G'day Kualo,

We run our own network in Australia which provides primarily terrestrial, radio and satellite internet connectivity to the business and home sectors. We also house our DNS servers and our main mail, news and web servers locally in our NOC here in Australia.

However, bandwidth downunder is *much* more expensive than it is in USA, so apart from a few priority clients who need quick local data access, we have all our hosting clients on unmanaged servers in USA. DNS is handled in all cases within our own NOC, and for hosting clients who are also clients of our ISP arm, we generally handle their mail locally whereas the mail for all other sites is left on the USA boxes.

Lately we've been doing calculations of the cost per site of our hosting clients, and when the real cost of staff is included with respect to server management including OS / control-panel / security / enhancement updates, we're feeling it would actually be cheaper to use the services of a third party specialist.

Accordingly, we've been looking for some time at your own operation and have been impressed with the obvious level of commitment the owners and staff here regularly demonstrate. It's always hard to gain a true perspective of internet companies from a distance, but yours look to be a tightly run and maturely staffed firm, and that suits our own business model perfectly.

In view of our particular requirements, could we just trouble you with a few brief questions?

1./ With respect to DNS management, will there be any problem maintaining full DNS control of all our hosting clients on our Australian DNS servers?

2./ Will assigned ips remain static for a reseller, semi dedicated or dedicated account for the life of the account?

3./ Would the ip used for a reseller account be carried along if the account were upgraded or converted to a semi dedicated or dedicated?

4./ I'm assuming your DNS assignments are server wide, or is it possible to specify a primary and secondary DNS for a particular reseller or semi dedicated? The point of this question is that I'm assuming that with WHM/CPanel a DNS record is created with the creation of a virtual site and if any of our clients' scripts request name resolution that will be performed by the DNS running on your server.

5./ If the answer to 4 above is such that name resolution of our accounts will be handled locally by your server, does the WHM/Cpanel system allow us to modify individual MX records appropriately so that those sites with mail handled back in Australia will be resolved correctly by their own scripts as well as any other scripts executed by other sites located on your servers?

6./ Can you also provide pricing for semi dedicated and dedicated server configurations?

7./ Do you maintain historic records of server performance (downtime, server load) which can be viewed? We fully realise that server down times occur in the very best of networks, we're much more interested in the response methods which staff employ in the handling of such situations.

If you require any clarification of any of the above questions, please ask away.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

Best Regards

LBJ

Hello LBJ,

First off we would like to thank you for your in depth interest. We are just going over your questions carefully before we respond.

Hi LBJ,

Thank you for your enquiry. I have detailed some answers to your questions below...

That is no problem at all. All accounts will work with external DNS servers. There are some key points to note, however, when using reseller accounts. For example, The FTP zone entry would need to be an A record pointing to the main IP of the server that you are using.

This is the intention, yes. There have been occasions in the past when we have had to move a server to a different location, or change an IP block because it became blacklisted after a server not under our control spammed. This is very rare.

If the reseller account was in our FloridaNOC, then this should not be an issue as we use our own IP blocks.

The nameservers added to DNS zones for each account will be set to those of the reseller. However, you are right in thinking that name resolution will take place on a local level.

This is a sticky point for cPanel. It is a feature that has been requested numerous times, and occasionally appeared. Basically, cPanel uses a file containing all the local domains, and checks all mail against them before deciding where to send it. It should be possible to specify domains which must be delivered externally, and we could work with you on that if that is what you require. It might involve some manual alterations to the various Exim configuration files.

Semi-dedicated servers are brought online when we have a number of clients who require one. There is currently a slot free on one of our semi-dedicated servers however.
We have not officially launched our dedicated server arm, but will be doing so over the coming months. We can provide dedicated servers, and if you required one I would advise emailing info@kualo.com detailing the specifications you would require, and we would put together a quote for you.

We currently use Alertra external monitoring, although we are in the process of setting up our own monitoring system that will be distributed across two locations. Some of the uptime links are as follows:

Bravo - http://uptime.alertra.com/uptime2?id2=2583&id1=276686
Juliet: http://uptime.alertra.com/uptime2?id2=2583&id1=276688
Macbeth - http://uptime.alertra.com/uptime2?id2=2583&id1=177181
Othello: http://uptime.alertra.com/uptime2?id2=2583&id1=177183
Romeo: http://uptime.alertra.com/uptime2?id2=2583&id1=177182

I will say that June was an interesting month. We did experience some network issues towards the end of June which affected the FloridaNOC servers (Bravo, Juliet and Romeo). Romeo also experienced a severe motherboard crash which corrupted both hard drives. It involved us having to rebuild the server and restore accounts manually. Despite the damage to the machine, we were still able to rescue a large amount of the data from the main drive. In addition, the Macbeth server is our only server hosted in BurstNET, and as such it has experienced large amounts of downtime recently. They have been making large changes to their network configuration, and we look forward to their network returning to its previously stable state.

As you mentioned, problems do occur, and when they do we work as fast as possible to get things back online. We do our utmost to minimise the downtime, and keep our clients informed at all times. During such times, the forums are used extensively because they allow our clients input into the problems which provide us valuable feedback from which both sides benefit greatly.


I hope that answers all your questions. If you have any more, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Craig.

Cool.

Cool again.

I'm thinking the best thing would be to give it a test then. :-)

That's possibly looking like the go for us. What price and details are we talking about there, or should I email info@kualo.com for more details on that option?

You were most helpful thanks Craig.

If you could just advise how we should proceed to obtain details regarding your semi-dedicated we should be all set.

Best Regards,

LBJ

Hi LBJ,

You will find the details for the Semi-Dedicated server here:

http://forums.kualo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=344

I hope that is useful, again if you have any questions be sure to let me know.

Best regards,

Jo

G'day Jo & Craig,

That looks perfect for us.

I'm assuming that all the details pertaining to your standard reseller accounts apply to the semi dedicateds too.

In particular, is overselling of bandwidth ok?

To give an example, the main server we want to move over currently has around 200 sites pulling a total of less than 30GB/month. Our standard base account provides an allotment of 50MB space with a 2GB bandwidth allowance. However the particular client base we target generally has low hit, low bandwidth static sites so we definitely need to oversell on bandwidth. From our current figures you will obviously see that it is a very safe oversale though. By the time we approach the limit of disk space provided on your semi dedicated we would still be barely be scratching at half the bandwidth allocation.

...and the final question, where do we click on your site to sign up for the semi dedicated? :-)

We've been following your development for a while now and I'm quite confident in our decision to partner with you. Our company has been involved with professional IT provision for a little over 20 years and we tend to forge long term business partnerships with quality organisations such as your own. We're definitely looking forward to a long and prosperous relationship.

Best Regards,

LBJ

Hi LBJ,

Overselling bandwidth is absolutely fine. Thanks for the positive comments about our business, they are truly appreciated.

Click here to sign up for the semi ded server.

I look forward to a long partnership together.

Best regards,

Jo

G'day Jo,

Clicked and signed. :-)

I'm positive we'll work well together.

Thank you Dennis, Craig and Jo.

Best Regards,

LBJ

Welcome to Kualo, LBJ.

Email sent, welcome to Kualo! I also enabled client access to the forums on your username so you can surf and search them to your hearts content.

Jo

Hello LBJ and a warm welcome from Kualo Canada.

Yahooooooooooooo!

Oooops, sorry couldn't contain my enthusiasm.

We all look forward to a strong and profitable relationship with your business group.

G'day All,

Thanks very much for the warm welcome.

I'll get a bit of a feel for everything this morning and we'll start loading up our server later today.

It feels good to be here.

Best Regards,

LBJ