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Lone Star Uke Fest 2011

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

When spring is in the air, and the first breath of April showers blows across the plains, the mind turns to simple passions. Luckily, for the past three years, the first week in April has wrapped lovingly around the Lone Star Ukulele Festival in Dallas happily just down the street from SoftLayer’s main office.

Now I know what half of you out there are thinking: “UKULELE festival?!? Isn’t the ukulele that kitschy instrument that every college kid in the 1930′s carried around in the pockets of their raccoon coat? Isn’t that the twangy noise maker that Tiny Tim crooned to on variety shows in the late 60′s and early 70′s?”

The answer, of course, is yes to both questions. Nevertheless, as attested to in the excellent documentary film Mighty Uke, the ukulele is enjoying something of a renaissance these days. From television commercials, to the Grammy award winning “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train, and across the globe the ukulele has plucked its way back into popular culture.

The other half of you are thinking, “Ukulele FESTIVAL?!? What the heck is a ‘Ukulele Festival’?”

A Ukulele festival is an opportunity for ukulele players of all levels to gather together and learn. The Lone Star Ukulele Festival featured nationally recognized talent like Kimo Hussey, Pops Bayless, Michelle Kiba, Ukulele Bart, Four Strings of Swing, and Texas’ own middle American good times band, The Wahooligans. These professionals taught seminars in topics ranging from basic music theory, to songwriting, to advanced blues and jazz chord structure, to performance skills. Such an event cannot be all work and no play, however, so the festival also hosted an Open Mic night, a Songwriter’s Contest, and not just one, but two concerts, one of which was dedicated to classical music interpreted on the Ukulele. Vendors had a forum to sell their instruments and books and there was no shortage of “Jam sessions” where participants gathered in the hotel lobby just to enjoy each other’s company and play songs together.

In short, a Ukulele Festival is a fun, relaxed atmosphere were like-minded people can revel in a common interest, share their favorite beverages, meet new friends and generally have a ball.

Now somewhere out there between the half of you that were wondering about the ukulele part, and the other half that were wondering about the festival part, I sense there is a cross section that is wondering what in the heck this has to do with SoftLayer and hosting. For those folks, I can only say this: At SoftLayer we work hard. We deal with large, complex systems and the difficult problems that arise from keeping those systems up and running. Sometimes the sailing is relatively smooth, and sometimes the waters can be a bit choppy, but we like to move forward and to do that we have to keep rowing.

Every once in a while though, when one has the chance, it’s nice to take a break: let the current carry you. When that time comes, for me anyway, I pick up my trusty ukulele. For me, the Lone Star Ukulele festival was a great place for me to rest and refresh.

My friends, we’ve all made it through winter and into spring. April’s showers bloom May flowers, ready for someone to stop and smell them. Hard work and dedication are important; get your work done! But equally important, be sure to set aside time to find your own simple passions, a place to indulge them, and friends to sit at your side once in a while. When you find your place, perhaps you could even pick up your own uke, and join them in a song.

-Scott

So … What Does SoftLayer Do?

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

In the first quarter of 2011, SoftLayer presented in, exhibited at or sponsored at least thirty different conferences and events. We’ve globe-trotted to places like Orlando, San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas and Europa Park, Germany, to spread the word about who SoftLayer is and what we do. We’ve talked about data center pods over beers in Boston and showed some server skin at SxSW in Austin, and in the process, we got to share the SoftLayer story with literally thousands (if not tens of thousands) of people.

It turns out, there might be a few billion people on the planet that haven’t heard of SoftLayer (yet), so every event we attend give us an opportunity to meet more people and explain the value SoftLayer can bring to their business. Take this week’s Web 2.0 Expo for example: More than 500 people came by the our booth to learn more about us, get some cool swag or grab a beer during the booth crawl, and a hundred of them lined up to try their hand at the Server Challenge.

Of the attendees who made it to the front of the pack to chat with one of us, it’s remarkable to note how consistent some of the conversations were. Since we haven’t really done a refresh to catch everyone up on what it is SoftLayer does (and since this blog is being presented in the sponsor section of Techmeme), a reintroduction may be in order.

Since the conversations I had at Web 2.0 Expo are so fresh in my mind, I thought I’d frame this little post around the most common questions we were asked by attendees learning about us for the first time (Warning: The responses to these general questions are SoftLayer’s value statements, so they’ll come off as very salesy … Leading you to believe we’d answer any other way would be disingenuous, though):

“What does SoftLayer do?”
Simply put, SoftLayer is a hosting provider. That generalization doesn’t do our business justice, though. We have ten data center facilities in Houston, Dallas, Washington D.C. and Seattle, and we host more than 80,000 servers for more than 25,000 customers worldwide. We offer cloud, dedicated and hybrid environments and resources that allow businesses to outsource their IT, so they can focus on their core competencies and give their hosting infrastructure to the experts.

“How are you different from <Hosting Competitor>?”
SoftLayer was built with a focus on a few core values: Innovation, Empowerment, Integration and Automation. Our hosting platform offers a true hybrid experience – dedicated and cloud services are seamlessly integrated – that can be accessed and controlled by customers in a number of ways. Each SoftLayer server supports three different kinds of network traffic (public, private and out-of-band management), and customers have complete access to their server via free KVM over IP included with every server. Everything you can do in our portal can be done with our API, and we’re an industry leader in product innovation.

Oh, and you can also spin up a cloud server on our platform in under 15 minutes and a dedicated server with your specs and operating system in 2-4 hours.

“Do you support <XYZ Technology>?”
If <XYZ Technology> is current, legal and useful, you can probably use it on our platform. If we don’t directly offer software or services you need, we have droves of customers and partners who probably do, and we’re happy to refer you to them. Given the unparalleled access you get to your SoftLayer hosting environment, the world is your oyster.

“Impressive sales pitch, but how do I know it’s more than just a pitch?”
Our business is designed around making our customers happy. Our services are offered on month-to-month contracts, so we have to continue to provide great service to you or we lose your business. We can share customer success stories until we’re blue in the face, but what really matters is what your experience is when you try us out.

Somewhere in there, you might have written me off as just some public relations guy, but I believe every word in those responses (as I’m sure my 550+ coworkers do). I’m not trying to claim that if you host with SoftLayer you’ll never have another problem or that people don’t make mistakes on our end, but as a company, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more devoted group of people focused on providing the best experience in the business.

-@quigleymar

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

If you didn’t read the title to this post in the singsong seventh-inning stretch tune, the rest of this post probably won’t be for you. For those of you who just got to “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,” as the song kept playing in your head, you’re going to love the news we have to share. We’ll wait for you to finish belting out “At the old ball game!” first, though.

[Pausing here for everyone to finish the song.]

Now that everyone’s back together, I want you to make sure you don’t lose any of that late-inning adrenaline because you might need it at the end of this post.

SoftLayer is all about customer experience. Just ask Skinman. If you’re a SoftLayer employee and you don’t have “the customer” in the top slot of your “work priorities” list, you’ll either need to update that list quickly or update your résumé. This post isn’t about THE SoftLayer customer experience, though … It’s about A SoftLayer customer experience.

THE SoftLayer customer experience is all about automation, efficiency, service and innovation. A SoftLayer customer experience uses the term in a much more general sense: It’s any opportunity we have to give back to our customers in the form of events, contests, and in this case, baseball tickets! If you’re a SoftLayer customer, you’re entitled to more fun than our competitors’ customers … And if that’s not in our terms of service, it probably should be.

SoftLayer Baseball

Throughout the 2011 Major League Baseball season, SoftLayer will be giving away tickets to Texas Rangers home games in Arlington, Texas! We’re going to keep you guessing about how/when/where we’ll be giving them away, but if you keep your eye on the SoftLayer Blog, follow @SoftLayer on Twitter, subscribe to SoftLayerTube on YouTube and “Like” us on Facebook, you’ll be the first to hear.

We’re pretty sure customers in the DFW area are going to be the most excited, since they can root for the home team, but as the season progresses, the net may be cast significantly wider … Reaching out to customers in other parts of the country (world?) who love SoftLayer and want to catch a game while they’re in town for a data center tour. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. Let’s give away our first set of tickets!

Texas Rangers v. Anaheim Angels

Date: Monday, April 18, 2011
Time: 7:05pm
Location: Rangers Ballpark in Arlington
Seats: 2 – Section 26 (Lower Level, behind Home Plate!)
Transportation: You’re responsible for transportation to/from the park

How to Enter
Since our first giveaway doesn’t include transportation to/from the game, the primary pool of participants will be customers who live within driving distance (or happen to be in the DFW area on April 18). Entry into the competition is simple: Comment on this post about why you love SoftLayer.

When you’re entering your email, please use a contact address associated with your SoftLayer account. Submissions will be accepted from now until 10 a.m. CDT on Thursday, April 14, so get to writing! We’ll have a quick internal vote for all of the submissions after removing your contact information to obscure on which account goes with which response. If your submission wins, we’ll email you on Thursday to arrange for ticket delivery … You’ll have the whole weekend to get excited about the game!

Play Ball!

-@khazard

Thou Shalt Transcode

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

Deep in the depths of an ancient tomb of the great Abswalli, you and your team accidentally awaken the Terbshianaki ghost army. You’re disconnected from the supply caravan with the valuable resources that could not only sustain your journey but also save your team. As Zeliagh the Protesiann hunter fires his last arrow, you come to the sudden realization that continuing your quest is now hopeless. Alas, true terror was unknown before this moment as you come to the most surprising realization: The one thing you truly can’t live without is your trusty server that converts one type of media into another.

Fear not great adventurer, for I, Phil of the SLAPI, have come, and I bear the gifts of empowerment, automation and integration. Freedom from the horror of your epiphany can be found in our complementary media transcoding service.
Before we can begin, some preparation is required. First, you must venture to our customer portal and create a transcoding user: Private Network->Transcoding. As you know from the use of your other SoftLayer spoils, you shan’t be obligated to access this functionality from your web browser. You can summon the API wizardry bequeathed to you by coders of old in the the SLDN scroll: SoftLayer_Network_Media_Transcode_Account::createTranscodeAccount.*

*For the sake of this blog, we’ll abbreviate “SoftLayer_Network_Media_Transcode_Account” as “SNMTA” from here forward … Shortening it helps with blog formatting.

You must then construct an object to represent a SoftLayer Network Media Transcode Job, like our SoftLayer Network Media Transcode Job template object. This template object will be built with a number of properties. Your pursuit in relieving your aforementioned horror only necessitates the use of the required properties.

You will need to decide in which format the final treasure will take form. You may find this information with the SNMTA::getPresets method.

$client = SoftLayer_SoapClient::getClient('SoftLayer_Network_Media_Transcode_Account', $trandcodeAccountId, $apiUsername, $apiKey);
$transcodePresets = $client->getPresets();
print_r($transcodePresets);
Array
(
    [0] => stdClass Object
        (
            [GUID] => {9C3716B9-C931-4873-9FD1-03A17B0D3350}
            [category] => Application Specific
            [description] => MPEG2, Roku playback, 1920 x 1080, Interlaced, 29.97fps, 25Mbps, used with Component/VGA connection.
            [name] => MPEG2 - Roku - 1080i
        )
 
    [1] => stdClass Object
        (
            [GUID] => {03E81152-2A74-4FF3-BAD9-D1FF29973032}
            [category] => Application Specific
            [description] => MPEG2, Roku playback, 720 x 480, 29.97fps, 6.9Mbps, used with Component/S-Video connection.
            [name] => MPEG2 - Roku - 480i
        )
 
    [2] => stdClass Object
        (
            [GUID] => {75A264DB-7FBD-4976-A422-14FBB7950BD1}
            [category] => Application Specific
            [description] => MPEG2, Roku playback, 720 x 480, Progressive, 29.97fps, 6.9Mbps, used with Component/VGA connection.
            [name] => MPEG2 - Roku - 480p
        )
.....

The freedom to use this power (the more you know!) is yours, in this instance, I scrolled through let my intuition find the option which just felt right:

stdClass Object
	(
            [GUID] => {21A33980-5D78-4010-B4EB-6EF15F5CD69F}
            [category] => Web\Flash
            [description] =>
            [name] => FLV 1296kbps 640x480 4x3 29.97fps
        )

To decipher this language we must know the following:

The GUID is the unique identifier which we will use to reference our champion
The category section is used to group like presets together, this will be useful for those who’s journey leads down the path of GUI creation
A description of the preset, if one is available, will be listed under description
name is simply a human-readable name for our preset

You are nearly ready to restore your yearned for transcoding service as the ghostly horde presses the defensive perimeter. We have but one more task of preparation: We must provide the transcoding service a file! Using your Wand of File Transference +3, or your favorite FTP client, you enter the details for your transcode FTP account found on the Transcoding page of the IMS (or of course SNMTA::getFtpAttributes) and choose the “in” directory as the destination for your source file. Lacking no other option, you may call upon Sheshura, a fairy sprite, specializing in arcane documents for a source video file: Epic Battle

The battle rages around you, as the Wahwatarian mercenaries protect your flank. The clicking of your laptop keys twist and merge in the air around your ears only to transcend into a booming chorus of “The Flight of the Valkyries” as you near transcoding Utopia. You strike:

<?php
//  Create a transcoding client
$client = SoftLayer_SoapClient::getClient('SoftLayer_Network_Media_Transcode_Job', null, $apiUsername, $apiKey);
 
// Define our preset GUID and filename
$presetGUID = '{95861D24-9DF5-405E-A130-A40C6637332D}';
$inputFile = 'video.mov';
 
/*
 * The transcoding service will append the new file extension to the output file
 * so we strip the extension here.
 */
$outputFile = substr($inputFile, 0, strrpos($inputFile, '.'));
 
try {
    // Create a SoftLayer_Network_Media_Transcode_Job template object with the required properties
    $transcodeJob = new stdClass();
    $transcodeJob->transcodePresetGuid = $presetGUID;
    $transcodeJob->inputFile = "/in/$inputFile";
    $transcodeJob->outputFile = "/out/$outputFile";
 
    // Call createObject() with our template object as a parameter
    $result = $client->createObject($transcodeJob);
    // $result will contain a SoftLayer_Network_Media_Transcode_Job object
    print_r($result);
} catch ( Exception $e) {
    die( $e->getMessage());
}

If your will did not waver nor did your focus break in the face of ever-closing ghouls pounding your resolve, your treasure will be waiting. Brandish your Wand of File Transference +3, or utilize your favorite FTP client to retrieve your reward: “out/video.flv”

If the gods be with thee, your resulting file should look like this: Epic Battle (in .flv)

With your victory fresh upon the tablets of history, you can now encode to any of our supported formats. Try using the process above to convert the video to .mp4 format so your resulting file output is Epic Battle (in .mp4)!

-Phil

P.S. If you’re going to take off your training wheels, the second example uses “[description] => MPEG4 file, 320x240, 15fps, 256kbps for download” for the bandwidth impaired.

3 Bars | 3 Questions: SoftLayer Channel Sales

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

In this week’s “3 Bars | 3 Questions” episode, I was nominated by Tom Blair to talk about SoftLayer’s Channel Sales team and the competitive advantages our three partner programs (strategic, referral and reseller) have over our competition.

As you’ll see in the video, we actually covered seven or eight questions, but the basic framework for the chat were these three:

How does SoftLayer define the channel?
What’s happening in the SoftLayer channel program?
How does SoftLayer’s referral program differ from the programs offered by competitors?

Because we had quite a bit of ground to cover, the video goes about 15 minutes, but I hope it’s entertaining and informative throughout. Be sure to stick around through the end of the video to hear the best analogy I can think of for SoftLayer’s program.

To learn more about the new referral partner program I mention, email referral@softlayer.com, and we can fill you in.

Since we recently announced an awesome partnership with TechWildcatters, I’m looking forward to hearing what SoftLayer VP of Community Development Paul Ford has to say about what else is coming up. Paul, enjoy the hot seat!

-Drew

WorldHostingDays 2011

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

This week, Lance and I hopped over the pond to attend WorldHostingDays 2011 at Europa-Park in Rust, Germany. If you haven’t heard of WorldHostingDays, you may be a little more familiar with WebhostingDays, its more narrowly focused predecessor. Because many of the sessions and discussions at the event have evolved and grown significantly from the pure-play “web hosting” market, the name change was a good one … And it didn’t even require tweaking the WHD abbreviation.

Given the ambitious scope of WorldHostingDays, we weren’t sure what to expect from the sessions, but we were excited to hear fresh perspectives on the European-centric hosting market. We walked away from the sessions with a few new ideas to implement into SoftLayer’s business, and it was interesting to hear the (regionally accented) conversations focus on the same problems and questions the US hosting industry is tackling: Public and private clouds, IPv6, scalability, stability and security.

Many European companies that are relatively new to the hosting scene are experiencing some phenomenal growth (similar to what we’ve seen at SoftLayer), and the opportunity is growing exponentially beyond their growth as new markets turn up with fresh needs for quality infrastructure. In these developing markets, local events in Europe like WHD will be invaluable to educate and relate how this relatively new industry might change the face of the local business environment … And when those efforts carry into Asia, the sky is the limit on the opportunity.

We have some pretty huge global plans on the horizon, and we’re excited to position ourselves for worldwide recognition. When WorldHostingDays 2012 rolls around, you’re going to see an even bigger, badder and better SoftLayer.

-@gkdog

The Rise of the Geek

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

Whether fact or fiction, in business, sports, politics or the arts, everyone loves a triumphant underdog story, and who could be more of an underdog than a bookish, socially awkward geek? You know … the ones that were overlooked and under-appreciated (until they made their first million dollars). The history of the Internet is littered with geeks changing the way nearly every person in the developed world interacts with the people around them. In honor of these stereotypically statistical underdogs, May 25 – the premiere date of the first Star Wars film (among other geeky holidays) – has come to be known as Geek Pride Day.

With more than 80,000 active servers and 550+ employees, SoftLayer is essentially a Geek Think Tank of employees and and proving ground of sorts for customers. As I’m writing this, the faint hum of our generators and cooling systems remind me that the next Facebook or Microsoft might be getting started in the data center pod right below my desk at our Dallas Alpha HQ.

Just considering that prospect reinforced to me that the geeks have really done it! The 2.0 millennium has been marked by the rise YouSpaceTwitterWikiMyTube sites spurred on by textbook-definition nerdy underdogs … It’s right in line with Lance’s theory of world domination. No longer are geeks merely the Steve Urkels of the business world.

They’re successful, smart, savvy, innovative early adopters.

Let’s take a moment and explore some of the more polarizing geeks of our day – Geeks who made being a geek cool:

Steve Jobs – 500,000 iPads sold by the end of the first week of release. Apple’s market cap exceeds that of Microsoft for the first time since 1989. Open Source application development and support is a key part of its ongoing software strategy.
Bill Gates – Windows, Microsoft Office, Xbox and their new “To the cloud” focus.
Mark Zuckerberg – The Founder of Facebook:
- More than 500 million active users
- Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform
  - Many of whom use SoftLayer as their Infrastructure host
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Peter Parker – Spider Man – Peter has a natural gift for the sciences and is considered by some genius. After being bit by a radioactive spider Peter develops super physical human strength and ability along with a sixth sense for danger.
Dwight Schrute – Top salesman for the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Winner of numerous sales awards. One-time Assistant to the Regional Manager and beet farmer extraordinaire

Alright … I might be getting carried away lumping fictional characters into the mix, but you get my point.

As a member of the SLales department, I am forever “geeking out” over new and exciting applications, products and tools the our customers are coming up with. Although I don’t believe I can truly claim my geek badge of honor yet, I aspire to reaching that rank.

-Arielle

PS: For the geeks out there, (without cheating) what year was the first Star Wars film released? Did you see it in the theater? If you weren’t alive when it was released, when did you first see it?

The Path to Hosting 19+ Million Domain Names

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

If you own a business, your goal is to be wildly successful. You might look at financial growth, operational efficiencies or customer satisfaction, but at the end of the day, you want to execute on your vision to continue it. With SoftLayer’s management team, company culture, innovative platform and focus on the customer experience, we’ve managed to become a phenomenally successful and fast-growing company.

I run the Market Intelligence group at SoftLayer, and my team is responsible for reviewing success metrics internally and in comparison with many of our competitors. We have a wealth of data at our fingertips, and one of the most interesting statistics I track is related to market switching data.

Today, I was looking closely at some of our most recent domain name data, and I came across some pretty amazing information. We have millions of data points instantly available for filtering and sorting, so we can produce some pretty insightful market intelligence that can help us make better business and customer decisions.

While reviewing that domain name information, I did a quick pivot exercise in Excel to see the number of domain names hosted by SoftLayer – not just DNS hosted by us, but a pretty comprehensive view of the number of domains hosted on our infrastructure. As of March 1, 2011, we had 19,164,117 domains. Yes, you read that correctly: More than 19 million domains are hosted by SoftLayer. To give that a little context, the total domain name pool was 282,602,796, so we hosts about 6.78% of all domain names on the Internet.

That’s impressive, but it’s not the end of the story.

The number of net new domains coming to SoftLayer on a monthly basis is even more remarkable … From October 2010 to March 2011 – a 6 month snapshot – the total number of domains hosted on SoftLayer infrastructure had compounded growth of 124%:

Domain Growth

What will the next six months hold? You can bet I’ll be refreshing the data to keep an eye on it. Without extrapolating much other information, I’d say that the growth numbers are astounding and they’re indicative of an unwavering confidence from our customers.

-Todd

Prayer and study: practices for spiritual enlightenment – LGBT Weekly

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

LGBT Weekly

Prayer and study: practices for spiritual enlightenment
LGBT Weekly
Dan Koeshall In our journey towards spiritual enlightenment during this Season of Lent, we have already gone through several practices that have the great potential of growing and deepening our spirituality and our relationship with God – these are ...

and more »

Enlightenment was lure for many followers – OregonLive.com

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

OregonLive.com

Enlightenment was lure for many followers
OregonLive.com
By Les Zaitz, The Oregonian Oregonians were baffled by the thousands flocking to his eastern Oregon commune for spiritual sustenance. These were not uneducated masses seeking escape from poverty or oppression. Studies of his sect in Oregon showed a ...

Sacred Light, Self-discovery: Spiritual Evolution Published by Outskirts Press – PRLog.Org (press release)

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Danzig

Sacred Light, Self-discovery: Spiritual Evolution Published by Outskirts Press
PRLog.Org (press release)
This book may be seen as a Light unto the quest of healing, Spiritual growth and Enlightenment as it guides readers through the Ascension process. 300 pages in length, Spiritual Evolution: A Basic Guide to Spiritual Growth and the Ascension Process is ...

and more »