Focal Hosting Solutions is pleased to offer the following:


SERVER ONE
- Pentium III 1.13Ghz
- 512MB Ram (512MB Max)
- 40GB 7200RPM Seagate
- 30GB/mo AT&T+Digex Bandwidth
- 8 IPs
- Any OS you choose (licenses provided by customer)
- 100Mbit Port
- Free Remote Reboot Capability
- Free 24 Hour Server Monitoring with Email Alerts
- 24/7 Emergency Response

Contract: NONE
Setup: FREE (normally $99)
Monthly: $149.00


SERVER TWO
- Pentium III 1.26Ghz
- 512MB Ram (2GB Max)
- 80GB 7200RPM Seagate
- 50GB/mo AT&T+Digex Bandwidth
- 8 IPs
- Any OS you choose (licenses provided by customer)
- 100Mbit Port
- Free Remote Reboot Capability
- Free 24 Hour Server Monitoring with Email Alerts
- 24/7 Emergency Response

Contract: NONE
Setup: FREE (normally $99)
Monthly: $199.00


SERVER THREE
- Pentium III 1.26Ghz (Dual CPU Capable)
- 512MB Ram (4GB Max)
- 18GB 10kRPM Seagate Hard Drive
- 50GB/mo AT&T+Digex Bandwidth
- 8 IPs
- Any OS you choose (licenses provided by customer)
- 100Mbit port
- Free Remote Reboot Capability
- Free 24 Hour Server Monitoring with Email Alerts
- 24/7 Emergency Response

Contract: NONE
Setup: FREE (normally $99)
Monthly: $249.00

SERVER FOUR
- Pentium III 1.26Ghz (Dual CPU Capable)
- 1024MB Ram (4GB Max)
- 36GB 10kRPM Seagate Hard Drive
- 100GB/mo AT&T+Digex Bandwidth
- 8 IPs
- Any OS you choose (licenses provided by customer)
- 100Mbit port
- Free Remote Reboot Capability
- Free 24 Hour Server Monitoring with Email Alerts
- 24/7 Emergency Response

Contract: NONE
Setup: FREE (normally $99)
Monthly: $299.00


6-Month Contract:
50 H-Sphere licenses are included ($320 savings); or
If you prefer another panel, let me know and we can probably include it.


Additionals:
Bandwidth - $2.00/GB prepurchased (less in large bulk), $3.00/GB overage.
IPs - Free with justification (80%/ARIN rules)
50 H-Sphere Licenses: $175.00 ($3.50/license, normally $4.50/license)
100 H-Sphere Licenses: $350.00 ($3.50/license, normally $4.50/license)
Backup Services Available.

IP to ping/trace: 66.129.95.127

Network:
DS3s to AT&T and Digex using BGP. Fully Cisco-powered network. It was specifically designed to have no single point-of-failure using mirrored dual Cisco 12000 series routers and 6500 and 3500 series switches.

Data Center:
16,000 sq. ft. and located in Jacksonville, FL. Dual UPS battery arrays with diesel generator for 100% power uptime. If you are in the area, tour requests are welcomed.

Tech Costs:
We will assist with basic questions and howtos. For complex tech service, we charge $90 per hour.

If you're looking for a high-quality network, 99.99% guaranteed network uptime (100% since Janurary) with a strong SLA, knowledgeable admins, quality servers, and a company that has been around for over a year and won't disappear into the night, Focal Hosting Solutions is for you. Customer service is and always has been our top priority. Ask around.

High-end servers are also available (Dual CPU, RAID, 4GB RAM).


To order, you can fill out this simple order form: http://www.focalhosting.com/services/dedsignup.shtml and state in the Comments section which server you wish to use; or you may email me directly.

If you have any questions, or if I missed anything, please let me know.

How about cpanel/whm with the server three?

Whoops, I had two server threes up there.

CPanel is $99/month with any server.

so $398 for cpanel/whm on server 4?

Correct.

Nice offers Alex! H-Sphere is tops with us too.

One question - why are you using IDE disk drives? We've been supporting H-Sphere since Psoft's inception, and we've always found the high RPM (10000) and transfer rates (>160) of SCSI drives to make a noticable difference to the end customers of the hosters we support.

We welcome your competition and partnership in the area of supporting H-Sphere. If you need to support a customer that needs more bandwidth than you have down there in Jacksonville, we would be happy to help you. We occasionally will get Spanish language customers wanting H-Sphere, and it might save everyone time if we referred those down to you Floridians if that would be of interest.

Regards,

ne question - why are you using IDE disk drives? We've been supporting H-Sphere since Psoft's inception, and we've always found the high RPM (10000) and transfer rates (>160) of SCSI drives to make a noticable difference to the end customers of the hosters we support.
Some people may want more space that SCSI can affordably provide, such as the 80GB drives. Pop another in there and you've got 160GB for the cost of one 36GB SCSI drive (approx, I didn't run the numbers but you know what I mean). Same thing for the 40GB IDE, it's much cheaper to get a second 40GB IDE than it is another 36GB SCSI. Our Focal Hosting servers run SCSI only, but that's our preference. IDE will work; SCSI is just better. :)

Besides, the last two servers are SCSI.

If you need to support a customer that needs more bandwidth than you have down there in Jacksonville, we would be happy to help you. We occasionally will get Spanish language customers wanting H-Sphere, and it might save everyone time if we referred those down to you Floridians if that would be of interest.
While I appreciate your offer, we can accomodate pretty much any size customer -- all they need is the money. We've got the resources to expand out quite a bit if we need to. We just recently had a customer pushing nearly a meg on a single site for a while before they went to a less-expensive provider. Our bandwidth isn't cheap.

As for the spanish, I know spanish, so if you're more comfortable sending those customers to other hosts, we should be able to accomodate.

Originally posted by dkbain
One question - why are you using IDE disk drives? We've been supporting H-Sphere since Psoft's inception, and we've always found the high RPM (10000) and transfer rates (>160) of SCSI drives to make a noticable difference to the end customers of the hosters we support.


Is this being documented by psoft? I use IDE in RAID1 for the CP server (as well as mail and DNS) and SCSI drives (U160, 10000rpms) on our web servers. I don't see any performance degradation on our CP server. The fact that you suggested there is a performance degradation suggests me the possibility that you are using one server solution with your HSphere.

Although the Control Panel server is somehow memory hungry and will be best if you put a fast CPU, it is no disk intensive (even after you put mail and DNS on it). Why would you think an IDE can't handle HSphere (aside from the fact that you seem to use one server solution)? Unlike webservers where sometimes they need to serve millions of hits daily (and hence a SCSI drive will be of sure benefit), the CP server is hardly serve anything; the load of my CP/Mail/DNS server is very minimum as we should expect.

Anyway, are you or are you not using HSphere in a single serve solution? If so, then you are comparing apples to oranges. If not, then I would certainly love to hear what psoft (or any other HSphere hoster out there) have anything to say about it. As for me IDE should be all right. SCSI, though, will be better, of course. :)

regards,
-dave

Hi, thanks for your comments. I certainly do not want to suggest that IDE usage on H-Sphere is problematic or in any way magnifies the slowness of IDE drives.

As far as your other question, we can configure H-Sphere to run on one box, but the optimal is 3 or more.

Hot -swappable SCSI drives do provide noticably better performance, and not just with H-Sphere, but just about any db linked applications. The other issue is uptime -- when the drive fails, you're talking about hours instead of minutes if it is not hot-swappable, which only low, low end customers tend to tolerate.

If there are any PSofters listening in, please chime in.

we use hot swappable drives on our webservers (3 total). We also use IDE ATA100 7200rpm drives in RAID 1 (mirror) on our CP/MAIL/DNS1 server and our Dedicated mysql server. I have not seen any performance degradation.


The other issue is uptime -- when the drive fails, you're talking about hours instead of minutes if it is not hot-swappable, which only low, low end customers tend to tolerate

I assume you have RAID5 or RAID1 drives hot swapable? Otherwise, in what aspect a hot-swappable non RAID SCSI be different in case of a hard drive failure? Shouldn't you still have a catasthrophic situation for your high end customers? I see that out of your 5 dedicated servers offer, 3 of them only have single drive. The other two do not mention any RAID 1/5 solution. So how has your offer be different in terms of fault tolerance?

If you are really serious about fault tolerance to your high end customers, please consider web servers farm/cluster that are desgined to be totally redudant and gives you the real fault tolerance you are seeking. Your high end customers won't even experience any single second of downtime even if one server in the cluster fails. We have signed a deal to deliver this fault tolerance (as well as load balancing) to our shared hosting customers (some of them are not really high end, btw).

regards,
-dave

Allera where do i order for a cpanel server? how do i go about ordering the server?

Thats is $398 server 4 cpanel..

Email me and we'll get the details sorted out: allera@focalhosting.com

If you prefer to do it by phone (toll-free), let me know.

Psoft does not have support for single dedicated machines with H Sphere yet. The maximum amount of sites you can put on a single server setup is about 50, and thats pushing it.

Are these single server setups or are you running these off of the control panel, dns, mail, etc servers that are already in place?

50 sites on one server? I think it can handle many more than that -- easily.

Yes, these are single machines. You can purchase more and get more licenses (get 3 on 6-month contracts and get a 150-pack license free).

Where did you get the information that 50 sites is pushing the limits of a single server running HSphere? And what OS was this based on?

HSphere does run on a single server. I don't think this is HSphere dedicated server extension (which I believe psoft is still working on it), but this is a fresh install of HSphere on one server.

With 512 of ram and a single processor thats all it will be able to handle. This information was given to us by psoft when we inquired about offering dedicated servers with H Sphere.

edit: I know it WILL run on a single server but it is not designed to.

I think you underestimate the power of a single processor and 512MB of RAM. It won't handle 50 WHTs, but it'll handle many more than 50 small sites. You'll need to define "sites" in order to validate your statements.

We've got a server running on our regular non-HS side of business with hundreds of websites: current load is 0.11, uptime is 39 days, and it's using about 384MB of memory. What additional resources does HS consume? The CP? That's hardly anything -- this machine has an actively used CP in it too. I think the CP is well built and on a good machine can handle much more than you think it can (depending on your definition of a site).

Besides, start off with one of these servers, and when you need to expand, just get more. HS makes it possible to expand pretty easily.

I could replace the HS license with a Plesk 30-domain license instead with no problems. I could even throw in Ensim for those who want that. I can throw in a couple of months of CPanel for you CPanel lovers out there, too. :) Try me, I'm flexible.

I think you're missing my point. I know that other servers can run hundreds of sites but being told directly from psoft, with everything on one server and 512 you can probably run 50 sites. 50 normal but overly busy sites.

Yes it is expandable but once you set your cp, dns, mail, sql servers up it is more difficult to move those processes to another server. It can be done but its not as simple as adding another web server. If you are going to add another server for dns, mail, etc then ok but you are still going to be stuck with one server that hs everything installed. If you do add more web servers and try to run them through the one server that is running all of the processes you are asking for trouble.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying that dedicaed servers are not supported by H Sphere in the way they are being advertised lately. I hope this does not cause a problem or give H Sphere a bad rep since it is a fantastic control panel.

Originally posted by Everyday
Keep in mind, I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying that dedicaed servers are not supported by H Sphere in the way they are being advertised lately. I hope this does not cause a problem or give H Sphere a bad rep since it is a fantastic control panel.
Also keep in mind that these servers aren't necessarily meant for hosting, and it shouldn't automatically be assumed that they are. You can, but you can use them for your own personal sites too. The control panel is there for people to administer the server when they don't know how to do it otherwise (or don't want to). This is why we are offering other panels as well -- to substitute for the HS licenses.

Whether or not the smallest server we offer can handle 50 sites or not is up to the customer to determine. Certainly, when PSoft releases the dedicated server versions of HS, we'll be offering those as well, but depending on what the customer has in mind in the long run.

Every order and customer is different and should be treated as such; and that's exactly how we operate. I simply post what we have to offer. If it interests you (the reader), talk to me and I can work with you to get exactly what you need. If not, maybe next time. :)

Fair enough! :)

Originally posted by allera
Focal Hosting Solutions is pleased to offer the following:


- 30GB/mo AT&T+Digex Bandwidth
If you have any questions, or if I missed anything, please let me know.

As far as I know Digex doesn't provide pure bandwidth anymore... its network was spun off to Intermedia... and then it was sold to Allegience Telecom...

So what gives?

The datacenter has always referred to it as "Digex, a UUNet company." I shall inquire, though. Thanks for catching it and bringing it up.

They're bringing in new providers soon too, such as Qwest and Time Warner (and some others they haven't decided on yet).

Psoft, as a responsible software developer, must err on the side of caution in pointing out limitations of single server implementation. H-Sphere does run completely fine on one machine and the only limitations we are aware of are the following:

1) Postgres instance must be used by H-sphere, and you cannot have second instance running on the same machine for your customers.
2) Capacity is determined by the activity of clients - could be 5000 "dead" accounts or 5 very active ones.

You guys are exactly right in saying that it is also makes a difference if the servers are designed for hosting.
There are architecture elements that you would never miss in a desktop computer that would seriously slow you down in a hosting environment. Hosting servers are best with SCSI drives because SCSI read a large number of small files (like on websites) 20 times faster than IDE which has a reading arm that must skip around to each sector of the drive to pick up each individual file. That's also why IDE will fail faster in a hosting environment.

Also the RAM is much faster if it is SDRAM, which is registered to work with buffer (and the computer it is in can take advantage of the buffer).

Machines of this type are more expensive, but the capacity, performance and reliability are a big savings in the end.

Despite the single server capacity, multiple H-Sphere machine installations are more efficient than single server implementations. That is:

capacity of a 2 server H-sphere implementation > capacity of 2 single server implementations

By the way, capacity of a 4 server implementation > capacity of 2 double server installations.

After 4 machines, the additional efficiencies of scale are not great, but there are some creative things you can do as far as putting dual processors with the elements doing the heavy lifting, and save money not doing it with the others.

Sorry so long winded as always, but I really hope this helps you guys.

Originally posted by allera

Also keep in mind that these servers aren't necessarily meant for hosting, and it shouldn't automatically be assumed that they are. ......

I think many WHT members are grossly underestimating the power of a single PIII CPU or IDE harddisk.

We have a mail server in our office that is a desktop PIII 800 with 40GB IDE and it runs as the Lotus Notes server serving 3000+ heavy-duty attachment freaks. It has been running for the last 6 months without a minutes downtime [and that on NT!].

I have a PIII 256 MB RAM with 40GB IDE from allera and I am able to host 40 odd sites on that and also some 260 email boxes and the server load is averaging 0.00 - 0.02! Some of these sites use PHP and mySQL and get quite some traffic.

I agree that SCSI is true server class but the good news is that IDE does the job and does it fairly well indeed.


As far as Alex's offer goes, I can only say from my personal experience that I have been hosting with him for over 160 days now, and my server has been 100% up for those 160 days and has not known any network downtime.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=off&mode_w=on&site=inn.valai.net

The only downtime I had was when I messed up httpd.conf when upgrading Apache from 1.3.20 to 1.3.26 and had to kill httpd for an hour. This was 2-3 am US EST time..

Alex's support is truly fanatical and his price is certainly a bargain for the quality of hardware, network, bandwidth and above all his support.

Go with him if you need peace of mind.

I haven't had one support enquiry on this server for the last 30 days.

Cheers
Balaji