using DNS results. A power failure taking down Seattle just means your queries go to Dallas instead. Why not skip the VPX layer and just GLB to the app servers? You could, if you don’t have a need for the other functionalities from the VPX.

Result: no single point of failure at the datacenter level

Having redundant functionality between cities takes planning, it takes work, and it takes funding. You have to consider synchronization of content. The web content is easy. Run something like an rsync from time to time. Synching the database content between machines or across cities is a bit more complicated. I’ve seen some customers use the built-in replication capabilities of their database software while others will do a home-grown process such as having their application servers write to multiple database servers. You also have to consider issues of state for your application. Can your application handle bouncing between cities?

Redundancy planning is not always fun but it is required for serious businesses, even if the answer is ultimately to not do any redundancy. People, hardware and processes will fail. Whether a failure event is a nightmare or just an annoyance depends on your preparation.

I sit right in the middle of the NOC (Network Operations Center) here at SoftLayer. I hear all the tech calls, project discussion, and random banter from the techs on a daily basis. Most techs are also propeller heads on their own time. They have servers of their own, apps they like to run, preferences as to what hardware and software they like best, etc. Now, working in this field for most of my life I know that techs are not company loyal when it comes to their personal geeky funness (yes, that’s a word) I don’t care if spell check, Google and the rest of the world doesn’t think so (but I digress) they like what does the best job regardless of where it comes from.

I routinely hear techs talking about their personal servers, apps, etc. and referring back to SoftLayer with comments like, “I just host it on my server here at SoftLayer so I don’t have an issue.” With the issue being whatever the topic of conversation might have been. Network speed and stability, hardware and software reliability, ease of access (KVM over IP, the portal in general, multiple remote control options) cost, endless amount of add-ons, and the latest and greatest in everything!

I can relate.

I realized the potential of SoftLayer from the beginning and this place continues to exceed my expectations- and my expectations are always over the top! Simply put, after working in the corporate world and realizing what could be done with the right people and the right attitudes, I vowed only to work with a company that shared those views. And quite honestly I never thought I would see it happen. Then along came SoftLayer.

When techs constantly refer back to SoftLayer for their own fun computer projects as being the best solution, it just confirms what I already knew:

SoftLayer Rocks!

I just got back in town from Las Vegas, Nevada. That town is filled with stories and you can really love it or hate it, depending on the hour (or if you are like me whether you are arriving into McCarran or departing). I had a great trip this last go around and actually made money on the tables. However, when they say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas they are really talking about your money. Never forget that the house always wins. Always. Even if you win money you’ll wind up spending it on stuff out there and perpetuating your own good time. There isn’t anything wrong with this at all. In fact I plan on coming up on the short side of the stick on both the tables and on simply spending cash when I go out that way.

I think the really interesting thing that happens when you go through “the Vegas experience” is the perceived value of a dollar. You can take it for granted that all of a sudden you are transplanted into this fantasy world that is reminiscent of Pleasure Island from the story of Pinocchio and you’ll find that you have anything and everything you could want to do, eat, drink, or experience right at your fingertips. As this begins to progress the value of a dollar plummets quickly. You start overpaying for things at a whim, tipping bigger, making bolder and even just dumber bets. I did this and I can admit that I doubled down on my 11 when the dealer was showing a 10 in blackjack. It was blind luck that I hit it and won every single time. It’s a bold and stupid bet to make, but when you are playing with house money the money doesn’t matter and it’s almost as if you are trying to give it all back. My game of choice is craps because it gives you the best odds and there is a lot of action. It’s good and bad as it can all come and go in a hurry.

I have only been to Las Vegas a handful of times, but each time there is a point where even for a second you can feel invincible – that you can’t lose. Or, that even if you do lose you won’t even care. The flight home is a completely different story. I call it the hangover flight. You may be literally hung over, but no matter what, you will start to deal with all of the actions that happened on your trip and how you will need to handle them. As soon as you touch down in your own home town things slowly start to become “real” again. Your own home can even feel somewhat foreign for a while, but you’ll quickly come to the realization that you had become a completely different person for a short time.

I have come to the conclusion that there is always risk in everything that we do. Exposing yourself to the tables of Las Vegas may carry more financial risk than your morning commute to work, but in both cases there are still risks. There are also risks that we take in setting and running a business. There are countless ways that you could be putting your business at risk without the right plan in place. From an IT perspective alone, you need to consider things like redundancy, failover, security, backups, growth, and even data loss. Knowing what is going to happen next for your business may be as likely as knowing what is going to come up on the next roll of the dice. If you know this for certain you can press your luck and come up big, but if you are not prepared you could lose everything you have on the table. It is better to be prepared.

I think of SoftLayer as the house, and remember as I said before, the house always wins. The good thing about this is that you are betting with the house. Even with this you need to bet on yourself and back up your own bet. If the bulk of your business is in your data then you need to have backups. If you absolutely need to have High Availability, then look into Clusters and Load Balancing. But remember, that you are betting with the house because SoftLayer gives you the capacity to do all of it and do it all at a very affordable price compared to trying to do it yourself and also do it without long term commitments. Long term commitments bring the most uncertainty in making moves that will positively affect your business. Imagine if a casino told you that you “had” to make 12 consecutive bets regardless of how well (or poorly) you were doing?

Coming home from Las Vegas to SoftLayer has been a very good thing and makes me thankful for where I am and what I have. There aren’t the levels of uncertainty here that are automatic with other datacenters or even other business models. SoftLayer is steady and it is very easy to get what you need here while cutting out the risk that you don’t want to deal with. SoftLayer is as much of a “sure thing” as any bet you can make!

As an executive at Softlayer, one of the things that I am amazed by is the number of unique and extremely innovative ideas that we see on a daily basis from our customers. We love the fact that these groups understand the value of what we do, while focusing their energy on their core competencies. It’s the perfect relationship for us and one that we try to cultivate and grow continuously.

One of the challenges that we face is sharing information related to the entire breadth of our service offerings in a simple and useful way. Our business model is such that the cycle from first contact to purchase decision tends to be short. Most customers typically come in with a specified set of required services. We often hear comments like “we didn’t know you offered that as well” from customers that come to us with a shopping list and take advantage of the self-service capabilities that we offer. Global load balancing, CDN, and Data Center to Data Center back-up are all examples of products that we have heard get overlooked. It’s a tough balance between over selling and allowing a tech savvy customer work his way through the waters (so to speak).

One of the other challenges that we face here is overcoming the “we don’t need that” syndrome. I look at it practically and associate it with insurance and how it’s never needed, until something occurs that it makes it a must have. In tech terms, I recently read an article on CNNMoney.com “The Tech Catastrophe you’re ignoring” that typifies this “we don’t need that syndrome”. The article encompasses the idea of back-ups for your data. There is discussion that the business of dead drive recovery globally is up staggering rates and it’s due to the lack of people backing up data on a continuous basis. We hear this loud and clear at SoftLayer when a customer would accidentally lose data that they wish they would have spent the extra few dollars a month to back up. It seems trivial post incident, but pre incident it’s one of those decisions that gets passed on quite frequently.

As mentioned, the uniqueness and innovation that lives in SoftLayer’s service offering is tremendous. As our CEO hammers home the message of think large and think global to us every day, I want to pass that message onto our customers. What you do is driving industry, innovation and all that comes along with it. We hope that the decision making process for you as a customer is driven by thinking large and thinking globally and that you take advantage of the solutions that we offer to make your work more functional, more secure, more robust, and more effective. I can’t imagine telling my boss that ‘we didn’t need that’ if it was something that we did need and it was right in front of me. I am sure many of you share that sentiment!

Some mornings after work when the weather is nice I’ll go to a local coffee shop on the way home to read or study for the CCNA exams. Sometimes I’ll just end up pulling out the netbook and browse around online. There are times during these outings when I’ll get asked the title question of this blog: is that a real computer? I guess the size that throws people but the answer is yes.

For those who are not familiar with the netbook class of systems here are the specs for mine:

• 10.2 inch screen
• 1 GB RAM
• 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor
• 160GB SATA hard drive
• 3 USB ports
• Card reader
• Built-in Wifi
• Built-in webcam
• Windows XP (I’ve got plans for Windows 7)
• 5 hour battery life
• Light weight (I’ve got books that weigh more)

Netbooks are great for when you’re just knocking around town and might want to do some light web work. This morning while at Starbucks I’ve checked e-mail several times, caught up on the daily news, and reviewed the game statistics from the Cowboys game I missed last night. Other mornings I’ve fired up a VPN connection into the office and been able to remotely help with tickets, work on documentation for our SSL product and tinker around with a NetScaler VPX Express virtual machine (an interesting bit of tech for a later article).

So how does this tie into server hosting?

You’ve probably had a time when your monitoring has indicated a service ceasing to respond on a server. If all you have is a cell phone the options are somewhat limited. With a fancy enough phone you might have an SSH or RDP client but do you really want to do anything on a PDA sized screen? I didn’t think so. You can put in a ticket from your phone and our support can help out but the person best able to fix a service failure is still going to be you, the server administrator who knows where all the bodies are buried and how the bits tie together.

A small netbook can be a lightweight (and inexpensive) administration terminal for your servers hosted with us. Just find an Internet connection, connect up to the SoftLayer VPN and now you have complete access to work on your servers via a secure connection.

Through the wonders of the IPMI KVM this access even includes the console which opens up the possibility of doing a custom kernel build and install safely, while sitting under the stars, drinking a hot chocolate and watching the local nightlife.

Sounds like a pretty nice reality to me.