We thought we would keep everyone posted on the events that have happened at Digital Pacific over the past 12 months and give you a sneak peak of what is planned for the next 12 months.

Data Centre Relocation

Around June 2010 we started to plan the move of our infrastructure to a brand new Data Centre. We felt that we needed to make this move as we were growing at a rapid rate and we needed make sure that we could sustain our growth well in to the future. The move itself was successful and whilst it took over a year to plan, the actual move took 5 weeks which was done in stages to minimise downtime. We reserved a fair amount of space at this facility that should see us through the next few years.

New Network Build

When we were planning the DC relocation we thought it would be an excellent time to build a new redundant network from the ground up, so we invested a large sums of money in Cisco and Juniper gear to make this a reality. The switches we used are Juniper EX4200’s and are capable of supporting our new cloud platform and IPV6 deployment which will be happening over the next few months.

cPanel Migrations

When we started Digital Pacific over 10 years ago we used a control panel called Ensim which was an excellent product back then, however over the years that product was acquired by another company and support and updates came to a halt, so we made the decision to move to cPanel which is the worlds most popular control panel for web hosts. At the end of November this year we completed our Ensim cPanel migrations after almost 2 years of planning. We worked closley with cPanel to develop migration scripts and tools to make the migration as smooth as it could be. There were a few sites that required attention after the migration however overall this was a massive success. cPanel is the control panel of choice for millions worldwide and Digital Pacific is now proud to now offer cPanel hosting. We have also fine tuned our cPanel servers with Cloud Linux and other software that gives a lot more stability than the previos Ensim servers.

New Backup System. We take them seriously!

We have taken backups fairly serious for the past 11 years, no one can run a hosting company with confidence and not have backups, it surprises me the number of hosting companies out there that either don’t backup or just backup to the same machine. People who run backups in that manner should never be in charge of any critical infrastructure. I would like to give you a bit of a background on the Digital Pacific Backup and restore process. We have partnered with a company called R1 Soft who are based in the US, their software is the only true Enterprise grade backup system available to the hosting market at the moment. Backups on all servers initiate on the R1Soft master server and “pull’ data from which ever server is being backed up, all backup traffic makes it way via high speed multiple 10GB links that go straight in to our offsite Disaster Recovery DC backup facility in to the latest Dell SAN’s with storage of well over 200tb’s making backups very quick and highly secure placing very little load on the server being backed up. We perform 4 backups in snapshots per day per server and more regular intervals for VPS servers, We will soon be implementing a web based system that will allow customers to have complete control over their backups, allowing you to restore all of your files or just a single file or table at any point in time from the past month, restores should take about 5 minutes for an average size site. We will then archive previous months to another secret location. Thats not all, We also use a completely separate and redundant backup network ports that does not affect your public traffic leaving that for your website visitors. We also have a state of the art DR plan but we cant let that one out of the bag. Then our competitors would be on to us. Rest assured, we have it covered. We have never lost a single customers file in 11 years due to no backups, and those files are in the many millions.

DNS

Over the past 6 months we have been building and testing our new DNS management software, which will allow you to manage your own DNS records via our control panel. We have also migrated our DNS to new servers based here in Sydney, our secondary DNS server is based in QLD. Over the next 6 months we will be deploying more servers around the world for global redundancy and will be giving DNS Hosting to all customers that purchase a domain name with us.

What are we working on over the next 6 months?

Over the next 6 months we will continue to work on projects that will keep us at the cutting edge of technology. Below are just a few things that we have in the pipeline. We cant let you know them all just yet.

Cloud Hosting

We are currently working on providing utility cloud services on demand, we are currently in talks with various hardware and software vendors for this project, we are looking to have this launched around May 2012. We are excited about this project and can’t say too much about it yet. Stay tuned.

One Panel

At the moment we have various systems that our customers log in to to manage their accounts with us. These systems are for billing and invoicing, cPanel and a range of others that are used to manage various aspects of services that are provided by Digital Pacific. We are currently working on systems that will allow our customers to manage everything from one control panel which we have dubbed “1Panel”. This product will automate a lot of the tasks our customers require on a daily basis. This will include a new management interface for dedicated servers which will include the ability to reboot, re-image and view bandwidth graphs as well as a lot more. We have been working hard behind the scenes for the past 12 months on this and are hoping to have it launched in the first quarter of 2012.

24/7 Support

Over the past 6 months you may have noticed that your emails are being answered all hours of the day, this is because we have secretly been trailing 24/7 support but have not yet announced it as official. We plan on announcing this around the middle of next year once we have all of the kinks ironed out.

There are a few more things that we still have under wraps, we can’t let it all out in one go. So stay tuned and thanks for all of your support in 2011.

Andrew Koloadin

Digital Pacific Milestones for 2011 is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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Last Friday night we held our annual Digital Pacific team Christmas Party at the Bavarian Bier Cafe.

We gorged ourselves on copious amounts of pretzels, pork knuckle and chicken shnitzels until we were just about shnizeled out.


We also consumed so much beer and cider that (lucky for the Bavarian Bier Cafe), we had to move on to our next pit stop at the Comedy Store before too much damage could be done.


Needless to say, a fantastic night was had by one and all. Plus, what a bonus it was that we were all still standing by the end of the night!

To see more photos, visit the Digital Pacific page on Facebook.

A Very Merry Christmas Party is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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Good news for Digital Pacific customers. Going forward, we are offering more space and bandwidth at no extra cost to you! This means that existing customers get an automatic FREE upgrade on their current plans while new customers enjoy a better deal. In short, you get more for the same, low 2010 prices.

All Personal Web Hosting, Business Web Hosting and Reseller Hosting plans will feature various upgrades. See below for a breakdown on what’s changed.

Make it personal.

If you like to dabble online, we’re sure there is a personal web hosting plan to suit your needs. At least double the amount of data storage is now offered, and for maximum savings, take a look at the advanced package where bandwidth has been increased over 200%!

Digital Pacific’s personal web hosting solutions are suitable for a range of online publishing requirements including:

• Blogs
• Hobbies / interests
• Family tributes
• Fan pages
• Community forums

Business Hosting plans are perfect for setups of all sizes.

Find a variety of great business plan deals with four of the five packages now upgraded to unlimited data transfer.

Furthermore, a massive increase in data storage sees all business packages bumped up between 300% and 400% of last year’s allocations.

• Upgrade or downgrade your plan (FREE)
• Great for company profiles / sites
• Create expert forums / blogs
• Manage payment channels / shopping carts

Want more?

In addition to the new 2011 deals, a number of plans also offer two months FREE hosting when signing on for annual payments.

Find the full service details of our shared web hosting packages via the following links:

• Personal Web Hosting
• Business Web Hosting

Ever dreamed of running your own web hosting business?

Now’s your chance.

If you’re considering a reseller plan or are already part of the Digital Pacific family, the great deals continue. Receive more space across all reseller packages and an increase to unlimited monthly bandwidth for both the basic and advanced plans.

Full control over customer management and business operations without the technical responsibility for the underlying infrastructure.

In other words, there is no need to worry about in-the-background hardware operations. Leave technical support such as server availability, maintenance and upgrades to us!

Reseller benefits also include:

• Setting up your own hosting plans, prices, customer billing cycles, data space allocations & more
• Supporting clients with cPanel an automated point-and-click hosting platform –
• Controlling your reseller business through the powerful WHM administrator interface
• Appearing as an independent web hosting service with no visible ties to Digital Pacific

For more information, take a look at Digital Pacific’s reseller plans to see how you can benefit.

Take the next step today.

There has never been a better time to connect with Digital Pacific. Contact us now to find out more about how we can help you achieve your personal and business goals.

Shared & Reseller Plans FREE Upgrade Recap — More Space, More Bandwidth is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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Digital Pacific is working with its customers to provide support to victims of the Queensland floods, initially by suspending all collections activity for affected areas. Please ignore all automated billing reminder notices, and rest assured your services will remain active in this time of need.

In the coming weeks/months: Each customers circumstance is different and as such we will be working with our customers individually to assess and support their needs. If you have been affected by the floods, we encourage you to contact us when you can so we can discuss relief options best suited to your circumstances.

Digital Pacific does not host any servers in Queensland however our transit providers have equipment there and there are reports of these providers being affected over the next 48 hours which may affect data transit in to parts of Queensland.

For more information and assistance, customers can phone us on 1300 694 678 or by email via our contact us page.

Our thoughts are with all people affected by the Queensland floods while they deal with this disaster.

If you would like to donate to the flood relief appeal you can do so via the Queensland Government website.

Digital Pacific Pty Ltd
 

Queensland Flood Relief – Digital Pacific is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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Over the past four weeks, Digital Pacific has banded together for Movember, an international initiative to increase men’s health awareness. Along with 129,625 other Australians, 32 willing individuals registered for the cause, joining the Digital Pacific Network creatively named “The Hosters with the MOstest”.

Our group of modern (and now very masculine) men have conquered odd looks from strangers and grumpy “pash rashed” girlfriends to raise much-needed donations for the Movember Foundation and Beyond Blue. Between our 32 Mo Bros, we triumphed this year to successfully raise a total of $12,919. A massive thank you goes out to everyone who participated in the Digital Pacific network — this is a mighty fine effort for a mighty fine cause!

With that said, alongside the Movember Foundation, we at Digital Pacific wanted to reward our network members for all their hard work. So, to encourage everyone to raise as much money as they could, we announced that whoever could raise the most funds during the month of Movember would win a grand prize of a 3G iPad, plus 16GB Wi-Fi.

The competition was on for everyone from the very beginning amongst our 32 Mo Bros, but it was a race to the finish line for three of our participants: Shane Fulcher, Martin Askew and Matthew Griffin.

In the last few days of Movember, the names on the leaderboard continually changed and we were all on the edge of our seats. All three boys did a fantastic job in collecting donations, however Shane scooped up the super cool iPad prize pack after raising $2,321 worth of donations. Matthew narrowly missed out with a total of $2,200 raised, and coming in third, Martin also did a tremendous job for ‘The Hosters with the MOstest’ network, pulling in another $2,111.

A big congratulations goes out to the three of you from the team here at Digital Pacific. Between Shane, Matthew, and Martin, the boys raised almost half of the network’s total donations – well done!

In total, Australia raised a whopping $18,533,550, and we were only beaten by Canada. With a fewer number of Mo Bros registering for the cause, they still managed to raise a fantastic $19,473,381. To see all the details, check out the global tally on Movember website.

As for our remaining Movember recruits, whoever raised more than $25 on their individual Movember profiles will not go away empty handed.

As a little thank you from us at Digital Pacific and “The Hosters with the MOstest” Movember Network, all Mo Bros who are current customers will now receive $25 credit towards their nominated Digital Pacific account. For those Mo Bros who are not current customers, but also raised more than $25 on their individual Movember profile, you can now choose between crediting a friend’s account (with a maximum of three referrals per account) or receiving an e-voucher of $25 for future use. These e-vouchers will be valid for 12 months.

With December now upon us, it’s time to say goodbye to moustache madness for another year — let the razors around the globe reunite. Once again, a big thank you goes out to everyone who supported Movember and participated in the Digital Pacific network this year. We look forward to doing it all again next year — bring on Movember 2011!

Movember 2010 Wrap Up is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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I have to say, with the Digital Pacific office being predominately male, I had some apprehensions about planning a pink themed day. But to my suprise the boys swallowed their pride, donned their pink attire (I think they secretly enjoyed it!) and got behind a fantastic cause. It’s possible that bribing them with cupcakes and biscuits persuaded them to go all out, but you can take our Facebook poll and vote for who pulled off Pink Ribbon Day with the most style.

This year alone around 12,000 Australian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Once a year the Cancer Council holds Pink Ribbon Day to raise awareness and funds for research, education and patient support programs. You have to agree that it’s a great cause to get behind and with a combination of donations from Digital Pacific, our customers and staff we managed to raise over $500!

Next Month it’s Pay Back Time

Since the boys were such good sports when it came to wearing pink for women’s health, I’ve decided to return the favour for the sake of men’s health this Movember.

If you didn’t already know, every November thousands of men in Australia grow a moustache to raise funds and awareness for men’s health issues; specifically prostate cancer and depression. This year, every Mo Brotha or Mo Sista who registers under our Movember network has the opportunity to get up to $100 credited to their account AND the person that raises the most money will win an iPad! See all the terms and conditions here.

Digital Pacific Goes Pink & Raises Over $500 for Breast Cancer Research is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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What is the cloud?

As mysterious as it sounds, the cloud is a basic concept: information stored on computer servers “somewhere else”. That information can be anything – email, music, documents, calendars for example – and “somewhere else” can be anywhere off-site and remote to where you work with your information.

The cloud also refers to more advanced products often referred to as “software as a service” (SaaS). SaaS operates like software on your own computer, except you usually interact with these programs through your web browser and the information is stored on the service providers’ servers instead of your computer. Some examples of SaaS products include online accounting service Saasu and task and document management service Backpack.

Why is it called “the cloud”?

The term “cloud” began with diagrams used by network engineers when drawing maps of networks. Traditionally, external networks are drawn as a cloud to indicate that outside the network is one big cloud of data. It is not important how information travels through that cloud, only that it does indeed travel.

Why would I want to use the cloud in my business?

The cloud enables you to work wherever you are without worrying about where information is stored. It can make it easier for businesses to share documents between staff and work collaboratively without the resources of a large corporation or complicated internal network.

For example, you can use Google Docs to work on documents in a hotel room, share these documents with your colleagues back at the office for comments, and then make final changes while enjoying a coffee in the airport lounge.

Using some cloud services also allows you to let someone else take care of backing up files and maintaining hardware and security patches while you get on with running your business.

Getting used to the cloud, one step at a time

Adopting the cloud as part of your business strategy can be daunting for a small business. Cloud-based services require an substantial element of trust. How secure is my data? Will this service still be around in six months time? Do I have to commit to costly long-term contracts? Is it easy to get my information back out if I decide I want to use a different service? Can I still access my data if my internet connection is down?

These are legitimate questions and you should be comfortable with the answers before going further. However, if you are ready to give the cloud a test run, there are several applications that you can install immediately with any Digital Pacific business hosting plan. Using your own server space enables you trial working with cloud services while still retaining control of your information.

PHProjekt
PHProjekt is a free, web-based project management tool. It includes modules like calendars, file uploads, time cards, task lists and the ability to generate Gantt charts. You can manage work projects without expensive software licences for programs like Microsoft Project. As it is web-based, you and your staff have access to your projects anywhere you have internet access, whether that be at home, on the road or on-site with a client.

SugarCRM
SugarCRM is a popular Customer Relations Management (CRM) program that comes in free and paid versions. CRM is a system that helps you track your interactions with customers, personalise your communications and begin to understand your customers better. Installing a CRM system is not something to be done lightly, as using a CRM system effectively can require you to reassess your entire business workflow. However, if you think that you might be missing opportunities with your customers than a CRM can be a worthwhile investment of your time.

Is the cloud the answer to everything?

The cloud is not a turnkey solution that can be adapted to solve all problems. The questions raised earlier remain. These issues of security, off-line access and data portability will be deal-breakers for some. However, provided the services are the right fit for your organisation, the cloud can help your business become leaner and more flexible than ever before.

How The Cloud Can Help Your Business is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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This post is for Movember 2009 To join us for 2010 and win an iPad click here

November has become known as Movember for many – an entire month dedicated to the growing of moustaches (mos) in order to highlight and raise funds for men’s health. The target issues at hand will be those of prostate cancer and men’s depression, two causes we are happy to support.

Digital Pacific has put together a team consisting of Mo Bros and Mo Sistas, all focused on growing (or supporting in the case of the Mo Sistas) a fantastic mo to raise donations. The project will run for the entire month of November, and we’ll definitely be chronicling the journey from start to finish on our Facebook Page.

If you are interested in participating in Movember, there are a couple of ways you can help:

1. Donate to our Team! – donate

Just by joining our team, you will get a $10 donation from Digital Pacific!* The team member to grow the best mo by the end of the month will win a FREE YEAR of web hosting!

2. Join our Team! – join

Remember, you can follow the entire journey on our Facebook Page, so become a fan and join in on the discussion.

*First 200 people.

Movember Results

The team rasised a total of $2,081.00 – Awesome effort from all involved.

Movember – Growing a “mo” in support of men’s health. is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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You can stop pinching yourself because you are definitely not dreaming. Digital Pacific is making it easier, and cheaper, to get your business online with a free domain name giveaway. Now, with every 3, 6 or 12 month subscription to a business web hosting plan, we will provide a registration of your chosen domain name… for free!

Eligible domains: .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .id.au, .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info.

The domain name registration will not cost you a thing, and it is necessary in order to get your business online and build an image on the web anyway. All it takes is the purchase of any 3, 6 or 12 month business hosting plan, from Basic to Enterprise, and your business will be equipped with everything it needs to get started.

As always with something this good, you know it won’t last forever. So, hurry up and order your business web hosting, get the free domain, and tweet it on the cyber streets to all your friends. This deal is only valid through October 31, 2009.

*To take advantage of this offer, please visit our Business Web Hosting page and use the order now links.

Free Domain Names Giveaway – Get ‘em while they’re hot! is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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Recently we learned that Digital Pacific made it in to the top 100,000 most visited sites in the world, with our exact ranking being 95,620. Whilst this may number may seem high, it’s actually a quite considerable acviement considering there are 238,027,855 websites online worldwide as of June 2009. Our ranking in Australia is currently 1,148.

This ranking was measured via a service called ALEXA which was originally an abbreviation for Address Lookup EXperts Authority, a service which ranks sites based on tracking information provided via search engines and other proprietary tracking methods.

The ALEXA rank is a measure of websites popularity so the lower the ALEXA number is the higher your ALEXA rank is, yes it’s a little confusing. For example a site that would have a low ALEXA number but a high ALEXA rank would be Google with a traffic rank of one. Other leading sites such as Yahoo!, YouTube and Facebook are also in the top 10. The goal of many webmasters is to get this rank as high as possible by getting the lowest number as possible.

How did we get there?
We mainly got there by making our site compliant, some search engine optimisation, blog posts and lots of hard work in other areas. But we have always tried to stay true to our vision of providing information on what we do best, domain names and web hosting.

Why should you be in the top 100,000?
Being in the ALEXA top 100,000 category can reap great rewards to site owners in many different ways, one being advertising. Many online advertisers look to an ALEXA traffic rank for a site before they advertise on a website, since they only target high traffic sites. And if advertising is not the reason you want your site to be in there, it should be a personal goal you should set for your site to improve sales or visits. After you get in to the top 100,000 try for the top 50,000 and keep going.

If you are interested in learning more about your own ALEXA ranking and stats go to www.alexa.com

Let us know how your site is ranking by leaving a comment.

Digital Pacific makes it into top 100,000 visited sites in the world is a post from: Digital Pacific Company Blog

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