I love working at SoftLayer. I get to play with the newest hardware before anyone else. Intel, Adaptec, Supermicro… The list goes on. If they are going to release something new, we get to play with it first. I also like progression. Speed, size, performance, reliability; I like new products and technologies that make big jumps in these areas. I am always looking to push components and complete systems to the limits.

But alas, Thomas Norris stole my thunder! Check out his article “SSD: A Peek into the Future” for the complete skinny on the SSD’s we use. I seem to be a bit to concise for a nice long blog anyways. But not to worry, I’ve got some nifty numbers that will blow the jam out of your toes!

Solid State Drives (SSD) represent a large jump in drive performance. Not to mention smaller physical size, lower power consumption, and lower heat emissions. The majority of drive activity is random read/write. SSD drives have drastically improved in this area compared to mechanical drives. This results in a drastic overall performance increase for SSD drives.

This is a comparison of the Intel 32GB X25-E Extreme drive vs. other drives we carry. Note the massive jump in the random read/write speed of the SSD drive.

No more waiting on physical R/W heads to move around. How archaic!

Please note that no performance utility should be used to definitively judge a component or system. In the end, only real time usage is the final judge. But performance tests can give you a good idea of how a component or system compares to others.

Single drive performance increases directly translate into big improvements for RAID configurations as well. I have compared two of our fastest SATA and SAS four drive RAID 10 setups to a four drive SSD RAID 10 using an Adaptec 5405 Controller.

The Adaptec 5405 RAID controller certainly plays a part in the performance increase, on top on the simple speed doubling due to 2 drives being read simultaneously. (See my future blog on the basics or RAID levels, or check Wikipedia) .

Propeller heads read on:

The numbers indicate a multiplied increase if you take the base drive speed (Cheetah – 11.7mbps / X25-E – 64.8mbps) and double it (the theoretical increase a RAID 10 would give): 23.4mbps and 129.6mbps respectively. Actually performance tests show 27.3mbps and 208.1mbps. That means the Cheetahs are getting a 15% performance boost on random read/write and the X25-E a whopping 37% due to the RAID card. Hooray for math!

Once again, this is all performance tests and a bit of math speculation. The only real measure of performance, IMO, is how it performs the job you need it to do.

As a young lad growing up in Houston, Texas I was always fascinated, awed and inspired by Professional Wrestling. When I was little I wanted to be a Professional Wrestler, I even invited Hulk Hogan – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_Hogan – to every birthday that I had growing up, sadly he never showed up but that was ok because I could watch him wrestle in the WWE (WWF at the time) every weekend. As I grew older I started being able to stay up later and therefore began watching more coverage of the sports entertainment world such as ECW – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Championship_Wrestling – and WCW – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Championship_Wrestling – which were a bit more on the edgier side of programming.

WCW is where I found Ric Flair – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Flair. What a fantastic persona this man has put forth – the arrogance, the superiority and the strength to back it up. Flair’s vicious chest chops and figure four leg locks were legendary. This is the point in my life in my early to late teens that I began to like the bad guys (or heels to those familiar with the industry) just as much if not more so than the good guys (face). Back over at WWE I began to notice the main heel at the time going up the ultimate face, Hulk Hogan, was the Macho Man Randy Savage – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macho_Man_Randy_Savage – who had quite the personality himself. Cocky, brash, a bit insane, very entertaining but always able to back it up with his classic finishing move the flying mighty elbow.

Flash forward to now. Yes, sadly to this day I still love and watch wrestling on a regular basis across all brands, WWE/ECW/WCW and TNA. Current favorite wrestlers include Scott Steiner – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Steiner – Triple H – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_H – and of course the Nature Boy Ric Flair, who is still wrestling and entertaining at the ripe age of 58.

Now since coming to work at Softlayer I have seen my fair share of entertaining websites and ideas from across the internet as a whole. However, I have yet to find websites that are more entertaining, fun, ridiculous, can provide every day answers and overall explain daily life here at Softlayer than these two. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Macho Man and Ric Flair soundboards.

Macho Man – http://www.realmofdarkness.net/sounds/wrestling/machoman-soundboard.htm

Ric Flair – http://www.realmofdarkness.net/sounds/wrestling/flair-soundboard.htm

On May 14th my buddy Shawn wrote “On Site Development.” Aside from the ambiguous title (I originally thought it was an article on web site development, rather than the more appropriate on-site development), there were a number of things that I felt could be expanded upon. I started by simply commenting on his post, but the comment hit half a page and I had to admit to myself that I was, in fact, writing an entire new post.

Updating the computer systems in these restaurants is a question of scale. Sure, it seems cheap to update the software on the 6 computers in a local fast food restaurant. However, a certain “largest fast-food chain in the world” has 31,000+ locations (according to Wikipedia). Now I know how much I would charge to update greasy fast-food computers, and if you multiply that by 31,000, you get a whole lot of dollars. It just doesn’t scale well enough to make it worthwhile. The bottom line is, the companies do cost-benefit analysis on all projects, and the cost of re-doing the messed up orders is apparently less than the cost of patching the software on a quarter million little cash registers and kitchen computers.

It’s the same logic that lead to Coke being sold for 5 cents for more than 60 years, spanning two world wars and the great depression without fluctuating in price. The vast majority of Coca-Cola during that time period was sold from vending machines. These vending machines only accepted nickels, and once a nickel was inserted, a Coke came out. That’s it. Nothing digital, no multi-coin receptacles, just insert nickel…receive Coke. The cost of replacing 100,000 vending machines was far higher than the profits they would get by increasing the price of coke slightly. Only after World War II, when industrialization and the suburb were really taking off, did Coca-Cola start to phase out their existing vending machine line and replace it with machines capable of charging more than 5 cents per bottle.

Of course, we all know how coke machines operate now. Computerized bill changers, many of them hooked up to the internet, allow Coke to charge upwards of $3 for a 20oz beverage on a hot day at a theme park. Coke even attempted (in 2005) to fluctuate the price of Coke based on local weather conditions. People would want a Coke more on a hot summer day, so why not charge more for it? (Because the public backlash was severe to the point where boycotts were suggested the very same day Coke announced their new plan, but that’s another story.)

The fast food problem Shawn mentioned, as well as the vending machine problem, is why so many companies are moving onto the web. Online retail is exploding at a rate that can be described as a “barely controlled Bubble.” To tie back in with my comments on the fast food restaurant, this means that all your customers see the exact same website, written by the exact same piece of code. Want to change the way orders are displayed? Well simply alter the order display page, and every customer in every country from now on will see that new display format.

This doesn’t just apply to retail, however. Many companies are moving towards web-based internal pages. When I got my mortgage, the load officer entered all my information into a web form on their intranet. This is brilliant, because it takes away all the cost of synchronizing the employee computers with the software, it removes the time needed for upgrades, and (most importantly) it means developers don’t have to come into the office at 4am to ensure that upgrades go smoothly before the start of the business day. So any of you business owners out there that have had to deal with the nightmare of upgrading antiquated POS software on dozens, hundreds, or hundreds of thousands of computers, consider making everything a web site. SoftLayer has geographically diverse data centers, so your stores can always log in to a nearby servers to cut down on latency, and we allow for VPN access, distributed databases, and real-time backups, making a web-based solution preferable to even the hard coded local systems that many stores use now.

WOW…Am I the only one that has noticed the sky-rocketing cost of formal education these days? Or, what about the exorbitant amounts charged for Internet educational programs? (Hello, RH! *I am a student in an online RH course…yes, I paid a ton!)

I truly enjoy learning. I must always have something that I am actively involved in learning. And, I am always looking for something new to learn. Hmmm….maybe that’s why I am in IT…

We all know there is always something more to learn in the world of IT. As a CSA, I can learn more in a day from investigating, researching, and resolving customer issues than most university students learn about a specific subject in an entire semester. I know because I was a university student at one time. The range of issues that we CSA’s face on a daily basis is truly amazing. It makes sense when you look at the vast array of businesses/business models, and therefore applications for their servers, that our customers enjoy. I believe there is another blog in here somewhere in which one of my colleagues outlines some of the hats that we as CSA’s wear on a daily basis. All this is to say that, in the relatively short time that SoftLayer has been around, there has been a massive amount of information that has been learned, communicated, AND SAVED FOR YOUR EDUCATIONAL BENEFIT AND PLEASURE!!!

That’s right! For an unlimited time (as long as you are a SoftLayer customer), you too can benefit from the wealth of information that numerous techs have struggled with, fought for, and, at times, felt like dying for! Volumes of knowledge have been painstakingly documented as a resource for our very own SoftLayer technicians, AND, this same information has been made available to our customers! This amazing resource is available for the bargain basement price of $0.00. Think of all the money you could spend at a university taking classes at inconvenient times of the day. Think of the mounds of cash you could spend for an online course or weekend crash course just to teach you the much needed information found very conveniently in SoftLayer’s very own “KnowledgeLayer”!

You might say, “What if I need a tutor?” Think of the cash you could spend on a personal tutor. No need to spend cash on a tutor when you are a customer of SoftLayer! The SoftLayer forums are filled with tutors ready, willing, and excited to answer your questions, share in your accomplishments, and bask in the glow of your success! There are industry “experts” in there to help advise you when you need to make a decision regarding the next step for your growing business. Did I mention the SoftLayer “tutorials”, which can be found in the SoftLayer portal under the Support tab? Yes, we have our very own customized video tutorials in the portal! SoftLayer is almost a “one-stop-shop” for all your server-related educational needs.

But, wait, there is more! If, after learning from the KnowledgeLayer and being tutored in the forums, you still feel that you need more personalized attention in order to truly understand an issue that you are studying, you can always open a ticket with Support, and a CSA will personally work with you to teach you everything that you need to know regarding that specific issue!

So, in summary, when purchasing a server with SoftLayer, you have not only made an investment in the success of your business by choosing the industries’ best on-demand datacenter provider, you have also enrolled in SoftLayer University!

What courses of study would you like to pursue?

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.

Life at our Corporate Headquarters can get a bit weird at times but is never short on fun. Every day I get to pass the Ferrari Dealership of Dallas on the way to work, often times there are a few whizzing on by my Honda, much to my envy.

When I get into the office where Corporate is located in North Dallas I sit in my cube with Superman as my sidekick and go to work. Sitting on my row is Daniel the gadget guy, Doug who never stops talking (ever), and Mary who manages to receive at least one package a day from various vendors even if she is not here – how she does that I will never know. In the next row sits Amanda from The ‘Ville, Laude the Kung-Fu Legend and Patty Mac-Patty Mac. While wheeling and dealing sales on our services we are always yelling over each other at what, when and where we are selling for coordination of product placement and inventory updates, it’s very much like the floor at the NYMEX, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So there we sit, 12+ hours a day in our nice massage chairs shouting at each other like heathens. Did I mention the story on the massage chairs? Daniel being the gadget guy that he is was always raving about how cool it would be to get office chairs that massage you while you sit there and work. So Lance made it one of our Sales incentives that month that if we hit, we all get massage chairs. We of course hit our team goal and now there is a general low humming from the chairs that resonate from the Sales section of the office – along with the yelling and screaming of course. More from Amanda on our cool new chairs.

Now we share this office building with several other companies and I would estimate that there are around 100+ people at any given time in this building. The restroom here has two stalls – you do the math. It gets quite interesting at times but at least they have elevator music playing in there. I guess.

After my day is over I like to go around and talk to co-workers to catch up on things. Then it’s off past the dealership to my home for some more clicking away at my keyboard to tie up some loose ends from work and some much needed rest. And tomorrow I get to see some more Ferraris – how cool is that?

Michael # 1

SoftLayer Sales Office = SoftLayer Med Spa & Wellness Center

It takes a lot to be a SoftLayer sales representative. We sit long hours at our desks staring at the computer screen. I should probably attribute this to the reason I cannot stand more than 4 feet away from the microwave at home, if I want to be able to tell what time it is by its digital clock. Sitting at a computer for a miminum of 10 hours per day, and a minimum of 5 days per week can really create stress and tension on your shoulders and back. Well, thank goodness Lance, Steven, and Mike are here to help. Around September 21st, a sales incentive came our way that would change our sales office forever. If we reached a certain goal, we would all receive comfy, cushiony, vibrating massage chairs for each of our desks. And being the *excellent* little sales team that we are, of course we received the prize. The funny thing about it is, they are quite loud. So you know when one of us is “getting our massage on,” as Doug Jackson likes to put it. Respectively, we have to turn them off when answering the phones. No customer wants to hear, “H-h-h-h-h-e-e-e-l-l-l-oooo, S-o-f-t-L-a-y-e-r S-s-s-a-a-l-e-ssss….”

The SoftLayer Med Spa comes with other services as well. We all sit in a very close range to one another. This leads to all sorts of possible problems, in regard to spreading colds, etc. On any given day you might find myself or Michael Miller stealing Daniel’s Airborn or Mary Hall bringing in cough drops for everyone “just because.” Basically, you can always find the cure and remedy you need in one cubicle or another. It has always been a huge mystery as to why Daniel has Febreeze and Lysol at his desk. I like to think he is spreading the love, and expanding our wellness center. “THANKS, DANNY!”

As you can see, we are very well taken care of. The healthier we are, the more time is spent helping our beloved customers!

Softlayer is a very unique company. It is a rare find and it is a pleasure to be associated with this company. I certainly hope our customers feel the same way (and if you don’t, please talk to us so we can make our service with you more valuable). I am a Senior Sales Representative at SL and I would like to give you more of a behind the scenes feel for why we are the best sales staff in the industry.

I am a people pleaser, and I truly love to help people find satisfaction. I have had several sales positions since I graduated from college many years ago. The thing those previous sales positions had in common was that the salesman was incented to take his own needs into consideration first and foremost. This directly conflicts with what I want to accomplish in business. It is understood that everyone goes into business not to play Barbie dolls, but to earn a profit. Still, this seems fundamentally wrong to me. I have direct experience (even in this industry) where sales positions are incented to put their own needs and wants before those of the customer, or even the company they are working for. This misappropriation of incentive or motivation can cause any number of scenarios that are bad for business on both sides. Luckily this is not how things are done at Softlayer. The customer’s needs come first, as it should be.

The main reason why I came to Softlayer was because of the way that its sales staff is designed. We are put together as a team, for the customer’s benefit. Customers do not need to worry about working with a single individual sales person unless they simply prefer to. I know that I prefer to build up business relationships because this makes for a good understanding of what the main goals are for each customer, and I can have a better grasp of what I can personally do to help. We are not individually commissioned so customers can rest assured knowing that we are doing everything possible to put them in the best situation imaginable. This allows us to avidly search for those “win – win” situations that are positive for everyone involved.

The Softlayer Sales staff is also very diverse in the styles and talents that we offer. Everyone here has had several years of industry experience and is quite knowledgeable about not only product lines, but also the businesses of our customers. I would go so far as to say that we have the most knowledgeable staff in the industry.
The bottom line is that an intelligent sales staff working for the right reasons ends up with satisfied customers. Satisfied customers are inclined to do more business with a company, and a positive culture between the company and customer is created as opposed to a negative one where it seems that there is always a disparity between the two.

Because of the culture we have created here, it makes me happy to come to work each day.

When we first opened our doors, Jeaves and Josh used to split 24-hour shifts in the DC to provide 24×7 support coverage, and there was a “napping couch” in the office for the occasional overnight work shift up in Plano. Most of us had a toothbrush if not a change of clothes in our desk drawer, and a fun Friday night entailed sitting around a whiteboard talking numbers, and coming up with new ideas for the datacenter.

Team SoftLayer is much much larger now, but the spirit is much the same. This picture is from a swingin’ SL party we had a few Thursdays ago, where the office got together to label power cables for the new Seattle DC. There are members of Dev, Sales, Accounting, Marketing, & Management here working together. It makes me so proud.

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!