iWeb Communities: Blog

We will be going for the first time at the annual conference cPanel will be hosting at Houston from 5th to 7th October 2009. For this opportunity, iWeb will be represented by Simon Boulet, IT Director, and Jean-François Chevrette, IT architecture speclalist.

Like our partners Microsoft and R1Soft, we will be attentive to the conferences covering improvement and new products for cPanel. We want also to know more about Enkompass, the new control panel from cPanel compatible with Windows and IIS7, and at the same time ask questions to engineers who developed this software.

Did you know that…

- the first customer who used cPanel in a iWeb dedicated server was on 10th September 2004?
- our control panel PanelBox for our shared hosting offering uses at its core cPanel?
- migrating from a competing control panel to cpanel is free (an offer by cPanel)?
- we offer cPanel licensing for our colocation customers, or if the server is not even hosted at iWeb?
- you can contact for free cPanel if you have problems with your control panel?

If you want more info on the cPanel conference on their website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter..

If you want to meet Simon or Jean-François at the cPanel conference, please leave a comment on this post and we will get you in touch with them.

We ask frequently customers to send us a traceroute and I thought it would be useful for a few to know how to use this command.

A traceroute is the tracking of a packet sent to a server. During its route, this packet goes through several network devices (routers, firewalls etc.) and then goes finally at the server. With the traceroute, you can see the IP as well as the response time between each barrier (router, firewall…).

We use then the traceroute to check the problem between your computer and the server. We can see quickly where the problem is and fix it.

Here are the steps for Windows and for OSX:

Windows : Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Line
or Start > Execute > type “cmd”

The command is: tracert domain.name
You can use this command with an IP adress as well: 192.168.0.1

Linux or Mac OSX: Applications > Utilities > Terminal
or Spotlight > type “Terminal”

The traceroute command is : traceroute domain.name
You can use this command with an IP adress as well: 192.168.0.1

Web : You can also use this Web tools on domaintools.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

MONTREAL (September 22, 2009) — iWeb announced today the availability of R1Soft Data Protection plans, an essential backup and disaster recovery service for its dedicated server clients.

Using R1Soft’s high-performance Continuous Data Protection® (CDP) technology, the new service allows bare-metal restore of dedicated servers for disaster recovery and business continuity. Customers can restore backed-up files and systems on a new server after a hardware failure, with file-level granularity. Backup and restoration management is done with an easy-to-use web-based interface.

The new service, powered by R1Soft’s advanced Continuous Data Protection® (CDP), offers iWeb clients near-continuous, disk backups with minimal server performance impact.  After a thorough evaluation process, iWeb selected R1Soft CDP because of its unique disaster recovery capabilities. In the event of system failure, the solution allows iWeb users to bare-metal restore their servers which minimizes downtime and maximizes business continuity.

iWeb’s new R1Soft Data Protection Plans offers diverse backup storage space from 10GB, starting at just $15/month, for Linux and Windows dedicated servers.

“Having a solid backup solution is key to deliver customer satisfaction in web hosting. With R1Soft CDP, we can offer our clients an enterprise-level backup service with a low-priced entry point,” said Martin Leclair, President of Products and Technologies at iWeb.  “Our flexible and on-demand plans give new and existing customers affordable options for data protection and have peace of mind knowing that their data is safe.”

With iWeb’s robust infrastructure and R1Soft’s reliable data protection software, customers now have the resources and backup tools for an even higher level of data availability. R1Soft’s high-performance CDP solution will protect their mission-critical servers with incremental backups around the clock, and bare-metal restores to quickly restore their data in the event of a disaster, hardware failure, or accidental deletion” said David Wartell, vice president of R1Soft, a division of BBS Technologies, Inc.

iWeb also offers Dedicated R1Soft Backup Servers for customers looking to backup more data.  The powerful, all-in-one solution boasts up to 4TB backup space, 25 client server licenses, and provides the ability to secure backups for multiple servers.

For more information on iWeb’s R1Soft Data Protection Plans please visit:

http://iweb.com/managed-hosting/backup-storage/

About iWeb
iWeb is a worldwide provider of Internet hosting services and IT Infrastructure, with three secure data centers in Montreal. Since 2004, the company’s compounded annual growth rate has been above 75%, making it one of Canada’s 100 fastest growing companies according to PROFIT Magazine. For more information, please consult the Company’s website: http://about.iweb.com

Did you know that the Jinn and Lumiva clusters host the emails of more than 12000 domains? These 2 clusters process more than 2 millions of emails everyday, and store 40 million emails (1.2TB storage space)!

To improve performance for all customers using those 2 email clusters, we have annonced the acquisition of a Sun 7410 Unified storage unit in December 2008. After several weeks of tests and tuning, we are ready to get this unit into production.

In a few days, we will begin the online transfer with the email migration of our own domain iWeb.com.

A second step is planned in which the Jinn and Lumiva clusters will be migrated to a set of better performing servers. This migration will be done in several seamless steps, and without service interruption for our customers. You can follow the evolution of this step-by-step migration by following the system status or via Twitter (@iWebStatus).

If you have more questions or comments for this performance upgrade on our Jinn and Lumiva clusters, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and we’ll gladly give more details.

With more than 21000 active customers, there are stories everyday at iWeb! There is one I heard lately where the customer, NeatWorx Web Solutions, agreed willingly to sum up THE day where they needed the Level 5 management level.

Like the insurance on your house or car, the Level 5 management level always acts as a security, which in an ideal world, would never be used. In the case below, NeatWorx Web Solutions was unlucky with his server and were there to support him

We started our business in 2006, and after dealing with other hosting providers in the U.S. and Europe, we learned of iWeb from word of mouth endorsements from our colleagues. After provisioning our first server with iWeb, we quickly realized we had found our permanent home and partner. As the principal developer of our on-line service, I can attest to the fact the iWeb is by the far the most sophisticated and reliable service provider we’ve dealt with. We’ve experienced virtually no downtime on any of our servers. Prior to being with iWeb, I was the VP of technology for Sun Microsystems of Canada, and appreciate the complexities of managing IT infrastructure. I always believed that the test of a business relationship was in what happened when something went wrong.

In July of 2009, we had our first and only serious outage. Our external monitoring services made us aware of this immediately. A good portion of our 60+ customers were down, and worse, their customers were down as well. Our phone began ringing almost immediately.

My partner and I were in a panic, but to our very pleasant surprise, as a customer of iWeb’s premium service offering, we were up and running again with our data 100% intact even before we could speak with a technician.

In short, iWeb’s pro-active, immediate and professional response to us as a customer, saved the day. As any business owner knows, it is easier to keep a customer than find a new customer, and in part owing to the quality of iWeb services, our customer attrition has been “zero” over the last three years. We appreciate iWeb’s excellent work and look forward to growing our business with iWeb.

NeatWorx Web Solutions is the provider of NeatClubs.COM, an on-line registration and payment solution for Children’s Recreational Centers and Professional Associations in Canada and the United States. NeatWorx has been endorsed as a preferred solution provider by Gymnastics Ontario, Gymnastics BC, and state level associations including NYSAGD.ORG and MichiganAGD.ORG. We have multiple Canadian and U.S. clients who depend on NeatClubs.COM for on-line registration, payment, content management and day to day club management.

If you need more information on our management level or data backup, don’t hesitate to contact us and we will gladly explain them to you.

iWeb, always there!