Head Guru

TCH acquires its own Data Center Space! TotalChoice Hosting has always aimed to provide the best possible service to our hosting family. In order to do that, we have always tried to use high quality servers remotely co-located in Data Centers (DC's) across North America. One of the issues we have found recently is that when there is a server problem that needs hands on technicians, we are reliant on the remote DC for both the technical expertise, levels of support and equipment spares. Recent experience at two of the DC's has shown that both the time taken for them to respond and the quality of the spare parts they use has not been at the service level we want to provide. We have spent the last couple of months thoroughly reviewing our options, and have identified and purchased our very own DC space, based in Michigan, where our own techs will provide the hands on support and we can ensure that only top quality servers and spares are used. So what does this mean to our client base? Increased reliability! Many of you will have noticed that some servers that have had disk / raid problems have had ongoing problems for a short while afterwards. You may have been disappointed that certain hardware failures take hours for resolution. Remote DC’s have taken hours to simply reboot a server or correct a small issue for us. This will be a thing of the past in the new DC as we will have full control over the servers and hands on work done to servers. The techs will not be remote to TCH; they will be our very own staff working on our very own servers in our very own DC! Excellent connectivity! We have always chosen DCs which have good connectivity. Our new facility located in Michigan is no different. We will have a main connection through AT&T with alternatives through Level 3 and MCI. Fiber Connections include a diverse path, diverse entry OC-48 fiber with 24 strands of unlit fibre. Faster resolution of major issues! Whilst our own techs remotely handle most server issues in under 5 mins (for example there are pager alerts as well as visible web based alerts when POP stops working on a server - these issues are usually then handled in well under 5 mins) we rely on the DC staff at a remote DC. There have been occasions where it has taken the best part of an hour just for the remote DC staff to get to the server that is down just to start work on it. This is not acceptable service in our view. In our own DC we will have our own staff there, who will respond to those issues within minutes. Whilst this will have little impact on small issues, major issues (such as a server down with a hardware fault) will be responded to much more quickly. Zero downtime for "server moves"! This is always a worry when physically moving servers – and hence we have decided we will not be moving the servers. We have taken the decision to equip our new DC with completely new servers (all high quality specs of course – see below) and we will copy accounts we are moving to the new servers, leaving the old servers online. We can then test the accounts on the new servers, before changing the IP address in the DNS. This will mean that there is no down time, and the both servers are online whilst we sort out small issues. Brand New, High Quality, Servers! At the DC we are equipping it with brand new high quality servers. These will be all based on the best server hardware available today. The network is all cicso based and is 100% redundant. We have already begun to build the servers in the new DC and announcements will be made as things progress. We have decided to hand build all our own servers, this gives us the best hardware combined with hands on build experience. I am very pleased to make this announcement and look forward to answering any questions that you may have about this most exciting news for TCH and all our family members.

/me feels me wallet getting bigger!

This is for local work to Flint, MI. Level 3 Technical Support Job Description. Technical support representative monitoring our help desk and helping clients with troubleshooting problems that they may be having on their servers. The successful candidates should be proficient in one or more of the following areas: * Independent thinker with solid problem solving skills * Good computer skills (typing, data entry) * Professional communication skills * Ability to be a team player with a positive attitude * Excellent customer service skills Desired Skills: Extensive Linux experience (3+ years preferred), Windows 2003 Server, Web Hosting. Control Panels (cPanel, Plesk), Apache, MySQL, Bind, Sendmail, Qmail, shell scripting, php. Position Requirements: * Excellent problem solving skills and knowledge of PC hardware troubleshooting issues * Ability to configure and troubleshoot apache, sendmail, qmail and MySQL * Previous experience with some or all of these control panels, cPanel, and * Working knowledge of the Linux command line * Customer focused attitude with some previous customer service experience * Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions * Thoroughly describe and document work using trouble ticketing system * Handle escalations of unhappy or irate customers; escalate issues to management when necessary Manager. * Good network knowledge with an excellent understanding of the Windows Server environment including IIS * Understanding of DNS * Software installation experience * Thorough knowledge of the processes and procedures used for all aspects of the job posting supporting role. * Program and project management skills Please contact Dick DeVance, Andy Beckett or Bill Kish for details.

Ticket # ?

LOL

It can take weeks to get a blacklisted server unlisted.

If the are at EOL (end of lease in this case) they are returned to the leasing company. If they are owned they are cleaned (drives wiped), parted of any good parts, and given away to local charity or schools.

The biggest announcement is yet to come.... That is a huge YES to your question heyguy. We are going to have a big announcement coming in the next ten days.

and the lot of 10 is done....

I am bringing back the service. Should be online today sometime.

Hello Steve, I would like to collect on our bet please? Bill

Things just keep getting better and better.... I can't wait to lay out the new "Galaxy" announcement. Galaxy is the best announcement to date Bill

Here are 4 completed server builds. Dual Xeons, 2GB RAM, RAID 1 Hot Swap Drives.

We could restore it, if your account in on one of the servers in the new backup scheme, we have snapshot style backups every 12 hours for 7 days worth.

First off, http://www.tchstatus.com/monitoring/status.html Has been retired! I believe you were told this in your ticket to us. Secondly, the link http://64.92.162.226:8082/pubgrp?uid=5D923...amp;showicons=1 Is our current server status pages. I am not sure why you have issues with the URL, but this is the status page and it is not changing. As I told you in your ticket, we are working on updating our status site. The abuser on 302 has just been identified and his site is being terminated. I hope it is not your account And as always, HD ticket is the way to go for server issues. Hopefully we will have s302 added to the status pages. Only time will tell for how fast I can get it added, busy busy!

I need a person that has Ruby on Rails experience please. There would be a small bit of reward for this user's help. Please contact me directly. Thanks!

Bruce, We build all the TCH servers. We stopped buying dell's a long time ago. Bill

Paul, That is my job, to make one feel loved and wanted.

After another visit from Brown, my spare bedroom looks like newegg distribution site.

That's the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. Of course we do not sell your e-mail addresses to spammers. Sorry I was away yesterday, I was picking up my new Bentley.

Parts as they arrive for the newest servers being born into the TCH family. Here we have 8 Dual Core 5130 Dual Xeon Processors and 12 160GB Hard Drives. Just waiting on more parts from brown.

This is the build of Backup2. This server is now collocated at our West Coast Data center and has been in production nearly a week. It is used to conduct off server backups for all the servers located at the West Coast DC. This server weighed 129lbs when it was completed. It is running a Single Intel Dual Core 5130 Woodcrest Xeon 4GB FB RAM 16 X 500GB Hard Drives forming a 6.5TB fully redundant RAID 5 array All Supermicro Componets. Build time was nearly 4 hours. Burn in time was 4 days.

I was starting the build of some new TCH servers and thought I would post some photos of the build process as we moved along with these servers. I don't know if anyone will appreciate this, but I thought it was a neat idea. So here we go.