iWeb Communities: Blog

As promised, Martin Leclair, Chief Operating Officer at iWeb Technologies, has attended the Hosting Transformation Summit which took place from september 17th to 19th at Las Vegas. On such occasions, iWeb always takes the opportunity to gather notes and establish contacts.

According to Martin, what needs to be remembered from the event in terms of hosting services is the importance of :

• - having a history of uptime to back service license agreements;
• - making services available on demand;
• - making your services easy to sign up for;
• - respecting standards and certifications to enhance the adoption of services.

Furthermore, two trends seem to stand out most of all :

• - 2008 will be the year of CDN (Content Delivery Networks);
• - the colocation market is hot since spaces are more and more limited.

Finally, participants concluded that the elements which should guide the future of the hosting industry are the same iWeb is already working on : availability, reliability, on-demand, and open standards. Stay tuned to know everything about the next events iWeb will attend !

Using the “catch all” option in the control panel of your POP email accounts implies that all of the emails directed to any addresses within your domain are forwarded to you, whether these addresses exists or not.
You may not be aware that enabling this option affects the server’s performance and increases the quantity of spam you are likely to receive. This function should be enabled only in rare exceptions, and we strongly recommend that you disable it.

You can disable the “catch all” feature from your control panel by clicking on “Set catchall email deleted” in the “POP accounts management” section. You can access the control panel on Lumiva or Jinn to proceed with these modifications.

Once disabled, it is neccessary to create a single email account (POP) for each one of the addresses you are using. The procedure is simple.

As explained in our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, a POP account is what allows you access to a mail server. Essentially a mailbox. It allows you to store received messages sent to your email adress. To retreive these messages, you will need a software like OutLook, OutLook Express, Netscape Mail, or Eudora Mail. Upon connection to the mail server, you will be asked for a username and a password. Once you have supplied this information, you will receive the messages contained in your mailbox (Inbox).

To create new accounts, go to the control panel then follow these steps :

1. Click on “Create POP account”
2. In the “POP Account” textbox, enter the prefix of the desired e-mail adress.
3. In the “Password” textbox, type in the desired password for this e-mail account
4. In the “Confirm Password” textbox, confirm the desired password.
5. In the “Name” textbox, enter a descriptive name for your identification purposes. (strictly informational)
6. Click the “Add” button.

If you need any help, do not hesitate to submit a request on the Customer Hub, or to contact us at +1 (514) 286-4242.

Ensim has just announced the sale of its Ensim Pro control panel business to SWsoft, maker of the Plesk control panel. Ensim will now focus on its Unify product line. Both Ensim and SWsoft tools are available to iWeb customers.

SWsoft has already announced that Ensim Pro customers can expect the full resources and support of the company. Ensim Pro will be integrated with other SWsoft softwares. iWeb will also continue to offer and support Ensim Pro.

The Ensim Pro control panel is used to automate the process of setting up and managing web servers, e-mail accounts, and software applications. As for SWsoft, its award winning control panel Plesk software has proven itself for years to be one of the best.

Press releases from both companies are available on their websites : Ensim, SWsoft.

The exceptional development of iWeb Technologies accelerated since the construction last year of our new data center in St-Leonard; it has been necessary to increase our manpower in order to sustain this growth. Since last year, the number of employees has doubled and this trend should further continue.

For this reason, our office on Hochelaga street became exiguous, and it is now requisite to rent new temporary office space so that the development of the company follows its course. The objective, as always, is to maintain the quality of our services.

Most of the members of the Marketing, Sales and Customer Service departments will move to new work spaces on the 9th floor at 1851, Sherbrooke East street, in Montréal. The employees will enjoy from a beautiful sight of the city, in addition to being near the famous Lafontaine Park. Moreover, this new site remains at short distance of iWeb’s Hochelaga street offices. The change involves approximately 20 employees who should move within one month.

The following map shows the location of this new office.

We will add photographs of the work spaces as soon as we are installed there. Until then, here is the complete address of the building :

1851 Sherbrooke East street
Montréal
H2K 4L5
Office 902

For addresses and directions to other iWeb facilities, please consult the Contacts page.

We are proud to announce the conclusion of the second expansion phase at iWeb’s-CL data center, in Saint-Leonard. Even if there are small adjustments and some cleaning to do, the center is completely operational and works at its full capacity. The construction of this second expansion phase debuted last September.

The data center’s capacity increased to 4000 dedicated servers and it now provides enough redundant power to fill 135 colocation racks. Also, a Network Operation Center (NOC) has been built in order to manage and monitor network activities more efficiently.

But iWeb won’t stop there : the third phase should begin shortly in order to increase even more the capacity of our data center. The goal is to cope with the increased requests from clients for our first-quality hosting plans.

Here is an interesting summary of all the different steps of this second phase :

September 2006 | March 2007 | April 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | June 2007 | July 2007

Finally, here are some images about these steps :

Martin Leclair, Chief Operating Officer at iWeb Technologies, has just been interviewed by the people at FindMyHost, for the MyHostNews web site which is specialized in reporting news from the hosting industry. The site’s editors declared they were impressed with the overall offering of iWeb for many years, and thought it would be interesting to ask some questions about the recent changes in our dedicated servers offers.

These new offers, as M. Leclair explained, includes “faster FSB, higher cache memory and a improved processor conception (for “single” or “multiple” core) which improves performance while consuming less power generating less heat”. iWeb’s cofounder also reiterated the company’s commitment to ensure there is no bad surprises, data losses, or services interruptions.

Here’s the whole interview :

iWeb has offered dedicated hosting for awhile now. FindMyHost has been impressed with your overall offering for many years. Can you tell us of any improvements or new plans you have added to dedicated since we last interviewed iWeb technologies?

For the past few months, we’ve been through a major transition with a complete revision of all of our offers! Indeed, for most Web hosts, the processor is the main unit of comparison between offers, and iWeb is no exception to this rule. We have almost 20 dedicated server plans with Intel processors besides the AMD offers and we intend to keep our pricing structure the way it is; which is appreciated by the customers. We chose not to go with the gradual integration of new processors, as to avoid a high level of mismatch when customers compare the offers. By changing 100% of the processors in every offer, the streamlined approach keeps it easy for customers to measure, understand and maximize the value of each offer.

As the majority of people may already know, the processor improvements of the past few months were made on several levels. Faster FSB, higher cache memory and a improved processor conception (for single or ?multiple? core) which improves performance while consuming less power generating less heat. The improved processor conception is mainly what makes the recent standard comparison unit obsolete (the power of the CPU in Ghz), Foreseeing the market’s conversion to this new paradigm in the near future, iWeb has completed the technological migration and elaboration of these new offers.

Please note that this answer reproduce what we once published on this blog.

What is ‘Bad Surprise Insurance’ and how can it help your customers?

iWeb dedicated server plans comes with a administration plan (level1) that help a client reduce the management costs related to their servers and opt for security provided by daily backups, monitoring and software work. Administration levels 3, 4 and 5 include an insurance against ?bad surprises?. If your server is inoperative because of viruses, worms, defective software or any unforeseeable event and that immediately reinstalling both your server and its operating system is necessary, iWeb will reinstall your server and make it operational free of charge within 4 hours following your request. This service is offered 24/7 without reinstallation fees and without deducting administration time from your monthly package. The server is reinstalled as we initially delivered it to you. The 4 hour delay begins when the customer authorizes the reinstallation.

I noticed you offer managed backup services; can you elaborate as to how a customer of yours can utilize this? What I mean is, does your support team handle everything?

The client must ask for the backup service to be configured on his server and must specify the directories and files that will have to be backed up. Each day, a backup script is executed in order to take a snapshot of the data. The client will receive a daily email confirmation of the backup. Only the data that has changed from the previous snapshot will be updated. Most of the log and system files will be excluded from the backups. The snapshots are saved for a period of 14 days. The client can restore files from day 1 to day 14. The client is responsible of reporting any errors that would be reported in the daily reports.

iWeb also offers Managed Services for an additional cost. Can you give us the main differences between the Level 1 and Level 5 plans?

All dedicated server plans comes with a level 1 management plan so there is no additional cost. If a customer wish to upgrade his management plan to level 2 to 5, a minimal fee is added depending of the plan. Our different management levels come with different features, among them there is the amount of supported software work time allowed per month to the server from our technicians, the amount of backup space allowed to you also varies depending on the plan you choose. For example, customers with an level 1 management package can get 15 minutes support for softwares and operating systems supported by iweb per month compares to 2 hours/month for level 5 customers. For level 5 customers, monitoring + 24/7 Intervention is included. We have different management possibilities therefore any customer can find what best fits their needs.

We invite you to visit the managed services section to learn more about all the packages offered by iweb.

I enjoyed the video tour of your data center. Can you give us an overview of the backup, fire suppression, and security tools on site?

iWeb operates two datacenters featuring 30,000 square feet of floor space in buildings owned and operated by the company. The hosting facilities answer the clientele’s specific needs while respecting a series of criteria concerning accessibility, security and availability. In terms of security, both datacenters are equiped with a VESDA (Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus) systems and a Preaction Fire Protection System for fire suppression. Regarding power backup, our redundant installations can count on 3 generators and a total of 1715KVA UPS capacity. Our datacenters are also equiped with Biometric Sensors, Cameras and Secured Access for maximum security.

The interview is also available on MyHostNews website.

The 2007 edition of the Hosting Transformation Summit is taking place from September 17th to 19th in Las Vegas, and iWeb will be part of it. Martin Leclair, Chief Operating Officer, will attend the event. The summit is organized by Tier1 Research, a firm known for its researches in the IT industry.

For the third year, the Hosting Transformation Summit will consider the future of the hosting industry by giving a voice to many professionals whose successes and failures will help to shape business strategies in the years ahead.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you want to meet us there. Until then, you can obtain more details about the Hosting Transformation Summit at their website.

Always on the look-out for new trends from the hosting technologies industry, iWeb is going to attend the Datacenter Dynamics conference at Chicago’s Hilton, on September 12, 2007.

This conference, which gathers professionals involved in the design, build and operational management of IT facilities, is the largest event of this type in the American Midwest. Some of the topics include engineering energy efficiency, cooling architectures, and best practices for disaster recovery.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you are attending the event. It would be a pleasure to meet you.

For further information on the Datacenter Dynamics conference, we invite you to visit their website.