Tier 3 Blog

Infrastructure-as-a-Service on ZDNet.com

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Being focused on High Availability means not only

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Being focused on High Availability means not only focusing on unplanned downtime. It is also about at passionate resolution to eliminate planned downtime. A major indirect cost of IT Operations. An article by Dell quotes "Infonetics Research study, The Costs of Downtime: North American Medium Businesses 2006, found that mid-market enterprises (101-1,000 employees) lose an average of 1 percent of their annual revenues to downtime. Even more startling, another study has found that up to 40-50 percent of businesses that have suffered major service interruptions never recover completely, and fail within two to five years." The article goes on to say the answer is virtualization.

https://www.dell.com/downloads,global.power/ps4q06-200701169-ziff.pdf

Why tape backups are bad

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Alot of our customers always ask why we dont do offsite tape backups or tape backups of any kind at Tier 3. The answer is many fold but what it comes down to is the non stop risk that it has.

Here is another reason why we use disk to disk to an offsite data center for backups:

http://www.computerworld.com

If you are using tapes be very careful to encrypt your data. Even with our solution we encrypt certain backups to ensure that data is protected.

To learn more about our solution contact sales@tier3.com

Why disaster recovery matters

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:00:00 GMT

At Tier 3 we always wonder about how good the facilities are in this era of cost cutting in the IT environment. That is why we automatically replicate our customers data to the secondary data center so if spin up needs to happen we can do this.

Disaster Recovery is often one of the things that is left out with most IT orgs because of the cost and technical know how required to make it be effective and maintainable.

http://www.intology.com/computers-internet/us-data-center-catches-fire-9000-servers-down/

If you are interested in our solution to prevent something like this just give us a call or drop us an email for a free evaluation and quote.

Thanks

Tier 3 Team

VMware DRS and VMotion

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:00:00 GMT

VMware DRS and VMotion: Improve workload balance, prevent problems

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1295290,00.html

NetApp highlights Tier 3’s successful deployment of NetApp gear to accelerate data backups and restoration for customers

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

NetApp recently posted a Tier 3 customer success story showcasing the impressive results we’ve been able to attain for our customers since implementing NetApp storage systems and associated software. Here are some of the notable benefits:

Helped provided enterprise-level backup and DR services at 10 times less cost than in-house infrastructures
Reclaimed 67% of storage in virtualized environment
Reduced backups of entire data center from 24 hours to one hour
Can now offer one-to eight-hour SLA for disaster recovery to every client

By managing our storage environment and optimizing storage utilization with NetApp, we’ve been able to save time and money – in turn passing those savings along to our customers. Our expanding relationship with NetApp will continue to be a valuable asset as we continue to grow our operations and expand our cloud storage infrastructure to more SMBs.

Click here to read the entire success story.

Tier 3’s Jared Wray invited as guest customer at web event with leaders from Cisco, NetApp and VMware.

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

On Tuesday, January 26, join Jared for an executive discussion with Tony Bates, Cisco; Tom Georgens, NetApp; and Paul Maritz, VMware, and learn how their expanding relationship will deliver new solutions that help customers evolve their virtualized data centers. To learn more: www.imaginevirtuallyanything.com

See Tier 3’s Jared Wray discuss the recently announced validated design for Secure Multi-tenancy with Cisco, NetApp, and VMware

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

See Tier 3’s Jared Wray discuss the recently announced validated design for Secure Multi-tenancy with Cisco, NetApp, and VMware. Learn how Tier 3’s use of the industry’s first end-to-end architecture to isolate IT resources in shared virtual environments can result in virtualized data centers that are more efficient, dynamic, and secure.

www.imaginevirtuallyanything.com

Multi-tenancy alliance could enable virtual data centers

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Check out a great article featuring some quotes by Jared Wray our Founder and CEO about Multi-tenancy.

http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid96_gci1379652,00.html

Automated provisioning of VPN services for our users

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Today we released automated provisioning of vpn services for our users. This is very exciting as it is part of our total goal of full automation and self servicing on our platform. Now with a single click of creating your server we will build out your VPN services without any configuration or setup from you all on demand.

We have been working on this for a while and have been using this product under the covers which up until now was just for testing. If you already have VPN services with us then you will migrated over the next 6 months and someone from your account team will contact you.

Here is a quick run down of the features:

No configuration required! All of the routing and setup is done for you automatically!
Works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
First concurrent user is free!
It will automatically build out your vpn server when you build your first server.
You can add or remove users via the control system
Only 25.00 per concurrent user and bandwidth costs per month.
Each customer gets their own instance which gives better performance and isolation than traditional models.
It is based on standard Open VPN which is widely tested and supported.
Can be enabled to do two factor authentication by setting up your Active Directory or LDAP server to it.

Go and check it out under your Network tab in the control system!

Control System Updates!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

We are always working to resolve bugs and add features to the control system. This update is a major bug update and here are the items that have been fixed in this build!

Incorrect calculation of total server resources allocated to an account which was causing errors on server create.
Create snapshot button was available when it should not be.
Archived Lab Groups appeared in the Lab Group DDL on new server create.
Fixed error that occurred when creating new Accounts (no bug was created for this).
Added Account Alias validation to ensure that duplicate Account Aliases do not get created.
Fixed the DateTime display on the Lab Scheduled Task list to be customer time zone aware, as opposed to displaying in UTC
DNS Management errors on updating and creating aliases

If you have any questions please feel free to let us know.

Control System Updates Build 672

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Build 672 has gone live with new features and bug fixes for the vpn service and control system. Here are some of the key new features:

Managing VPN Max Concurrent Users): You now have the ability to control the number of concurrent users and control your costs. In our system the first concurrent connection is always at no cost and anything after that is at $15.00 / Month. Now you can go in and change this level at any time. So if you need to add more concurrent users go to control.tier3.com > network tab > vpn > edit vpn settings.
Two Factor Authentication with Active Directory: Now you can configure your vpn service to do two factor authentication via active directory. This will require the user to have not only a certificate but will be prompted for their active directory credentials.
New Templates: Added Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, and Windows 7 32-bit templates.
Welcome Screen: We have added your CPU, Memory, and Storage counts to the welcome page.

There was a total of 20 bugs that also were fixed in the current build. As always if you need anything please let us know as we are constantly adding new features and fixes.

32gb of ram servers from the control system and multiple IP addresses

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

32gb of ram servers from the control system and multiple IP addresses!

We released build 690 today of our platform and other than the usual bug fixes and tweaks we added two new features:

32gb servers from the Control System and API

Now you can add up to 32gb of ram to any server when ever you want with no long term commit as it is just hourly. Scale it up or down when needed! To do this via the control system simply go to the server you are wanting to change and click the edit server button. Once there it is just a reboot away (about 1 minute of downtime) and you now have the ram needed from 1gb to 32gb within minutes.

Multiple IP addresses to a single server

With our new multiple IP address feature you can add the IP addresses that you need for a specific server all via the control system. To add an IP address go to Networks > IP Addresses > Add External Address. From there you can add an external IP address to your server or have it assign a new address for you. Once you have added an external address or multiples at anytime that you want to update the firewall ports that have been enabled you can easily do that by going to the IP Address section under Networks and scroll to the bottom of your IP addresses. From there you can click on the row with the ip address you want to edit and then change the firewall ports.

Our standard firewall ports are:

PING, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SFTP, and HTTP 8080

If you would like anything else please email noc@tier3.com and they can help you.

Once the external IP address is added all the traffic will be calculated to your account until you release it.

FreeBSD added to our library and more features!

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Build 775 has gone live with new features and bug fixes the control system. Here are some of the key new features:

Added FreeBSD 32 and 64bit template
Added Windows XP 32bit template
Added Windows Vista 32 and 64bit template
Added Windows 7 32 and 64bit template
Enhanced Linux server provisioning where network override file was not correctly being cleared of IP addresses

There was a total of 20 bugs that also were fixed in the current build. As always if you need anything please let us know as we are constantly adding new features and fixes.

Tier 3 Enhances Industry-Leading SLA

Wed, 05 May 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Tier 3 Enhances Industry-Leading SLA

Tier 3 has enhanced their industry-leading SLA with the following changes:

Incident Reports: Tier 3 will provide Customer with an Incident Report via e-mail within twenty-four (24) hours of an incident for incidents resulting in greater than thirty (30) minutes of downtime. The Incident Report will include: incident date, duration, issue, details of the problem and details of the resolution.
Outage Credit Improvements:
1. Increased maximum credit from 100% to 150% of fees for the impacted service(s) for the billing month.
2. Eliminated Tier 3’s discretion in the adjustment of credits awarded.

To review the updated SLA in its entirety http://www.tier3.com/legal/sla

API Documentation is now Online!

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:00:00 GMT

We have just released a new version of our API and have decided to just make it available online so you wont have to ask for it!

The API has been built along side all of the features of the platform with the idea that if you can do it in the control system you can do it via our API. The API currently supports Xml, JSON, and SOAP which is far more featured than any of the other API's that we have seen out there.

Go check it out: http://apidoc.tier3.com/

Create an API user here: https://control.tier3.com/security/api

As always, anything you need or see that we could improve on let us know!