Why move to the cloud? Here is February’s quick cloud tip:

24/7 availability, and performance-oriented infrastructure…

When we talk about cloud technology, there are concerns. One main concern is whether or not the technology can cater to clients’ needs, and another is the scalability of the environment created. If such questions boggle your mind, don’t worry. Managed cloud services will do both for you. Cloud monitoring and cloud migration of data from one server to the cloud server are two features (among many others) that are catered to by managed cloud service providers.

“Let’s Make a Deal!” was a terrific run, wouldn’t you agree? We had a ton of fun deal-making and prize-awarding, through the original promotion and then again with its revival. However, like all good things, “Let’s Make a Deal!” must, too, come to an end. If you find yourself in tears, we understand. Take a moment. We’ll wait…

We would like to extend a final, congratulatory shout-out to our winners of “The Deal of a Lifetime” (Jesse C., Steven S., Danny F., Hendra S., and Adam B.), and an enormous “Thank you!” to everyone who entered. This will not be the last TurnKey Internet giveaway of its kind—mark my words!

With that being said, we have something brand new to share with you! Come on; would you really expect anything less from us? At this point, we hope you know as well as we do that we would be bored to tears without some kind of event going on.

Without further ado, we would like to introduce… The Truckload Sale!

An 18-wheeler just arrived at the TurnKey Internet data center, bursting at the seams with a medley of 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB Intel E3 dedicated servers. To celebrate the arrival of this glorious mountain of technology, we are packing in the savings and marking every single one of them 40% off! All you have to do is enter the coupon E3TRUCK at check-out. That’s it! We’re all about making things easier.

E3’s are what’s hot right now, and they are being snatched up left and right. Don’t miss your chance to get in on this discount, because—trust us!—it won’t last long! Check out the Truckload Sale > 

Also… Yes, there is an “also”. Have you noticed there’s almost always an “also”? The E3 sale isn’t the only new thing starting up at TurnKey Internet this week. Since the truck arrived carrying only servers, we realized that we needed to show our other products and services some love as well. Naturally, we decided to offer savings on… well, everything. We just feel like a new year is started best when there’s a deal involved, you know? Especially when it’s a TurnKey deal, because those are our very favorite kinds of deals. So, see for yourself! Whether you’re looking for a reseller package or a virtual private server or anything in between, with this sale (and the coupon code TK2013), we know you’ll be able to kick off 2013 correctly.

So, are you as excited as we are? We hope so! But save some room for more, and keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages. We may or may not have another contest all cooked up and coming your way in the VERY near future.

Pssttt… I’ll have it be known that by “may or may not” I mean “definitely do without question”, but that’s between you and me…

Howdy Do, TurnKey Lovers?

It’s your favorite technician, back with another delightful treat. Haha, okay, maybe I should tone down the favoritism. I could be your favorite technician, or it could be any of our other wonderful techs. For the sake of this article, let’s just assume that I’m your number 1 guy.

Another year has come and gone, and what a year it was. That’s what I want to speak to you about today. If you don’t mind, let’s do a bit of reflection for a moment. Let’s take a step into the TurnKey time machine to look at this past year. (No, you can’t buy mine. Get your own.)

2012 has been one hell of a year, and I will give you the TurnKey Top Plays. Think of it like SportsCenter’s Top Plays, but with TurnKey. All of you sport fans should appreciate the top plays. I mean, why else do you watch SportsCenter at 3 in the morning? Okay, okay, I digress. Jeremy, stay on topic. Ah, yes, our Top Plays of the past year…

Let’s begin the countdown at number 5:

5. Welcomed new staff into the TurnKey family

Yes, this makes the Top Plays. We’ve added a few new members to our TurnKey family. I’m sure you’re already familiar with one, Emily Wegener. She’s the lovely lady who edits all of these posts; making us writers/technicians look better at this blogging thing than we are. Another new member of our TurnKey family—even though he doesn’t always stay because of something called “college”—Is Jared Rutnik. Jared helps Emily keep our TurnKey name out there in this delightful world of the Internet. Last but not least, we welcomed another technician, Chris Day.

4. Launched new products across our product lines

While we did launch several new products this year, I would say one of the most fun—yet frustrating—products has to be CloudFlare and Attracta. These services are now included with every sign up for one of our reseller or SEO accounts. It helps our customers not only attain higher page rankings, but it also gives redundancy with CloudFlare, should you need it.

3. Complete overhaul of our Reseller system

Okay, you might be saying, “Why is this in the top 3?” Well, have you ever used ZamFoo? It can be a pain, if you’ve never had the pleasure. While yes, it did provide additional functionality to our resellers, it became very clear that an in-house or custom-built reseller platform would be the way to go. Our new reseller system is a lot easier for end users to navigate, and also provides additional functionality that isn’t included in ZamFoo. For example, changing a site’s IP via ZamFoo can be a confusing process for a reseller. He or she would have to upgrade the account, assign the IP, and then downgrade the account. Our new reseller platform streamlines that process so you can just use the IP manager to change IP’s.

2. Survived Hurricane Sandy

Now, you may be wondering why this made the list, as our data center is in Upstate New York and not down by the coast. Well, many local businesses in our area had severe wind and rain impact. There was flooding all around, and some of our clients were deeply affected by the storm. Providing top-notch support across the board in billing, customer service, and technical support helped to keep some customers’ minds at ease about their hosting. While this might seem trivial, it made a tremendous difference to many of our clients. We were contacted numerous times, to confirm that our data center would survive the storm. Special accommodations were made for users who needed assistance with their billing or support during this difficult time. I’m proud to say that the TurnKey family pulled together and that we all did our best to help by any means we could, even if it was just letting customers pay their bill later so that they could focus on other things.

1. Moved into our new datacenter.

This is easily number one for me. Moving into a new data center while building it can make things a bit hectic. Users’ servers go off-line to be moved, and servers get transported from the old data center to the new one. If you had been here to witness the sheer amount of work that went into the project, you would have been amazed. Well, I know I was. The way the staff pulled together to migrate servers while dealing with the support issues being raised was nothing short of phenomenal. Sure, there were bumps along the way, but we all pitched in, as a team should, and got the job done. It made me proud to be a member of this TurnKey family.

Well there you go, TurnKey lovers. While it may not be a Top 10 list like SportsCenter, it doesn’t diminish the importance of each point.

Until next time…

Howdy do, Turnkey Lovers?

How are you feeling this week? I’m only asking because I’m not sure how to begin this topic. Let’s see, not too long ago, one of my co-workers mentioned that some of our competitors were writing blog entries on what it’s like to be an “IT Professional”. This has actually been something that I’m curious about myself.

What makes an IT Professional? I mean, IT (Information Technology) is such a large umbrella. So I did what I always do when I need to know something: Google. You would be surprised—well, you might not be—about the number of articles out there that deal with this very topic. Hundreds of “IT Professionals” all list their own explanations of what an IT Professional does.

Rather than bore you with yet another article on what an IT Professional does in general, I would prefer to take you into the world of a “TurnKey Professional”. These are probably one in the same, as a common denominator through all of the articles on IT professionals was this idea of wearing multiple hats; metaphorical hats, in this case. This could be anything from fixing a certain type of software, to providing customer service to a local client. If you’re really lucky, you may even get to work with a businessman or salesman.

In no place did I see this idea chiseled deeper into stone then at TurnKey Internet. On some days, I’m just your friendly, neighborhood slayer of tickets. This extends from any support issue as small as resetting a password on a locked out cPanel account, to deploying a major upgrade to new technology. On other days, I might be working on LiveChat, attempting to sell one of our many services—everything from dedicated servers, to colocation, to domain registration.

A TurnKey Professional is a jack of all trades, if you will. We each have skills that we must call on in a moment’s notice, to best service the needs of our customers. Isn’t that what an IT Professional is supposed to do? I’m not 100% on that, but I know here at TurnKey Internet, that’s what we do.

Having team members who each possess different skills, leads to a diverse, all-encompassing set of solutions to common issues that any IT Professional may run into. You know, that’s why I love working here. There are always multiple ways to solve an issue, and here at TurnKey, we usually end up employing many of them—if not all of them—to solve our clients’ needs. It’s quite refreshing.

Well, that’s just another little bit of information I wanted to share with you. It’s another way to show you Turnkey-lovers that I love what I do; another piece of information to share and bond over.

Until next time…

“Hindsight gives you 20/20 vision,” is a statement you should keep in mind as you read this blog article. Many businesses that were just recently affected in some way by Hurricane Sandy could have avoided the complete standstill to their services by preparing and planning out just what they would do if their facility suffered a catastrophic loss. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes,  snow storms, flooding, and fire are some of the most obvious causes of potentially disastrous losses that could halt the operations of a business. In fact, the property of a business does not even have to have any direct damage for a natural disaster to halt their business. For example, loss of electricity, telephone, or internet connectivity can cause problems with functionality, as those services are paramount.

The question any disaster recovery consultant will ask you is, “how would your business survive if it was affected short-term and/or long-term by some catastrophic event?” If you understand that any type of disaster could destroy your computing infrastructure – where all of your company records and data are stored, which could quite possibly destroy your business – then you should have a plan in place to alleviate that possibility.

At the very least, any business that uses computing to manage their operations should have an off-site back-up of their most important data and records. This is not a very expensive strategy, it is something that can be entirely automated, and it does not even need to be accessed until you actually need to use it. There are automated back-up systems available from most data-centers, which back-up your data as frequently as you desire. The incremental changes made in the time-frame chosen are then sent across the internet through an encrypted protocol, and stored in a managed backup system at the data center. Usually, the client is provided with a secure web interface to access those files as needed. These back-ups can also be used to restore individual data files that may have become deleted or damaged at any time, and downloaded back to the computers in your office.

The next step up from simply backing-up your data for protection from a disaster would be hosting some, to all, of your regular computing infrastructure in a data center (cloud computing). If you hosted your main office server in a data center and accessed your files over the Internet from the PCs in your office, you could survive a disaster from a computing standpoint. All of your important data could then be accessed from a temporary, remote location, or even by having your employees work from home until the office is re-established. Many companies are now hosting their entire computing infrastructure in a data center; everything from virtual PCs to their application servers. These can then be accessed through just about any device that is connected to the internet, such as a PC, Mac, tablet, and many types of smartphones.

Communicating with your customer base during and after any disaster is vital in many cases. When your email and telephone systems are cut off, and you and your customers can no longer communicate, this could be extremely damaging to your business. By hosting your email server at a data center, you have access to your email system through almost any device connected to the internet.

One of the data center services that is really gaining popularity lately is VOIP-based hosted phone systems. In a VOIP-based system, The PBX system normally nailed to the wall in an office is replaced by a PBX server in a data center. Management and administration of the system is then done though a web interface. All phone communication is channeled through voice over Internet protocol (VOIP).  The advantage of this in a disaster is that your phone system is always intact. You can access your administration portal over the Internet and change any settings that may be necessary, such as adding additional extensions for remote users. Staff members can work from remote locations or at home, by accessing the phone system with a softphone on their PC or by having their calls transferred from their extensions to their cell phones.

I have suggested that data center services, TurnKey Internet included, are great solutions to the issues surrounding disaster recovery. The key reason is that they have multiple redundancies in place to provide 100% up-time guarantees. At TurnKey Internet, we have multiple fiber providers supplying our Internet and bandwidth through diverse physical paths into our facility. We have complicated switch gear in place to maintain your connections, in case one or some of the fiber connections coming into the building are disrupted. Additionally, our power supply is backed-up with both a robust battery back-up supply to all servers and equipment, as well as an on-site diesel generator that can power our facility long-term if necessary.  For these reasons and more, anyone considering disaster recovery planning should consider the options available from reputable data centers like ours at TurnKey Internet, to insure that their business is not damaged long-term by a catastrophic event that had not been planned for.

At TurnKey Internet, there is only one thing we like to do more than make new friends, and that one thing is tell everyone about it. That being said, we are so excited to announce that docSTAR, a document management software company and subsidiary of Astria Solutions Group, LLC., is moving into our Latham, NY data center!

docSTAR is located in Schenectady, NY, so we’re basically neighbors. This is one of the most noteworthy aspects of docSTAR’s move into the TurnKey  cloud. There has been quite a stir around here in regards to teaming-up with a fellow Capital Region small business, and we welcome them wholeheartedly to our facility. We like to think of it as a little ray of sunshine on the heels of Hurricane Sandy!

Greg Laird, docSTAR’s VP of Product Development commented, “The cloud powers our software and our business. Our growth required a bigger, faster, stronger cloud in order to continue to provide the highest level of service. The TurnKey data center exceeds all of our requirements, so our customers can continue to grow.”

We’re more than happy to help! To read the full press release, you can check it out here.

A few weeks ago, Jeremy wrote an excellent article concerning Black Friday and why it’s important to consider all the cloud has to offer for managing such a busy holiday. Remember that? If not, you can (and should!) give yourself a little refresher course, here. Now, to establish the obvious, Black Friday is a high-traffic “holiday”. The same thing goes for Cyber Monday. However, these days, this might be little more than the result of heavy marketing campaigns and layers upon layers of hype that have accumulated around it over the years. We recently stumbled over some intriguing statistics that The Wall Street Journal dug up. For those of you hardcore deal-seekers who may be tuning in–you should probably consider sitting down for this.

Did you know that Black Friday may not always be your best bet for finding the absolute lowest price or steepest discount? It was hard for us to believe, too! There’s always such a craze leading up to and—of course—on Black Friday; from the lines wrapping around entire city blocks, to the blinking, coffee-slugging early-birds maniacally refreshing retail sites. However, according to the aforementioned study conducted by The Wall Street Journal and Decide, Inc., all of this effort (and, well, misery) might not be monetarily worth it in the end.

Interestingly, it seems that major retailers are pumping up marketing campaigns surrounding their more extreme deals, while inflating the price of other items to avoid a diminution of profits. Therefore, let’s say you want a specific TV, and see that it’s absurdly marked down at a specific store. Go for it! You wait in those lines, hurdle those human beings, and get that TV by any means necessary! However, if you’re shopping in general or looking for something that has a significantly reduced demand post-holidays, you might want to just hang out for a week or so. Or, you know what? Be a go-getter! Create your own shopping holiday and have a “Super Saturday” a few weeks early, or something.

Before you give yourself a head-slap for time spent in the calamity of Black Fridays past, rest assured that Black Friday does offer some outrageous deals and you absolutely will and have saved yourself a good chunk of cash. Our point is, a lot of expert deal-hunters might be looking for bargains on days that aren’t Black Friday, and you’ll see high traffic spikes then, too. So, although you definitely need to consider Jeremy’s advice for Black Friday because of the less-informed masses who will virtually stampede through your virtual doors, you might ALSO want to do some research and apply it here and there at other times throughout the year. That way, you won’t be unprepared for the hordes of shoppers who have really done their homework.

Take a look at this graphic we pulled from Decide, Inc., and mull it over. Happy Autumn (and happy shopping!) from TurnKey Internet.

Howdy-do, TurnKey Lovers?

A couple of weeks ago, my co-worker, Joe Schoonbeck, came up with a brilliant idea for a post. He suggested we write up a quick “How-To” on some of the essentials you need to begin a hosting business. What a simple, yet profound idea. If I had a dime every time we received questions about how to set up hosting, I would be able to buy a triple with cheese and a large fry from Wendy’s. Enough of this talk about food; let’s get down to business.

Now, this list of ideas is by no means set in stone. These are just a few steps that I believe will give you a good foundation to build your business upon.

 
Step 1 – Decide and Buy

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is important to determine which type of reseller account suits your needs. Unlike spandex, one size does not fit all. You see, at TurnKey Internet, we sell different types of reseller accounts: alpha, master, and WHM (web host manager).

Each reseller account has its pros and cons, but we’ll leave that for another article. For this entry into the TurnKey diary, let’s just keep it very high-level. Alpha accounts can resell Master accounts and WHM accounts, while Master accounts can only resell WHM accounts. Then, the poor, old WHM accounts can only resell cPanel accounts. This allows you to resell multiple accounts on your website.

Once you decide which account is best for you, purchase it.

Step 2 – Create

I had an intense, internal debate about step 2. Initially, I was thinking about skipping right to Step 3 (configuring your DNS), but it didn’t make sense to me to get into that if you have no site to share with the world.

You can take multiple steps in setting up your website, so I will be brief. You can use TurnKey’s website builder that is included in our reseller packages. Or, maybe you have a developer who creates fantastic websites in his/her sleep. The choices are limitless on this step.

Step 3 – Setup (Part I: Your DNS)

For the sake of this article, I’m going to assume you do not know what DNS is. I’m going to instead share how I teach what DNS (domain name system) is to our newbie engineers. You see, I compare DNS to a post office system. You have your streets and your addresses, which allow people to find your place of residence. That’s what DNS is, in a nut shell.

You have your website, and in order for others to see your masterpiece, you must first tell them where it is. You do this with your DNS. You have your DNS record, which contains your website’s IP address and your nameservers. Your IP address is essentially like the number on your mailbox. Your nameserver(s) would be the street(s) on which your house resides. You have to setup your DNS in order for others to visit your site.

Step 4 – Configure

Now that you have your site online and users purchasing hosting from you, they will inevitably need support. This could be with anything, from support for setting up your clients’ websites, to adding space to their account.

You will need some point of communication that you can use to speak with your clients. Our TurnKey reseller accounts each come with free helpdesk software included, which you can white label in your company’s name. This allows you to have a way for your customers to easily and efficiently submit tickets.

Step 5 – Setup (Part II: Extras)

When I say “setup extras”, these are items that can add increased functionality to your hosting company. While this step can be rather large, we will just stick to a few of the basics.

If you’re selling anything on your site, you will need to install an SSL certificate. This basically encrypts your users’ connections when they submit orders to your company. I would say this is just as important as your website. If you don’t happen to have an SSL certificate lying around, you can request a FREE SSL with your TurnKey reseller account. If you’re going to be accepting orders, you may need a billing system that can help keep those orders in line. Enter—one of our most popular free extras—a free WHMCS license.

 
Now, there are no exact steps, but these can give you a good foundation for beginning your hosting account career.

Until next time, Turnkey Lovers!

Howdy-do, Turnkey Lovers?

You know, I haven’t spoken with you guys and ladies in quite some time. It’s been too long, and I just wanted to write a post for you. Today, one of my favorite musicians’ latest album came out, and it got me thinking — thinking about what some people consider to be the American Dream.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the story; some lady or gent claws their way from the bottom to the top. It could be figuratively or literally. It could be coming to this country and opening up a chain of gas stations, or coming to this country and opening a chain of hosting companies. While all of that is fine and dandy, I wanted to share with you, Turnkey Internet lovers, my hosting dream.

Now, this dream is mine and mine alone, but I’ve also gathered a bit of information just from dealing with multiple clients on a daily basis. You see, I believe the hosting dream is very similar to the American Dream. I say this, as I work with hundreds of clients who have this idea that they can start a hosting company.

They purchase a Turnkey reseller account, and set up their site to begin. They may then have a developer, or use one of our website development tools, to build and design their site. Dedicated IPs are purchased, and assigned to domain names that have been recently bought through Turnkey’s domain registration. The customer then sets up the reverse DNS (dynamic naming service) to only be in their domain, after which WHMCS or a similar billing product is purchased or provisioned so that orders can be processed.

Next comes the fun part — marketing this new online business. Maybe you create a hosting account on a credible hosting forum to begin making a name for yourself. You may even create social media accounts on sites such as Twitter or Facebook to develop a following. Sure enough, the day comes that you receive that first customer. The beginning of a long journey has arrived.

Support issues will be raised, and need to be addressed quickly and completely to the customers’ satisfaction. Repeat. Repeat, repeat. You repeat until your customer base grows. Your name is mentioned in forums and in social — and possibly your local (newspaper, television, etc.) — media.

You see, that’s my hosting dream. That anyone can deliver a satisfying product to their customers with the correct tools, ambition, proper networking, support, etc. That anyone can provide top-notch support and superior customer service. That, with all of this, you and your budding hosting company can flourish.

That’s my dream and desire for every customer that approaches Turnkey Internet. My hosting dream is for our company to help your company succeed and thrive.

I just thought I should share that with you, as everyone has to have a dream, right? How could we achieve anything in this life if we never have a dream?

From my hosting dream, to your own.

Until next time, Turnkey lovers!

The cloud is IT on demand. The cloud is a scalable, reliable and cost effective way of accessing information technology at any time from any where.

The technology of the cloud revolves around the benefits of moving expensive and complicated IT out of your office into an efficient, scalable, and secure data center. This data center is where your IT equipment, office servers, desktop applications, web applications, business software and data can all be accessed easily, at a much lower cost, and securely via the Internet.

TurnkeyCloud is IT On Demand

TurnKeyCloud offers ready to go Cloud Applications that help any business be more efficient, communicate and collaborate with ease. Our instant on technology can have these Cloud Applications running for your business within seconds, and save you both money and time versus trying to deploy similar solutions in your office. Our Cloud enabled Virtual Desktops let you connect your computer work environments together with employees across the room, town, or globe with a shared desktop, suite of Microsoft Office applications, and access to files and folders in a secure environment. Cloud Servers offer instant replacements and instant capacity for your office servers. At the push of a button you can deploy additional services, cloud servers, increase speed, increase storage capacity, increase the number of users all without having to call your IT company and schedule an expensive site visit.

How Does the Cloud Help My Business?

Cloud Sourcing your IT (Information Technology) provides significant Cost Savings, increased reliability for your business, instant access to computer resources or applications when you need them, green friendly benefits to both you and your community, and access to powerful software tools to help your business grow and be more efficient.

How is Cloud Hosting Different?

Traditional hosting servers run applications in a linear design without extensive redundancy or scalability. The traditional method until now when hosting a server, web site or application is to place it in your office on a single computer. Although the hardware on this computer may have some limited redundancy such as a spare disk drive- it is inevitable to have some form of business disruption from loss of power, exceeding the capacity of the computer or network, hardware failure, human error, or simply having a software crash. This disruption could cost a business significantly in lost data, lost time, and for the IT company you have to hire to come in and fix everything.

With the TurnKeyCloud Hosting model, the single point of failure is replaced by a scalable on demand network of computing resources that are hosted in our data center with multiple redundant ultra-high capacity network connections, on-site generators, precision cooling systems, and leveraging green-friendly practices. The single server design model of yesterday is now replaced by sophisticated SAN (Storage Area Network) file servers, multiple clustered HyperVisor virtualization based systems, and control module nodes that ensure a reliable always available experience for your servers and software applications.