[M5Hosting] M5Hosting Service Improvements

[Michael J McCafferty]

Dear Happy M5Hosting Customer,

	It's been a few months since I have written to you. We have made some
great improvements, and more are on the way. I'd like to share with you
some of those improvements and give you some insight in to future
improvements.
	
	We have a new phone number. The new number has been on our web site for
a few months now, but we are still getting calls at the old number.
Please take a moment to update your cell phones, address books, etc with
the new number. +1-877-344-HOST or +1-877-344-4678  This new number
rings in to a new phone system designed to improve communication, the
old number does not. Other communications improvements are soon to come.

	We are implementing a single interface to replace the multiple
interfaces you use now for availability monitoring, billing, clearer
bandwidth metrics and support tickets... and adding to it the ability
for you to see hardware configurations and other account information.
However, the really cool things that are now available through this new
interface include:

	Reboot your server via a web interface - The same web interface
described above can command switched power outlets. If your server is
wedged or kernel panicked in the middle of the night or some volatile
configuration change needs to be undone faster than the time it takes to
open a ticket or make a call... you can now do it yourself... as many
times as you want.

	Gigabit Ethernet switch ports - All of our quad-core Xeon servers and
some of our other very recent models of servers have Gigabit Network
Interfaces, but are plugged in to 100 Megabit switch ports. Most of our
customers do not come close to needing more than 100 Megabit interfaces.
However, some customers, especially those with multiple servers can make
good use of Gigabit from end to end and between servers for such things
as backups or large file transfers or cluster synchronization, lowest
possible latency between hosts, etc. Can you believe that some other
dedicated server hosts still use 10Mbps interfaces and charge extra for
100Mbps !

	Enhanced Monitoring of Server Metrics. Through the same web interface
described above we can now monitor and display graphs of the important
metrics for CPU (user, nice, system, IRQ, I/O Wait, etc) Memory
(Physical and virtual), and Disk (IO in and out in KBps for each
partition, space used per partition) and system load average (1, 5 and
15 minute)... and ALERT on any if any of those metrics exceed your
chosen high or low threshold !

	These are available now to any of our existing customers, at a
discount. The Web Reboots and GigE Switch Ports are bundled together for
$15/mo per server. Server Metrics is just $10/mo per server. There are a
limited number of switched power outlets and GigE switch ports available
during this initial phase of the roll out. Later phases may be priced
higher.

	We have migrated about 40% of our customers over to this new system
that makes this all possible. At the core of the system is the billing
system. We are working to get everyone migrated to the new billing
system, but we can put you at the head of the line if you'd like to take
advantage of any of the above new features. As we migrate you to the new
system you will receive an email announcement and a short list of tasks
to do once you have been moved (ie: log in and change your password,
update contact info, set a phone password, etc)

	Oh, I almost forgot... through the new system you can rate how we
performed on your support request right there in the web interface. This
is because your feedback is how we improve. Everything in this email has
been requested by our customers.

	Coming Soon: Dedicated Juniper/ Netscreen Firewalls, R1Soft CDP Backup
services (Google it !), Load Balancing services, and more improvements
in communications. 

	If you have any questions or comments about anything in this email,
please let us know. You can send them support [at] m5hosting.com or to
me personally at mike [at] m5hosting.com

Thank you very much !!!
Mike


PS: The greatest compliment is your referral

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Michael J. McCafferty
Principal, Security Engineer
M5 Hosting
http://www.m5hosting.com

You can have your own custom Dedicated Server up and running today !
RedHat Enterprise, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and more
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