2004-07-22: Vortech Inc. Announces New Features!

Vortech Inc. Announces New Features!

+ HSphere Dedicated Managed Servers

+ HSphere Control Panel On Standard Ports

+ HSphere Unix Web Servers now offer Secure Services

+ HSphere Windows Servers Hard Drive upgrades

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Matrix Reseller is proud to offer Dedicated Managed Servers to our Resellers.

Here is an outline of a Dedicated Managed Server Package:

1 - Dedicated Windows 2000 or FreeBSD Server. Managed in our Reseller Cluster.
12 month contract required prior to installation.

2 - You must have one existing Reseller plan for this to work. Signup for or use an existing plan based on your required user accounts, bandwidth, mail, and database space needs accessed from our shared machines.

3 - Server Hardware Specs:

CPU: Dual Intel XEON 2.4GHz
RAM: 1024 MB
Drive 1: 18GB SCSI 15Krpm
Drive 2: 36GB SCSI 15Krpm

For more information and pricing, email Sales@MatrixReseller.com

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HSphere Control Panel On Standard Ports

We have modified our Control Panel setup to enable the server to run on the standard HTTP and HTTPS ports. This means you can now access the control panel via:

http://cp.hsphere.cc

and

https://cp.hsphere.cc

Resellers who have set the "Change URL" option in their Reseller menu will also be able to access the control panel via

http://cp.servicedomain.com

or

https://cp.servicedomain.com (For Resellers with CP SSL enabled.)

The control panel is still available via the old ports :8080 and :8443 for HTTP and HTTPS respectively. We have no plans to remove these ports.

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HSphere Unix Web Servers now offer Secure Services

The HSphere Unix web servers have been revamped in the past few weeks to bring you increased performance and advanced features. Included in this, we have installed "snakeoil" certificates that allow you to access phpMyAdmin, phpPgAdmin, and Webshell using a SSL connection. Just go to https://unix.hsphere.cc (or https://unix.yourservicedomain.com) to connect using SSL. You will receive a warning message because the snakeoil certificate is not a "valid" certificate, but you are still connecting over a secure layer. (We cannot purchase certs for each server as the servers can be accessed under many names.)

We also have enabled TLS/SSL support for FTP on the Unix web servers. You must have a FTP client capable of supporting this feature in order for it to work.

=====

HSphere Windows Servers Hard Drive upgrades

Due to a recent batch of bad hard drives, we will be upgrading the hard drives on the following servers:

NT15, NT24, NT2, NT

The downtime will be very minimal (< 2 Minutes) as these servers have a RAID configuration that allows us to easily replace the drives. The downtime is only necessary to shutdown the machine and swap the drives. This will be taking place tomorrow, July 23, sometime in the afternoon.

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Please check out this forum thread if you have any questions or comments:
http://forum.vortechhosting.com/showthread.php?p=71348

If you cannot find your answers there, please contact us if by email at support@vortechhosting.com or by phone at (407) 323-5634.

[mfennell]

and the price for a dedicated server is?

I did email sales, but they are closed and I am dying to know.

[Silverbug]

Yeah i'd be interested in knowing too.
I thought vortech were staying away from ded servers?

[arindra]

yeah , me too mfennel ... i also got a reply back from carly ... i guessed they must have bee real excited with the deciscion as we are that they announced it while sales dept. was closed
would definitely be interested in knowing about the prices and configs .

[Brangwyn]

Spill the beans post the prices!

[admin]

http://www.rapidcolo.com/servers.htm

The pages are no where near being done.. There is still a lot to be added. There is also a few other things coming down the pipe that I am sure a LOT of you will like.

[mfennell]

Are you serious about those prices?

A P4 w/ 512Mb Ram and a 400 GB Transfer for a $200 deposit and $200 per month?? I realise this is a managed server but just how much management are you guys planning on?

And it just gets worse as I scroll down the list.

Please do some serious rethinking on your price structure.

[Silverbug]

There is also a few other things coming down the pipe that I am sure a LOT of you will like.

Excellent, we look forward to it

[dwhite]

mfennell, Have you actually gone out and compared prices? Sure you pay less with the el-cheapos, but I know from experience that you get what you pay for from them. No support and frequent downtime. Surly techs taht never get back to you. If that's your bag, then you are in the wrong place.

Brad, darn it, I wish you'd done this just one week ago. Just signed a contract for one with a competitor the other day. I did look to see if you had any plans first. Maybe next time. Good luck with this venture, I'm sure you'll do well.

[Curt]

Originally Posted by mfennell

Are you serious about those prices?

A P4 w/ 512Mb Ram and a 400 GB Transfer for a $200 deposit and $200 per month?? I realise this is a managed server but just how much management are you guys planning on?

And it just gets worse as I scroll down the list.

Please do some serious rethinking on your price structure.

If you consider transfer alone, that's only 50 cents a gig. That's actually pretty good as far as I'm concerned. It's more than double the transfer you'd get with the "Matrix" plan for the same cost. Plus it's a private server, not shared, so you don't have to worry about other people hogging the CPU and slowing down your sites. And on top of everything else... hey, it's the Vortech team, and we all know that means. Why would you want to host elsewhere?

[mfennell]

Originally Posted by dwhite

mfennell, Have you actually gone out and compared prices? Sure you pay less with the el-cheapos, but I know from experience that you get what you pay for from them. No support and frequent downtime. Surly techs taht never get back to you. If that's your bag, then you are in the wrong place.

Brad, darn it, I wish you'd done this just one week ago. Just signed a contract for one with a competitor the other day. I did look to see if you had any plans first. Maybe next time. Good luck with this venture, I'm sure you'll do well.

I have compared prices and services.. extensively. In fact I even have a few dedicated servers, so yes I do know exactly what I am talking about. And, yes you do get what you pay for in most cases, but lets be serious here.

Proven top quality dedicated server hosts (I will not list any here on the Matrix board, that would be just too rude) with better networks and higher grade gear and a long history of actually managing dedicated servers (please keep in mind that this is a new product line for the Matrix crew and there WILL be kinks to work out) that cost half to three quarters of this price.

I'm just saying that the price seems waaaaay out of wack of the equipment and bandwidth.

BTW.. would we get root access to these machinces or just control panel access?


If you read what that page says.. support is $125 per hour.. so thats a $200 deposit (for what I have no idea, not like we can damage the system) plus $200 per month plus if you need help from matrix its another $125 per incedent. But reboots are always FREE.

[Brangwyn]

Actualy dwhite I would have to agree to a certain extent with mfennell the prices to me do seem a little on the high side.

Take this deal for instance Dual 2.8 Xeon, 2GB RAM, DRAC Card, 2x73GB SCSI's, 2000GB traffic for $249 managed (management includes patching, IDS, service monitoring and hands on 24x7 etc).

I won't mention where that comes from but if you've been looking around yourself you'll probably already know.

I get the impression these boxes will be on the "shared" HSphere cluster is that correct ?

[mfennell]

On a different route....

What else could they offer to help offset the price?

*KVM over IP (i.e. drac card in Brangwyn's post)
*Private network (if you have multiple servers)
*Usage of the SQL servers (Licensing is a killer)
*Alternitive control panels i.e. Plesk, Ensim
*Network based backup space


and again.. would we get root access?

Hrm. Since Brad hasn't posted, I'll try to clear some stuff up from my understanding. I think I have it right

The page you guys are linked to below is the RapidServers page. Those are NOT the "HSphere Dedicated Managed Servers" I mentioned in the announcement.

The Hsphere Dedicated Managed Servers is a server that we setup, manage, and add to OUR cluster like any other of our servers (NT, Web, MySQL, MSSQL, etc. You name it). It's given a special name, a special group, and your Reseller account is the only account that will have access to create accounts on that server. Its effectively a dedicated server in the fact that your accounts are the ONLY accounts on the server. You still manage the sites exactly like you do now through the Control Panel. So basically, you get a dedicated box without the headache of setting it up, and you don't have to worry about mr. b. coder taking the box down (b for bad) =)

There are a lot of practical applications to it as well. If you have Custom COM Objects that we just won't install on the Shared servers, we'll, we won't have a problem installing them on the Dedicated box since your the only account.

The page for this isn't setup yet, thats why we said contact Sales

[Vixen]

Originally Posted by mfennell

Are you serious about those prices?

A P4 w/ 512Mb Ram and a 400 GB Transfer for a $200 deposit and $200 per month?? I realise this is a managed server but just how much management are you guys planning on?

And it just gets worse as I scroll down the list.

Please do some serious rethinking on your price structure.

This server is not managed. This is simply a dedicated server. Support would be additional.