Any place you spend hours upon hours every week, you tend to get to know people pretty well. During my time on my shift, I’ve gotten to know my fellow SLayers quite well. You learn their favorite foods (I’ll tell you right away what almost everyone on my shift orders from our favorite Chinese deliver place – almost like clockwork), their choices in music, their favorite computer games (yes, WoW tops this list, seemingly a standard in the IT Industry), and even how they react in certain situations. While the operations team is a tight knit group, we also have our extended families in SLales, InfoSys, Dev, and the other departments.

As many know, they recently opened up our new HQ. Yes, it’s as awesome as every has said it is. Lance made it a point to acquire a Sonic-style ice machine, our facilities are state of the art, and the building is just simply awe-inspiring. I suppose you could consider it our new home. As a new home, we’ve recently brought all of our departments together under one roof. Operations can grab a quick break with SLales, Dev can bounce some questions off of the CSAs or SBEs simply by walking a few feet, and even better, the friendly trash talking and joking just got easier (we’re a family, of course we’re going to mess with each other every chance we get!).

I’m sure employees everywhere are akin to this metaphor, but here it seems to ring true. We have our family quarrels, we know each other like the backs of our hands, and when things get heavy, we’re there to watch each others’ backs to ensure the mission is accomplished, and we continue to dominate the hosting industry.

So here I am at the new “SoftLayer Global HQ” on Alpha Road in Dallas that we moved into last Monday, July 12th. We had a very warm welcome; our landlords catered bagels, pastries, and fruit for breakfast that day, and they also provided Maggiano’s for lunch (I’m still in need of lasagna detox).

Another thing that was (and still is, and will unfortunately be for a while) warm is the weather outside. Blisteringly hot, actually. Also, our new office space is huge compared to the one we just moved from. Being the only residents in our building, we have lots of room for growth (and we will definitely grow). As a result, most of the departments that were nestled right in next to each other at the “horseshoe” location in Plano are now isolated from each other and separated by light-years of deep space (the ridiculously huge spaces between galaxies) in the name of room for future growth. If I were a scientist, I would probably now make up some cool, true analogy derived from real data for someone to understand how vast deep space is, (you know, like saying the Earth and the Sun’s relative sizes are like a pea and a soccer ball or something like that), but I’m not a scientist; I’m a summer intern who classifies transactions all day, so I’ll just read Wikipedia and then say that it’s just huge and that there’s nothing there except random bits of energy and this theoretical weird stuff called “dark” matter and “dark” energy. Stuff like that is what’s separating the Accounting department from certain amenities such as the front door, the main café…oh, and our CFO and VP. But who cares about them, because it’s not like we work for them or anything.

Trivia question! What is uncomfortable about deep space? It’s really, really, really, incredibly cold. You pretty much don’t want to go there, at all, ever. I don’t care how cold the DC and Seattle guys say it is where they live compared to Dallas; compared to deep space, even Siberia would feel like Death Valley. What’s the temperature? Infinitesimally close to absolute zero. What is absolute zero? It’s the lowest temperature theorized to exist, and while no one has ever measured something with this temperature because it’s nearly impossible to do so, it’s highly likely that this theory is true. What is the scientific definition of temperature? Temperature is just the measurement of the effect of thermal energy (heat) on the movement of matter. Heat gives things kinetic energy (which makes them move), and we measure the average kinetic energy of a set of particles and call that the temperature. Imagine particles of matter as zillions of microscopic foam balls in a large pot. If the pot is held still or nearly still (a low temperature), it appears as a solid. As more heat is present, the pot shakes more and more, and if there were zillions of microscopic balls, at a certain temperature it would appear to you that there was a liquid in the pot rather than a solid because the heat was giving the particles more kinetic energy to the point where they were moving so much they began to flow like a liquid (melting). And if it shook so much that the balls flew out of the pot, it would appear as a gas. Absolute zero is the theoretical temperature where there is a complete absence of thermal energy (a completely still pot). Well, you know about the Celsius scale, right? Water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred degrees Celsius. In 1848 a scientist named William Thomson, however better known as Lord Kelvin, got lazy (or innovative, who knows) and made up a new scale where absolute zero, was, in fact, zero. Absolute zero is located at about negative 273 degrees Celsius, or zero Kelvins. So deep space is cold and dark.

Now that I’m done rambling, what do deep space (which as established above, is cold and dark) and SoftLayer have in common? Both! Apparently the warm temperatures outside were slightly winning in the battle against the air conditioners on Monday (just a simple calibration issue), so a few people in my sector of the galaxy politely requested a slight temperature adjustment to cool down the office just a tiny bit. The result was an Antarctic chill of biblical proportions that plummeted the office temperature close to that of absolute zero. I’m not kidding. I’m now sitting in my cube typing this blog extremely slowly, because as I explained earlier, you can’t exactly move very well at deep space temperatures. I’m dreaming of a pair of astronaut gloves while wearing a sweater I found in my car that I had during the winter. So that’s the cold part. Well, for the dark part, among other slight issues that can be expected upon a new office location that is still not completely finished, we encountered one that prevented Bryan Chamberlain (my boss) from having lights in his office. Apparently the motion sensor that turns them on is not communicating with the power grid, and so a new part has to be ordered and replaced during off-hours. Congratulations, Bryan, you now have two things in common with interstellar space. However the moral of the story is, cold places are great for housing heat-producing servers.

And Wikipedia makes me sound really smart.

Every so often on a slammed sale days, I offer to pay for lunch for the sales team to keep everyone at their desks focused on sales rather than worrying about food. Other times, a very nice customer might offer to pay for lunch one day for the sales team. Regardless of the situation, I usually task someone with ordering and picking up the food so the rest of the team can focus on sales. Seems pretty simple right? Somehow it never seems to go as planned. Here are two examples:
How to spend $200 on lunch for 6:

Daniel one of our Senior Account Managers calls me on his way into work (he comes in at 11:00PM), here is the conversation:

Daniel: “Hey Steven, I see its really slammed at work want me to pick up lunch on the way in?”
Steven: “Sure, go ahead no one has had time to get up from their desk much less get lunch. Pick something up an Ill buy lunch today for the team”.
Daniel: “What should I get”
Steven: “Whatever is fine, gotta go the phone is ringing”

Daniel shows up a bit later with a ton of food, enough to feed half the office not just sales. A really nice Fajitas feast with all the fixings, hot sauce, cheese, beans, guacamole, rice, pretty much everything. I thought to myself, wow Daniel did a really good job here this is excellent. Then I get the bill… It was over $200 for takeout lunch for 6 people. I promptly tell Daniel he is no longer on lunch delivery team, and that $200 for lunch is a bit much. Two months later I am still trying to work up the courage to put that one on an expense report.

How to spend $25 on lunch for 10:

A particularly grateful customer contacted us saying that he wanted to buy lunch for the sales and a couple of networking team members that helped him out with a recent issue. Mary another one of our Senior Account Managers was tasked with the order this time and after much discussion back and forth between Pizza and Mexican food, we settle on Mexican food. I am thinking to myself, thank goodness Daniel isn’t in charge of this order, Vik (the customer) probably doesn’t want to pay $200 for lunch. When the food arrives, I step out into the sales area to examine the feast. Much to my surprise there is only two very small bags of food half full.
I announce out loud:

“Where is the rest of the food? This isn’t close to enough to feed 10 people.”
I’m told “that’s it, that’s all we got”.

No cheese, no hot sauce, no guacamole… this is a far cry from the spread Daniel got last time and there was no chance of it feeding 8 people. Ultimately I send someone back for more food.

So what is the lesson learned here? The sale team is excellent at selling SoftLayer services, and managing customer relationships. They can tell you the difference between and why you want a Single processor 5000 series server vs. a Single processor 3000 series server, they can tell you why your video streaming site needs to run on a server with SAS drives and not SATAII drives, and they can tell you all about StorageLayer and how it can help you. What cant they do for you? They can’t get the Mexican food order for lunch correct.

Next time we will stick with Pizza.

Seattle baby! That’s what’s next. With that being said I thought I would blog about Tom Hanks. I know you wish you had thought of this one too. I chose him because I figure he has done enough movies and other things that I can actually have enough content and he did do “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail” and they are both closely related to our expansion. Why, you ask? Right now we have a few guys in Seattle installing cage nuts — 17,280 to be exact. That is 1 cage nut installed every 5 seconds for 24 hours straight (Sleepless!). I hate that I am missing out on that fun. Writing blogs is nice too I suppose.
So here we go Tom Hanks and Softlayer!

Softlayer works because we are all “Bosom Buddies”. We all get along. Hopefully all of us will continue to be famous afterwards and not just half of us. That would make for a lot of “Happy Days” in the future. We also have quite a few “Family Ties” as we have a brother/sister pair (Fleitman), and 3 brother pairs (Kinman/Laude/Guerra/Harris) and we can’t forget the Father/Son set (Rushe) family keeps things fun and busy! If we continue to grow at this rate we will all be making a “Splash” soon when we leave our competitors in the dust. When that happens we will have a party to rival the likes of the “Bachelor Party” and we can invite “The Man with One Red Shoe” and will need some “Volunteers” to serve the Hors D’oeuvres.

I bet most of you didn’t know that Tom Hanks was in “Real Genius” but I will use it anyway because we really do have some real geniuses here (Everyone take a bow). This keeps us from turning into a “Money Pit” and on the top of our game. I could say that before Softlayer all of us would have been just a bunch of guys with “Nothing in Common” but it seems that “Every Time We Say Goodbye” we seem to end up back together. Even having to go through the “Dragnet” is worth it, because we all want to be “Big” and have the last laugh in the “Punchline”.

We all drive in from “The Burbs” almost daily just to make sure we make our customers happy and we let the kids watch “Turner and Hooch” on the in-car DVD on the way to daycare. Once we get here we keep the “Joe Versus the Volcano” attitude and will take on any problem and get it solved.
To keep it light, once a year we go play in Muenster and Sam cooks up the BBQ on “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and we pig out and have a blast. There are some great “Tales from the Crypt” after those parties. Sam and his cooking crew won 3rd place last year and that puts them truly in “A League of Their Own”.
Meanwhile the guys are still “Sleepless in Seattle” and Lance is spending his nights thinking of the next location. I really doubt it will be “Philadelphia” at least I hope not, too many Eagles up there. Go Cowboys!

Note: I am pretty sure I am the “Forrest Gump” of Softlayer. I think Gump had ADHD like me and that is why he wanted to be and do so many things in his life. I take pride in that! You can always tell by my blogs.

Back to being the best — in “Apollo 13″ the most famous line in the movie (true story too) was “Houston, we have a problem” I bet there are some competitors to Softlayer out there that are saying that same thing right about now with our continued growth and that isn’t some kid’s “Toy Story” that is the honest truth. We do it with customer service and the best product. Why? We just like hearing our customers say over and over, keep doing “That thing you do” and we will keep buying your service. That hurts the competition sometimes. We aren’t sorry about that. We will go “From the Earth to the Moon” to continue to make our customers happy and we will make sure “You’ve got Mail” when something important is coming and it will not be just another “Toy Story 2″. Even if it is like “Saving Private Ryan” we do anything we can to make it happen. All while walking “The Green Mile” because taking care of our environment is very important to us. (You didn’t think I was going to talk about the death penalty did you?)

Some people like to look at us as a “Castaway”, but we truly are a “Band of Brothers” on the road to fruition instead of the “Road to Perdition” like so many others. I welcome all readers to try and “Catch me if you can” in this blog and let me know of the movies I have missed so far. I will admit I have skipped a few TV appearances so you have to let me slide on those.

One of these days I might have to blog on “Freedom: A History of Us” and let you know where we all came from and what got us here. It is a long list of “Great Performances” that would impress you. Some of us were the smart geeky type and some of us were “The Ladykillers” and could have fun at an airport in “The Terminal”.
I am getting close to the end now so the Narrator would now say, “Elvis has left the Building” on the “Polar Express” or was it in a pack of “Cars”, oh well either way. I hope reading this blog has been an enjoyable experience and not like trying to “Crack the Da Vinci Code”.

As we all know there is an incredible amount of attention being paid to the “greening” of IT. Most people in the hosting industry regard this as the responsibility of the datacenter, as they can make the largest impact with their large-scale deployments of energy-efficient power supplies and processors, efficient physical layouts, cooling practices, and recycling.

Outside of the hosting industry the options become more varied—namely the ability to save massive amounts of power by turning off unneeded infrastructure during non-peak times. A great example would be a call center that operates 9-5 and shuts their workstations down when not in use, or an accounting firm that turns off their billing servers when they go home for the day. This is far from a common practice currently, but it is a very logical and easy step to conserving power. The gotcha here is that unless you can physically walk over to the infrastructure and power it back on, you are going to have to call someone to do it for you. Then wait for them to do it for you. Then hope that they don’t forget. This leaves many businesses with infrastructure in an outsourced datacenter throwing their hands in the air, because it’s frankly just too risky to not have their resources available at 9:00am when their day starts—might as well just leave everything on.

The story is a little different here at SoftLayer. Using our innovative network design and remote power control, our customers are redefining the way that IT is deployed in an outsourced datacenter. They run their web and mail servers here, pretty normal stuff. But utilizing the SSL to private backend network feature (allowing them to completely disable connectivity to the public network), they are also deploying their domain controllers here. And their office file servers. And their central servers to which their local thin clients connect. They are getting them out of the closet in the back of the office and into a datacenter on enterprise-grade hardware. And you know what they do at the end of the day? They turn them off. The next morning, a click on the power control in the SoftLayer Portal brings them instantly back online anytime, day or night. No phone call to support needed, no waiting for someone else to do it for you. The impact of technology designed to give you optimal control of your IT environment is staggering, especially when you see so many companies utilizing it.

So not only can you choose to deploy your operations in a datacenter that is making enormous strides in green infrastructure, but you can also deploy in one that provides you with the ability to control your own impact as well.

And just like that, everyone gets to be green. And sorry, envy doesn’t count.

I get bored while driving to work so today I decided to Blog on the way to work. There are no corrections to what follows so easy on the spelling and grammar errors, you would make them too!

So I drive about 1 hour to work everyday and I deciced on the way that the other kinman’s acct blogs were too hard. Almost like homework and I decided it was time to blog while dryping. Dryping isd driving while typing. Its a very unsafe practice but I like living on the edge. I walk on banana peels too! Back to dryping, we all carry blackberries to make sure we can rapidly respond so that is what is making this possible. I have the 8700c with the full keyboard. There are 2 types of dryping single thumb and dual thumb. So far this has been all single thumb. Update I am 0sabout 1/3 of the way in. Single thumb is self explanatory one hand on the wheel and one on the phone. Dual thumb dryping is best in traffic or at red lights. Amazingly I get more people honking at me when dual thumbing at redlights. I. Must forget I am supposed to go on green. Unfortunatly my phone has no camera or I could be taking pictuires of the trip. Ok halfway and my thumb is tired. A big van behind me would like me to speed up. Btw this is a 41 mile trip so I have a tiny car that gets great mileage. So the van looks really big in the mirror. You’ in the white van’ if you read this, don’t tailgate the echo! 20 minutes left and almost on the freeway for a little dryping while going 80. 80 is interesting because it makes your thumb feel as it should be dryping faster. So I came up with th word dryping a few years back; if I have since been copied I was first; and my goal was to hear them use the word on OC and I never did. Did you? I guess we will never know now. Now I have to think of what show it should appear on now. I would say “Lost” ut they only had one van and one satellite phone and I think they finally broke both. Maybe they can say it in high school musical 3. Ok 7 minutes to go I better wrap it up. If I sideswiped your mirror in the making of this blog my apologies but I do have insurance. Technology is cool. I have left all grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors intact for the full affect. Ok, oi know I can’t do much better on a real keyboard with help from spellcheckers or dictionaries and thesauruses but it sounded good. Last exit. Tollbooth. Redlight. Dual thumbs enabled well that was short lived. Have a great day. And no dryping allowed. Professionals only. Key off

We like metrics, here are some stats from the trip above. The trip took 59 Minutes and is 41.8 miles. The blog is 452 words and 2300 characters including the spaces. That works out to 38.98 characters per minutes and 55 character per mile. Out of 452 words I see 12 misspelled or mistyped and 3 punctuation errors that weren’t intended. So I asked the other Kinman (Financial Wizard) what percentage was typed correctly and he gave me 96.68%. So now you know if a customer has an urgent need and I am mobile I can still take care of it at 38.98 characters per minute with almost a 97% accuracy while Dryping!!

The SoftLayer contingency recently returned from attending HostingCon 2007 in Chicago and I have to say, it was a great experience. We had a lot of opportunities to meet up with many of our customers, meet with a lot of vendors and potential vendors as well as visit with some of our competitors.

While there, I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion on “Green Hosting: Hope or Hype“. Isabel Wang did a great job of moderating the discussion with Doug Johnson, Dallas Kashuba, and myself. The overall premise of the panel discussion was to talk about green initiatives, how they affect the hosting industry, what steps can hosting companies take and is it something we should be pursuing.

It was interesting to hear the different approaches that companies take to be green. Should companies focus their efforts on becoming carbon neutral by purchasing carbon credits such as DreamHost, by promising to plant a tree for each server purchased such as Dell, by working on virtualization strategies such as SWSoft or by working to eliminate the initial impact on the environment such as we have done at SoftLayer. You can probably tell from one of my previous blog posts where SoftLayer is focusing our efforts to help make a difference.

Besides the efforts of the individual companies on the panel, there were some good questions from the audience that helped spur the conversation. Does the hosting industry need its own organization for self regulation or are entities such as The Green Grid sufficient? Do any of the hosting industry customers really care if a company is “green”? Should a hosting company care if it’s “green”? And, what exactly does “being green” mean?

While there are differing opinions to all of those questions, there really isn’t a “wrong” answer. Ultimately all of the steps companies take – no matter how small – will help to some extent. And no matter what the motivation – whether a company is “being green” in an effort to gain publicity, to save money or to simply “make a difference” – it’s all worth it in the end.

Being in SLales (SL + Sales = SLales – we’re so clever), I talk to around 200 people or so a day via email/tickets/telephone/chat/etc. I like to think of our Slales team as the “A” team in the industry. Going along with Jason’s “we wear many hats”, we must have detailed knowledge of every single product and service that we offer — networking capabilities, what program/software/application works with what hardware all the while fitting what each particular clients unique needs are into their budget.

A typical day for the Slales team involves getting to work and going straight for the Monster or coffee (or both) depending on your preference. Get to our cubes and login to our side of the customer portal, chat and check our email. This is when the fun begins. Immediately we are engaging people on chat, catching up our shared Slales and personal email inboxes, talking to clients or potential clients on the telephone, verifying orders, IMing with different divisions, putting through payments, credit card changes and grabbing tickets from existing clients looking to cut a deal for upgrading and/or adding servers and services – all at the same time. We take multitasking seriously here!

On top of all of that we have to make sure that customer billing is accurate when ordering these services depending on the deals we have available, which are always going to be inventory-based. Also, we are making sure that everything is working correctly on each customer’s server and if not, coordinating a game-plan to make sure that the client is satisfied and running along smoothly, as quickly as possible.

At the end of the day we want all of our clients to be comfortable, happy, making money and enjoying themselves – because if you are, we are too!

The Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model (OSI Model) or 7-layer model has been around for decades. It was actually developed in 1977 by the ISO as an abstract model of networking protocols which is divided into seven layers. Each layer interacts with the layer beneath it or above it depending in the directionality of the conversion. The 7-layer model was written from a broader point of view and in today’s world is not really used as it was intended. The most common protocol and the one most of us have heard of is the Internet protocol know as TCP/IP. The TCP/IP model only uses four of the layers to more simplify the architecture making it streamlined and easier for most to understand. Here are both models and a brief description and example of each.

OSI Model (7 layer)

1. Physical – The electrical and physical connections for devices (example: wires, electrical signals, hubs, network cards)
2. Data Link – Functional means of transferring data between network devices via switches and protocols (example: Ethernet, Token-Ring and switches)
3. Network – This layer is responsible for transferring data between multiple networks via routing protocols (example: Internet Protocol (or IP), ARP, and RIP)
4. Transport – this layer provides a reliable transparent transfer control of data between hosts (example: TCP and UDP)
5. Session – This layer controls the connections between hosts. Establishes, maintains, and terminates connections between hosts. (example: NetBIOS and DNS)
6. Presentation – This is the layer the data is transformed and formatted to provide a standard interface for the Application layer (example: ASCII to XML conversion)
7. Application – Provides services and data to user defined applications (example: RPC, FTP, HTTP)

 
TCP/IP Model (4 layer)

1. Network Access – This is the physical layer like cables, hubs, switches, and routers necessary for communications
2. Internetworking – This is the IP address and layer that allows hosts to be able to find one another on the Internet
3. Transport – Connection protocols like TCP and UDP operate here. This layer deal with the opening, maintaining, and closing connections between hosts
4. Process/Application – High level protocols like HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3 operate

Back in the day when I got started in the networking field for a small ISP in Dallas, I had to study the OSI model for Cisco exams. I had to use anagrams to remember the different layers such as (P-D-N-T-S-P-A) “Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away” or in reverse (A-P-S-T-N-D-P) “All People Seem To Need Domino’s Pizza” so I could keep them all straight. Once I was actually starting to get my hands wet in the field, I found the OSI model to come in handy when trying to troubleshoot networking issues. I had to morph the definitions of the layers to fit my needs, and used them as a daily reference on how to isolate issues and come to a resolution by stepping up and down the layers. Here is what I used to simplify my life when troubleshooting a dial-up connection (analog, ISDN and sometimes a T1).
 

Network Troubleshooting (7 layer/step)

1. Physical layer – Is there good working cable between point A and point B? (the router and switch let’s say). Have you tested the cable to make sure it works?
2. Data link layer – Is there a link light on the router or switch? Is it plugged into the correct ports on both ends? Are the port speeds and duplex settings on either end matched up? (10/full, 100/full or 1000/full)
3. Network layer – Can I ping across the link from the router to the switch? Am I using the correct IP address information?
4. Transport – Am I able to get out of the local network? Is there a firewall that might be blocking something? Is the default gateway setup correctly?
5. Session – Am I able to reach (ping) the end host I are trying to reach? (the web server in this case)
6. Presentation – Is the service I am trying to reach installed and running? (like IIS or Apache) Is there a firewall blocking inbound requests? (hardware or software)
7. Application – Is there actually content on the server to present? (HTML pages) Does the web server config have the appropriate permissions applied and pointed to the correct directory for content?

I know this might seem a little simplistic, but sometimes getting back to the basics is the best way to solve problems. It is also an effective way to teach people interested in networking how to troubleshoot issues that come up in our industry on a daily basis. I hope you find this approach useful and apply it in your environment.


A funny little known factoid is that when we started this company a couple years ago, the OSI model actually came up when designing our logo. When brainstorming and jotting down ideas one of our founders (guess who?) used the 7 Layer theme to design our current logo. Shows you how influential the OSI model has been in today’s Internet driven world.

Let’s see what anagrams you can come up with for “P-D-N-T-S-P-A” or “A-P-S-T-N-D-P” Give me your best shot. (keep it clean though!)

During some recent weekend R&R, my family and I saw a “human statue” street performer. He looked as if he’d been spray-painted gold – clothes, skin and all. He had a bucket out for “donations” and there was a healthy crowd watching. Parents would give dollar bills for their kids to put in the bucket. For each dollar, he’d do robotic movements and noise for 5 to 10 seconds and then return to statue status. After a few seconds, another dollar would go in the bucket and the cycle would repeat.

My son, a budding numbers-geek, said “Wow Dad, he makes pretty good money. I’ll bet it’s $50 an hour.” Being a full-fledged numbers geek, I said “By my calculations, it’s more like $70 per hour”.

This got me to thinking. What do we provide our customers for $1 of hosting fees? So I figured it out for our most popularly sold hosting offering. This is not $1 per line item below; it’s $1 for the whole package below.

• 272,232,402,234,637 operations performed by the CPU at 50% utilization
• 12 megabytes of RAM
• 1.4 gigabytes of hard drive space
• An Operating System to make it all happen
• 45 seconds of technical support
• 5,538,770,949,720,670,000,000,000 electrons (in the form of electricity)
• 10,909 average sized packets of public transfer
• Up to 37,973,200 average sized packets of private network transfer

All numbers are approximate. Nonetheless, be sure to make use of your hosting dollars here at SoftLayer!