Tag Archives: Australia

Sydney, Australia – A Green Datacenter

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Earlier today our datacenter provider for our Sydney, Australia announced that they had been awarded the LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™ Gold Certification for its high building standards by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The award was given for 3 primary reasons:

  • 100 percent reduction of potable water for sewage conveyance through the capture and reuse of rainwater.
  • 78 percent of on-site generated construction waste diverted from landfill.
  • Use of up to 98 percent of the building's existing structural elements -- the LEED Gold Certification required a minimum of 55 percent of elements be reused.
  • Overall energy cost savings of 22.24 percent.

Prior to its use a datacenter, the Equinix facility was used as a government paper store. The building was designed by famed architect, Harry Seidler.

The U.S. Green Building Council established the LEED certification in 2000. The LEED certification is designed to provide building owners, and operators with a framework  for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions, taking into account factors such as energy savings, water efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction.

This makes the second green datacenter VPS.net uses, as our Amsterdam location also has a plan that has been into action to reduce its carbon footprint.

Cloud Report: Australia, India and RAM Nodes!

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My friends have told me that giving yourself a nickname might be the most self-absorbed Cloud Report: Australia, India and RAM Nodes! thing you could ever do. That didn't stop me. Perhaps that's an even more telling sign? You see, I was about to start referring to myself as the "streak stopper." Sports in Cleveland, Ohio haven't been so good to us lately. After Lebron James took his talents to South Beach, Florida, my Cleveland Cavaliers went on a 26 game losing streak. I was there when it ended. With the way we celebrated the victory after 26 losses, you would have thought the city of Cleveland finally won a championship.

While the Cavaliers have returned to greatness under basketball prodigy Kyrie Irving, the Cleveland Indians -- our baseball team -- have faltered. What we thought might be a playoff bound season, has recently been plagued with zero offense, and not very good pitching. In fact, we lost 11 games in a row. With the losing streak, tickets were cheap, and I couldn't help my self. Looking for a night out with some friends, I picked up a few seats for this Friday's game against the Boston Red Sox. Much to my dismay, the Indians finally won a game on Tuesday, and the nickname "Streak Stopper" gets shelved even before it was able to be used. Friday will still be a good time, though I am slightly disappointed. I was really looking forward to having a nickname, even if it was self given.

Australian & Indian VPS Servers Online

It's not often you're able to announce two locations in a single day, especially two locations that have been as heavily anticipated at Australia and India. I've been working at VPS.net since June of 2010, and our customers have been begging for VPS servers in both countries since day 1. They're both finally here and available for your use. As these locations mature, I can't wait to see the amount of unique ways our customers will be able to use them. Every day when I talk to our customers, I find out about different ways customers are utilizing our services. It's part of what makes my job at VPS.net so exciting.

Now, before I go any further, I do owe everyone a little bit of an explanation. When we initially launched our new Australian location, we marketed it as being in Melbourne. Melbourne looks like a beautiful city, and one I intend to visit as soon as I can. Unfortunately, that's not where our servers are. Instead they're located in Sydney, Australia. Now people can say, "How does that even happen?"

I'll explain -- it's actually quite simple. When doing our research for datacenter partners, we spoke with vendors located throughout Australia, many of which were in Melbourne. When it came time, we chose an existing partner, Equinix, which has a datacenter located in Sydney. We have another partner for our Manchester, United Kingdom location, named Melbourne Internet. While I wish I could explain in much more detail how it happened, I can only relate it to those times when a certain name or word gets stuck in your brain and that's all you can think of.

Half Price RAM Nodes

Hurry! Our RAM Node special is set to end tonight. Currently you're able to purchase 512 MB of RAM for just £5 / $7.50 a month. RAM is the easiest way to increase the speed your cloud server, and with this special, also the most affordable. In you're at the cusp of needing an upgrade, now is the time to do it.

That's all for this week. What's in store for next week? I don't want ruin any of the surprises Rus has for you, but I hear that may be more new locations about ready to make their debut. Any guesses? If you're in the USA, I'll throw a robot your way if you correctly guess.

Australian VPS Servers from VPS.net

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VPS.net has gone south of the equator with our brand new Sydney, Australia location! This new location represents two firsts for VPS.net; Sydney is not only our first location in Australia, but also the first location for us in the southern hemisphere.

Our Australian VPS servers are located in Equinix in Sydney, Australia. Nodes in our Australian VPS location are charged at a premium rate of $40/£27 per node, and come with 150 GB of bandwidth.

Why should you create a VPS in Australia?

Currently many hosts are providing services to Australian based clients with servers in the United States. While a west coast presence in the United States does provide for a quality hosting experience, latency is still quite significant. With Australia showing positive economic growth, Australian based businesses will also be looking to have their website hosted locally.

Recognize the Brand?

Finally, we've all been pretty excited to launch our new Australian location. It's been a long time coming! We decided we'd have some fun, and turn the logos of some iconic Australian brands into something a little more VPS.net style. What do you think?

The Cloud Report: CPU Upgrades, Elastic VPS, and HostBill

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It's been a busy week at the VPS.net offices this week. While some of the work has gone on behind the scene, we have plenty of things to discuss. Rod Holmes followed up his initial guest blog post with yet another insightful masterpiece, Adwords vs. SEO...A surprising WInner. Jerel from PyroCMS also posted a guest blog, highlighting many of the benefits PyroCMS has to offer. If you're looking for a new CMS, PyroCMS may be one to consider.

CPU Upgrades
The biggest announcement this week was the increase in CPU power given per node for our Cloud Servers. Each node is now given processing power to the equivalent of 1.2 GHz, doubling the previous amount of resources given. This upgrade was done with absolutely no price increase. If you haven't received the upgrade already, simply reboot your cloud server and it will come back online with the increased resources.

Elastic VPS
We have released our new Elastic VPS product. An Elastic VPS is built upon the same cloud server infrastructure we use to power all of our products, however the Elastic VPS is able to grow and shrink as necessary. Our cloud servers have always supported this, but as a result of the changes in resource utilization, your monthly bill could have huge fluctuations. The new Elastic VPS comes at a fixed monthly cost, making things easier to budet for. Prices start at just $112 a month and the Elastic VPS can be used in any of our locations.

Australia and India
Our new Australian Cloud Server and Indian Cloud Server locations are nearly online. We expect to have them online and ready for use by Monday, meaning you'll be able launch Cloud Servers in two new locations. The Australian cloud is located in Melbourne, while our Indian cloud is located in New Delhi.

HostBill
HostBill is back at VPS.net! While we're no longer able to offer HostBill free of charge to our clients, we are able to license it at a monthly fee of $10. HostBill does come with a VPS.net module, which is great for our resellers. The module allows for resellers to completely automate the process of setting up, and managing a VPS for their own clients.

That's all for this week. As Rus hinted at on Twitter, we're going to be running a HOT special next week for existing clients. Keep your eye out for it, because you will want to take advantage of it.