A Rock Solid Foundation

While we've found other providers designed their infrastructure to be redundant, they sacrificed performance. We also found they made their service overly complex and unreliable in the process. Everything we've designed maximizes the following factors:

• Reliable - Does the operating system crash often?
• Redundant - What happens if hardware fails?
• Scalable - How many visitors can the configuration handle?
• High Performance - Do dynamic web pages load quickly?

These are just some of the questions we ask when choosing the facilities, network, hardware, software and services we offer. The computer term KISS (Keep It Simple Silly) applies to hosting more than ever.

Facilities

For ultimate reliability, we house our equipment at two east coast data centers located 25 miles apart. Both are Tier 4, Class A data centers with multiple OC-192 fiber connections and peering arrangements with major ISPs. Should power fail, each data center has UPS battery backups and diesel generator. Physical access to the data center is by two-factor authentication.

Network

Each data center uses Tier 1 bandwidth with uplinks to multiple transit providers. We have a public and private network for better separation of traffic and security. Our network consists of:

• Separate private network for sensitive traffic such as DNS, system monitoring, patch management, remote MySQL, and backups
• Minimum GigE backbone LAN
• IPSec VPN between data centers and an option for customer use

Hardware

Unlike many other providers who rent their hardware on a monthly basis, we own all of our equipment. We are in it for the long haul.

Our systems are designed to be "lights out" and 95% of our maintenance can be done remotely. We monitor and audit every aspect of our network 24/7/365, from the quality of Internet connectivity, to ambient temperature within the data center. Rest assured, we usually know about an issue before it becomes critical.

Our routers, switches, firewalls, VPNs, PDUs and servers are all high-end, data-center grade hardware. No desktop computers or home office switches are used here. All equipment is 100% owned and maintained by us.

Software

Our software is tweaked to ensure the maximum performance and the ultimate in reliability. Our engineers design and test all software before deploying into production.

• Node Operating System: CentOS 5 Linux (enhanced by Empowering Media)
• Virtualization Software: Xen 3
• Control Panel: DirectAdmin (enhanced by Empowering Media)
• Programming Languages: PHP, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Java Servlets
• E-mail: Exim, ClamAV, local DNS of RBLs and SpamAssassin with many customizations
• Databases: MySQL 4, 5, and PostgreSQL
• System Monitoring: Nagios and Cacti with custom plug-ins monitoring over 30 data points per server

Service

With all of the neat technology, it does not run by itself. Our staff is constantly monitoring and improving our service. If you need assistance, they are always here to help you along the way.

• In-house technical support
• Prompt and helpful responses (typically less than 15 minute response time)
• Proactive monitoring and preventive maintenance of all services
• All services are tuned to ensure the best performance possible from our servers and network.
• Senior employees each have over 15 years of computer experience

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