Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Over the weekend we’ve updated the 3 x High Availability Hosting Limited websites:

www.hahosting.com
www.thevirtualcloud.com
www.sheffielddatacentre.com

The main updates are over on TheVirtualCloud – where the full Flexible Cloud Servers information is now live, along with prices, examples etc…

Take a look at http://www.thevirtualcloud.com/cloudservers/default.aspx for all the details!

Other updates include links between the sites, a full list of all services (all sites) on the homepage of www.hahosting.com, and the removal of legacy VMware hosting.

Last week we (quietly) launched our Flexible Virtual Servers hosted on Hyper-V.

Since we had a number of back-orders from existing clients to fulfill, we’ve been working hard to provision these new servers first – as well as creating documentation, support access, procedures etc (I know, bit boring but has to be done…)

Demand has sure outstripped supply, at least on the first cluster nodes we’ve built.  So much so that this weekend we’re upgrading the memory in the first 2 cluster nodes, before looking at buying more physical servers as we move forward.

Flexible Virtual Servers will be available to new customers in May.  Pricing will be formally announced shortly, as well as updating the websites, but I can give an example server here:

• 1 x Opteron 2.0Ghz CPU
• 1GB memory
• 25GB SAN Disk Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• 2 x IP Addresses
• Linux OS

£38.50 per month!

Windows server OS + £5 per month

You’ll be able to configure your server as you want it, with anything from 128MB to 3GB memory, a variety of Operating System options, 25GB to 1TB disk space, inclusive bandwidth.  The “smallest” server, will start at just £7 per month.

If you can’t wait, or want to know more, contact sales(at)hahosting.com or call us on 0114 228 0022.

We’ve this week updated our 3 websites:

• www.sheffielddatacentre.com
• www.thevirtualcloud.com
• www.hahosting.com

We’ve refreshed some out-of-date content, added some new information, restructured the menu’s to make them easier to navigate, and fixed some spelling errors etc… (thanks to everyone who pointed them out to us… ahem!)

We’ve also posted the first signs of Hyper-V which (quietly) started going live this week.  We’re now taking orders from existing customers for Hyper-V based dedicated servers, and we’ll be opening up orders to the world at large soon.

If you get chance to have a look at our updated sites, and want to feedback anything to us (good or bad) please do!  Some of the changes this time round came from user feedback!

Thanks,
Stuart.

Last week we completed the migration of our web hosting customers to our new DotNetPanel controlled hosting cluster.

Customers of TheVirtualCloud’s Professional Web Hosting (http://www.thevirtualcloud.com/webhosting/) are now using Windows 2008 IIS7 powered servers, SmarterMail 6 email, SQL Server 2008 and MySQL5 databases.

The migration which was completed over 2 weekends was a complete success with only 1 period of short scheduled downtime while mailboxes were copied to to the new servers. As an added bonus, no support tickets were raised as a direct result of the migration, and 1 week later customer feedback is positive!

DotNetPanel

Our DotNetPanel control panel now controls all website, email (except Exchange), DNS, SQL, and SharePoint hosting. Plans to integrate DotNetPanel with our Outlook Anywhere Hosted Exchange system are already being discussed.

DotNetPanel totally replaces Helm which has now been withdrawn.

DotNetPanel

We’ve successfully migrated all our Professional Web Hosting customers’ DNS and Email from the old web servers to new dedicated DNS and shared web servers.

All existing Professional Web Hosting customers will now enjoy quicker responce times, fewer errors and an updated SmarterMail web server, updated from v4.3 to v6.1.

Moving of the IIS / web sites will happen over next weekend, but we’re on track to switch off the old web hosting platform for mid-December.

More info on our Professional Web Hosting service can be found at:

http://www.thevirtualcloud.com/webhosting/

The new websites for HA Hosting, TheVirtualCloud and The Sheffield Data Centre went live last night.  Information on every service we offer has been updated, some prices reduced, and new services introduced.  Along with a fresh new look based on a shared stylesheet and master page.

Major updates include:

• Single look and feel across all sites (and this blog!)
• Extra “value added” services added for VMware hosted Dedicated Servers (HA Hosting)
• Outlook Anywhere – now with same day setup (TheVirtualCloud)
• New Professional Web Hosting service added (TheVirtualCloud)
• SharePoint Hosting service added (TheVirtualCloud)
• Updated colocation services added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• New bandwidth offers and options added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• Extra services (firewalls, rDNS, Backups, SAN) added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• Extra data centre information, power, cooling, network etc… (Sheffield Data Centre)

Blog posts on specific services (such as the new Professional Web Hosting) will follow next week, in the meantime if you get a chance, check out our new websites at:

• www.hahosting.com
• www.thevirtualcloud.com
• www.sheffielddatacentre.com

Due to an outage last night at our previous colocation provider (one of many outages this year), we took the business decision to move our exising servers and SAN storage early into the Sheffield Data Centre.

The following services are now fully colocated within the Sheffield Data Centre:

• High Availability Hosting – VMware dedicated server hosting
• The Virtual Cloud – Web hosting, Exchange Hosting, Spam / Virus filtering
• Sheffield Data Centre – this website & blog
• Core networking / AD services / DNS services

All services were successfully migrated for 03:00 this morning (1st July), and DNS started to propagate quickly.  We worked through the night to ensure all applications were working post-migration.

We apologise for any inconvienience this may have caused (especially with slow DNS propagation beyond our control).

- Stuart.

It’s with delightful pleasure we announce the first customer has moved servers into the Sheffield Data Centre.  A local web hosting company occupied “Rack 3″ yesterday and their kit is now live on the Internet.

We are now accepting orders and inviting customers to colocate kit with us.  Current lead-times on half and full racks are around 5 working days.  Single rack servers can be moved in immediately.

• Full rack (up to 16A):  £575 per month.
• Full rack (up to 32A:  £700 per month.
• Half rack (up to 8A):  £295 per month.
• 1U single server (1A):  £27 per month.
• 2U single server (1A):  £36 per month.
• 3U single server (1A):  £45 per month.
• 4U single server (1A):  £54 per month.
• Tower server (1A):  £35 per month – lead time July 2009.
• Extra power available at £22 per Amp per month.
• IP addresses up to a full class C (254 usable) available.

(All prices are ex-VAT)

Another 8 racks were delivered yesterday, with another 4 due either today or Monday.  Cabling works on these racks will begin straight away.

Our VMware Dedicated Server platform (www.hahosting.com), and our Web & hosted Exchange platform (www.thevirtualcloud.com), will be moved from the current colocation providers to the Sheffield Data Centre in early July.

The construction of the Sheffield Data Centre is split over 3 phases, with phase 1 is now complete.  The next phase will see the backup generator installed; final project plans for this will be drawn up in July.  Phase 3 (FM200 fire suppression) will be later in the year.

The web site will be updated over the weekend, but you can take this as official that we are open for business.

Contact us on 0114 228 0022 or sales@sheffielddatacentre now!