LogicalSolutions.net’s July eNewsletter

COMPANY NEWS
 
Mark Your Calendar 
LogicalSolutions.net will be hosting our IT Networking Event on Thursday August 19th from 4-7pm. Join us for food, drinks, data center tours and networking! Invitations to follow.
 
Free Bandwidth Rate Quote
LogicalSolutions.net continues to grow. As we grow we purchase more bandwidth to make available to our customers. This means we have been able to reduce our bandwidth costs, translating into lower costs to you! Get a free rate quote today! 
Free Bandwidth Quote  
 
Client Portal Expanded 
Our team has been working hard over the past month with a variety of network upgrades. Included in this is the capability for our colocation customers to view real-time data for their bandwidth and power usage through their customer portal.  
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DID YOU KNOW?
Microsoft Hosted Exchange 2010
LogicalSolutions.net now offers a managed Hosted Exchange 2010 enterprise email solution for as low as $12/month per mailbox! This comes with all the features including Outlook Web App, Outlook support, Active Sync, Mobile Support and more! Click the link below for the estimator calculator today.
Cost Calculator
 
BLOG TIME
Featured Blog Post
“Lower Bandwidth Rates”
by Casey Rohrer

As a leading data center services provider there are many factors that go into managing a successful enterprise class colocation and hosting facility. Each one is equally important and benefits not only our customers from a technology standpoint, but a business one as well. While building our new SAS70 Type II data center in Rochester, NY, redundancy was engineered into every component of the facility to provide the most reliable and cost effective data center services in the industry.      
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SPECIAL PROMOTION  
Free VPS for a Month
For the month of July sign up for a free month of hosting services for your Virtual Private Server. Click the one of the links below to signup online and use the promo code FREEWINVPS for Windows or FREELNXVPS for Linux.
Windows VPS
Linux VPS

Metered Power Colocation – Get “Current” Before You Plug-in

Technology continues to advance at an amazing pace. Today, you can do things on your cell phone, that 10 years ago you couldn’t do on your computer, and 20 years ago you couldn’t have even imagined was possible. Yet most data centers and hosting companies are still using technology that is older than me when it comes to power systems and as a result you are paying the price. When buying colocation services, most hosting companies only offer a fixed rate power circuit with no intelligence and yet the technology exists to offer so much more.

What does that mean? Basically, you’re plugging all of your brand new servers, networking equipment, and other devices into a power strip that is no more advanced and provides about the same features as the electrical sockets in your house. You spend a lot of your time configuring your servers, setting up monitoring, and closely analyzing the up time, performance, and overall health of your equipment, yet your hosting company cannot tell you anything about the power that they are providing you and you are consuming. It’s time to insist on metered power, otherwise you are using old technology and you’re paying a premium for it too.

What does Metered Power have to offer?

1. 1) In order to provide metered power, your hosting company must have intelligent circuit monitoring equipment in place. This means that they can tell exactly how much power you’re using and can make sure that you are alerted if your current usage is approaching a point of tripping your breaker.
2. 2) With this monitoring equipment in place, you should be provided with a real time look at both the current level in your circuit and overall power consumption. This can be as simple as just a point in time snapshot of the values, or a graph over time, which is what we provide at LogicalSolutions.net. Here is an example of what those graphs might typically look like:
3. 3) Probably the most important feature of metered power is that you only pay for what you use. Without metered power, companies will charge a flat rate for a circuit. It doesn’t matter if you plug in one server or fill up every U in an entire cabinet, you will pay the same amount for that circuit. The prices are typically high enough to more than cover the cost if the entire circuit is maxed out. In the end you are overpaying either a little or a lot. With a metered power circuit you only pay for what you use. When first starting out you can save a lot of money. You can also influence your costs by controlling the efficiency of your equipment or how you deploy that equipment. Don’t just take my word for it. Below I’ve compiled some example data. I grabbed the per circuit price from two national hosting brands who only offer fixed power pricing (and who will remain nameless for their own benefit) and compared that to a customer of ours who is using metered power.
   

   	National Host #1	National Host #2	LogicalSolutions.net
   Voltage	120	120	120
   Amps	15	15	20
   Fixed Price – 1 circuit	$275/mo	$325/mo	—
   Metered Price – 1 circuit	n/a	n/a	$150.45*

   * Example customer: 2/3 of cabinet full and 2-20A circuits. Price is for one of the circuits.

Our metered power option can offer significant savings throughout your entire hosting engagement with us. Not only will you have a lower initial cost, but as you grow and need to add an additional circuit to your cabinet, there is no extra charge from us, just pay for your actual usage. Whereas the fixed price providers, will charge you the full flat rate even when you might just need one extra outlet to start.

I hope it’s clear what some of the benefits of Metered Power can be. It’s time to expect your colocation provider who is offering the latest technologies in their network infrastructure to upgrade their power systems to the same century.

Rochester, NY Server Hosting and Colocation

What is Server Colocation?  Server Colocation, Server Hosting or Server Co-location is a very economical way to run a Highly Available application, without investing in Network, UPS and Cooling Redundancy.  Hardware colocation is cost effective, because you own the Hardware, and fully manage the application.  LogicalSolutions.net Guarantee’s the Redundant Network, Power, Operating Temperature and Humidity.  We are a fully staffed facility that offers free remote reboot services. 

Pricing for colocating a 1U server at our Rochester, NY facility starts at $89/mo with 1Mbps Dedicated Bandwidth.  Some Frequently Asked Questions about Rochester Colocation:

Can I get a tour of the Datacenter Facility?

Yes, We love nothing more but to show off our Datacenter to prospective clients.  Please call us at 1-800-957-4872 or Contact us here to schedule an appointment.  You can also get information and images of what the Rochester, NY Datacenter looks like here.

Can I ship my Server to LogicalSolutions.net?

Yes, you can mail the server to LogicalSolutions.net, 1100 Pittsford Victor Rd., Pittsford, NY 14534.  Send a Support ticket to us with the Tracking Number.  Once the Server arrives at our Facility, it will be racked immediately. Please send us the Power Cables and Required Rails.  Any other information such as Manuals and Extra parts will not be stored by LogicalSolutions.net.

What information do I need to configure my server? 

Upon Payment you will receive a welcome e-mail with the 4 Dedicated IP addresses, and all necessary DNS, Gateway/Subnet Information.

Where do I order online?

Visit our Server Colocation Page, and Click Get Started.  Need more server space, bandwidth or managed services?  Contact a Sales Engineer today!

And the Data Pipe gets bigger again!

Earlier this month we increased our Highly Available Network Bandwidth to over 1.3 Gbps, spread over 3 redundant backbone providers that are each connected by a 1Gb fiber uplink to the Internet backbone.  With this upgrade, we are one of the highest capacity datacenters in Western New York.

This upgrade is the 2nd in three planned network upgrades for 2010.  In Q3 of this year, in anticipation of continued growth, we will be adding another Tier 1 backbone connection in order to bring even more bandwidth  to our clients, while also reducing bandwidth costs to our colocation clients.

Datacenter Services and Upstate (Upstate NY Data Center)

When I first started in the Data Center Services Industry, I was with an International provider working out of headquarters in NYC.  Man, I thought that was the place to be…..New York City, the most important metropolitan city in the world with the latest and greatest that technology had to offer. Things were going great.  We had a beautiful data center and NYC was overflowing with companies that needed our services.   Customers were lining up at our door….we couldn’t build cabinets fast enough.  The Data Center industry was on cruise control and I was driving it in New York City.    Then came Sept. 11, 2001.  We were located about 10 blocks from the World Trade Center – not that far when you’re talking about city blocks in Manhattan.  The city stopped, nobody was allowed access to our building for weeks.  Yes, the generators kicked on when the power failed, our multiple access providers allowed us to maintain connectivity and our staff did a great job keeping our customers online.  As we all experienced, everything came to a screeching halt after the attacks.  Without downplaying the tragedies of that day, my focus for this message is that although the data center performed exactly as it was supposed to, our customers quickly changed the way they viewed where their data center is located and their disaster recovery plans.

Well, now it’s 2009 and I’m fortunate to continue my career within the Data Center services industry with LogicalSolutions.net.  I followed the lead of a lot of my clients from NYC and moved away from the metro area and headed north to Upstate, NY.  Most of the customers I had in NYC either moved their primary  infrastructure out of the NYC data center and into one located in this region, or setup a DR site in a data center located in this area.  Either way, they quickly discovered that data center services provided in Upstate, NY are not only as good (if not better), but the price is right too.   One of the many things that Upstate has to offer is the climate.  Our climate lends itself very well for data center cooling and power management.  I’m sure you’ve heard that Yahoo has even recognized this and is building their newest data center in Buffalo.  LogicalSolutions.net has built its newest data center in Pittsford, NY – a suburb of Rochester.  With our data center located in this area, we are able to accomplish many things.  One of those is the ability to reduce power costs by utilizing the latest technologies by taking advantage of the cooler climate.  Combined with the ability to provide metered power, we are able to manage power utilization more efficiently which enables us to pass tremendous cost savings on to our customers.  When you are considering data center services, start to consider the Upstate, NY region for the energy efficient processes, robust backbone options, and skilled engineering support.