Last week, Ryan posted about his first month at The Planet, and as a new employee on the training team, I can’t help but echo his excitement and enthusiasm. 2009 was certainly a year of difficulties and change for me. With the downward spiral of the economy came an unexpected turn in my career.

After more than 13 years with the same company, I received the proverbial pink slip last summer. At 40, I lost a large part of my identity with the click of a mouse. How could this happen? What do I do now? I was fortunate enough to have a severance cushion for my abrupt nudge out of the nest, so I took some time and enjoyed the summer with my kids.

With the daily silence of the phone and the vast wasteland of my inbox came a foreboding sense of doom. What if I never get a job? I felt the first trickle of panic around the time my kids went back to school. They had returned to their normal routine. Where was my chance?

Then one day I opened my email expecting the same “inbox empty” message that had mocked me for months. This day was different: there was a response. The Planet wanted to talk to me! I was even more excited and promptly contacted the office to schedule an interview.

The phone interview fueled my excitement, followed shortly by an in-person meeting. I walked into the office and was immediately impressed. This was not your normal corporate land of cubicles — this had style. I felt an energy I knew I wanted to be a part of. After I had what I hoped would be the best interview of my life, I waited patiently for next steps. It came a few days later when I had the opportunity to meet with the director and further explain why I felt this company simply could not live without me. I walked out, sure this would be my new corporate digs. I was so confident that I immediately started planning my first-day outfit.

Given the holiday season, the actual “welcome” took a little longer than expected, so I was anxious to hear if I had finally made it back into the productive work force. As I was waiting, I got a call from my old employer out of the blue with the possibility of going back to work in a different department. Not my dream job by any means, but it was a job. And I felt vindicated. They had made a mistake in letting me go.

And then I received an offer letter from The Planet. I was at a crossroads. Two paths awaited my decision that would forever change my destiny. One was well traveled and familiar; the other bright and shiny and shrouded in mystery. I had some serious contemplating to do. I talked with my family and weighed the pros and cons of both. Enlightenment often comes from the most unexpected places. My son, with all his ten-year-old wisdom chimed in: “Mom, your last company betrayed you and that is not good. The Planet needs you!” Now, how was I going to argue with that?

I immediately accepted the offer with The Planet, and the day I started knew it was the best decision I had ever made.

In my short tenure I’ve learned that one of our core values is about passion for the business and for our customers, and those “aha” moments come every day. The team here at The Planet offers an immediate feeling that I belong , and they are glad I finally made it.

I may have traded my thirteen years for 42 days, but the rewards are already priceless. I am proud to be part of this company and look forward to work every day.

I still think this is one of the coolest offices around. I gaze onto downtown Houston with a smile on my face. It is so much more than just a job — it’s a true sense of belonging. When I attend meetings and get to hear about the great things that we are working on, I am thrilled to be a part of it. It is a new horizon that seems endless in opportunities. I am still in awe of the massive amount of knowledge that sits behind these glass and steel walls.

Just like Columbus explored his new world, I am navigating my very own Planet. Although I doubt seriously he had to worry about throughput and bandwidth on his voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

-Tracy

Smack dab in the middle of downtown Houston’s theater district sits the somewhat ambiguous – and intriguing – structure we call The Planet HQ. Just walking into the place is an awe-inspiring undertaking. It’s an old conference center that has been completely renovated with offices, conference rooms and catwalks. At this very moment, if I look to the right I see a neon blue-lit Ferris wheel spinning at the Aquarium restaurant complex across the road, and I can’t help but feel a little intimidated by the environment.

I recently joined The Planet as a Sr. Technical Support Specialist, so part of the intimidation might be the “new job” aspect. The place looks nice and the people seem great, so there has to be a catch. I’ve been around the block in the IT industry’s call centers and their ilk, and my honest expectation was to be hurled into the important, but somewhat soul-sucking, role of being a nameless cog in a corporate machine. That isn’t the case at all here.

I’m amazed by the depth of effort each of The Planet’s departments puts into interconnectivity. Yes, I answer phones, take care of customer concerns and work on servers, but what makes the real difference is the fact that everyone – and I mean everyone – has the opportunity to participate in the inner workings of The Planet as a whole.

My primary focus is helping our customers get the results they want, and at the same time, I have the opportunity to research, develop and contribute to every aspect of The Planet’s business. If I think something could be done better and have an idea on how to fix it, I won’t be dropping a card into a bottomless suggestion box … I’ll be contacting the person in charge – even up to the CEO – and presenting it myself. From what I’ve witnessed, those recommendations are taken seriously. Employees are empowered to make their jobs better and make customers happier. That’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

I’m still pretty new here, and the natural intimidation I felt when I first walked into this building hasn’t completely worn off. But as I start to feel a little more comfortable, I can’t help but be proud that I have the opportunity to work with a company that treats its employees the way The Planet does. Not only does the environment give me the enthusiasm to do what needs to be done, but I honestly believe this approach will take the company to the top. If you ask me, that’s the kind of company I want to be a part of.

This may all sound like a PR spiel, but I can’t think of any other way to be more honest about my impressions as a first-month employee entering the fray. In the coming months, I hope to elaborate more on some of the actual operations happening here and talk about some of the services we’re building and providing. There’s definitely some exciting stuff in the works, and I’m looking forward to diving in head-first and giving you all a sneak peek.

-Ryan

What defines “value” in hosting for you? Is it all about price? The quality of the server? The quality of the network? Is it an intangible peace of mind? Where do great service and support fit in?

In 2010, The Planet is raising the bar. We are on a quest to bring our customers the best hosting value, and we’ve started making some big changes. We’ve lowered many of our regular server prices and added new server lines to our product catalog, including a low-end model with Intel’s newest Pentium G6950 processor.

You shouldn’t need a special deal to get a great server at the best price, and our new approach to pricing guarantees that for you.

While lowering prices is a good first step in becoming a leading provider of value hosting, it’s just that — the first step. We know that you want to run and maintain your server with as little interference as possible, so we just launched a value bundle program to empower you with the tools you need: With every new server you purchase from The Planet, we’re going to provide a free control panel, 10 GB of free cloud storage and free Symantec antivirus software. That’s not for a limited time — it’s a permanent value-add.

Thus far, we’ve only talked about a few of the server-side changes we’ve made, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Value hosting is not defined by bottom lines and add-ons. The most valuable hosting offering is the one that provides the best data centers, network and support for a given budget, so we’re investing in those areas of our business.

Since value is perceived on a customer-by-customer basis, your experience is our focus. In the coming weeks and months, you’ll hear about some of the huge investments we’re making to increase your satisfaction. The Planet has always been known for the quality of our service, and we’re not resting on our laurels. We want your experience to be even better.

If you’re interested in learning more about our new offerings and Twitter-exclusive deals, be sure to follow @ThePlanetSales.

2010 is already an exciting year at The Planet!

-Kevin

On January 12, Haiti was rocked by a series of devastating earthquakes. In the past week, people from around the world have come together to provide supplies and support to the Haitian people and their ravaged nation. More than $24 million has been pledged via text message to the American Red Cross International Response Fund , and groups like Doctors Without Borders, Shelterbox, AmeriCares and International Medical Corps have been working around-the-clock to provide as much help as possible.

With all of the ongoing relief efforts, it has been difficult to decide how we could be involved and make the biggest difference without making our involvement seem like it’s about us. It turns out we’re not alone in that sentiment. Over the past week, The Planet has been working with other hosting companies including Rackspace, PEER 1, GoGrid and ServInt to create an industry-wide campaign to provide relief:

We know the power we have as a group exceeds the sum of the contributions we could make on our own, so we’re putting aside our fierce competitiveness for the greater social good. If you’re able to help, you can be sure you’re making a difference.

Visit HostingForHaiti.com to learn more about how you can help by donating to the American Red Cross and spreading the word about this effort.

If you’re a Web host and you’d like to join this industry-wide effort by posting a blog and spreading the word to your social network, e-mail info@hostingforhaiti.com to be included.

Follow the progress of the effort on Twitter by following @hostingforhaiti or searching for the #hostingforhaiti hash-tag.

We hope to make a difference through our unified efforts by providing immediate assistance to the tens of thousands of Haitians in need. Please join us to expand our reach.

Sir Isaac Newton saw an apple drop from a tree, and started contemplating gravity. Albert Einstein was riding in a street car, and Bern’s clock tower inspired the key to special relativity. Larry Page woke up in the middle of the night to scribble down a plan to download the Web, and Google was born. These “Eureka!” moments get the most fanfare, but Thomas Edison reminds us that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

The same can be said about new businesses and software applications: Even the best ideas require time, diligence, resources and a whole lot of work to succeed. If you’re a small business owner, you probably won’t make it very far by spending an hour a week executing your business plan. If you’re a developer, you won’t be able to code and test “the next Google” on an old Pentium II desktop in your closet.

While we can’t provide the inspiration, diligence or “whole lot of work” pieces of the puzzle, our new Sand Castle program can give you the resources and time you need to jumpstart your vision:

• A Dual Xeon server
• An Enterprise-class data center
• An Industry-leading network
• FREE for 12 Months.

The costs of rolling out new business plans and testing software can be prohibitive, especially in uncertain economic times. So think of Sand Castle as an economic stimulus for entrepreneurs and developers. We’re providing an online environment to help launch the next big Internet success.

The initial Sand Castle deployment includes up to 500 servers, and The Planet’s Chairman and CEO Doug Erwin looks at it like this: “With eight data centers, we’re in a position to offer a single server to 500 individuals who want to start their own businesses. These 500 servers could create 500 jobs, and then we’ll have taken one small step to pay it forward and be part of the solution.”

FREE Server Configurations

We consulted with many developers, and with their feedback, we set minimum server specs for this program:

• Dual Xeon 2.4, 2.8 or 3.2
• 1GB RAM
• 146 GB of HDD space
• 10Mbps Unmetered Bandwidth
• Operating System: CentOS 5

Eligibility

Are you a developer? Do you have a vision for a new application or service? Do you need help turning that vision into reality? If so, you’re perfect for the Sand Castle program.

Fill out the one-page signup form with your contact information and vision for a Sand Castle server. We expect demand to exceed our initial supply, so quantities may be limited, and not every application will be accepted. Take time to detail your plans and provide any applicable examples to give yourself the best chance.

If you’ve got the inspiration, it’s time for some perspiration. Visit the Sand Castle page to learn more and apply!

-Kevin

P.S. If you know of any friends who may be interested in the program, be sure to Tweet this, Digg it, email it or smoke-signal it.

At the end of my Learning from a Blender post, I alluded to a project George Wright’s presentation inspired. Armed with a video camera and a bit of inspiration, I headed to our H2 data center to capture our own “obvious” video for our customers. Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” series features their Total Blender in a way few had ever seen a blender before. Blenders are designed to dice and slice, so they recorded themselves dicing and slicing … albiet a few unconventional objects.

We help our customers build their businesses on servers in our data centers, so why not disassemble a server and rebuild it on camera for you? While the server-building process isn’t nearly as noisy or destructive as blending marbles, it gives our customers an opportunity to see their server – or in this case, one like it – from a different perspective: inside-out.

When I asked the data center managers about recording a server build on video, they jumped at the opportunity. Transparency is one of The Planet’s goals, and by showing you how your server’s components fit together, we’re giving you that “insider” perspective.

Follow Scott Stanley, an H2 data center supervisor, as he builds a Xeon 3060 – SAS server:

Key Components:

• 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon “Conroe” 3060 processor
• 4GB DD2 667 ECC RAM
• 146GB 10K RPM SAS HDD
• SAS drive card
• Dell PowerEdge 840 tower chassis

If you’ve never seen how all of the components are laid out inside a server, consider this your crash course. Do you have any questions about the server construction process? Is there anything “behind the scenes” like this that you want to see for yourself? Leave a comment below and let us know!

-Kevin

P.S. The background music is courtesy of Brandon Holbrook at Royalty Free Music X. Thanks Brandon!

Will it blend? That is the question.

If those words evoke mental images of diced golf balls, shredded iPhones or powdered marbles, you’re one of the tens of millions of people who have watched Blendtec’s virally successful “Will It Blend?” video series.

At a conference I recently attended, Blendtec Vice President of Marketing & Sales George Wright explained the inspirational genesis of the “Will It Blend?” phenomenon: While walking through the company’s factory, he came across a pile of wood shavings on the floor. Since wood isn’t used in the production of most commercial-grade blenders, the sight was unexpected and borderline worrisome. When a few assembly line workers saw his confusion – and concern – they explained that company founder Tom Dickson was testing a new blade design on a two-by-four and that everything would be cleaned up quickly … No big deal.

This kind of “testing” didn’t cause much of a commotion in the factory, but George saw potential. Armed with a $50 starting budget, “Will it Blend?” was born. As the series approaches its 100th YouTube upload and 100,000,000th video view, it’s fairly safe to say that the $50 was well spent.

What made the video a success? What was the secret sauce? George’s first bullet-point: Obviousness.

Of course people want to see a blender face off against a Chuck Norris action figure. Of course they’ll tune in to see you destroy the impossible-to-get-at-the-time iPhone. Of course people want to see why your blender is better at blending than any other blender on the face of the planet. Is that the case? I can’t say I’ve seen any other blender destroy a rake handle:

Taking Blendtec’s “obviousness” cue, I headed up to our H2 data center with a video camera and came back with a video. Do you want to see it?

-Kevin

P.S. Yes, I jumped when the rake hit the blade the first time.

[an encore, from a long ago Solstice. but still true today]

If you had walked out into my backyard around 4:40 the last few afternoons you would have been greeted with the orange ball of the sun setting with a final low glare over the tops of the buildings that I can see low on the horizon out across the Los Angeles basin. At this time each late afternoon I like to get out the binoculars that I keep next to the back door, and I step outside to watch the last seconds of the sun setting and to find the spot where the last glimmer of light for the day appears. Every night that glimmer has moved a little further to the south. Just a few weeks ago the last glint vanished just behind the cupola of the Pasadena city hall. By just the next day, the cupola was clear, but the sun disappeared behind the building to the left of city hall. Last night it set 4 or 5 office buildings further to the left, still, behind an anonymous office tower that I can't recognize, but through the binoculars appears impressive with the sun directly framing it and the occasional stray bit of light going through a window on the far side, rattling around on the inside, and emerging as the last bit of bit of light before a long winter night. Tonight I watched again, and the sun set behind exactly the same anonymous tower. It hadn't moved at all. Today, therefore, must be the solstice. The solstice is many things: the first day of winter, the earliest sunset, the longest night of the year, the latest sunrise. Most people notice the sunset more than anything else. But solstice comes from the latin "solstitium": sol for sun, and stitium for a stoppage ("armistice" comes from the same root: a stoppage of arms). The stoppage of the southern progression of the sun -- the turnaround to come back to the north -- was considered a big enough phenomenon to give the event its name. The sun stoppage. As the darkness tries to ascend (quickly; these winter twilights don't last) the other part of the season becomes clear. While the nearby glare of Los Angeles means that we never truly have darkness in these parts, this time of year everyone is doing their best to cut the darkness even more. I can see Christmas lights on the houses throughout Pasadena, and, with the binoculars, I can see to downtown Los Angeles where the buildings have been strung with lights. And who can blame them? With the nights so long and the sun moving further and further south, who would not want to try to do their part to make up for the absence of the light and the heat? Who would not be at least a little afraid at this time every year that the sun would somehow not decide to stop and then come back?

At our house we celebrate the solstice with our best attempt to coax back the sun. When the night is as dark as it will get, we gather with friends around our Christmas tree, turn out all of the lights in the house, and slowly refill the house with the yellowy-orange glow as we one by one light the dozens of candles hanging in the branches of the tree. Lighting candles on Christmas trees is a well known Bad Thing to Do, but we find that with a tree cut down the day before (and a fire extinguisher on hand just in case), all goes smoothly. Like the sun, the candles slowly go out. Some catch a few warm drafts and burn more quickly, some get less air and burn more slowly, but one by one they all eventually go until, with just two or three left, the house is dark again and the shadows of branches shimmer sinisterly on the ceiling. Finally the last candle sputters and dies, sometimes with a long glow and sometimes with a sudden final pop, and the longest night of the year totally envelopes us.

The night sky gets in on the act this time of year, too. Many people who claim to know no constellations in the sky can look up and identify Orion in the winter sky. With the three bright stars making the belt, the scabbard of stars hanging below, and the quartet making the shoulders and knees, Orion is truly simple to identify. But Orion is also composed of some of the brighter of the stars in the sky. In fact, look outside, and look around Orion. Bright stars are all around. The constellation of Taurus, Sirius, the brightest star around. The seasons of the sky are not created equally. Winter is a spectacular display of stars and constellations unlike any other, as if the stars, too, are trying to help us out on the longest winter nights by saving the best show for the very end of the year. None of this is true, of course. The spectacular winter skies are caused by the fact that we are looking straight in to the Milky Way galaxy, instead of out of it as we do in the spring and fall. But still, it is hard not to see the similarity between the lights strung in the town below trying to dispel the night and call back the sun, and the lights above, also seemingly strung for the same reason.

Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'm going to go outside with my binoculars and see exactly where the sun sets again. Because I do this every year, and because I can look up the precise date and time of the solstice, and because I know that the earth will continue to go around the sun with the same tilt for my entire lifetime, I know what will happen: the sun will have moved away from the anonymous office building and finally started moving right again. The day will get imperceptibly longer. Really, there is not much suspense in what will happen, just a certain reassuring inevitability. But if I didn't know these things and didn't have confidence in the inevitable, I can imagine myself holding my breath as the last rays of the sun were shooting out and I was trying to see just where it was setting. I stopped yesterday, but is it really turning around today? Will the days really get longer again? Will my crops (well, ok, my vegetable garden) come back to life? And I'll then see the spot and it will be clearly north and I'll know. And at that point, I will say to anyone within sight: happy new year. For while the calendar claims I have another week to go, the Christmas lights and the candles and Orion and Taurus and Sirius will have done their jobs, and the sun will have started its new year already today and we should all be glad for the solstice.

While navigating the expo hall of the 2009 Cloud Computing Conference, Dell’s Cloud Evangelist Barton George snagged Rob Walters for a quick interview to learn more about how The Planet is taking advantage of the cloud. Rob tackles some big questions about the market’s perception of pure cloud computing and its hesitance to immediately adopt the seemingly Utopian platform. If you have about six minutes and forty-two seconds to spare, head to Dell’s Inside Enterprise IT blog and watch the video: The Planet, from Hoster to Hoster & Cloud Provider.

As soon as they wrapped up the interview, I turned the camera to Barton. What does Dell’s Cloud Evangelist think about the future of cloud computing? Can private clouds and virtualization survive the hype of the public cloud? How is Dell approaching the cloud behemoth? His answers may surprise you:

Key Points:

• Dell has invested about $450 million in software in the past two years to provide niche public cloud services.
• Similar to Rob’s sentiment, Dell sees virtualization as the “building block” of the cloud – a necessary step in getting hardware-minded customers comfortable with the platform.
• The private cloud isn’t necessarily doomed, and it’s more than just a stepping stone.
• Traditional IT isn’t going anywhere.
• In the future, a company’s infrastructure may involve a mixture of traditional IT, virtualization, private clouds and the public cloud.

-Kevin

A few weeks ago, I received an interesting email. The sender claimed to be from CNN, and he wanted to chat about The Planet’s #showmemyserver experiment. Before I filtered the seemingly surreal opportunity into a folder typically reserved for emails that say, “Dear Sir, I will send you $1million dollars if you send me $25.93 for postage,” I did a little snooping around. To my very pleasant surprise, this John D. Sutter guy is not only a real person, he actually writes and produces for CNN!

We exchanged a few phone calls, and I learned that he spoke with Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge for a CNN Tech article about “The Cloud.” As they discussed the mechanics of the cloud in terms of data centers and servers, Rich pointed out the juxtaposition of this hyped demand of virtualized products with an old-school desire to have the data in a visible, tangible location. Enter The Planet’s #showmemyserver project.

John was very interested in our take on the social media experiment’s success, so it was great to share a little of what we heard from our customers … and we were even able put him in touch with Nate Tallman at HealthTeacher.com to give him a direct customer perspective. Thanks for your help, Nate!

Long story short: John posts A trip into the secret, online ‘cloud’ to quite a bit of fanfare … which isn’t surprising, given its great introductory video:

From the heart of that article, he links to a “Behind the Scenes” blog about The world of ’server huggers’ and investigates his subconscious desire to find the “real” location of his digital data. As any customer who visits one of our data centers can attest, he’s not alone.

If you’re interested in “hugging” your server, stay tuned to The Planet Blog over the next few weeks, and keep your keyboard at the ready. We’ll offer another opportunity just in time for the holidays.

-Kevin

The fall term always gets a little overwhelming, as classes get into session and lectures need to be written, problem sets graded, exams created. I have an amazingly long backlog of things about which I want to write at this point but which I have not yet had the time to even get started. To top things off, my life appears to be changing forever. Most of these pieces get written on weekend afternoons while Lilah is napping. But the days of napping appear to be coming to a close.I understand intellectually that this is likely, after all, few 10 year olds nap, but I had never really stopped to think about the effect on my life. It’s not all bad; being able to pondering going out to do something with Lilah in the afternoon could be quite fun! But it will definitely gobble up my quiet afternoon writing time. But, today, after a late Halloween night and a no-doubt sugar-induced-early-morning wakeup, Lilah is currently snoozing away and I am going to now type as quickly as possible. Ready? Go! (Halloween? Yes, I started writing this almost a month ago, giving a perfect demonstration of the point I am trying to make.)

Back at the end of August I asked everyone to review my paper on Titan fog, and, to my surprise, many people took the task extremely seriously. The paper was discussed in classes and in on-line forums and was stared at by many eyes. If you recall back in August one of the reasons for attempting this open review was the fear that having only a single official reviewer leads to a huge random factor as to whether or not you will get anything useful out of the process. In this case, I have to say that the official review was pretty difficult to decipher. The reviewer commented on a few typos, complained about the location of the references, and said that the paper was generally incomprehensible.

Incomprehensible? Now, I will admit to having written papers that are incomprehensible before (how about this one; I can barely understand it myself 20 years later), but I actually thought that the paper was pretty clear. What’s more, of the many comments I had gotten from outside the official review process, no one had quite said “incomprehensible.” So what was going on here?

I reread the paper several dozens of times, and reread all of the comments that I had gotten, and realized, I think, the source of the problem. I think I was much too terse in my explanation of what I had actually done. Sure, I discussed fog and its discovery in gory detail. But I perhaps did not do a great job of describing how I really sorted through all of the data to find fog. It’s a pretty crucial step. If you don’t provide enough details in your paper that someone else could come after you and reproduce precisely what you did, you have failed an important point of having a paper in the first place.

One reason for describing all of this poorly was that the real process was actually quite different from the way I attempted to describe it in the paper. The real process consisted of this: I was looking at a bunch of pictures of Titan and said “Whoa; what the heck is that?” That turned out to be fog. I suspect that many discoveries are made that way, but if you read scientific papers you will rarely learn that fact. If you read my paper, you will find something like “Fog is very important so one fine day we decided to go look for fog on Titan. And we found it.”

OK, partially this description is true. After the first few times of accidentally seeing the fog we did, one fine day, systematically search through the entire data set. But that description was all pretty muddled.

The solution was a nearly complete rewrite of the paper. Had I just gotten the official review I would have fixed the typos and reworded a few things here and there and wondered what the heck the reviewer was talking about, but with the strength of the large number of comments, I could really tell what people were seeing and reading and I could make it significantly better. At least I think it is. But don’t take my word for it. Remind yourself of the first version, here. And now go read the new version here as it is about to appears in this week's Astrophysical Journal Letters. You still will not read the new version and realize that the real way we found fog is that we stumbled on it accidentally, but you will at least, I think, have a better idea of precisely what we did and how we did it. Want to go find fog yourself? I think the roadmap is now significantly more clear.

My conclusion from this experiment? I can’t tell you whether this system will always lead to such dramatic improvements in the quality of a paper, but in this particular case there is no doubt that when you read the two versions of the paper and you note any improvements almost all of those improvements came from the open review, rather than the official review. All of the comments that were sent to me were incorporated in one way or another. And for that, I would like to say a hardy THANK YOU to everyone.

But wait, there’s more!

Fresh on the heels of the Titan fog paper, I have submitted a paper to the Astronomical Journal called “The size, density, and formation of the Orcus-Vanth system in the Kuiper belt.”

This paper, I will admit, is less accessible than the paper about fog on Titan, yet, still, would you give it a read? It’s been posted online for a week and one reader already pointed out a rather stupid math error (thanks Alan Martin) of the sort that creeps into papers when you work on them one hour a week for 3 months (the error is still there, until we fix it in the next round of reviews, so feel free to go track it down and marvel at how stupid I sometimes can be).

Normally I would spend a few pages here telling you what the paper is about but, conveniently, I did that last spring, when we were searching for an appropriate name for the moon of Orcus. Go back and reread the post about coming up with names for the moon of Orcus, where I talk about the strange characteristics of what we now call Vanth. And, with a bit of continued Lilah napping over the weeks to come, stay tuned for thoughts about searching for the real Planet X, why I hate the 5 dwarf planets, and strategies for Lilah-weekend-nap-inducement.

And look! Lilah is done with her nap, and ready to start in on last night’s candy. Back to the sugar frenzy. (and with that, Lilah was awake, and we were off, and now it is a month later and Lilah is settled into a post-Thanksgiving nap and I finally have a spare moment to finish and post. Classes end next week for the year, so I look forward to a bit more time for reflection soon. Stay tuned.)

Since Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, The Planet’s annual Boo Bash is happening today. As you can see from our archives, there are a lot of creative people around here, and when a costume contest challenge is issued, you’re bound to get some interesting results. I’ve already seen a fully costumed Ghostbuster, a bumble bee, and about 45 people – including our CEO and CFO – dressed as Todd Mitchell. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Todd must feel VERY flattered.

We will post our costumed competitors on The Planet Flickr for all to see, and you can post a comment here to vote for your favorites. Click the picture of “Todd” below to go directly to the Boo Bash 2009 album.

To let you share in today’s costuming, we’ve got a present for you. As a part of our fundraising efforts to support the American Heart Association, we printed shirts for employees who donate. The shirt design has been so popular internally that I made it into a few wallpapers that you can use:

Versions Available:
Dual-Monitor Setup (2560 x 1024)
Single Monitor – Server Only (1280 x 1024)
Single Monitor – “You Got Served” Only (1280 x 1024)

After you get your desktop suited up in its new costume, remember to vote for your favorite Boo Bash 2009 entrant in the comment section below.

Trick or Treat!

-Kevin

At the 2009 Cloud Computing Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., The Planet Director of Product Management Rob Walters was one of five experts invited to participate in a panel discussion about enterprise-level cloud computing – whether it’s a far-off dream or a present-day reality. Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan covered everything from whether the term “cloud” was too broad to be useful to whether private clouds and public clouds can coexist.

I caught up with Rob in the expo hall to have him weigh in on each of the questions for our loyal blog readers (you!):

I love the analogy he uses to explain why “the cloud” is such a difficult concept to explain. It seems to be a paradigm shift unlike any we’ve seen in recent memory, so the transition from hype and confusion to understanding and adoption should prove to be an interesting adventure over the next few years.

One of the most interesting questions asked of the panel was whether or not we’d be talking about cloud computing in 10 years. The unanimous answer: No. Why? The resounding sentiment is that shift toward “the cloud” will be so pervasive that a given platform’s “cloudiness” will be implied. This opinion is shared by a group of experts at a “cloud computing conference,” so there may be a little bias here … What do you think? Will the cloud take over and become the de facto standard or will demand for traditional IT remain in the midst of the cloud’s surge?

-Kevin

As an avid reader of The Planet Blog, you’ve probably noticed some consistency in the 164 articles published here since Doug’s inaugural “Welcome to The Planet’s blog… I think?” post on May 14, 2007. We focus on our company culture, support, data centers and network to help you step through the looking glass and get an inside perspective on our business. With a continuous stream of changes and improvements, it’s tough to feature even a fraction of the work our team is doing to improve our service, so we keep an eye out for opportunities to “show” what we’ve “told” you about in the past. This is one of those opportunities.

On September 2, 2008, we announced the results of our lights-out energy efficiency initiative. A few days ago, I was sorting through a batch of data center pictures, and I came across a few great examples of what this news looks like in practice:

This is Phase Two of our H1 data center. With all the posts you see from H2 and D6, you might be curious about what our other data centers look like, so hopefully the picture above doesn’t surprise you. We have extremely high standards for our data centers, and you should expect the same enterprise-level quality across the board.

If you took a guided tour through H1, you’d see it all lit up as it is above. If you walked in during a normal DC shift, you’d probably find it a little different:

When the data center is unoccupied, the lights are switched off to save energy. How much energy? Well, across the board, we estimate the program saves more than 1.4 million kilowatt hours in a given year – or about $140,000 in power bills. It’s no small change.

As you’ve seen in our other posts about data center innovation and operational efficiency, we take a common-sense approach to energy conservation. It’s incredible to see the significant impact such simple changes can make.

It’s also pretty cool to see servers glowing in the dark:

-Kevin

If you weren’t able to attend the cPanel Conference 2009 last week in Houston, you missed out on a great show. With all the networking events, educational sessions and vendor booths to visit, it was pretty tough to keep up as a participant, so the cPanel team deserves a high-five or two —physical or virtual — for having everything so well prepared.

As you may have heard, I led a session about “Disruptive Technologies: The Road from Disruptive to Sustaining.” Instead of copying the bullet points from my presentation into this blog post, we recorded the whole session on a Flip MinoHD. If you’ve got a little time and you’re interested to hear my take on the effects of the Cloud and Virtualization on hosting, go grab a bag of popcorn, turn up your computer speakers, sit back and enjoy:

[See post to watch the Flash video]

I opened the floor for Q&A in the session and for additional follow-up after the session after we ran out of time, so I want to do the same for you: When you watch the video, if you’ve got any questions, please post them in a comment below and I’ll be happy to respond.

-Todd

More often than not, server backups are misunderstood. With dozens of hardware options and hundreds of software options, finding the right backup can be intimidating. To assuage some of those fears and clear up a bit of that confusion, let’s go over a few of the most common backup schemes. This list isn’t all-inclusive, and the options presented shouldn’t be mistaken for backup plans. A backup scheme is simply a method of creating backups. A backup plan (or disaster recovery plan) is a scheduled implementation of a backup scheme. As we evaluate each scheme, we’ll look at the requirements, costs and benefits, and by the end of our tour, you can decide which best fits your business.

Before we get too far into the specifics of the different schemes, we should define some fundamental terms that we’ll use throughout the comparison:

• An archive is a set of data that is being preserved
• A reference point is a single archive against which comparisons are made
• A restore point is the most recent working backup

The key question a backup scheme answers is this: “If a server suffers a catastrophic failure, what is needed to resume operations with minimal downtime and data loss?” Again, the backup scheme is not a complete disaster recovery plan — its focus is the restoration of data.

The four basic backup schemes we’ll compare are full-server backups, simple incremental backups, multi-level incremental backups and differential incremental backups. The primary considerations about the method that should be used are the server load generated by the backup process, the backup file size, and the speed with which a backup can be restored.

Full Server Backups

A full server backup is one of the simplest methods for a backup scheme. It takes only a single backup archive to create a restore point, which makes data restoration simple and fast. The drawbacks are the amount of time it takes to make the backup, the load it generates, and the total size of the backup. Each backup scheme we’re comparing uses a full backup of the server.

As we evaluate the other schemes, you’ll note they all start with a full backup as a reference point, and create their own restore points as they move forward.

Simple Incremental Backups

A simple incremental backup attempts to resolve some of the issues with full backups, and it does a good job. With an incremental backup, a single full backup is made that serves as both a restore point and the initial reference point. On subsequent backups, it becomes a little more complex. Instead of making a new full backup when it is updated, this scheme compares the current state of the server against the state of the server as it was in the reference point (the first full backup). If it locates any changes, it backs up those changes and generates a new snapshot of the drive as another reference point. This new reference point is then used for the next incremental backup.

This backup structure means the restore point on a server with this backup will consist of the initial reference point and all subsequent incremental backups that use this reference point. This dependency is the primary weakness in simple incremental backups: All of the backups — from the original reference point to the incremental additions recording changes from the reference point — must be uncorrupted and complete for the backup to fully restore the data. If any backup is missing, corrupt or incomplete, the restoration can’t be completed.

The server load created and storage space required for this type of backup is generally less than what you’ll see in a full backup scheme, especially when there aren’t many differences between the backup point and the reference point. On the other side of the spectrum, if the entire data set changes between backups, the storage requirements and server load will be the same as they were when full backups were being performed.

There are two incremental backup schemes that attempt to address this issue: the differential and the multi-level incremental backup schemes. In Part II of “Know Thy Backups,” we’ll explain the pros and cons of these methods, and you’ll be ready to plan your backup strategy.

-Ben

In Know Thy Backups – Part I, we started discussing the most common strategies of backing up your data, and before we continue that discussion, I should clarify that we’re not talking about hardware configurations like RAID or backup products like Evault and Data Protection Servers. These backup schemes can be executed without spending a dime on additional equipment or resources. While there are best practices and recommendations for making backups and keeping them safe, if your budget is limited, you can protect and preserve your data using one of these schemes on your local workstation or on a secondary drive in your server.

When we looked at the full server and simple incremental backups in our previous post, we noticed a significant limitation: losing a single backup can be catastrophic to restoring data. In the next two schemes, we’ll evaluate solutions that protect us from this vulnerability.

Differential Incremental Backups

A differential scheme requires a full backup reference point and then makes a backup of all changes to the server from that reference point on each subsequent backup. This method requires more storage space than incremental backups but generally doesn’t need as much space as a full backup.

Based on the volume of changes made between the first backup, the reference point and the current backup, differential incremental backups may require additional server resources than an incremental backup. Simple and multi-level incremental backups constantly update the reference point with minimal load, while differential backups update the reference point with a new full backup.

Multi-level Incremental Backups

There’s a more granular and robust backup scheme that is less vulnerable than simple incremental backups and less server-intensive than differential backups: The multi-level incremental backup. Multi-level increments assign a level to each backup and then make a comparison against the last lower-level backup made. Only the changes between the reference point and the current data are saved.

This arrangement allows you to design a backup scheme around your needs and the capabilities of your server, and you can decide how many backups you will need for a full restoration to the latest restore point. You will control the number of backups required for a given restore by determining the number of levels in the system. In the event of a disaster, you need a single backup of each level, and each higher level backup must use the lower level as its reference point.

Choosing Your Backup Scheme

As I said in the beginning of this post, these backup schemes are available to you without the use of an additional server or any expensive backup management software. All of the above are viable options for making your backups; however, not every scheme is perfect for every situation. You should review your requirements and the available resources to determine which scheme best fits your needs.

-Ben

A few weeks ago, we ran a one-hour contest for avid blog readers and @ThePlanet Twitter followers who wanted a picture of one of their actual servers in our data centers, and the results were phenomenal. We had more than 50 people contribute on the blog and on their own Twitter streams, and about 35 thrill-seeking adventure junkies completed all three tasks required to qualify for their picture.

The DC operations crews in Houston and Dallas were great sports about adding this photography project to their normal responsibilities, and we had the pictures out to customers within 48 hours of the contest’s conclusion. Here are a few of the snapshots we took during the contest:

As I warned, some of the pictures didn’t come out as professional photography masterpieces, but that just adds to their authenticity. We couldn’t be happier with the community’s participation, and we’ve heard the repeated requests to rerun the contest. We’ll be offering another opportunity in the near future for customers who missed out on this one. We’ll be tweaking it a little to allow more people to get up close and personal with their servers … even if they live half a world away and happen to be sleeping during the Texas workday.

Thanks to everyone who joined us in the inaugural #showmemyserver experiment! If you have any suggestions on other ways we can give you insight into our business, leave a comment below … We’re all ears.

-Kevin

P.S. If you have some time to kill, visit the #showmemyserver blog and click through to visit some of our customers’ sites in the comments section. The “My Web site is ______, and I’m powered by The Planet” list is a great snapshot of the diversity of our customer base and what they do with their dedicated servers.