We're proud to sponsor this year’s .LAN convention. ColoCrossing has deep roots in the gaming community going back a number of years. We have quite a few employees who are passionate gamers as well. By offering some of the best dedicated servers with a superior network, we are able to grow and give back a community for which we know very well.

This was the fourth year we sponsored this event. It is spectacular to see such an event grow so quickly. The event has nearly doubled in size since 2011's convention, so it had to take place in an even larger venue to accommodate such large turnout. We look forward to sponsoring this event for many years to come. Congratulations to all the winners out there and thank you for all those who participated and made this event possible.

We're always looking for people to join our team! We've moved into a new office that is nearly double the size of our previous space to accommodate our growth. We'll be writing in the future about our new office as it is pretty exciting in its own right. If you're a down to earth competent techy, who can deliver top-notch support to our clients, we want to talk to you!

Whether you have prior experience or are fresh out of school, we're open to any skill level. Our environment is very laid back; I sometimes forget I’m working. The workspace is extremely open with plenty of large windows, lots of action and excitement. We just want dependable people who can help us provide extremely reliable dedicated servers and colocation for our ever-growing client list. Come join our winning team.

Show us what you got! We are currently holding open interviews for knowledgeable System Administrators and Support Technicians. Visit http://www.colocrossing.com/company/careers to learn more or send your resume to hr@colocrossing.com.

-Chuck

Going forward, we will now utilize a more flexible and useful approach to subusers. Subusers can now be either Staff or Customer accounts: Staff accounts are granted access to whole sections of our Portal system (Devices, Support, Billing, Sales, etc) through their parent account, while Customer accounts are granted access to only devices which have been specifically assigned to them. In either case, the parent account can pick and choose exactly what he/she would like to grant access to on a per-subuser basis. This provides an intuitive and functional interface for both our end users and resellers.

So, if you have subusers on your account already through our old Access List system, you will need to make appropriate Staff accounts for these users, as we will begin phasing out Access Lists. Just go to the Add Subuser dropdown link under Profile and you can get these accounts set up in no time. For resellers, its as simple as making a Customer account and assigning your customer's devices to that account. In the future, you'll need to make Staff accounts for anyone you'd like to have access to your Portal account. This will ensure that we can efficiently keep track of users associated with your account while giving you full control of these accounts at the same time.

Take a look at the new subusers section (View Subusers dropdown link under Profile), give it a try and let us know what you think. As always questions and suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

Our Portal software was built from the ground up by our in-house development team. This allows us to do exactly what we need to do without the frustrations found in off the shelf software most of our competitors operate. We are constantly adding and improving portal and we always welcome customer feedback, so let us have it!  Feel free to send your suggestions (and frustrations) to our development team through a support ticket, we’ll be sure that they receive it!  Doing it ourselves certainly isn't cheap, but we feel like it's the only way we can fully control our user experience.

We've gone ahead and revamped our phone system.  We've had to waive goodbye to our beloved Frank Sinatra hold music.  The rat pack served us well for many years, but it was time for a change.  Don't worry!  The goal is to improve the response time of our voice support and elevate it to world-class.  Now when you call in (800-518-9716), expect to receive an answer within 30 seconds.

Can your datacenter say the same?

Here are some pictures from the delivery:

For those who are eager to learn more, here is a copy of the official press release:

Buffalo NY - March 5th, 2012 – ColoCrossing.com, a leading provider of scalable internet hosting solutions announced today the recent donation of $40,000 in brand new technology resources. The contribution, provided to a Western New York Catholic School, will provide thousands of students with access to brand new computers equipped with the latest technology and modern software.

Jon Biloh, ColoCrossing’s founder and Vice President of Operations, is himself a product of a Catholic education. “I understand the challenges that private and charter schools must overcome given their budgetary constraints. The wonderful and highly motivated administrators and teachers that make it all happen are truly an inspiration. Education is what powers the world, and providing students with the tools they need to succeed is an honor I’m proud to have, due to our company’s success,” said Biloh.

The recipient of the donation, the Nativity Miguel School of Buffalo, has provided motivated, low income students with an opportunity to graduate from high school since opening in 2004. Their program has resulted in much higher than normal success rates for their students, including an exceptional 96% attendance record. The formula for success is simple, “We have to keep classes small because one of the keys is that all of our teachers know all of our students very well,”  says school President Nancy Langer. “It’s through charity and community support that schools like Nativity Miguel are able to operate and continue providing life-altering opportunity. We all need to do our part.” adds Biloh.

ColoCrossing looks forward to providing ongoing support services to Nativity Miguel, ensuring that the computers offer years of benefit to as many students as possible. For additional information about the Nativity Miguel School and other programs like it, visit www.nativitymiguelbuffalo.org or www.wnycatholicschools.org.

About ColoCrossing

ColoCrossing is a leader in the cloud hosting, dedicated server and colocation markets. Since being established in 2006, ColoCrossing has provided premium internet services to thousands of clients with award-winning uptime and reliability. The company’s mission is to make enterprise quality accessible and affordable, allowing its clients and partners to thrive in the web-connected world. ColoCrossing’s network of seven datacenters offers the geographic diversity that discerning customers, who cannot accept downtime, demand.  ColoCrossing is pleased to be opening its eighth datacenter, and first to be located in Buffalo NY, in April 2012.

Contact Information

Chuck Andre
candre@colocrossing.com
+1 800 518 9716

Supply chain issues of 8GB memory modules have prevented us from offering 32GB E3 Xeons. Hopefully that will change soon, however our vendors maintain that we won't be seeing a better supply chain for some time.  Mother nature hasn't been very good to parts suppliers for both hard drives and memory recently.

You can order the platform with the links below:

Intel E3-1240 Xeon 8GB

Intel E3-1240 Xeon 16GB

It's been a very busy June here at ColoCrossing, and we're very excited to report on what's been going on.

1. Bigger footprint: We've just completed a capital expansion project in Chicago, which will support our accelerating growth through the next 12 months. On top of our new Chicago build-out we're in the final stages of doubling the size of our presence in San Jose California. Demand has been consistently strong for colocation and dedicated servers in both San Jose and Chicago, so we're thrilled that we have ample capacity to keep pace. 

2. New Toys: Our engineering department has been thoroughly testing some of the recent access layer and distribution solutions released from Cisco, Juniper and Brocade. Thus far the tests have included the 4200EX series from Juniper, the 4900M and 3750X from Cisco and a number of Brocade devices. ColoCrossing has always made the investments necessary to ensure that our network infrastructure is built on the highest quality equipment available; so these tests are important as they help us decide what we'll use for future deployments and upgrades. I suspect Alex, Jeremiah or Gary will chime in at a later date with a blog post regarding our impressions of each platform/device.

3. More NYC Capacity: Over the past few weeks we've been planning the phased migration of our remaining 1Gbit uplinks over to 10Gbit. Because our NYC network, like all other ColoCrossing locations, is fully redundant no customer impact is expected when the actual switch-overs occur this coming week. The added capacity will ensure that our NYC network is capable of absorbing massive swings in traffic levels without any performance degradation or increased latency. Similar upgrades have already taken place at our other facilities, so once NYC is complete this wave of enhancements will be finished company wide.

4. New Staff: We’ve recently added a number of new faces; including Frank Shafer, Chuck Andre and Jared Santos to name a few. Their roles are mixed, with Chuck and Jared joining our systems administration team and Frank wearing a few hats between development, project lead and technical supervisor.  Frank and Jeremiah Shinkle (one of our highly skilled operations managers) will be taking point on a new and very exciting upcoming cloud project. I can’t share much (ok, nothing) on that project right now, but you can bet that we’ll be talking about it a lot quite soon.  

Comments? Thoughts? Email me at jbiloh*at*colocrossing.com!

- Jon Biloh

-Alex

One thing that I've noticed over the last couple years as a trend in the industry is that they are starting to build them (datacenters) bigger.  How big?  Microsoft has recently finished several facilities for their cloud platform, some of which top out at 500,000 square feet.

How big is 500,000 square feet?  Pretty big.  According to Sports Know How, an NFL regulation football field is 360 feet by 160 feet, or 57,600 square feet.   The MS facility is then to be considered almost 9 football fields.  It's approximately 200 average sized American homes (at 2500 square feet average).

-Alex