Deft Blog
Keep up with the latest in colocation, cloud, and disaster recovery services.
ServerCentral.com: Then And Now
Let's take a walk down memory lane through ServerCentral.com.1999–2000:ServerCentral 1.0, back when clip art was cool.2001–2002:Because purple.2003–2006:J u s t i f i e d T e x t.2007:Triangles. Triangles everywhere.2008–2012:Clip Art, we meet again.2013:We emerge...
Why ServerCentral’s Internet Didn’t Go Down
After early August’s widely publicized outage among several Internet providers, a lot of ServerCentral’s customers are curious as to why they didn’t see any impact. The short answer? ServerCentral deploys a modern and scalable routing infrastructure supported by...
4 Signs That Your Startup Is Ready for Dedicated Infrastructure
Whenever we meet with early-stage companies, we get asked the same question: “How will we know when we’re ready to add our own infrastructure to our shared cloud?” While there are many answers to this question, here are four indicators that it’s time to consider...
If I’m looking to add cloud capacity for resiliency and reliability, what should I look for in a provider?
If I'm looking to add cloud capacity for resiliency and reliability, what should I look for in a provider? Look for: Their level of comfort with your technical stack and requirements Level of experience with companies like yours A consultative approach to...
Scalability part 3: You’re ready for cloud
In Scalability 102: Virtualization, we discussed the advantages that virtualization brings to the table when scaling your environment. Here’s a quick recap: There more you can utilize the idle time on most servers, the less you have to worry about scaling via...
Scalability in cloud computing: using virtualization to save money
Scalability in cloud computing can get make your team’s infrastructure more reliable and affordable. By starting with adopting virtualization, you can setup the environment for your company to thrive and grow at an unprecedented scale. First we’ll discuss how to look...
What Is Cloud?
There is a lot of confusion these days as to what is really considered "cloud." Although a number of the technologies that make up cloud computing have been around for many years, only in the last few have they been grouped together under the label “cloud.” Still, the...
What It’s Like to Work at ServerCentral
We couldn’t be more proud of the staff we have. As luck would have it, they like us too! We asked our employees, "What's your favorite part about working at ServerCentral?" Here's an uncensored look at their replies: On Fridays, it's the beer fridge. The rest of the...
Information security for small businesses
If you read the news lately, it seems like every corporate board across the country is adding Chief Information Security Officer to the ranks of their C-suite. The bailiwick of the CIO — Information Security — is now the de facto buzzword of the post-Heartbleed world....
Measuring the cost of downtime
You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. Despite the business impact, few businesses actually measure how much downtime they rack up in a year. Acknowledging a failure and researching the contributing elements becomes a critical success factor for risk mitigation...
Scalability Part 1: Up And Out
Everyone wants to grow. Whether that's serving more customers, expanding into new markets, or taking care of internal IT for more employees, growth is a measure of the health in business, economies, and nature itself. Growing your IT infrastructure can be...
5 strategies for implementing high availability
Even the most robustly architected systems fail. Here are 5 automated strategies you can take to limit your downtime exposure.
Patching Heartbleed
ServerCentral works around-the-clock to help keep our clients secure. Here’s some insight into the time taken to perform a massive, network-wide scan and notify our affected clients: ServerCentral's response summary You don’t spend 15 years in IT without one of...
What to Put in Your Support Ticket for The Fastest Response
Once in a blue moon, we get a support request like this:"My server isn't responding. Please reboot it."Well, yes, we'd love to, except we have thousands of servers and don't know which one you'd like to reboot. In this case, we would need to write back asking for more...
People Make All The Difference
When you buy technology for your business, you're not just buying systematized 1s and 0s and boxes with blinky lights. You're buying an extension of your workforce. Information Technology is now the backbone of modern business. Without it, orders go unfulfilled, bills...
Dedicated vs. Cloud Costs
One of the major factors in deciding between cloud and dedicated infrastructure is cost. While hard costs are an obvious contributing factor, soft costs are more subtle and can be difficult to assign a number. So, how do you justify costs to your CFO? Human Capital...
IT infrastructure is not a product discussion
In my last post, I opened a can of worms by taking the stand that cloud isn’t a panacea for companies’ infrastructure challenges. I’d like to expand on this a bit and discuss how we view the physical IT infrastructure world today. Being in this business a lot longer...
5 Questions That Call Your SLA Into Question
Once purely the domain of IT and infrastructure organizations, service level agreements (SLAs) have become strategic business tools throughout the enterprise. The proliferation of as-a-service (aaS) offerings places newfound interest and importance in what SLAs should...
Are Big Data Systems The Next Bleeding Edge Technology?
We're getting into more and more discussions with our customers about Big Data: what it is, what it's good for, and the problems it solves. Big Data systems are made up of 6-7 classes of software that evolved to deal with the difficulty (and cost) of scaling...
Not All SSAE 16 Reports Are Created Equal
The SSAE-16 SOC 1 report is considered to be the mark of a trustworthy technology service provider, but the reality is that every company’s SOC 1 report looks different. While many providers offer a SOC 1 report, the SOC 1 framework itself does not have a common set...
To Colo Or Not To Colo, There Really Is No Question
“Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous [outages]. Or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by [colo'ing] end them?” - William Shakespeare Well maybe that quote is a little melodramatic, but for IT infrastructure managers who...
What Is Your Definition of Cloud?
A consistent question with inconsistent answers.The holiday season is usually a time for reflection. A time to focus on the year that was. If you’re lucky, and your hectic holiday schedule permits, you may even get to spend a bit of quiet time contemplating what is to...
Cloud is not a panacea for your infrastructure challenges
In our 18+ years in the technology infrastructure space, we’ve seen several major iterations in how companies use service providers for their compute, storage and network needs. From shared hosting to dedicated servers, colocation, and now cloud, the key for...
Dedicated vs. Cloud Hosting White Paper
One of the most difficult IT decisions facing organizations today is the choice between dedicated servers and cloud solutions. Often the largest inhibitors to change are the initial investment in cloud infrastructure, and the migration strategy from a dedicated...
