The Steadfast Networks Blog

Chicago, IL Aug. 30, 2010 -- Steadfast Networks, a leading Chicago based data center and dedicated server hosting provider, announced today its #1359 ranking on the Inc. 5000 list, a list published by Inc. Magazine featuring America’s fastest-growing private companies. The Inc. 5000 list ranks private companies according to highest growth in terms of revenue over a three-year period, from 2006 – 2009. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs. Music website Pandora, convenience store chain 7-Eleven, Brooklyn Brewery, and Radio Flyer, maker of the iconic children’s red wagon, are among the other prominent brands featured on this year’s list.

“The leaders of the companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression,” said Inc. president Bob LaPointe. “The 2010 Inc. 5000 showcases a particularly hardy group of entrepreneurs.”

"Since our inception in 1998, we have always focused on providing the best service possible for the price," said Karl Zimmerman, CEO of Steadfast Networks. "At Steadfast Networks, our focus has always been based on value; not providing the cheapest service, but providing a high quality dedicated server hosting service where customers can feel appreciated at a reasonable rate. This model has allowed us to keep up consistent growth even during this tough economic times"

Over the past three years, 2006-2009, Steadfast Networks has maintained 215% growth. This is the third year in a row that Steadfast Networks has been on the Inc. 5000 list, having been ranked 370 in 2008 and 630 in 2009. This continued growth has been sustained organically, with no outside investment, while continuing to improve the service offerings and level of service provided to their customers, which include major Chicago institutions such as the Chicago Reader, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Museum of Broadcast Communications, and the MacArthur Foundation.

"To continue our growth, we have expanded our services out of the New York metro area through our acquisition of The New York NOC, opened a brand new data center facility and office at 725 S Wells St. in downtown Chicago, and are now entering the financial networks market by offering market data services and consulting service to financial and trading firms" said Zimmerman. "To further enhance our hosting services, we have extended our network to San Jose, Ashburn, London, and Amsterdam to improve our international connectivity and peering relationships."

In addition to ranking #1359 in the Inc. 5000 list, Steadfast Networks has achieved the #51 ranking in the Chicago metro area. The company’s business model was developed specifically to help companies get a better handle on their IT needs by providing a reliable and complete solution that can easily scale when customers require more space and bandwidth. By allowing companies to outsource their IT load and data center needs, Steadfast Networks has been increasing the efficiency and responsiveness of their customer’s IT staff while reducing their overhead.

"At Steadfast Networks, we believe that when you choose a company that demonstrates consistent and steady growth since inception, you receive additional benefits knowing that your equipment and data is being hosted and maintained by a hosting provider that will be here today, tomorrow, and well into the future," said Zimmerman. "Additionally, a company like Steadfast Networks has proven that we can grow quickly and consistently while maintaining our high levels of support and personal service."

Steadfast Networks’ Inc. 5000 list profile including ranking and revenue growth information can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000/profile/steadfast-networks.

About Inc. Magazine
Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. With a total paid circulation of 712,647, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit us online at www.inc.com.

About Steadfast Networks
Established in 1998, Chicago based hosting company Steadfast Networks, delivers high quality, powerful servers through reliable dedicated server hosting, colocation server hosting, virtual private servers, shared web hosting, and dedicated game server hosting. Steadfast's award-winning services and dedicated support staff help customers from all over the world 24/7/365. Customers can choose basic hosting or a customized, fully managed dedicated server hosting solution.
To learn more about Steadfast Networks, visit http://www.steadfast.net.

I'm sure at least some of you noticed the announcement this morning that we're going to be replacing our core routers. I figured it was worth a blog post to detail these changes and what they mean for you.

First of all, we've been using Cisco 6500 routers with the SUP720-3BXL management cards at our core, which handles all BGP with our carriers and peers as well as some customer VLANs, for many years now. These routers have worked out great and have served us well, but we're reaching the end of their useful lives for us, at least here in Chicago. There have been some incidents causing higher CPU usage levels than we'd like to see and some bugs on the BGP side, with the large number of sessions we have setup for peering and the like, and that had led us on the initial search for a replacement. It was clear the 6500 platform would not last us much longer as core routers in Chicago.

Our primary concern in looking for a new router was the processing and throughput capacity along with the density of 10 GigE ports and "future proofing." In the end, we selected the Brocade (formerly Foundry) MLXe-16, the newest member of the MLX family that isn't planned for official release until mid-September. It takes less of a footprint and less power than the CIsco 6500's, but gives us a significantly improved platform. We had also considered Juniper, and we love the Juniper OS, but we simply couldn't get the density and capacity we wanted.

Here is a comparison.

Cisco 6500
Processing for up to 400 Million Packets per Second
640 Gbit/sec of throughput
40 Gigabit backplane capacity per module
Up to 32 full line speed 10 Gigabit circuits
No support for 40 GigE or 100 GigE

Brocade MLXe-16
Processing for up to 4 Billion Packets per Second
Over 6 Tbit/sec of throughput
240 Gbit/sec backplane capacity per module
Up to 128 line speed Gigabit circuits with current line cards, higher density line cards are in the works
Support for 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet are in the works and the backplane capacity exists to support it

As you can see, the Brocade gives us roughly 10 times the capacity as well as the ability to continue growing with 40 GigE and 100 GigE modules. In addition, the line cards for the Brocade all have their own forwarding processors. Having this distributed processing means that we are much less likely to face similar CPU issues as we did with the Cisco 6500's, and that we have significantly more processing power at the router level.

The pair of MLXe-16's we're starting with each come with 8x 10 GigE ports (SFP+) and 20 GigE ports (1000BaseT) and leave us with 14 additional slots for future expansion, including the possibility of 100 GigE ports. The units also each have redundant management cards, which allow us to do software upgrades and maintenance without downtime, redundant switch fabric modules, and redundant power supplies. These are extremely redundant boxes on their own, but we believe strongly in our 100% network uptime SLA and still choose to have two of these routers in place.

Note: The picture attached is from right after we got them and were doing the initial software upgrades and base configurations. Don't worry, they won't be sitting on the floor when we turn them live.

We've had our PXE boot system for doing automated installs for awhile now and I'm sure many of you with IPMI on your systems have seen this setup when you reboot your systems. Well, now we have full documentation for using our PXE system here: https://support.steadfast.net/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=60

This means if you need a reinstall of your OS you can perform it yourself, assuming you have IPMI or KVM over IP, which most systems come with now. In addition, it gives you access to all sorts of other diagnostics tools, such as disk utilities, rescue images, R1soft Bare Metal Restore, memtest, and many more. These tools can come in handy to help you restore your own system or fix an error you made without even needing to contact our support staff. We're giving you the control, but if you still need our help we're here for you 24/7!

If you have any questions on using the PXE system or feel there needs to be some clarification in the documentation please contact our support staff.

We'll be throwing a party at HostingCon for our customers, fans, vendors, acquaintances, competitors, or whoever wants to show up. The party starts at 8PM, after the official networking event, starting 8PM on Monday the 19th at Parkside, 301 East 6th Street, Austin, TX. It is just a couple block walk from the convention center or the surrounding hotels. We'll be serving food, have an open bar, (Yes, I said OPEN BAR!), and have Guitar Hero on a projector for some entertainment. The party will go on until midnight.

We'd love to see you there, but the space is somewhat limited, thus we would recommend you RSVP by emailing sales@steadfast.net if you plan on going.

Leading dedicated server hosting company finishes construction of its 2nd Chicago data center.

Chicago, IL (PRESS RELEASE) June 29, 2010 – Steadfast Networks, a leading Chicago based data center and dedicated server hosting provider, announced today the opening of its new Chicago data center, located at 725 S. Wells St. The new Steadfast Networks data center will accommodate the expanding demand for Chicago colocation services and Chicago web hosting services in a state-of-the-art data facility. The initial phase includes 6,000 sq. ft. of raised floor data center space and 750kW of power and is the first phase of a 4.5MW build-out at the location.

“Our goal at Steadfast Networks is to give you highly competitive pricing in downtown Chicago without cutting any corners on performance and quality,” says Karl Zimmerman, CEO of Steadfast Networks. “We have the size and scale to easily deliver managed hosting services and colocation hosting services to small, medium, and enterprise businesses, but with a commitment to flexibility and the personal customer service often found in a small company.”

Chicago hosting services at Steadfast Networks meet the key parameters for operational sustainability – location, processes, and staffing. The new Steadfast Networks data center has a redundant dark fiber ring back to their original 10,000 sq. ft. location at 350 E Cermak Rd., the main telecommunications hub in Chicago, and 600 S. Federal St. allowing Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity between the sites at affordable rates. The site will serve as a center for Steadfast Networks colocation hosting, Linux dedicated servers, Windows dedicated servers, and managed virtual servers.

“Not only is Chicago a center for commerce and finance, it is a vital link to premium colocation web hosting in surrounding regions,” says Zimmerman. “As a leader in dedicated server hosting, colocation hosting, virtual server hosting, and web hosting services, Steadfast Networks houses, transmits, and protects your essential data with the latest in data center security technology.”

In addition to providing web hosting and colocation services to Chicago-based businesses, the 725 S. Wells St. data center is a connection point for some of the largest IP carriers in the world including Level(3), AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Abovenet, and Cogent. With its premier infrastructure and extensive data backup features, Steadfast Networks offers superior connection to metropolitan cities throughout the area with its web hosting and colocation web hosting services.

“Steadfast Networks Chicago data centers connect you to any provider in the buildings’ Meet Me Room (725 S Wells, 600 Federal, or 350 E Cermak), in Equinix Chicago, the Steadfast Financial Exchange, or the Chicago Internet Exchange with a wide array of connectivity options for T1, DS3, or Ethernet connectivity,” says Zimmerman. “The reliability of our infrastructure, our network, and our expert staff make Steadfast Networks a hosting provider our customers can depend on today and well into the future.”

For more information on Steadfast Networks’ new Chicago data center or to learn about Steadfast Networks dedicated server hosting, managed server hosting, and colocation hosting for your business, visit steadfast.net.

About Steadfast Networks

Established in 1998, Chicago based hosting company Steadfast Networks, delivers high quality, powerful servers through reliable dedicated server hosting, colocation server hosting, virtual private servers, shared web hosting, and dedicated game server hosting. Steadfast's award-winning services and dedicated support staff help customers from all over the world 24/7/365. Customers can choose basic hosting or a customized, fully managed dedicated server hosting solution.

To learn more about Steadfast Networks, visit http://steadfast.net/.