Slicehost

It’s super quiet around here. You know what that means right? The wheels are turning, code is being slung and we’re working on goodies. More to come, but until then we wanted to point everyone to our new jobs page. We want sharp, dedicated people in support, operations and development. Sound like you? Then come with us.

Forbes magazine ranks St. Louis #14 on the list of best cities for young professionals. Not a bad place for gobs of virtual servers either ;-)

A very high share of the best 400 big businesses and best 200 small businesses call St. Louis home. In that measure, it ranked sixth. In attracting the cream of the graduate crop, it clocked in at 16th. The never-married population was good for 24th, and salary to cost of living hovers right around the national mean.

A belated congratulations to Slicehosters at Jackson Fish Market whose new service, They’re Beautiful! was both Techcrunched and Scobleized on the same day earlier this week. That’s what I call generating some buzz!

Walter reports:

...our slice had absolutely no problems despite the fact that I haven’t really had a chance to do any perf tuning on it.

Positive reviews too, from both Mike and Robert. Excellent work and a successful launch, congrats to the entire Jackson Fish Market team!

Our friends at Magnetk have put together a nice deal for Slicehost users interested in SftpDrive. It’s a very handy application for Windows that maps an SSH server as a local drive, creating a network filesystem over SFTP. It will work great with your Slice!

Normally priced at $39, using the coupon code SLICEHOST, you can get a copy for $24. The code works for the first 50 users and there are discounted multi-license options too should you need it for a development team. We’re not receiving any kickbacks for this, it’s just a nifty piece of software, is easy to use and enhances your ability to work with Slices. Thanks again to Jeff at Magnetk for setting this up.

Screencast of SftpDrive in action

Listen up ye RAM starved coders, the 2048slice has arrived. We mentioned the 2gig Slice on last week’s podcast and rolled them out over the weekend. This new package is in response to your demands, which began trickling in early this year and now are regular requests.

What might you do with a 2gig Slice?

• Upgrade your 1024slice and double storage, bandwidth and CPU time
• Use it as a big, bad database server
• Migrate apps from expensive dedicated servers

This will certainly help the 1gig folks who have been pleading for expansion options. And we feel this a real alternative for those running apps on dedicated servers, since you get a big chunk of CPU and RAM at a solid price. Might a 4096slice be around the corner? Hmmm ;)

Recorded Friday evening. We discuss an upcoming network maintenance, IP migrations are over, 2 gig slices, the design contest, iphone chatter and REST (briefly).

Direct download

Subscribe to the podcast feed

iTunes link

It was just brought to our attention in the chat room that our form mailer at www.slicehost.com has been queuing mail for a few days instead of delivering it. If you did not receive a response, we apologize and hope to get back to you soon. Feel free to resend a message if needed.

Recorded Friday evening. We discuss the IP migrations, ARIN, IPv6, Xen 3.1, office ramblings, design contest and more.

Direct download

Subscribe to the podcast feed

iTunes link

You should have received an email today if any of your Slices need a new IP. The wiki has instructions and examples for various distributions.

One of our biggest requests is multiple IP addresses for a Slice. It’s something we’ve been working toward for sometime. While not quite here yet, we are taking preliminary steps to reach that goal. A required hurdle is the transition away from some of our current IP allocations. We have a process in place to minimize how this impacts our customers, allowing them to use both IPs for a bit to smooth the cutover. If your Slice IP needs an address change, you’ll receive an email soon with detailed instructions.

• a bit of manual work on your Slice to modify the network config
• updating external DNS records pointing to the new IP
• removing the old IP after the cutover

It’s a short-term pain, but ultimately a good thing for all Slicehosters. It grants us portability, more IPs and hopefully multiple IPs for those who need it.

UPDATE: Use this forum thread for comments/questions.

WIKI: DNS updates

Episode 1 of our podcast, the 3-way handshake, is online at podcast.slicehost.com. We plan to have a new show for you every week or two. We discuss Slicehost specific info: news, maintenance, technical talk up front. The latter parts of the show will focus on user questions, interviews and other relevant topics. Send suggestions or questions for the next episode to podcast AT slicehost DOT com. Be gentle, the first attempt is always a little rough around the edges :)

3-way handshake Ep. 1 download

Subscribe to the 3-way handshake feed

iTunes subscription for the 3-way handshake

We’ve just enabled a new feature that will allow you to resize your Slices.

• via the SliceManager, choose a new Slice size
• resize will begin as soon as resource availability permits
• data is copied from the old slice, preserving your IP
• the synchronization process was designed to minimize downtime
• a notification email is sent on completion and status may be viewed in SliceManager

• upgrades are prorated based on the difference in Slice price and remaining time in the current bill period
• the speed of the process and amount of downtime will vary depending on your system activity and the composition of your filesystem
• the original copy of the Slice is kept for up to a 12 hour verification period

A load of feedback came in on our cashflow post. The majority of comments at the blog and forum are on board with a 3-month prepayment for new signups. Several folks also expressed a desire to pay more to move up in line. Over the weekend, we implemented a new wait list format and signup page which we hope is fair to everyone:

• new signups will require a 3-month prepayment
• if you cancel before the first month, we’ll refund your prepayment minus the first month’s cost. Just like before, the commitment is one month.
• the wait list will be ordered by prepayment term, then signup date. What this means: longer prepayment term = better wait list position.
• Prepayment terms: 3 months (default), 6 months, 12 months, 24 months – 10% bonus for annual prepays
• wait listers receive an email with a link to a status page that includes a time estimate. On this page, you can modify your prepayment term to improve your position (if needed).
• everyone who signed up in March has immediate priority. If you signed up in April, the prepayment term will affect your position.

That covers our new process. The good news: this setup should help everyone get a Slice faster – and that was the goal. Again, we truly appreciate the dialogue on this issue. It gave us an excellent feel for what people would be open to and new thoughts as well. So please do continue, let us know if this works for you.

PS – if you are already on the wait list, you’ll get an email soon with a link. No need to add your name again.

Announcing the birth of a new virtual celestial object.

Open for immigration to all Slicehosters. Feel free to submit your feed. Planet Slicehost is the place to read about what Slicehosters are up to, check it out!

edit – updated to reflect Planet software/links. (2007.09.05)