Houston, Texas - (The Hosting News) - May 12, 2008 - Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, has extended its private rack portfolio, by adding a new virtual rack solution, designed for as few as two servers.

The new virtual racks provide an advanced hosting solution that is both cost-effective and offers a smaller footprint. Virtual racks provide customers who require cost-effective scalability and security with the power and flexibility to host advanced multi-server solutions. By providing a broad choice of servers as well as bandwidth pooling and unlimited server-to-server data transfer, customers can host complex multi-server online applications in The Planet's world-class data centers without giving up the control they desire. For a limited time, the company is offering the first month free on all Kentsfield servers hosted in a virtual rack.

Mike Glisson, Senior Systems Analyst with Cincinnati-based Bridge Worldwide noted, ''We create high-end interactive media campaigns, which means clients rely on our company to be up and running around the clock. There's absolutely no room for error or downtime. We've used the new virtual rack solution from The Planet for the past three months with stellar performance and results. The scalability allows me to add servers quickly and easily, and still take advantage of the cost-effective pooled bandwidth feature. With content-rich media, that's an important added bonus.''

Urvish Vashi, Director of Product Management with The Planet remarked, ''Our private rack solutions are the fastest growing segment of our business, which is especially attractive to customers hosting more complex multi-server sites and applications. No longer are customers forced to make the difficult choice of purchasing unused capacity or look for costly alternatives like colocation to host their more complex applications. The new virtual racks offer some of the same economies of scale for companies with a need for more powerful solutions.''

Virtual racks enhance security, particularly for companies running advanced, high-performance applications that require security and flexibility in multi-server environments:

Unlimited server-to-server transfer: Multiple servers within the same virtual rack have unlimited connectivity so customers don't pay for bandwidth between servers.

Reduced risk of bandwidth overages: Virtual racks allow customers to pool bandwidth across all servers in the environment. The Planet eliminates the guessing game of which server will accumulate overages, only to find others below their limit. Pooled bandwidth allows servers to share the bandwidth included with every server purchased from The Planet.

Access to advanced security and hosting technologies: A complete hosting solution for complex environments requires advanced firewalls and load balancers. Virtual racks allow customers to take advantage of these solutions across their multi-server applications.

In addition, the following promotions continue through May 31, 2008, or while promotional supplies last:

• Firewall Upgrades: The Check Point X16, formerly priced at $89 per month, is now available for $69, a 22 percent savings. The Check Point XU is now available for $139 per month - reduced from $189 per month - a savings of 26 percent.
• Double Down Select: This promotion provides customers the choice to double their base bandwidth, hard disk or RAM for free on new orders of the Kentsfield SATA or the Dual Xeon 2.8 IDE.
• Dual Xeon 2.4 SCSI: Now priced at $143 per month - down from $219 - customers can take advantage of a 35 percent savings on this popular server.
• Dedicated Backup Servers: For customers looking for special pricing on backup servers, the company is offering savings ranging from 13 percent to 29 percent on 500GB to 6TB servers.
• Component Upgrades: Existing customers can take advantage of disk space, additional bandwidth and backup at 50 percent off current prices.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide:

• High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
• Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
• Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
• Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
• Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is a leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting over 22,000 small and medium size businesses and 6.7 million web sites worldwide, using the best choice of servers, software tools and support, backed by enhanced facilities and network connectivity.

To learn more about The Planet's private rack solutions, please visit: www.theplanet.com/hosting-products/private-racks/.

For more information about The Planet, please visit: www.theplanet.com.