Host Virtual, Inc Blog

We are pleased to announce the release of our AsteriskNOW 1.5b2 image. The image is available immediately. You can read more about AsteriskNOW at asterisknow.org.

To install this image, simply select the AsteriskNow option from the build / beta page when installing a server.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

We are pleased to announce the release of our Debian 5.0 (Lenny) image. The image is available immediately.

To read more about Debian 5.0 read the official release notes over at debian.org

To install this image, simply select the Debian 5.0 option from the build / beta page when installing a server.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

We're pleased to announce the release of our OpenSUSE 11.1 Virtual Server image. The release includes over 230 new features, and is first for us.

You can read more about OpenSUSE and the 11.1 release by reviewing the formal release notes.

To install this image, simply select the OpenSUSE option from the build / beta page when installing a server.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

Last night we deployed a minor vClient and platform release. Notable features include the ability to chose the number of CPU's assigned to your virtual server (instead of defaulting to 2) via server options.

Some of our customers who aren't running multithreaded applications have found this results in a performance boost and it's now easy to change this option.

Several other enhancements and bug fixes were bundled into the release. A feature request from many of you was a second level of validation for server deletions. We now require that you re-authenticate using your vClient password in order to destroy a server.

There's quite a bit more in the works and we're looking forward to several upcoming enhancement releases.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

We’re happy to announce another iteration of our web control panel for our v2 platform. This feature completes a new ‘Reports’ option under manage server that provides you with current and historical reporting for your servers network, cpu, memory, and disk usage.

Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly graphs are available for each area being monitored. Note that with the exception of network statistics, this is “outside in” monitoring and may be approximate – especially for cpu and memory usage.

For detailed tracking we highly recommend you install a server side monitoring tool. This side, the reports provide excellent data in aggregate and will allow you to trend your servers usage.

Also another minor enhancement on request – links to the RSS feed for this news and our maintenance/network status feeds are now available from the vClient news tab.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

January was a busy month for us, as we kicked off the new year in high gear for our virtual server / vps hosting service. We're continuing the momentum and have several exciting announcements planned over the next few months.

Here are a few of the mentions from January:

1. New tier 1 bandwidth - Internap added to San Jose, CA with no cost increase. Internap gives us access to every single tier 1 carrier in the world. Combined with our own connectivity and peering we were very pleased to be able to bring you this at no cost.
   
2. Several Virtual Server image upgrades, including Gentoo, Fedora, and cPanel.
   
3. Plan upgrades for our VPS Hosting service. Looking forward in the new year, all plans have received additional ram at no cost. We're notifying customers when their servers are ready and a simple reboot will add the additional resources. At this point the roll out is almost completed.
   
4. A look at Green Hosting and just how "green" it is to use a Virtual Server.
   
5. Instant resource upgrades and downgrades. Now you can simply order additional ram, disk space/more or downgrade within a few minutes. We're also pleased to note that with our new pricing structure, you can easily bring your server up to what used to be our next plan for typically $5-10/mo. For example, for just +$5/mo an XV1 server is upgraded to 512mb of fully dedicated ram.

As we look forward there is a huge amount of work in the pipe. Be sure to continue submitting suggestions to our feature roadmap so we can incorporate your feedback.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

We're pleased to announce several enhancements and upgrades to our service. The biggest feature is the ability for customers on our v2 platform to instantly order additional ram, disk space, ips, and bandwidth and have the resources auto provisioned within minutes.

Pricing for the additional upgrades are as follows:

• +128mb ram $5/mo
• +10gb disk storage $10/mo
• +100gb transfer $10/mo ($0.10 per gb)

You can see the full pricing and details on our addons page. Additional IP addresses and other addon costs, such as WHM/cPanel licenses do not change.

To purchase additional resources, simply select "Upgrades" from your servers management page. Also note that we've moved the "Purchase additional IP addresses" to the new upgrade tool.

If upgrades for your server are available, they will be displayed along with the monthly price. Simply select the upgrade and purchase to have your server instantly upgraded.

You can return to the upgrades page to remove upgrades, such as ram or disk space as well.

Quite a few other bug fixes and minor enhancements have been deployed to the vClient. We're gearing up for our next release and have some exciting enhancements in the pipeline. Please stay tuned and contribute to our feature roadmap.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

New customers can take 50% off any of our plans for their first month. Just use discount code 2009 during checkout.

'Nuff said.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

While a good portion of our customers use our Virtual Servers for hosting custom software, another set use it to host WHM/cPanel installations as a cPanel VPS. While you will often find us toiling away with vi, looking to get an nginx, lightthpd, tomcat or other server up -- cPanel is a great option if you want to provide an easy interface for your customers(or friends/family) with a simple and straightforward administration interface.

It's for this reason that are an official cPanel reseller, and pass our exact license cost on to you. (To purchase a license, simply installer our custom appliance from the appliances tab, or use CentOS or Fedora to see the purchase link under Manage Servers. See our cPanel VPS hosting page for more details. )

Today we're pleased to announce an updated WHM/cPanel Virtual Appliance that includes the latest stable 11.24 release. 11.24 has some excellent performance enhancements - that combined with our memory upgrades make it possible to run an appliance on our XV1 plan, something previously only possible on XV2+.

From the official cPanel announcement:

The amount of improvements made to the core software can not be overstated. We have improved interfaces for configuring mail servers, FTP servers, web servers, and name servers. DNS clustering has also been imbued with many speed enhancements which, coupled with NSD will make DNS functions run at top speed. cPanel's backup system has been reworked to realize significantly higher speeds. This will make creating, or restoring from. incremental or compressed backups substantially faster.

.....

Reducing overall memory consumption is the goal of VPS Optimized 2.0. It boasts a 12-15 Megabyte reduction in standing memory usage. Add that to the nearly 60% memory usage reduction that VPS Optimized 1.0 achieved, and you've got a much speedier server.

We've made improvements that address the architecture of core cPanel services, so they benefit everyone, not just virtual server configurations. For example, the cPanel log processing daemon has been redesigned to minimize memory usage while maintaining all of its functionality. And to enhance security, we've reworked the cPanel process monitoring daemon to include service-specific verification, improving the security of running services.

Existing customrs can upgrade easily from the WHM interface, or by executing /scripts/upcp from the shell.

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team

Quite a few folks have written in asking just "how green" our hosting is. To us, thinking about the huge data centers, n++ redundant power, cooling, and everything else that is necessary to run a world class facility we get a kick out of realizing just how much virtualization, and the ability to consolidate workloads really has in conserving energy.

We've created a Green Hosting page on our site, where we hope to have more information as we begin to put data together. Here's a start:

The amount varies across the United States based upon the methods each utility uses to generate electricity (coal, gas fired, hydro, solar). In California where our primary data center is located, 1 kilowatt of electricity generates approximately .8 pounds of carbon dioxide.

The average, sustained power draw of one of our host server is approximately 158 kwh/month, or 126.4 pounds of carbon dioxide/month. With the average consolidation ratio in our plans, using our service saves approximately 3,033 pounds (or 1.5 tons) of carbon dioxide per month.

Keep your questions coming.. and thanks for doing your part to "host green."

Thanks,
the Host Virtual Team