2) Our service. Our support team is here 24/7/365.  We can be reached by phone, livechat, or email any time of the day or year and you’ll always get a timely response.

3) We care. You’re not just another number with us, while we’re certainly not small, we’re still not too big – we establish relationships with our customers and for this reason most of our customers stick around for a long time.

4) We back up what we say. We offer a 100% uptime SLA on power and network as well as a 1 hour hardware replacement SLA.  If we can’t meet that, you get a credit on your account.

5) Our locations. Six locations mean your project can expand across the entire US.  It may not apply directly to you on just one server, but we do offer services in six cities across the US, so if you need more than one server, there’s no need to try new vendors – you can go with us for almost, if not all, of your USA server needs.  Even if it’s not relevant now, it’s useful for future expansion.

Why do you need to consider this? Well, ultimately data has to travel from either yourself or your users to the server and back to you or your users again.  Even though, for the most part, it’s traveling at the speed of light, there is a noticable difference between when data travels 2000 miles and when it travels 20 miles. It’s particularly noticeable on with streaming content and less noticable with static pages that are mostly text, but it’s never, never, never bad to reduce latency to your server.

When considering where to put your server, put it as close as possible to the population center of your users.  If you’re a Chicago Cubs fan stranded in Dallas, it’s probably wise to put your Chicago Cubs fan site in our Chicago data center instead of our Dallas datacenter.  It’s a bit of an extreme illustration, but hopefully it illustrates what we’re going for here – you want to get your server as close to your users as possible and sometimes that means further from you.

If your users are everywhere, the general wisdom is to get as close to major population centers as possible.  Lets take the example of a site that is visited predominately by Americans.  You’ll obviously want to pick something close to the center of the United States so you can reach all of your users, but which center? Dallas or Chicago?  Consider the three largest cities in the United States, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.  Placing your server in Chicago puts it close two two of those, so Chicago might be wise.

All in all though, for most web hosting content, anywhere within a few thousand miles is pretty darn good.  With game servers and voice servers, a few hundred miles is much, much better.

1)  Realistic Growth Speed. I can’t count how many startups come to us asking about a full cabinet for their 1u server “so we have room to grow.”  Believe it or not, sometimes they fill in the cabinet, sometimes they go bankrupt.  The important point here is that it’s very easy to overbuy colocation so that you can grow into it.  Sure, colocating 42 devices is cheaper per device than 5 devices are per device.  But is it cheaper to have a little bit of downtime later on (to move your equipment) or is it cheaper to swallow the larger monthly recurring cost to allow yourself room.  There isn’t a right answer for everyone, but there is a right answer for you.

2) Know when to rent. Keep in mind that if you have to ship servers to and from the datacenter regularly, it may make more sense to rent them in the first place.  Shipping adds up and it’s just money out the window.  Sometimes customers try to get the most out of 1u by slowly upgrading it from a low end server to a medium server, to a high end server, all the while the shipping costs are adding up.  Maybe it makes sense for you, but don’t forget to factor that in.

3) Give yourself time. A huge mistake we see nearly every day (seriously!) with colocation is waiting until the last minute to pull the trigger on upgrades.  Not all upgrades are instant. Seriously.  If you need a cross connect, it can take up to two months for all of the necessary parties (telcos are notorious for slow times like this) to pass off all the paperwork and complete all the labor.  Plan well ahead for major upgrades and at least know the lead times.  Sorry, we simply can’t deploy 100 cabinets overnight.

Those three tips should set you well on your way.  Mistakes in planning colocation can be very costly, so definitely plan the project ahead of time.

Step 1: Purchasing

The first step is to contact our sales department and let us know what you need.  We’ll send you an official quote.  If the quote looks good, we’ll go ahead and begin the process.  If the quote doesn’t look good to you, let us know what we need to tweak to meet your needs and we’ll provide another quote.

Step 2: Setting up Invoicing

The next step is to set up billing for the service.  We’ll take down your contact information, generate an invoice in our billing center, and provide login information so you can sign on and pay it.  If your colocation involved a contract longer than month to month or was over $500/month, we’ll also typically have a written, signed contract by both parties – don’t worry, it’s a very painless process.  We generally skip this formality on very low dollar colocation arrangements and month-to-month colocation arrangements, but if you’d like the MSA (Master Service Agreement) on a smaller colocation agreement, we’re more than happy to sign one.  Once the invoice is paid, the lead time for the service begins.  Leads times are typically brought up in step 1, but can range from 3 to 30 days on most projects depending on size and complexity.

Step 3: Equipment setup

Once your invoice is paid, Ubiquity will contact you with IPs and other provisioning information.  If you’re going to ship your server(s) to us, just let us know the tracking number(s) as soon as it’s available.  If you’re going to bring your equipment in in person, contact us letting us know what time you’d like to bring it by. Once you’ve brought in your server(s), we start the billing cycle from that day.

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Choosing and upgrading a bandwidth plan

By default, our plans come with 6TB of data transfer on a  100mbit port.  There are a whole host of changes you can make to this plan.  You can upgrade the port speed ($35/month).  This essentially allows you to do a lot more bursting, but doesn’t let you move more traffic over the course of the month.  In other worse, it lets you “spend” your traffic allotment faster, but doesn’t make it bigger.

Our 12 TB plan is a $70 upgrade, but allows you twice the bandwidth.  It lets you transfer more bits and bytes over the course of the month.

Alternatively, you can get a dedicated port.  The nice thing about dedicated ports is that you cannot get an overage.  In other words, if you have a 6TB plan (6000GB) and you use 6001GB, you’ll be responsible for a $1 overage.  It doesn’t sound like much, but it can add up fast.  To ensure you don’t have overage bills, get a dedicated port.  This is frequently called “dedicated unmetered.”  It’s essentially saying that you can use the full 10 mbps, 100mbps, or 1000mbps (or custom port size) without any chance of overage.  Changing the port speed greatly changes the price.

If you have any questions, let us know at sales (at) ubiquityhosting (dot) com!

Picking out and upgrading your HDD configuration

Since hard drive (often shorted to HDD for Hard Disk Drive) size is pretty straight forward, we’ll simply cover the other upgrades that are possible.  Any of the upgrades below are possible in varying sizes, although the that variation itself may be limited.

RAID – There are three main types of RAID used in Web Servers.  There are a few options beyond these, but here are the best options for web hosting, particularly when you factor in cost.

1. RAID0 – In this RAID array, every other bit is written to a different disk, thus increasing speed by the number of disks in the array.  If anyone one disk fails, all of your data is lost.  Most people do not put any more than two disks in a RAID0 array because the more disks you have, the more likely it is to fail.  With two drives, you’ll have approximately the combined total storage space of both drives.
2. RAID1 – In this RAID array, the disks are mirrored in realtime.  It is only done with two disks.  With two drives, you’ll only have the total storage space of the smaller drive.
3. RAID10 – This has the benefits of the speed of RAID0 and the redundancy of RAID1.  Actually, it’s implemented (more or less) as a RAID array of RAID arrays.  With four drives, you’ll have the storage space of 2x the smallest drive.

HDD Speed – Most Ubiquity servers come with 7200RPM drives.  These can be upgraded to 10k RPM drives or 15k RPM drives.  As you may have guessed, if RAID0 or RAID10 isn’t enough speed, you can put these in your server to really kick it up a notch.  These involve custom quotes, so contact us at sales (at) ubiquityservers (dot) com for more information about upgrading to a higher RPM hard drive.

Spare HDD – Lets say you want backups, but you only want to run them once a day.  A good way to save money is to add another drive to the server, but leave it unRAIDed (you save money by not using a RAID card.)  Then, simply use it to back up your main drive during off hours.

This blog post isn’t even close to a complete analysis of each type of upgrade, but hopefully it was able to give you an overview of what your options are.

Choosing and Upgrading the Server Memory

Memory is something you need to think about before you pick which processor you want to go with, because that will dictate what rules you play by when it comes time to consider memory.  There are two ways to upgrade your memory – upgrade to faster memory (i.e. upgrade from DDR to DDR2 or from DDR2 to DDR3) or add more of whatever you’re using.

More memory never hurts.  It doesn’t necessarily help, either (if you upgrade well beyond what you need.)  Motherboards (the main component that ties your whole server together) have a limited number of memory slots and a maximum amount of memory supported.  Eventually you’ll hit your server’s maximum amount of memory.  If this ever happens, consider upgrading in the near future.

Not all memory is equal.  As the years go by, memory, just like a computer processor, evolves and operates at higher speeds.  We currently offer three types of memory – DDR, DDR2, and DDR3.  DDR2 is twice as fast as DDR.  DDR3 is twice as fast as DDR2.  Our Celerons support DDR memory, our Xeon 3220s support DDR2 memory, and our Xeon 5520/dual Xeon 5520 support DDR3 memory.  If a tech tells you your memory is inadequate, it’s possible that upgrading processors will have the nice side effect of upgrading your memory speed.

Lastly, upgrade memory in quantities that keep it going at full speed.  Based on the ways the DIMMS (memory slots) are set up in our servers, you’ll generally want to upgrade your DDR memory in multiples of 1gb, DDR2 memory in multiples of 2gb, and DDR3 memory in multiples of 6gb.  Ask our sales team at sales (at) ubiquityhosting (dot) com for more information about your server, because it will vary from server to server.

Choosing the Processor

You have four basic options for your processor. Our entry level Celeron, the Xeon 3220, the Xeon 5220, and the Dual Xeon 5520.

Celeron D 325 -  The Celeron is a server with a heartbeat – it’s an entry level system designed more around meeting the definition of “dedicated server” at the lowest price possible than performance.  And it’s great at doing that!  It’s a great system for a basic site that needs the power of a dedicated server, but the budget of a hobby.

Single Xeon 3220 – Is an entry level quad core processor made by Intel.  It’s has more than 8 times the computing power of the Celeron D 325.  The nice thing is that it can take you leagues above an entry level server like the Celeron D 325 without the price of a 5520.  The downside, however, is that next time you need to upgrade, you’ll be migrating to another server again (see below).

Single Xeon 5520 – This server is built using one of the best processors available today.  It’s significantly more powerful than the single Xeon 3220, but the best part (and don’t underestimate how awesome this is!) when you need to upgrade, you don’t need a new server.  We’ll just pop in a second processor and suddenly you have a dual Xeon machine.

Dual Xeon 5520 – As you may have guessed, the dual Xeon 5520 is about twice as powerful as the single Xeon 5520.  In fact, it’s the same hardware, just an extra processor.

Once you find that the Dual Xeon 5520 isn’t powerful enough, it’s time to contact our sales department about upgrading to custom hardware or to a web server cluster.  We’re making custom solutions every day, so we’re well versed in scaling your operation as large as you need us to!

You have four basic choices, a Celeron (Celeron D 325), a basic quad core server (single Xeon 3220), a high end quad core server (single Xeon 5520), and a beefy dual quad core server (dual Xeon 5520.)  Making the jump from a VPS to a dedicated server may already exhaust the budget, and if it has, just snag a Celeron.  But if there’s a little room in the budget, the best thing you can do is get to the Xeon 3220.  It’s as powerful as eight of the entry level Celerons (plus double the memory!) and it’s only $40/month more.  You’ll feel this upgrade more than any other.

The next thing to think about is RAM.  RAM (Random Access Memory, often just called “memory”) is essentially the computer’s workspace.  I like to tell customers to think of it as how much counter space you have while cooking.  If you’re making a big, elaborate meal for a lot of guests, you’re going to need a lot of counter space to prepare that meal, right?  If you’re making a big, elaborate website for a lot of guests, you’re going to need a lot of memory to serve those pages.  One of the easiest ways to increase site performance is simply by increasing the memory.  Expect to spend about $20 per gb per month on memory.  If $70 isn’t in the budget for the processor upgrade, this is the next best place to spend some money for a performance gain.

In the past, if you’ve been on shared hosting or VPS’, you’ve likely been protected from hardware failure by a RAID solution.  RAID (Redundant array of Independent Disks) is used to increase speed or performance in hard drive configurations.  RAID0 increases performance while RAID1 provides redundancy.  If you’re not making backups, you need RAID1 or you risk losing your data in a hard drive crash.  You likely won’t need RAID0 until you’ve upgraded your dedicated server, as it tends to be something that doesn’t cause a bottleneck right away.  If you’re making backups of your site and saving them to a backup service (we offer one) or to your local computer, you don’t necessarily need RAID unless you want the convenience.  If you’re not making backups, you NEED RAID1.

Bandwidth – 6000gb is probably more than enough bandwidth.  If you need more than that, you probably already know it and the upgrade to 12000gb is $70/month.  If you need more than that, contact our sales team if you aren’t sure what you’re doing.  We can be reached at sales (at) ubiquityhosting (dot) com.

If you have any questions about any aspect of ordering servers, don’t hesitate to let us know.  It can be a daunting task the first time you do it, possibly even the first few times.  We’re here to help, so don’t be shy!  We can be reached at sales (at) ubiquityhosting (dot) com.

Some of the features include:

• Bulk rDNS updates (or any rDNS updates for that matter)
• SWIP requests
• IP justification requests
• Control panel license ordering
• Web based remote reboot
• Some control panel interaction (for example, seeing how much space is used on an Interworx box)
• Brandable reselling
• Ordering additional services
• VPS load average graphing, memory graphing

And more! So be sure to check out https://cp.ubiquityservers.com/ with the same username and password that you would use for https://my.ubiquityservers.com.

If you have any questions or see any bugs, let us know!  You can reach us for bug reports at support (dot) ubiquityservers (dot) com!