A Look Inside Steadfast Networks

I am pleased to announce that despite our decision not to switch shared hosting customers over to PHP5 on account of compatibility risks, we have now made it possible for customers that wish to begin using PHP 5 features to do so without interfering with existing customers using the PHP 4 installation.

PHP 5.1.2 is now accessible via the FastCGI Apache module. I was able to easily drop this module into the existing configuration and to set up the php-cgi binary installed by H-Sphere for PHP 5 so that it could be activated through two simple lines in .htaccess. Instructions on how to do this are available here.

Next on my todo list is tackling mono support with mod_mono. This module will allow the support ASP.NET features on Linux web services, eliminating some customers' need to use Windows hosting. I am still working on learning how to drop in MySQL as a replacement to MSSQL, but the basic ASP.NET functionality is working well, so look for that feature to become available over the next month or two.

I am proud to announce that Steadfast Networks has reached an agreement with WebHost Automation Ltd. the makers of Helm, a control panel for Windows based servers. With this agreement in place, Steadfast Networks is now offering Helm on all Windows dedicated servers, giving customers a choice between Helm and Plesk. 20 domain licenses of Helm will be offered at no additional charge, while 100 domain licenses will be $10 a month extra and unlimited domain licenses will be $25 a month. Helm can be ordered on all Windows servers through the order form on our web site at this time.

From what we have seen of Helm, it appears to be a well respected, stable, and feature rich control panel which we are now pleased to offer and support. Helm was designed from the ground up as a Windows web server control panel and offers extensive clustering features, making it a perfect control panel for any Windows based web host.

I would just like to make a quick note that it seems our network engineer and the engineers at InterNAP and Avaya have worked out a work-around so that both the Avaya RouteSceience and InterNAP FCP products will function correctly in our networks with the addition of some network hardware, which will not affect our overall network configuration.  Over the coming days we will bring in the additional hardware required and resume setting up and testing the InterNAP FCP and Avaya RouteScience products.

After working with InterNAP engineers for about a month it has been determined that the InterNAP FCP device will not work with our network topology. I know many of you may be disappointed with this news, but we are currently in talks with Avaya regarding their RouteScience product. If the RouteScience device does not have the shortcomings of the InterNAP FCP product we are hoping to be utilizing it to optimize routes for our premium network customers in the coming months. it is our goal to provide the best routing possible to our premium network customers, and we will not allow this setback to stop us.

We have finally upgraded our support ticket system to Kayako 3, after finally getting it to import properly and getting all the templates modified to fit into our site design. Overall, we have been quite happy with the upgrade on our side, and hopefully several of the new features, including InstaAlert, will also help us in delivering faster response times aross the board.

In related news, NOCWizard is now at http://noc.steadfast.net and the support system has also been moved to the steadfast.net domain, http://support.steadfast.net. We are currently looking at replacing NOCWizard, finally, with Ubersmith Data Center Edition. This upgrade will not be cheap, but should be worth it long term. After talking with the Ubersmith staff, we should be able to greatly improve our current billing setup very quickly and for the long term it should allow us to greatly improve the automation and level of service provided.