Holdfire Hosting Blog

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Dharma downtime due to dead mobo

Posted in Holdfire on August 29th, 2010 by Jordan | 3 Comments

Dharma's motherboard unexpected died on us earlier this morning with no hint that it was going to stop working. Since we house our servers in a datacenter, we do not always have immediate access to them. There was a long delay with having the motherboard replaced which results in Dharma being down for more than 60 minutes (which is our own SLA we have from our provider.) Unfortunately there was nothing we could have done to sped this up as our provider did not have any extra motherboards for our specific server processor on hand. As a result they went out of there way to purchase a new mobo and as such was the reason why our server was down for several hours this early afternoon.

For those of you that contacted us via support ticket or Twitter during this issue, you will receive a month of free hosting.

Also as a result, we are working on our new newsletter system that will be sent to our clients. We will be organizing our clients by servers: Flame, Dharma, Orchid and general. We do realize that some people do not stick through with Twitter and/or our blog and would prefer to be emailed on notices such as the aforementioned and anything in the future. Be not afraid we know your want for this and we are working on this immediately! :)

New and Improved Dedicated Server Line

Posted in Holdfire on April 29th, 2010 by Jordan | 1 Comment

We have made the decision to rework our dedicated server line from the bottom up. We have not been satisfied with the quality of servers from our current datacenter (HostNOC/BurstNET) in terms of hardware quality and their network's uptime. As a result, we will no longer be utilizing their products/datacenter for new servers purchased today and thereafter. However, any current dedicated server clients will still remain under the BurstNET datacenter as our server line and pricing has changed significantly from the products previously available. Although we will allow any current client to purchase a new server and be migrated to the new datacenter if any of the new products interest you.

So without further ado, here are the new servers:

  • Xeon Dual Core 3110
    • 500GB Seagate SATA 7200RPM
    • 4GB DDR2 RAM
    • 10TB Monthly Bandwidth Allocation
    • 100Mbps Uplink Port
    • 5 Static IP Addresses
    • $125/Monthly
  • Intel Core2Quad Q9550
    • 500GB Seagate SATA 7200RPM
    • 4GB DDR2 RAM
    • 10TB Monthly Bandwidth Allocation
    • 100Mbps Uplink Port
    • 5 Static IP Addresses
    • $160/Monthly
  • Intel Nehalem Xeon 5520
    • 1TB Seagate SATA 7200RPM
    • 12GB DDR2 RAM
    • 10TB Monthly Bandwidth Allocation
    • 100Mbps Uplink Port
    • 5 Static IP Addresses
    • $240/Monthly

All servers will be located in two different datacenters in the Chicagoland area. DC1 features redundant N+1 power, HVAC, and top-of-the-line networking facilities. DC2 features ultra-redundant power, HVAC, and networking systems with no single point of failure. The building features over 200,000 square feet of raised-floor computing space; SingleHop currently has 10,000 Sqft of computing space in this location.

Cleaning up information on My.HF

Posted in Holdfire on March 13th, 2010 by Jordan | No Comments

We decided to do some much needed spring cleaning on our billing backend this year. We've removed all canceled and terminated hosting services (add-ons included) as well as canceled and expired domain name registrations.

This will be especially relieving to clients that may have leftover domains and/or hosting accounts mixed in with your active accounts. No longer will you need to see them clogging up your list.

Have a great weekend and be safe for St. Paddy's day!

Giving away two Macheist nanoBundles

Posted in Resources on March 3rd, 2010 by Jordan | 4 Comments

Macheist is an event that allows you to participate in challenges ("heists") that offer "free" software and/or discounts to software, as well as selling a bundle of software at the end. This year Holdfire is giving you the chance to win a nanoBundle (with $250 worth of software!) for free.

What do you win?

Two winners will receive one Macheist nanoBundle which includes the following software:

Software currently unlocked in the bundle

MacJournal
Totally revamped and rebuilt for Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard, MacJournal organizes all your important information and helps chronicle your life faster and easier than ever before. Create a personal journal with MacJournal's simple-to-use interface with two-level security.

RipIt
Movies stored safely in your computer can't get lost, scratched or broken. Use your Mac's built in search tool, Spotlight, to find a movie in your collection... instantly. Moving files around on your computer is a lot easier than alphabetizing shelves full of DVDs.

Clips
Clips is your Mac OS X clipboard reinvented. Use Clips to increase productivity during your daily computing experience. When Clips is running you won't even notice it. Try Clips today and finally see clipboard and snippet management, the Mac way.

CoverScout
Color the gray gaps in your iTunes library: CoverScout 3 helps you find missing cover art in your iTunes library with style. It's never been easier to complete your music collection: simply search, apply, edit and print. CoverScout has been optimized for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Flow
On the Mac, you've become accustomed to software that's not just powerful, but elegant too. Armed with the belief that file-transfer should be no exception, we made Flow. Flow brings the best of the Mac to your server's files and folders. Flow makes working remotely every bit as intuitive and natural as working locally.

Software currently locked in the bundle

Tales of Monkey Island
Telltale's latest episodic series is Tales of Monkey Island, a five-episode saga featuring mighty pirate Guybrush Threepwood and his motley crew. Tales of Monkey Island pulls the legendary franchise thundering and plundering into the modern era with an epic storyline conceived by some of the same team that dreamed up the original games.

Rapidweaver
With powerful tools under the hood, yet a beautifully-familiar user interface built especially for Mac OS X Leopard, RapidWeaver is ideal for anyone looking to create a beautiful website. RapidWeaver has all the tools you need to quickly create pages you'll be proud of.

How do you win?

Contest Rules

  1. Winners will be emailed as well as announced in a blog entry on Holdfire's blog which will also include a tweet on our Twitter account.
  2. Winners may be from any of the 7 continents and will be responsible for any related taxes or restrictions according to their state laws.
  3. Multiple entries will only be counted as one entry.
  4. Make sure your tweet is public; If you have a private profile, we can't see it!
  5. No purchase is necessary to win nor are you required to be a Holdfire client.
  6. Participants must be 14 years of age or older to enter.
  7. Contest entries are valid only through 3/3/10 10PM CST until 3/6/10 12PM CST.
  8. Winners will be picked at random on 3/6/10 1PM CST and announced around 3PM CST the same day.

Good luck to you!

Dharma DNS Changes

Posted in Holdfire on February 22nd, 2010 by Jordan | No Comments

In an effort to keep up with our client's growing needs, we have migrated from our old IP addresses to new IP addresses. 173.212.202.154 and 173.212.202.155 are now the new IP addresses for nameservers on Dharma.

We have also suspended the use of all previous nameservers except for ns1.holdfire.net, ns2.holdfire.net, ns3.holdfire.net and ns4.holdfire.net. Although some users on Orchid may still utilize orchid1/orchid2 for the time being as those have not yet been flushed out.

We are also in the process of making our hosting more transparent so that if you want to resell to your own clients with the Holdfire label attached to it, you will be able to do so. We'll be straying from using 'Holdfire' itself on our reseller servers to allow you to have private label hosting for you and your own clients. More details will be made shortly.

Thanks!

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