01 Sep 2009 Tue, 2:37 pm

Introducing Imperia

Posted In: Awesome Company Stuff, Stuff Related to Service — Sep 01st, 2009 at 2:37 pm EST by Fathi Said

This is going to be huge.

Since my last several blog posts, there have been many changes that have taken effect at IX Web Hosting. We’re rapidly building our support team of “Personal Heroes”, we’re participating more in external social media so we can keep in touch with you, and we’re building an internal community of customers so you can put your collective voice together and be heard about the things that matter.

But what I’d like to talk to you about today makes all of that turn just a shade pale in comparison.

One of the top-secret projects we’re developing right now is one we call Imperia (seriously, this is ultra-sensitive, so I have to watch what I say about it). Essentially, it’s an entirely new way of running and managing your website. There’s a lot of technical aspects to it, but suffice it to say it will have beautiful effects on how successful your site will be and how much it will do for you.

The best part is: It will be available to you for FREE. I’ll go into more detail in a second but first… I need your help. And it’s urgent.

We have only 24 hours left.

Imperia’s technology is built on cutting-edge open source software from a wee little company called Red Hat (just joking, they’re actually huge). They hold an annual contest to determine the year’s best innovators, and guess what? Imperia, your soon-to-be new hosting platform, just won the Red Hat Award for Outstanding Open Source Architecture! We now also qualify for the overall Innovation of the Year Award.

This directly affects you.

Winning this award would be of tremendous benefit to you. Should Imperia win, Red Hat will invest significant resources into the project to make it even better. We’re competing with the likes of Geico, Verizon, Whole Foods, etc – giants compared to us. Luckily, the big award is open to public voting – that’s YOU – for the next 24 hours. I hope you’re with me on this.

If you are willing to give me your vote (it only takes 10 seconds of your time), please go here:

http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/269267/2c6a/

Vote for: “Ecommerce Inc. + Vizuri — Outstanding Open Source Architecture” at the top and the bottom and hit “Submit.” That’s it. (Ecommerce is our parent company name. That’s why it doesn’t show IX Web Hosting on the page).

Here’s a screenshot that shows you what to select and how to vote. (Of course I know you’d have figured that out yourself. But I wanted to show you that we’ve made every possible effort and even prepared a screenshot!)

Red Hat voting page

I would REALLY appreciate your vote! This is about you, after all!

IMPORTANT: VOTING ENDS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, SO PLEASE HURRY!

By the way, to read more about how Imperia works technically, take a look at this:

http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2009/awards/ecommerce_vizuri.html

Ok, now that I have your vote, let me show you exactly what Imperia will will do for you. If you didn’t vote yet, go do it right now!

Imperia will bring you:

  • Profoundly stable websites. We are legitimately expecting the coveted 99.999% uptime goal. Check out this blog post I wrote about “How will we blow you away, exactly? Or: Please help us transform our company and build a second-to-none IX customer experience (Part 1 of 3)”.
  • A really easy to use interface. I know what you’re thinking – ugg – but seriously this is going to break the mold, just wait. Build your websites faster, manage emails/FTP/databases more easily, the list goes on. We’ve been getting hundreds of comments from customers testing Imperia about the unmatched beauty and gymnastic flexibility of the interface, but we know that most important is providing you with a control panel that doesn’t tie your shoelaces together every time you turn around (talk about annoying). This really will save you tons of time. Here are a few screenshots:
    • Imperia
  • Environmentally friendly. This is TRULY exciting: the new system will reduce our data center electricity usage by over 70%. Yep, you read that exactly right. That’s something we can all get behind, right?
  • A breathtakingly fast hardware infrastructure. We selected HP to provide the equipment at Imperia’s core, and these machines are SWEET. Featuring the latest blade server technology along with HP’s newest storage solutions – EVA 8400 disk arrays – Imperia runs on a highly dynamic computing grid consisting of thousands of energy-efficient Xeon cores, more than 3 terabytes of RAM and over 600 terabytes of high-speed fibre-channel disk storage. Comparing apples to apples, we’re seeing more than a 10x fold increase in performance and efficiency from the new hardware alone!

    • What this means for you? Well, instead of being assigned to a single server and suffering the fate of that single machine (or group of machines), your website flows in a fluidic fashion across the grid, never being impacted directly by singular hardware or software glitches. This means no more localized disk failures, RAID rebuilds, slow server response, overload impacts, etc. In a nutshell, it makes your website’s life pretty much great. And as a consequence, hopefully yours too, if only in a small way!

    You may be a technically interested like I am – so if you are curious to learn more about how Imperia works, read on.

    Imperia Technical Background

    Last year, it became clear that the H-sphere Control Panel software we use to provide web hosting services was way too outdated. We reviewed other control panels such as cPanel or Plesk – but those too suffer from inherent flaws that lead to downtime, and are sometimes difficult to use. I felt that to really improve, we were going to have to develop our own new system; from SCRATCH. Enter center stage, Imperia.

    At its core, Imperia is a combination of state-of-the-art hardware, leading software solutions, innovative command and provisioning logic and an intuitive user interface. That’s a really fancy way to say that Imperia will bring many amazing features together to create the ideal hosting platform. I already elaborated a little bit on the hardware that we will use above.

    EVA8400 storage, front view
    Blades c7000 enclosure, back
    One rack with part of EVA8400 storage and second with 4 c7000 blades enclosures

    To utilize this hardware to the fullest extent possible, Imperia was designed using the latest Enterprise-class software including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBOSS, EnterpriseDB, Hyperic, Zimbra and Windows Server 2008. Together with Vizuri, a Red Hat-preferred award-winning development company in Washington D.C., and our own internal development guys, we are able to coordinate these applications to work in beautiful harmony. These software solutions are being tied together in a super-streamlined customization (dubbed Imperia Command) to make them all sing, and I do mean sing.

    Imperia Command is a business-decision based intelligence system for running large super-computer grids and data centers. Some may call this a “cloud” architecture, but we don’t. Clouds mean rainy days. We prefer to think of this as “ionosphere” architecture, or something else much more cool than a rainy day.

    Imperia Command actively senses thousands of metrics for all of the services and nodes operating within the grid and continuously applies the results against a set of rules for action. This built-in “intelligence” gives Imperia Command the ability to move services across servers as needed to eliminate downtime and DRAMATICALLY improve speed and performance.

    And what’s even better is this is all going to happen soon.

    In the coming weeks we will be in touch with you about Imperia’s development and the cool features it’s going to bring you. Beginning in late October, Imperia is scheduled to go into a limited beta-release, with full migration likely occurring by the end of the year. Our goal is to make the transition as seamless as possible, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the improved features and performance.

    And hey, thanks again for being an IX Web Hosting Customer!

    Until next time.

    Fathi Said, CEO

    IX Web Hosting

    Psst…remember to vote! http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/269267/2c6a/

    • trueblueqt
      All that saut id Mr. Said, and I still don't see what is in it for me...
      Pictures would have helped. I may vote on blind faith against the other guys...But does IX really "warrant" our votes?

      All I know is IX couldn't even get my billing right... accepting my same credit card, but not 'allowing' for the fact that the security code changed in the last 3 years since last bill... so my email was inadvertently canceled for 2 days. Now that is BIG! Duh. Stupid you don't have a better system. I am SURE I am NOT the first one it happened to. So it reflects poorly on you.
      And no one contacted me about my complaint. Your fault. One sided glitch. Not mine.
      Minus a few glitches over the years, I have been happy with IX hosting.
    • john
      Its your responsibility to update your billing information inorder to get billed correctly.
    • rockaclimba
      Fathi Said, CEO
      IX Web Hosting

      The way your support had handled us was so pathetic and inhuman that I personally was shocked to see such nicely crafted email in my box. I have all records of conversations I did with your support and how dejected I was that within no time had to pay to another HOST to shift domains.

      Sir- If you really want to work as a company- I think this is time when you should invest and hire some humans. After spending more than 3 years with you- I am still hesitant if we will renew next year !
    • brook_BDMP
      Wow this sounds great, you've already got me excited. I run my own web design and production company and I became a customer back in 2003, since then my web clients have grown considerably. I had over 25 clients hosting on your servers at IX Web Hosting. Threw a verity of issues, downtime and security leaks my clients, and in return me became very frustrated with your service.

      I now only have 3 clients hosting with you (one is still me) and all the remaining, that stayed with me have moved their files to other servers. I was even considering moving mine off since I'm no longer seam to be getting anything from the affiliate program.

      After reading about this though I'm already reconsidering. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with. I will be redesigning my site soon and it'll have a lot more content in it. I guess we'll see how the new system will hold up to the HD video I will be using. Thanks for the update and I look forward to hearing more as it develops.
    • Steve
      I received this message in an email, addressing me only by my last name, which gave me flashbacks of high school gym class, so thanks for that. I admit I didn't actually read the whole email -- I tend to check out when I see too many exclamation points, inane metaphors, boldface type, WORDS IN ALL CAPS... so I don't actually know what you're selling, but I do know that my email client flagged your message as a possible email scam. So good job on that. Also, I'm not an IX customer anymore -- my hosting account expired yesterday. So you're too late for, well, whatever it is you want from me.
    • I'm on your Windows server. Everything works fine. Often when big changes happen, problems occur. Your solution seems primarily linux. I hope the change doesn't affect my Windows ASP forms, etc. I really can't afford to spend a lot of time trying to iron out problems not of my making. So I hope you really really test the system, especially those sites using Microsoft windows features like ASP forms.
    • ssaurini
      I totally agree with Jerry, can't do anything on this until we know what it is and what it isn't. Has anyone thought of linking to a Demo of this thing or publishing a features list?
    • Pickett Huffines
      "this is going to be huge!" = viagra spam? Please have IXWebhosting in the subject line.
    • Didn't think of that. How true! I'll be more careful in the future. :)
    • Kaveh Rassoulzadegan
      -Voted-
      @Chris Buhneing:"I find Open Source software is always a huge risk in itself."
      Well, Chris open source software can appear scary as it is open, but is not that risky precisely because it is open:
      When exploits are found, they can be addressed faster because the code is opened and wider shared so, statistically, more people have the picture in mind.
      Developers are free of obfuscation logistic efforts and can focus on the pure service. In all cases, exploits can be easily found in open source projects but can be repaired fast as well. What is the best deal ? Address an exploit fast or making it long to find(obfuscate) ? I guess both, but open source does not imply the user to propose the exact same revision than the one publicly available. Knowing a bit IX professionalism, I bet we are pretty safe.
    • I voted !
    • jonedwards
      Sounds good but what about secure email. SSL
      With all the other good things your missing a large customer customer base that requires it.
    • rdanders9466
      IX Web hosting has been a great company since I joined a couple of years ago. This new and innovative software sounds very promising and shows your continuing desire to give the customer everything he or she needs and then some. To be honest I've been pleased with what you have so far but I must say I am very excited to get my hands on this new software to manage my sites. All I can say is well done guys and congratulations on showing the others how to meet and exceed the customers expectation.

      Regards,
      Richard D. Anderson II
      CEO - Solve-it Group Inc.
    • Thanks for all information submitted on the technological advances that will be in ixwebhosting servers and will impact all customers. I can only say that one of the best decisions I ever made in my business is allied with ixwebhosting me. Thanks again to all the technical team and all collaborators.
    • Go for it guys...
    • abdulrahman alibrahim
      Voted already, wish you all the best

      abdulrahman alibrahim
    • Sounds fantastic! I have been an iX customer for years now and have appreciated every aspect of the service: support, pricing, features, etc. I wish you all the very best!
      Thanks again, and keep up the superior service!

      R.Hall
      http://wireyourhouse.com
    • Name
      Re your e-mail (message same as above): Fortunately, I recognized your name as the sender, or usually when a subject line begins with my last name, and continues with "this is going to be huge!" I instantly think of spam. Please include IXWebhosting in the subject if you use a advertising cliche, and I'll not make the mistake of deleting it. Other than that, I was glad to read it.
    • Hi guys, thanks for the update. I voted, and I hope it helps! I've been with you for a very long time, and this update would definitely improve my experience. I have always detested the H-Sphere interface. I will take time to read more about Imperia later, but for now I wanted to thank you guys for your recent advances. You are going a long way toward reminding me why I chose you in the first place. Thanks!
    • I have been an IX Customer for several years but, I find Open Source software is always a huge risk in itself.
      But if you are willing to take a chance then I will continue to support IX in the future.
      The Numbers tell it all:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Wind...
    • Awesome job guys! Best of luck in the contest I just voted (from each of three different web browsers) ;)
    • drprasannabhat
      I am not a very technical person. However, I understand few basics and feel that IX is going to be better and better. Thanks for the info and all the best to you and for us...!
    • I'm really looking forward to the update! I already voted and hope the underdog pulls off the major upset! Thanks for the forward thinking and innovation. Best of luck!
    • Fathi,

      While I am not a hard core web site builder, I can say that my association with IX has been nothing short of a pleasure. IX has never let me down and has been there to help me trough my own web site difficulties that were do to my own lack of knowledge. So if Fathi Said tells me that this new product is the way to move into the future then I follow that suggestion and yes, I have voted as per the instructions.

      Regards,
      Chuck
    • Great job! I voted and will keep my fingers crossed as long as you promise our rates won't increase! Ha! ;-)
    • pabs11
      hi,

      All sounds very good, but no mention of security and security comparisons with what we have already and with other options out there.

      Some links to independent assessments of security performance would be good.

      thanks, paul
    • kenotron
      Its really cool
    • engputer
      voted
    • engputer
      Voted. How could we get benifited?
    • BryonBest
      VIP Membership for testing how do I apply
    • nballinger
      Please, please PLEASE tell me that this system is NOTHING like unstable, unreliable GRID system that was launched at MediaTemple last year. Before they launched, they said many of the exact same things in this post. Those of us who's accounts were unlucky enough to land on "Grid 2" have suffered repeated, extended downtime.

      My clients will simply not tolerate any more downtime... especially those who's domains I've migrated from MT to IX.
    • Name
      I thought that email was junk mail. It didn't seem like it was written by a professional, let alone the CEO of a company. I came to the blog to see if it was legit. I was going to forward it to IX to warn them that someone might have hacked into the system. Just thought you guys might want to know that.
    • kohlermichelle
      Hey, i was wondering when something like this would take place. The userface is really old shool and realllly needs an update..just so its easier to understand and operate, specially for "uneducated websters" :)
      Another thing, have a look at "ispeedway.com" ...their operating system is really easy to understand and would be a great influence for you. thank you for your hard work!

      Keep it up!
      Kind regards
      Michelle Kohler
      Director
      BQ Cosmetics Pty. Ltd.
      kohlermichelle@yahoo.com
    • sashameel
      I have voted in the keysurvey
    • charlesrobbie
      Go go go Fathi !!

      Now please make YOURSELF available to YOUR customers too!! Then your company is 100% PERFECT :)
    • travelingcanadian
      Voted for you - everyone else should too, this looks cool, and easy!
    • travelingcanadian
      Everyone should vote!
    • Scott Krabler
      This is great!?! At least it sounds great Fathi. I wish I were testing it now so I could know. How come I can't log into the blog with my ix login?.
    • brianwesterman
      You have my vote.

      Brian
    • I like my current server very much. It's fast and stable. Does this mean I will be moved out of it?
    • Its great job..

      good luck in the award..
    • I just voted for Imperia.
      The features and specifications seem excellent. Have to wait and see how the Imperia infrastructure will effect overall performance and price for us end-users.
      Good luck
    • johnjensen
      I have been an IX Web Hosting customer for over 4 years and am very pleased with their products and services. I am sure that this upgrade will make the program even better.
    • arielohat
      I am my voting for you
      I think that your server is good and there is help of the people in each thing
      And also I rented to several security guardss your server
      And arrives you
    • good ,I voted for this
    • I only wish this made sense to me. Alas, I'm not a 'techie' but if it makes it easier to manage my websites, then go for it.

      I do have to say I've found your customer service to be no problem at all. Very friendly and patient with me when my questions are really dumb, lol.

      Good luck.
    • elsa
      I voted for you!.... I HOPE YOU WIN!
    • brind
    • brind
      Plz,
      correct your link
      http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2009/awards/....
      by
      http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2009/awards/... (. <----------- remove the dot at the end of your link)
    • xinssun
      sounds nice!
    • vassilatos
      One vote from me.
      good luck.
    • vassilatos
      One vote from me.
      good luck.
    • Ok, I'm waiting. I'd love to see the interface. Hope it happens soon. I also hope it has something like Wordpress built in. That would be coolness. All gadgets and tweakies are good. But the performance, that's the main thing. I hope it's really all that!
    • Thank you and good luck!
    • John Gardner
      Sounds amazing... can't wait to see it in action!
    • Will i still be able to use site studio with this new change?
    • Davi Cavalheiro
      Very nice this new infrastructure. I'm really excited to get started as soon as is available. The changes that I could see so far has greatly increased my satisfaction with the services of IX. Whenever you need can count on my vote.
    • This is some great stuff! I can't elaborate enough on how outdated the current Control Panel is. Looking very forward to the features that Imperia offers the end user (me!) and I would love to join the beta test if you will have me.
    • darrylclutter
      Fathi, This is going to really help out my business (Southwest Antennas & Accessories) a Bunch! Good Luck Sir withthis new product that I will be using.
    • Mike
      Wow is all I can say...
    • madolynlocke
      I'm not interested in voting for the company to add more/different technology until the horde webmail is fixed to become FAR more reliable than it is. I'm very frustrated with how often it's down, slow, has errors, doesn't go through, etc etc etc - this is the email face of my company & it doesn't present well.
    • Hello Madolyn, yes - that must be fixed as well. Imperia will come with an all-new webmail. If our plan works, without the current sluggishness that you may experience at times.
    • paolorye
      If what you claim is put into action....I think it will be a lot of an improvement
      especially if my site data is turned back to its original state.
    • Just be careful! We left our last host because when they changed for ‘something better’ we got lost in the process. That apart, it sounds great. But I hope also your new setup will be hack-proof. That’s always a major concern. Oh, and pssst – yes I voted!
    • Voted... Good Luck
    • John B. Dahlman
      Okay, I did the vote thing...no problem.
      Next time you send out a mass mailing - please give second thoughts to addressing the person receiving as "Dahlman." "Mr. Dahlman" or "John" would be a lot nicer and more friendly! Hope this does not increase hosting plans pricing. Keep up the good work!
    • DJAronson
      This sounds great. I can't wait till we all get to check it out. Good luck in the contest, you know you have my vote!

      Another fine reason why I've been a happy customer with IX for years and happily recommend you to clients as well ;-)
    • daveowens2009
      If this goes as badly as our experience with IX's transformation away from FrontPage, we'll surely be out of business.

      If I have to move our websites onto a new service with IX, I'll move all of our sites to another hosting company.
    • Went and voted right away after receiving your email. Glad to have a chance to help out. Enjoy your service and am pleased that I switched to you.
    • Vj123
      You guys rock! Hope u can pull it off in time as promised. :)

      Cheers,
      Vj.
    • heranbago
      Clouds don't mean rainy days in modern computer slang.

      This sounds cool I suppose. I already upload files directly with FTP but the energy saving sounds great.
      What concerns me for the company is releasing this "groundbreaking" software as open source. Aside from name recognition gained, you can't keep the competitive edge for long if everyone has access to the software. That said, it's of course amiable.

      Voted. With all that money you're going to not spend on power you could pass on the savings. ;)
    • Looks good. An update to the current UI would be welcome.
    • Name
      I came, I read, I voted for Ecommerce, We all win

      lazerengravings.com
    • After reading the hype in the email and blog here, I went to the website and read about the op sys.
      It sounds really good. My only problem is your images are too small and not clickable. How about a blog to actually show the system off with images we can actually see. That would be a big plus. I voted for you in hopes this comes to fruition and that it's as great as it sounds.
      Good luck. (if it's more secure, I'm all for it.)
    • Hello Mike,

      We'll make the screenshots expandable. Check back on Tuesday and they should expand once clicked on.
    • AxisGroup
      We have been with IX for 9 yrs. Looking forward to the new interface. I hope it remains user friendly!
    • ibrahim
      You definitely have my vote, good luck.

      Ibrahim Ismail
    • jamesbrian
      You have got my vote.
      Best of luck!
    • pfv
      Voted, trust you will deliver.
      Is the migration from the current system be as difficult as the last one that was proposed to me or automatic this time (I was supposed to back up the whole site, restore it, back up and re-create all the mail boxes and configurations which is stupid work as it should be automated).
      Will the system provide email SSL?
    • It is supposed to be automatic, and we will be testing extensively for months before we attempt any automated migration. You will not have to recreate anything (or as close to that as possible).

      And yes - Imperia will be supporting secure email.
    • crusadercon
      Great! I'm really excited! You got my vote, along with my support!
    • oroton
      So I was wondering in short, whats the big differences we can expect from Imperia over HSphere?
      Will this have the option of mass file uplaoding?
    • Oroton, what exactly do you mean by mass file uploading? If you could explain further, I can find out whether or not Imperia can already do this, or if we can add it to the list of features.
    • mohamadhelmi
      voted!
    • jimforbes
      I have received two emails from you in the past two days. One to my first name and one to my last name.

      I am not one bit surprised by that. Additionally - I have NO idea what either email is about. They both seem to ramble with self-promotion garbage.

      Though I am a very long time customer, iXWebhosting is FAR from being a favorite entity to do business with. I have 3 domains that I will let expire within the next few months. I will allow my host account to renew simply to avoid the hassle of changing. I only use iXWebhosting for non-serious domain hosting. I would NEVER use it for any domain that involved sites like eCommerce, Merchant Account, etc.

      Just in the past 11 months I have had no less than 3 major and a couple of minor accessibility issues. The latest was Aug. 24 and 24 2009. I was advised a couple of weeks prior to that date that my domains were going to be migrated to a different server - AGAIN! The domain migration seems to have gone fine but my email accounts were a mess for over 48 hours. Two VERY long phone calls to your tech support failed to resolve the problem(s). I was reduced to using mail902.opentransfer.com for both POP and SMTP until the morning of Aug 26.

      Over the past 2 years, and especially the past 1 year, I have heard from your tech support nearly a dozen excuses(?) for accessibility issues. None of them should have taken more than a few hours to correct had they been the REAL reason for the problem(s).

      I have opted out of your mass email list. I await to see if THAT works.
    • Hello Jim,

      Thanks for your comment. I hate to say it, but your experience is not a singular one and I am well aware of our deficiencies. I have asked one of our customer service managers to contact you further to assist, maybe we can recoup at least some of the damage that was done.

      Our new platform will hopefully alleviate any such technical issues in the future. Thank you for sticking with us through all your troubles, even if it's just for non-serious domain hosting.
    • Béla
      As for the name order, I must note that Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Hungarians have reverse name order, compare to the Western name order.
      Being Hungarian, the name use of the first email was OK for me, and the second letter is not (+ not showing the accented characters); but this is the least important matter, compare to how the website works.
    • mohdmahmoud
      I just wish the Tech support you have can be more experienced like tech support of other hosting companies
      also would this new program increase the size of attachment I can send with my emails as hotmail gives 5 times more space for attachments but I will vote anyway to give you the support hoping our needs are listened to
    • Hello Mohd... I hope we will be able to address this as a feature request as soon as Imperia is launched. It is my goal to support as many features as we reasonably can. Thank you for your patience, and thank you so much for your vote.
    • Ibrahim
      I voted
    • Bladeoptra
      Your Technical Support SOP
      STEP 1 - Say "My name is ____ How may I help you today"
      STEP 2 - Say "Hold let me check" .> go chat with friends, call home, eat doughnut, chat more with friends, go to the john, fix hair,fix face, chat more with friends, check home again, chat more, buy more doughnuts, go back for coffee, chat more with friend,after completion Proceed step 3
      STEP 3 - Say "You should create a trouble ticket for our admins to see, they will fix it for you, is there anything more?"
      STEP 4 - If there is anything more, repeat STEP 2 and 3.

      I have voted in your favor and I am happy with ixwebhosting ,thats all ;)
    • Our new hero concept will hopefully alleviate the tech support runaround madness that you have experienced:
      http://blog.ixwebhosting.com/2009/07/how-will-w...
    • Paul
      Hmm, I've been a customer for many years and have been very happy but recently moved to your 'new' php 5 servers. Performance dropped through the floor with all of my sites slowing dramatically. MySQL was so slow that sites using it took up to a minute to respond or failed completely. It took several weeks to get my databases moved to another server and only then when I threatened to leave. It's better now but I still have times when things are slow. If this new system really is this good then great but I'll want to see it work a lot better than it does now before I start voting for it.
    • Paul, that's the plan. Imperia was designed from the ground up to alleviate load issues and resource constraints. Thank you for your patience and sticking with us as we try to resolve all currently ongoing issues.
    • azzabi
      Hello Fathi, Guys
      i Voted because i have been a customer with IX several Years ago , with more than 15 domains ,since then everything is getting better day after day ,Simply , i can say ,i completely trust IX web hosting Team ,
    • I have been a loyal customer of IX for about ten years, and until earlier this week any email communications have included the IX Logo header and a proper footer.

      I received two emails, once addressed to my last name only, and a second addressed to my first name. There were so many boldfaced phrases, exclamation marks, underlines, etc. with no real identification from IX, I thought someone hacked into the IX database and started emailing spam.

      If this is authentic, I strongly suggest future emails continue to follow the same pattern and include a proper IX Logo header and footer. And rather than including so much in the email, politely refer your customers to the IX-Webhosting site to check the weblog.

      Your customers will know where to go, and the emails will be more effective not looking so much like spam, or phishing attempts.
    • Hello Wynne, thanks for your feedback. We used a much more colloquial writing style in the last two emails than we usually do. That's a good suggestion on the header/footer, but I wanted to have as little distractions as possible. Maybe we can find a good compromise for future mailings, however if everyone was used to 'this kind' of emails, there would be little confusion, if any.

      Great suggestion on the length of the email by the way. We'll utilize what you proposed in future mailings.
    • davidgenadek
      In regard to the online training you mentioned in your e-mail, there is a new product for delivering such content and webinars that is light years head of everyone else . It is called ReGL which stand for Remote Guided Learning. You can learn more about it at stillmangeorge.com. This platform is so superior to anything else on the market that as a long time customer I would be thrilled for you to adopt it over the other outdated technologies for training and webinars.
    • Hi David, thanks for the awesome suggestion. We haven't chosen our Webinar software yet. Many webinar software's limit you at 1,000 attendees - which is a problem for us. I'll be sure to check out the one you suggested. If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to shoot them my way.
    • davidgenadek
      Fathi,
      Do take a serious look at ReGL I did a lot of research before I chose them and they have really delivered for me. They can set you up on your servers and they use a fifth of the band width of anyone else. You can even deliver really high end presentations to people with dial up. This a program they have used in house for over ten years so it is the most dependable program I have on my machine. Your contact would be Charles Stillman 800 270 3954. I am just a customer of theirs and yours so my interest here is in getting information to me in the best possible way.
      David Genadek
    • Pickett Huffines
      Dear folks at ixwebhosting blog,
      My eyesight is terrible, so I view pages enlarged. Your blog layout falls apart, somewhat, when it is enlarged. None of the navigation in the div #sidebar works on the “home” page. The "about" page works fine.
      Just thought I’d let you know.
      Pickett Huffines
      masprema@gmail.com
    • Hello Picket,

      I've forwarded your comments to our person in charge of the blog. We'll get it fixed and followed-up with on here.

      Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
    • Hi Pickett,

      The blog layout styling has been modified to accommodate your needs. Please let me know if you've experienced any more problems with it :)
    • Pickett Huffines
      Thanks. All seems good now. Thank you for your speedy response.
    • Cindy
      Faithi Said wrote: "the new system will reduce our data center electricity usage by over 70%. Yep, you read that exactly right. That’s something we can all get behind, right?"

      Maybe. The only way I can see reducing that much electricity is by shutting down a major portion of the data center. If there's a shutdown, then that means lost jobs. If your 70% "reduced electricity" comes from lost jobs, then I'm not going to be celebrating because that means service support has also been lost.

      Sorry Mr. Said. Maybe I'm too cynical after listening to too much corporate and political double speak over the past ten years. So maybe you can clarify exactly HOW this 70% electricity reduction will happen?

      Cordially,
      A long time customer
    • Dear Cindy,

      We intend to reduce power usage by consolidating hardware. With Imperia, we will be able to operate our infrastructure at a ratio of 10:1. So for example, today we need 80 racks of equipment to run our services, with Imperia, we'll need only 8. Additionally, Imperia will dynamically and intelligently shift resources around and power-off servers based on whether they are needed or not. This means that during night time, in off-peak hours, we might see 50% of our servers powered off.

      I can't guarantee though that our power company won't cut a few jobs due to loss of revenue :P
    • Given that it's open source, I'd have to see the source code first. That said, I've got my own reasons for not makeing a habit of using open source in any project under my direction as a long term solution. H-Sphere, while kind of klunky at times, does the job for now and is a commercially viable product that helps some economy somewhere without trying to commoditize an industry.

      I vote, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Reward innovation - pay for it. If the current system isn't good enough, pay for one that is, or develop one that is, but be sure to pay the developers and sell the product to recoup the development cost!
    • Agreed - we do pay our developers very well. I'm sure a lot better than H-Sphere's developers were paid :)

      By the way, Imperia itsself it not open source. It's undecided at this time whether we will make it open source or not. However, we've built it on a foundation of a series of enterprise grade open source software used in Fortune 100 companies today, all meshed together to provide one solid foundation for Imperia.
    • The Imperia platform is a new level of performance, integration and stability that I personally welcome. Moreover, your customer focus (what's in it for both of us) is exemplary. Providing the tools, education and resources to move the creation, management and success of our websites to the next level is most appreciated.

      Your team has always responded efficiently and professionally, which is why I remain a client.
    • IX Customer
      I find it amazing that with all the comments here, there are NO RESPONSES from IX employees. This really shows a lack of customer appreciation.

      IX - Get your act together! I'm sure that you have enough employees now that you can afford to put one in charge of responding to customer concerns on this blog.
    • At your service :)

      Sometimes, it takes me a few days to follow up. Comments come in in droves when we put up a new post, but I'll do my best to follow-up faster on future posts.
    • I would love to see a 99.9% uptime. Do we have an ETA on this project? Is there any way for someone to sign up to be an early adopter if you only initially roll this out to a smaller percentage of your customer base. I would really like to use Windows Server 2008 as opposed to Windows Server 2003 and as such would really like to participate in any early adoption/Beta plans. Is ther any way someone can opt in
    • Imperia will support Windows Server 2008. We're looking forward to start a BETA Phase and the Imperia VIP Membership program by the end of October - in just a little over one month from now! By the end of the year, we hope to have the majority of all our customers migrated to the new platform, but that really depends on how well our beta tests progress. We will not start migration (except for voluntary migration) until we are 100% confident and convinced that the new platform works exactly as we envisioned.
    • beckybeads53
      I was told today that Site Studio will no longer be available after the change and that all websites built with Site Studio will have to be rebuilt. I then received a retraction of this statement. I don't know what to believe- has anyone else heard this??
    • Hello Becky,

      The information you received is not correct. All sites previously built with it will remain to be functional and can continue to be edited with Site Studio in the future, so long as we can operate it in a secure manner. With the release of Imperia, we will introduce a new Website Creator in addition to Site Studio that should make your life a lot easier and allow you to create much more stunning sites, in a lot less time. To create new websites, you can only use our new software once Imperia is released.
    • davidwooddr5
      Unfortunately, this is all too little too late for us. After almost losing our domain because of "total lack" of admin attention to the urgent problem of someone hacking your own system and "total" failure to protect our domain, nothing said would had made us stay with IX, we simply could not risk loosing our business domain. IX offered no monetary compensation either AND WE HAVE NO IDEA how much damage was done. After 3+ weeks of email screaming This ball dropping could have done us serious damage had 'we' not been on top of it. If we had left you to do your job, we would not have a business today. Good luck with your changes, you need them for sure.
    • Hello David,

      I apologize for the bad service level you have received. We have a huge customer service effort underway now to renovate and promote a new concept of customer service. You can read more about our new 'Hero Concept' on my previous post:
      http://blog.ixwebhosting.com/2009/07/how-will-w...

      I've also asked one of our customer service managers to contact you to see if there is anything we can do to at least better the situation a little bit.
    • Kaveh Rassoulzadegan
      @Cindy:"Maybe I'm too cynical after listening to too much corporate and political double speak over..."
      Nothing wrong in being cynical in this world. I think that Fathi Said was talking about decreasing programmatically electricity consumption, through new caching approaches, that a lot of web technos should have implemented sooner. In fact, I would say that nearly 70 % of the web traffic is caused by redundant (reloads, back forwards...), so not logical nor optimized transmissions.
      I would like to add that there is still a lot "easy to optimize" stuff as the web scene just started to really focus on what should be really sent or received from client and remote sides.
    • Kaveh, your comments are very accurate. In fact, we just spent the last three days at the Red Hat and jBoss Summit in Chicago. Tomorrow is the last day - we'll know then too whether all our votes made us the Innovation of the year winner. Fingers crossed!

      The power savings of 70% or more will be achieved by condensing our hardware. On our new infrastructure, what previously required 80 racks of equipment can now run on 8 or less. On top of that, during night time, under-utilized resources will be shut down automatically, resulting in another 50% or so savings during off-peak hours.
    • cemoua
      The next generation is in progress
    • Honestly Fathi, I have been with IXWEBHOSTING for a while now, and I am quite comfortable with what I am getting. The website did not get significant downtime, I had a couple of issues that customer service managed to sort out for me at the time (billing and security check), and overall I believe I am getting quite good value for money. I do not see a reason to switch at all.

      However if there is space for improvement, it is not in the back office or server stability, it is site building program. It is really backwards and non-sensible, and what I design does not appear as designed. The templates are outdated and inaccurate, and fonts tend to touch the graphics. We'ld really appreciate it if you can do something about that, as I am not into using Dreamweaver and professional software and a good design plug in would really improve the package for us.

      Thanks
    • Imperia will feature an ALL NEW sitebuilder that I am personally very excited about. Stay tuned for more information about it. I'm confident that you will like it too.
    • That is very good to know and is a major improvement. I do have a concern though: Will we lose the currently designed website? How can we make the transfer?
    • Steve
      What I would really like to see is a feature list or something that tells me more about what this is. The reason I came to IXWebhosting was because my previous host made system changes that totally blew my development methods out of the water. Before I can vote, I would need to know what it is exactly and how my interraction with it will change.
    • ssaurini
      Any chance of seeing more nformation?
    • We'll be publishing detailed information about Imperia shortly. Thanks for everyone's patience :)
    • Sounds great to us. Looking forward to hearing more about it. We haven't had any problems at your end. Possibly because our needs are simple and basic. We are very pleased with the uptime.
    • oroton
      i ment using the in browser FTP file uploader. The current one from memory was a little difficult to understand and i could only upload one file at a time. This in turn forces me to use an FTP program to upload alot of files. Unless I just missed where you can upload lots of files (1000) files lets say for a mediawiki or blog or forum.
      Thankyou!
    • Hello there, I am not certain if we will support multiple file uploads through the new file manager. However, if we don't, this is a feature that we can add once Imperia is released. What we will do is have a user voting community and based on everyone's feedback, we will be prioritizing feature requests and adding them accordingly.
    • paul
      Hi

      All sounds good if it does as it's described . I hope it does.

      Nothing has been said about how this new system compares with the current system or other systems that that are out there. And has the system security been independently assessed ?
    • Security was one of the central themes in the development of Imperia. As much as possible, we've ensured that defaced websites, phishing and outdated scripts that lead to hacked sites are a thing of the past (even though, we don't have control over what our customers upload, so that makes this job a lot harder). There will be a noticeable improvement in perceived and actual security and stability.
    • rockstomper
      Dear Fathi,

      A couple of points. New servers and software are great, but the main sources of service interruption are power failures and transmission failures. Have you implemented rock-solid standby-power and transmission route diversity to overcome those problems?

      New software sounds wonderful at first blush, but where is it being field-trialed? Serial number one of anything is a huge risk. Will you be doing a phased cut-over? Is there a fall-back plan? Will there be any service interruptions?

      Also of importance, what versions of tools like PERL, MySQL, PHP and so forth will be in place? And what about details regarding FTP, E-mail, logs etc.? These are really important.

      Is there going to be augmented security, preventing effects of DoS attacks, span and so forth? It sounds like what you are implementing is akin to "cloud computing" which has its own set of security issues.

      What about gateways, load balancing and other non-server service affecting issues?

      Is there a new "Users Guide" available?

      And by the way, your first e-mail was filed here as spam -- I never saw it until I went looking in the archive. And after I read your second e-mail, it was too late to vote. Sorry!

      And yes, I have been a client for a number of years and am generally pleased. However, your "tech support" are never able to directly do things like reboot a server or whatever else may be needed -- they need to issue a ticket or whatever. So things take a while to fix...

      But what would be really nice as a user is if you implement the Google Analytics server-side XML sitemap generator etc. -- now that would be nice, and save a pile of work!
    • sencyman
      Very much I do like the idea of when in doubt make your own.

      Kevin
    • OnHoliday
      As an owner of an ecommerce site and the christmas season coming, I do hope we will get a notification email with a chance to decide on when our websites will be moved. I really do not want my site down for any reason during the holiday season. End of October to first week in January(your projected times to move) are peak. I do hope you consider this.
    • We will be introducing Imperia very, very carefully, and every step will be communicated to you and on this (or our status) blog. First, there will be a Beta phase based on invitation only and for members of the Imperia VIP Membership (more details will be announced about this shortly). Then, we'll do it by voluntary migration. After we are confident that the system works as intended (this process could take weeks, but also months), we will begin with automatic migrations. The critical factor here is not time, but that we have taken all measures necessary to ensure Imperia's stability).

      If all goes well, migrations will go by unnoticed by most of our customers, with the great difference of improved service levels, and a new control panel.
    • Fathi,

      Congratulations on your recent award, and yes I voted :-) in your favor! I've been with IX for about 3 years now and currently host 8 domains on your servers. I am looking forward to "Imperia" and the other upgrades you have mentioned. I was really surprised to see the energy saving potential. I know improvements and upgrades like the one IX is undertaking do not happen overnight. I also understand they present their own set of problems that must be addressed. Ultimately though, your clients and our clients will all benefit, and I for one am proud to be associated with a company willing to accept those challenges head on. Thanks to the whole IX team for their hard work in making this happen. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but your efforts will pay off. Hang in there.
    • dranod
      I have to agree with a few previous comments; live chat support staff seem to have some issues with english, prompt replies and understanding the concept that a customer has some kind of fault finding ability.

      Is it outsourced?

      Secondly: this email looked alot like spam, and it seemed all but my Ubuntu machine threw it in the junkmail folder.
      From a consumer point of view - short and to the point with areference for further reading would have been better.

      Lastly, what I want from a hosting provider: HOSTING, and simply that.

      I don't care what "cool features" there are. I write my own scripts, and use my own composers.

      I just want to pay the money and upload my site's files.

      I really don't care about the control panel as long as it works.

      like any good woman, if my hosting is reliable, honest, and does not go nuts once a month, we will have a long relationship.

      In the past 3 years, this what I have had.

      That being said, I do not profit from my site, I simply display my own experiments and host a bit of free stuff to make this world a little better.

      Others may not share my opinion.
    • ixwebhosting is really really cool.. I was shocked when i enter their control panel. It is friendly and i can almost do everything i want. But one thing i dont like is that i cannot host a game server on ixwebhosting which is my main purpose. I hope it will be available to host a game server since i was on unlimited pro package..thanks you
    • Jose H
      Does that great new technology of innovation has the most basic feature, the: "forgot your password?" link on the webmail login window !?

      That will be a huge improvement of your platform.....
    • the greater big
      sept 12-09
      Look- great service, great price, but this migration process was very frustrating & confusing. After 1.5 hours on your live chat help desk, I walked away with a bit more confidence as to what was happening. For us not-so-geeky customers, simple englsh would go a long way to guiding us along this upgrade path. In my case, it was with shared IP's. My questions were:

      1- Without changing any settings, why are my websites are still working?
      2- Where do i make these changes & what happens when I do change the Name Servers?
      3- email accounts... will they automatically start working when these changes take place or is there more MX, A, C, LP's, or CD's to change?

      The answers- after digging and being transferred to 2 diff people (who were rather patient with me , and in the end answered my questions- but this info could easily have been provided ahead of time)
      The answers- as I understand them to be:
      1- We made a duplicate copy of all your websites and settings, and your sites function on BOTH the old servers and the new ones to give you time to move over to the new servers. Updating the settings will make no viewable difference and be virtually seamless.
      2- Your registrar- where you have registered your domain names. You will need administartion access to login, but all the tools are there for a DNS edit. Once the DNS resolves to the new settings (usually within a couple of hours) the new settings take over. That's it.
      3- If the email accts have been set up with IX in your panel, then those IP setting updates above will make your email accounts including passwords fucntion without touching them. As far as CD's and LP's go- get an iPod.

      Unfortunately, if you have a lot of domains on shared IP not registered with IX, you have your work cut out for you! One at a time... like me, I have customers on a variety of registrars... interesting exercise.

      But this took 3 attempts to gather the above info, being pushed off twice with the live help desk saying 'please create a ticket'. This is the help desk...a ticket??

      Not an easy migration all in all, and it could have been more painless and more thought out is what I'm getting at.
    • Richard
      I signed up with your service today because you currently offered Fully-Trusted ASP.NET sites in Shared Hosting. Will the Imperia platform support Fully Trusted ASP.NET sites in Shared Hosting as well?
    blog comments powered by Disqus
     
    © 2009 IX Web Hosting.