Quick updates:

April 17th, 3:30 pm PDT.
Post the move we have experienced some issues with 3 of our web servers. (#15, #18, and #20). Our Dell Service technician is on site now (We have gold support on all our hosting servers - so we get 4 hour onsite priority hardware support) and we hope to be returning those servers to normal service shortly. One one server will be down at a time while it's getting serviced.

April 17th, 4:38 pm PDT.
The changes and fixes to web servers #15, #18 and #20 have been completed and took only one hour in total.

April 17th, 12:01 am PDT.
After move was completed (2 hours ahead of schedule), we noticed some latency in the network. We asked our primary bandwidth provider to check the router on their side. They said all was fine.

Almost 3 hours later and after checking all of our connections at One Wilshire, we were able to finally prove that our primary bandwidth provider in moving our bandwidth and IPs from the old data center (theirs) to the new one (One Wilshire) had set our transport setting for auto and it needed to be set at full duplex 100mb. As soon as they changed that it fixed the network latency. As of 9:46PM PDT the network has been stabilized.

April 18, 7:05 am PDT.
We will be adding in the following items today. We expect no downtime to occur as a result of these additions.

1) Additional backup devices (the backup of your websites will stay with us longer.)

2) A backup network, so that if our primary network is under Denial of Service Attack (DoS or DDoS) we can log in securely and see things from behind the attack. This gives us the capability of fixing things faster and prevent further damage.

3) Remote power rebooting, for fastest power cycling (faster than walking over to server and clicking a button), if a server does not respond to a software reboot.

  Hip! Hip! Hooray!

Dear ThirdSphere user.

I have terrific news for you. Every single step of the planned system upgrade went smooth as silk and the move to the new datacenter has been completed 100% successfully. All systems are "go" and your website is back online as normal.

Thank you very much for the support and understanding. And a especially warm "Thank You!" to all customers who wrote in sending their congratulations for this quick super-achievement... Your kind words and the fact that we see you grow everyday is what encourages us to get bigger, better and to work hard all the time to bring you the best tools & systems available anywhere.


So what's different now?

The web servers holding your website are now located in one of the most modern, secure and state-of-the-art telecom buildings in the world: OneWilshire.

OneWilshire is also known as MAE-LA. They are the leading telecommunications hub in the West Coast of the USA. There are only 10 building like this in the entire USA and together, they make the nation's internet work. Whenever any surfer in the entire world requests a website hosted in the US, all the web pages, graphics, audio and video contained on that site goes through one of these telecom hubs.

Think of your website now living directly in the entrance of the information super-highway, making its commute time to anywhere in the world shorter and faster.

Here are the juicy details of what this move means to both you and ThirdSphere:


More physical space.
A new datacenter gives you more room for growth - our clients can now host more websites because we have more room for servers, backup units and networking equipment, etc. to keep up with their growth rate.


More power.
The more servers and equipment a hosting company has, the more sheer electrical power it needs to run. The new datacenter has the necessary resources to provide ThirdSphere's network with all the power it needs now and for the foreseeable future.

The new datacenter boasts four heavyweight 2,000 Kilowatt generators and one backup 470 Kilowatt generator supporting the main electrical power. In the event of service interruptions or low-voltage conditions your website will never go down... even if the entire city block blacks out!

ThirdSphere now has 30% more power than before, and anytime more power is needed, it can be added in just 2 days with absolutely no downtime whatsoever.


A higher level of security.
Your website is now guarded in a true security fortress. The building has a lobby fully staffed with security officers and personnel working hard to protect 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The entire building (and its perimeters and sensitive areas) are protected by a high-tech CCTV system and futuristic personal "ID card" systems; all monitored from its 'security headquarters'.

In addition to this, the building also has a state-of-the-art, totally automated fire protection and life-safety systems. These include a full fire sprinkler network with 24-hour monitoring and the latest technology of Halon systems. This building is safer and has even better protection than many banks out there!


Hardware upgrades
The new datacenter has all the resources required to make any hardware upgrades needed. This includes the ability to have remote-rebooting systems for all of ThirdSphere servers, which means that none of our system administrators will need to physically walk into the server room and reboot it manually.

The new datacenter has the necessary infrastructure that allows us to remote reboot all of our machines within seconds from anywhere in the world, instead of wasting precious minutes. All this translates into increased up-time for your business.


Better bandwidth redundancy.
The internet keeps evolving and demanding more bandwidth than ever before. Webmasters are going high-tech every day and are including audio and video applications to their websites.

To keep up with those requirements, in addition to our current provider who blends a few bandwidth carriers, we are able to have multiple bandwidth providers for greater redundancy. Your website will never experience any outages or "network hiccups" because of bandwidth problems.


Improved services & offerings.
This move gives us the necessary infrastructure to build better services, new tools (that demanded too much bandwidth) and to bring better offers to the market as well as some great upgrade paths for successful customers who need it (like dedicated and semi-dedicated servers). Great things will come in the future - and all of them will be possible because of this down-time sacrifice that we all had to make.


Cutting right to the chase...
To put it in a few words... The network that your website is hosted on has become more powerful, be more reliable, more secure, more redundant and more stable than ever before. And while the entire move cost ThirdSphere over $275,000 in equipment, contracts and investments, your hosting fees of your account will not be raised one red cent.

Once again, we'd like to apologize for the hassle that the down-time brought and look forward to keep providing you with the outstanding web hosting service and the remarkable tech support you've come to know, love and expect from ThirdSphere for many years to come.

Warmly,
The ThirdSphere.com Team!