Slicehost

You know, email can be a tricky thing to set up and run on a Slice. It does need maintenance and it can be a chore for some people.

I think things should be easy so we teamed up with the very nice people at Rackspace Email to offer an exclusive promotion code which will reduce the minimum monthly commitment from $10 a month to just $3 a month.

Let me explain:

Without the promotion code, the minimum commitment to have Rackspace host and serve all your email needs is $10 a month. However, I know a lot of Slicehost customers are just like me and only want two or three email boxes.

Using the promotion code means my minimum commitment is just $3 a month. For that, I get 3 Rackspace Email mailboxes. That's suits me fine. If I want more, I can add them, one at a time, as I need them, and pay for my usage.

I think this offer is perfect for many of you who just want two or three mailboxes. I hope you take advantage of the famous Rackspace Fanatical Support that Rackspace Email offers. I personally use them for my email needs (and not just because I work for Rackspace!).

Enough! Where is the code?

Log into the Slicemanager and you will see the promo code in the left hand menu. All you need to do is go to the Rackspace Email website and sign up using the promo code.

To help explain the process, Mark (our wonderful Support Manager) has created a couple of articles:

Email article 1 (Initial sign up process)

Email article 2 (Rackspace Email MX Records)

It is worth noting that the signup process will not show the discount. It will still say $10 a month but rest assured, you will only be charged $3 a month (assuming you only use up to 3 mailboxes of course). If you have any concerns once you have signed up, check with Rackspace Email support and they can confirm you have entered the promo code.

They also have a 14 day trial so if you feel icky and don't want to continue, just cancel before the end of the 14 days.

If you have any questions about Rackspace Email I recommend you chat to the great support staff on their website. If you have questions for us at Slicehost, come and chat!.

Paul

UPDATE:

I forgot to add that there is a very convenient DNS Zone creator you may want to use:

Slicehost and RS Email DNS Zone creator

Note that the site is not officially sponsored by Slicehost so YMMV but I think it will save you time and typing.

Paul

As many of you with Slices in our Rackspace DFW Datacenter are painfully aware, there was a power outage in the early hours of Tue, 3rd Nov.

Firstly, it goes without saying that I personally apologise for the outage and I want to explain what happened. Although this will not change your experience, I hope it will go some way to easing concerns about a repetition of last night.

Secondly, it has taken much of today for me to get accurate information. For those that know me, you know I am a straight talker (to say the least) and I wanted facts before I approached you with details.

So, what happened?

At around 12:29am CST this morning, the DFW data center experienced a power outage during a routine (non impacting) maintenance. Clearly, this non-impacting maintenance became impacting and many Slicehost customers in the DFW DC experienced downtime.

Power was restored within five minutes and most Slices were up and running in a good timeframe. However, some of you did experience lengthy delays while we restored your Slice. We had the Systems team working from the moment we knew something had occurred and they did not stop until everyone was up and running again.

The issue was further complicated by internal DNS issues which were caused by the unexpected power outage.

However, this does bring up a couple of specific points I would like to discuss:

We did not post a notice about this maintenance. Until now, we have restricted notification of maintenance windows to those that might, under normal circumstances, have an impact. We didn't expect this period to be impacting and so we did not post a notice.

This turned out to be very wrong and, as a result of this, I will be posting more routine maintenance warnings on our status blog.

The second point is that I feel our communication lacked in a couple of areas. We did not keep you informed as regularly as we should have done. Even if there was no specific news, I feel regular updates are essential so you know we are dealing with the issue. I have already changed our procedures and there is a clearer, more defined, route for communication.

I make no excuses for what happened. It reflects on us badly and it affected you negatively. This is not something I find acceptable and I will continue to work to provide the best service for you.

I know you will be concerned and if you have any questions then please email us or come to our chatroom.

Paul

Wow. We've had a mad 24 hours but we are very pleased to announce we have a shiny new Ubuntu Karmic Koala Slice image up and running.

If you want to try it, then log into the (Slicemanager) and fire up a new Slice or you could rebuild your current Slice with a fresh Koala image (remember a rebuild will wipe the Slice though!).

The kernel issues we talked about yesterday have been solved by the wonderful Systems Team. If you happen to be in our IRC lounge (Freenode, #slicehost) then do send a wave of thanks to RackerHacker and Ant. They have worked their little socks off on this one and have done a great job.

I think you know we don't recommend upgrading a distro from the command line but, hey, if you want to, then the latest kernel will allow you to do just that.

For those that do decide to go the command line route, then you will want to upgrade the kernel, via the Slicemanager, before you upgrade the distro. Good luck!

Thanks for your patience and support while we sorted out the kernel issues. It goes without saying (although I'll just go ahead and say it anyway) that if you have any issues then let us know. The best ways of getting in touch are to open a ticket via the Slicemanager or to join us in our chatroom 24/7.

Cheers, Paul

IMPORTANT NOTICE - PLEASE READ:

Ubuntu is our most popular distro and we expect a keen uptake once Karmic Koala is released tomorrow (29th Oct 2009).

However, I wanted to take this chance to give you a warning that you should wait to upgrade your Ubuntu Slice, via the command line, until we have a kernel that works with the new release. We are working hard behind the scenes to make sure there will be a working, reliable kernel but it may take us a few days to get this ready.

If you do upgrade via the command line, then your Slice WILL NOT boot!

To recover your data you will need to enter rescue mode and transfer your data.

PLEASE BE WARNED!

We are working hard to get a viable release out as soon as possible and you should wait until we have an official Ubuntu Karmic Koala distro before attempting to upgrade your Slice by hand. As an aside, we never recommend upgrading a Slice via the command line anyway.

If you have any questions or concerns then please do send us an email (support@slicehost.com) or open a ticket via the Slicemanager (under the Help tab) or come and chat to us, 24/7, in our chatroom.

Thanks for your patience and we will get a working Ubuntu Karmic Koala out as soon as we possible can.

Paul.

UPDATE:

Thursday, 29th Oct 2009:

So we have a working kernel and we are going to be abusing it pretty hard over the next 24 hours to make sure it comes up to Slicehost standards!

We hope to get it out tomorrow (Fri, 30th Oct) afternoon, US Central time.

Any changes and I'll let you know.

Cheers, Paul

Until now, if you needed a different kernel for your Slice, you had to enter a ticket. Although the process was quick and relatively painless, we wanted to make things even easier.

We are happy to say that you can now select which kernel you would like for your Slice right from within the Slicemanager. This means there will be no delay in changing the kernel and you can swap them around as you see fit!

We tweaked the Slicemanager display to make things a little easier. Let's see what the Slice information page looks like:

Kernel Selection:

To change the kernel, click the 'kernel' link and then select your preferred version. As noted in the Slicemanager, this will immediately reboot your Slice into the new kernel:

That's it, done.

As always, do come into our chatroom if you have any questions. See you there!

PickledOnion

We like creating stuff. We especially like people who create stuff off their own back.

Today we were honoured to present the Rackspace Cloud 'Einstein Award for Innovation' to a member of Slicehost Support for the work he put into creating and maintaining our public chatroom (http://chat.slicehost.com).

As we grew, the chatroom we were using wasn't really working and we needed a new solution. Josh Kearney, who runs our third support shift, volunteered to look into how we can better communicate. He may not have realised the size of the job when he volunteered but he tackled this project head on and much of the development was done in his spare time.

We can't give Josh enough praise for his effort and determination to see the project through the end and he still continues to improve it.

We also like facts and figures so I reckon we can share this with you:

It took Josh something like 80+ hours dedicated to designing and creating the room.

It allows customers to chat with us, live, from any web browser at any time of the day or night.

it allows us to ban those silly people who seem to want to cause havoc and link to nasty websites.

Customers can paste text and images into the room which can assist when explaining an issue.

We hope you like the chatroom. It's been live for a while now and the feedback has been very positive.

Here's to Josh and innovation!

PickledOnion

Today we’re pleased to announce Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an option for Slicehosters! We strive to offer all major distributions and RHEL was a popular request, but it was tricky to implement due to the the virtual nature of slices. Rackspace and Red Hat hammered things out and now you can get RHEL for $36/month plus the cost of your slice. It’s a great solution for deploying applications that support the RHEL stack on your slice and for our business customers that have standardized on the Red Hat platform. We hope this makes life easier for our Red Hat loving Slicehosters, please get in touch with any comments/questions. Enjoy!

Yikes! It’s been way too long since our last podcast. Part of the gang was in San Antonio this week and Paul demanded we knock one out. We cover a bunch of topics, including Cloud Servers, what everyone’s been up to, some customer questions and more. Intro is ‘Here’s the Thing’ by Girl Talk and outro is ‘Ulysses’ by Franz Ferdinand. Enjoy!

Direct download

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iTunes link

You may have noticed this post from our sister company Mosso. The announcement has generated some questions about Slicehost which we want to address.

We promised that Slicehost wouldn’t change after the Rackspace acquisition and that is still 100% true. We continue to offer Slices which include bundled and pooled bandwidth, predictable pricing, great support, a legendary articles database and a lively community.

Cloud Servers is a separate Rackspace product offering that works as a utility service with hourly billing. The pricing does not include bandwidth (a question that keeps coming up). The entry-level support is similar to ours with an option for upgrading to phone support. For more details, check out the Cloud Servers page.

We have a podcast coming out soon and a ton of stuff to discuss. The team is pumped to be with Rackspace and delivering what we always have – Slices with a big dollop of Slicehost Love!

Do pop by our chatroom or email if you have any questions, we’d love to get your feedback.

Hook’em Horns! Gig’em Aggies! How ‘bout them Cowboys! Texas forever!

I’ve run out Texas propaganda, but am delighted to announce that slices are live in the Rackspace Dallas datacenter. We’ve been working hard on this since the announcement last October and it’s a big step for us. First, a huge thank you to all of the Rackers who helped turn up the new facility, they’ve been awesome and completely top-notch. Second, we are pumped to offer customers geographically diverse options for backup/redundancy/load-balancing purposes. Third, we have plenty of room to grow in the new facility and are working harder than ever on geeky goodies you are sure to love.

Now what does this mean? Q&A below.

Q. Where are your datacenters?

A. We have 2 facilities in St. Louis (STL-A and STL-B) and now DFW-1.

Q. Where are new customers going?

A. New customer are going to DFW-1, previously they went to STL-B.

Q. Where do slices go when I add them?

A. Additional slices are automatically added to your local/default datacenter.

Q. Can I pick where a new slice is built?

A. Not at the moment. If you’d like to add slices in a datacenter other than your default, just contact support and we’ll do it for you. DFW-1 is a great option for those of you in STL that require geographic diversity for disaster recovery and business continuity.

Q. Can I move existing slices to DFW-1?

A. Not automatically. You’ll need to contact us to build a new slice in DFW-1, then rsync data from the old slice.

Q. Can I create a new slice in DFW-1 from a backup in STL?

A. Not at the moment, but we are working on solutions.

That’s all for now, if you have any other questions please let us know. As always thank you for your support!

The free version of Mike Mayo’s Slicehost iPhone app has finally been approved by Apple and is available now at the App Store. The $1.99 Pro version has been out since late December and allows you manage multiple accounts via the API. There’s been a great response to the app, check it out and let Mike know what you think.

Mike’s post on the free version

Paul pointed out this morning that several people have joined the Slicehost team and we hadn’t done the customary blog post. We did mention everyone in our video chat last week, if you missed it please give a warm welcome to:

Josh K from Wisconsin who will be working overnight support. Josh has a background in Linux administration.

Ben B from North Carolina working daytime support. Ben previously worked in software QA and Linux administration.

Ben H from Chicago working daytime support. Ben comes from a development and administration background.

Josh and the two Bens were Slicehost customers before joining and have really improved our support coverage.

We also picked up two people from Rackspace:

Mark B in San Antonio working overnight support has been with us since October. He’s been a fantastic help through this process and hit the ground running.

Sabrina G who recently moved from Texas to St Louis and has been assisting with operations. Everyone at Rackspace referred to her as a “superstar” and she’s lived up to that reputation.

They’ve been here a month or longer, but if you missed them stop by the chatroom and say hello. We’re growing fast and having fun – if you’re located in St Louis and interested in joining us, get in touch!

What an amazing day for Slicehost and our customers! Our acquistion by Rackspace has been announced and we couldn’t be more excited. Jason and I started Slicehost two years ago and it grew beyond our wildest dreams. Selling the company was not in the cards. So what changed? A few months ago the Rackspace team invited us to talk – we couldn’t have walked away more impressed. In Rackspace, we discovered a larger version of ourselves – a hosting company passionate about their customers and the technology behind their business. As the process leading to the announcement unfolded the top notch people we encountered, along with their attitudes and knowledge of the industry, assured us we were making the right decision.

We believe that Slicehost and Rackspace are fantastic complements to each other. Our technology strengthens their position in the cloud hosting world. Their expertise, experience and resources enable us to improve our product and continue meeting our customers’ needs. Fear not loyal Slicehosters, we promise to keep doing what we’ve always done – listening to you and building a product that solves your problems. Now we have one of the largest and most respected names in the industry standing behind us. So please join us in celebrating this announcement, but not for too long. We’ve got to get back to work and have big plans ahead. As always, please send us your thoughts and questions. Thank you for your support!

Rackspace Slicehost FAQ

Our biggest podcast ever! Jason, Jared, Paul, Tony, Mike and me all in the same room. We have some feature announcements, recap Slicehost highs and lows, discuss the Slicehost summit and more. Intro music is “Player’s Club” by NWA featuring Too Short and “Time to Pretend” by MGMT.

Direct download

Subscribe to the podcast feed

iTunes link

We have a feature for larger customers called bandwidth pooling. It means that the monthly bandwidth allowance is metered against the total bandwidth of a customer’s slices. For example: 4×1024slices = 4×400GB = 1.6TB total bandwidth. As people employ multiple slices and take advantage of private IPs for communication, it made sense to enable this across the board. Today we’re pleased to announce that bandwidth pooling is a standard feature and monthly bandwidth allotments are now equal to the total bandwidth across your slices.