Positive Internet Blog
The latest in news, thoughts, and fun about getting the most out of the cloud, hosting, managed services and open source software. Subscribe to our RSS feed.
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Nov042012
Utility Power Restored At New York City Data Center
Yesterday, ConEd restored utility power to our Manhattan, New York City data center. All systems are now transfered back from emergency generator power to utility power. Thank you to our team and partners for keeping everything online when the storm hit and so many other downtown data centers lost commercial power and had their emergency systems fail. We at Positive Internet value our customers for choosing us to host their mission critical systems and appreciate the trust they put in us to prepare for emergencies and successfully execute emergency plans.
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Oct312012
New York Data Center Continues 100% Uptime During Power Outage
Positive Internet's lower Manhattan data center is operating at 100% network and power uptime throughout this disaster and expects to maintain 100% uptime for our VIP Managed Hosting and PosiCloud customers hosted in this data center.
Since ConEd turned off power on Monday, the data center has been without commercial power and is running on emergency backup power power by diesel generators. Fuel storage is good and fuel deliveries are being made as expected. All operating temperatures are within spec and have been within spec since the emergency began.
Staffing at the data center is increased and will remain so to ensure safe, ongoing operation.
Sales and support services are unaffected and are operating normally please contact us as you normally would.
We wish all of our customers and the greater New York community the best during this difficult time and thank our staff and partners for their excellent dedication and service to keep 100% uptime during the worst natural disaster in New York's history.
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Oct292012
New York Data Center Prepared for Hurricane Sandy
Positive Internet has confirmed that should there be a power outage and flooding during Hurricane Sandy that our data center in lower Manhattan, New York, that houses many of Positive's financial services, e-commerce, and popular web service customers is prepared. The facility has recently tested it's backup generators and has thousands of gallons of diesel fuel stored onsite with priority delivery contracts in place should they be required. Positive is committed to providing stable, high-availability VIP Managed Hosting and Cloud Hosting Services to our clients and will do our best to continue to do so during any natural disaster. For any questions, please submit a support request to help[a]positive-internet.com or through any of the other normal means.
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Oct192012
We're hiring!
Very few organizations focus entirely on GNU/Linux and Free Software, all the way from their desktop machines to complex computing clusters. Would you be interested in a rare opportunity to work for one? The Positive Internet Company has positions available for sysadmins to join a lively team providing support for a range of GNU/Linux systems.
Company Background
The Positive Internet Company has been an innovative open-technology company since its foundation in 1998. Focusing on high-end hosting with second-to-none customer support, we own and operate our own data center near Cambridge, UK with hundreds of our own servers (almost all running Debian). Additionally, Positive maintains PoPs across major European sites.We host and maintain a variety of systems, including HA setups and clustered solutions. Many of these are fully managed by the Positive technical team. In addition to working with some big and interesting corporations (including major financial organizations and media groups) and household names (Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry), we host none other than the father of Free Software himself, RMS. We also actively support various community projects.
Due to demand for its services in the US, Positive expanded to New York in 2008 and now operates a wholly-owned US subsidiary company. We are based in Manhattan with a data center at a leading communications facility in Lower Manhattan, New York with a DR site in Tulsa, OK.
The roles
We are interested in hearing from any junior or mid-level sysadmins (or wannabe sysadmins) with a passion for GNU/Linux. These positions will involve supporting our customers (mainly by email) as well as working on infrastructure. You will join a team hand-picked not just for their technical skills but their flexible understanding of our customers’ needs.
Ideally, candidates will have experience setting up and maintaining web/database/mail servers utilizing technologies such as Apache/MySQL/Postfix/Heartbeat(pacemaker)/DRBD/Xen/Perl/PHP, but we are also open to hearing from anyone who may only so far have used GNU/Linux at home as a hobbyist. Having worked with open-source virtualization would be an additional bonus.
The position would likely be a mix of working from home and working from our New York sites/future offices. We anticipate that normal working hours will be 11:30am-7:30pm Eastern with some negotiation on these finer points for the right candidates.
As we are recruiting at a number of levels, salaries will be commensurate with experience. Successful candidates will benefit from the support of co-workers with many years of experience, but as these positions report to senior managers in London, candidates must be able to work independently and thrive in a partly autonomous role.
Once fully-trained, Positive engineers participate in our 24/7 call-out rota (with generous overtime allowances). Positive gives a good vacation allowance (20 days + Federal holidays + various goodwill days around the major holidays), lots of training opportunities, funding to attend free software conferences such as OSCON, company cell phone and the chance to work with some of the best free software experts in the business. There are various opportunities for international travel and a period of training in London where you will meet your co-workers. We also offer healthcare benefits.
Get in touch
These positions should interest anyone who wants to work with GNU/Linux in a completely Windows-free zone. Successful applicants will get the benefits of working for a firmly-established European company, but also enjoy the freedom and potential usually associated with a startup. If you are interested, please send a covering email and resume to jobs at positive-internet.com.
We will hold in-person interviews for shortlisted candidates in Manhattan on November 5th and/or 6th 2012 and candidates should be available for interviews on these dates. -
Apr112012
Positive Internet helps set another world record with the Big Egg Hunt
Anyone visiting London in the last few months will have noticed that large eggs have appeared throughout the city as part of The Big Egg Hunt. These intricately decorated pieces of public art played their part in promoting an auction - both online and at Sotheby's - in aid of the magnificent charities Action for Children and The Elephant Family.
We at Positive Internet were asked to supply and manage the hosting infrastructure for the live online auction. Working with our client, we agreed on and then provisioned a managed failover cluster, also known private cloud. We took the responsibility seriously: the thought of the final moments of such an important live event's ruination by a server crash or network glitch is the stuff of bitter nightmares. Not to mention that such a failure could deprive this charities of hundreds of thousands of dollars that they depend on to continue their great work.
In the end, the hard work paid off, because the online and Sotheby's auctions raised well over a million dollars for the worthy causes, with the Positive Internet managed cloud never missing a beat. Alan Newman of Sensible Development, Positive's client who supplies the live auction software, coordinated the whole project between Positive, the charities and creative agencies.
After the successful end of the project, Alan said,
"We have worked with Positive Internet for many years: they understood exactly what was required for this high-profile project, and tailored the cluster so it'd cope with bursts of extremely popularity. As part of the VIP managed service, Positive engineers offered live support throughout the auctions. They made sure everything went without a hitch. Positive is a partner rather than a simply a 'provider': everyone from senior managers through to the oncall engineers is a pleasure to work with. It's clear they care about our projects as much as we do".
Such kind validation of our team really helps our egg-os. Of course, we work egg-stremely hard to ensure our managed service always entails this level of attention to detail; however, when we muse on the work that Action for Children egg-sel at, it's egg-straordinarily gratifying to know that our service has played a part in allowing them continue doing it so egg-selently. This evening, we're egg-suberant to find out that this is the second project in which we've been involved that's won a Guinness World Record! Indeed, it's won two. Frankly, we're oeuf-er the moon. (sorry - we'll egg-ress now).
For projects large and small, managed hosting and cloud servers from Positive Internet can help make your next commercial or non-profit project a worry-free success. We especially love supporting the great work of non-profits and offer donations or substantial discounts so that you can focus on doing more good. Get in touch with us today.
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Mar292012
Podcasting: now remarkably unremarkable (and that's a great thing!)
Positive Internet though our Jellycast service are veterans at podcast hosting and distribution. Since we won the Guinness World Record with Ricky Gervais for his podcast we continue to help host and manage top-rated global media extravaganzas for people like Stephen Fry, and for organizations like the British Council.
Our most recent client to reach the iTunes top podcast slot is Iain Lee's Pocket Radio Show. From just an idea discussed to a global sensation in mere weeks, this is just another of those unremarkably remarkable success stories that the team at Positive Internet helps make possible.
Iain, a well-known television and radio personality, decided to devote his proven talents to podcasting. This is podcasting 2.0: professional, interactive, with the sophistication of a traditional radio program but with the immediacy of new media. All the finesse one would expect from a professionally produced program is there: phone-ins, interviews, jingles - the signifiers of "proper" broadcasting that just a few years ago would have demanded the backing of a huge established media-organization to marshal, but today require little more than a microphone, a laptop and an affordable mediacasting account with Positive Internet or Jellycast.
As the podcasting has evolved, an increasing number of professional people are focusing on podcasting as their primary or even sole means of communicating with the public. The freedom that podcasting gives creative people has been an obvious lure from the start; as audiences have proven themselves loyal downloaders, an increasing number of popular podcasters are finding that they are able to sustain themselves financially through cultivating this audience, by obtaining sponsors and through democratic patronage from their followers.
Thus, Podcasters now control their own media destiny in ways unimaginable under the old broadcasting hierarchies. This freedom is intoxicating. Listeners enjoy the closer relationship they have with the broadcaster, without the alienation of intrusive middle-men.
In a sense, then, what is now remarkable about podcasting is how unremarkable it has become. We take for granted the ability to select and download audio programs at will. Commutes, flights, jogs and even hospital-stays now seem unimaginable without our favorite stash of comforting audio-accompaniment. And popular podcasts, like Iain's, are garnering tens of thousands of loyal listeners by the day.
Just a decade or two ago, the notion of getting radio-sized audiences by recording something in one's basement and uploading it to a service like Positive Internet's Jellycast Podcast Hosting would have seemed absurd science fiction. Now becoming a radio star is simply another in the range of services we offer. We work hard to ensure that our mediacasting bandwidth, reliability, support and speed is second to none, so that we can fade into the background and allow our hundreds of media champion clients to shine, and some to propel themselves all the way to the top of the charts. Just like Iain has done over the last few weeks. -
Feb292012
Leap Day: Freedom and Privacy Edition
Happy Leap Day!
We are going to use this lovely extra day in February to just remind everyone that Internet titan Google is changing their data use and privacy policies, which they even say is important stuff. Yet, the vast majority of gmail, search, youtube, and so forth users will never read this and never understand the high price they pay to use these "free" services.
Free Internet friends over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have put together a great guide on steps you can take to delete your Google history before the March 1 deadline and thus hopefully minimize the harm. In general, you'll also learn more about these changes and why they are so important.
Good luck!
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Jan192012
Richard Stallman speaks tonight in Boston about SOPA, PIPA and Internet Freedom
There is still some space available to hear the founder of the Free Software movement and President of The Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman speak about the proposed SOPA and PIPA laws and what we need to do to secure the freedom and power of the Internet.
Full details about this great event, including how to register for free, can be found on our events page.
See you all tonight!
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Jan182012
Free hosting for sites participating in the SOPA & PIPA blackout
Positive Internet is pleased to offer free hosting for sites participating in the SOPA & PIPA blackout today, January 18, 2012
The Positive Internet Company, a specialist GNU/Linux hosting, cloud services provider and Free and Open Source software advocate, supports its clients who are shutting down their websites on January 18, 2012 in opposition to the pending US SOPA and PIPA legislation by providing a them with free hosting and managed services for the duration their site is blacked out.
"Our clients, whether big or small businesses, are making a great sacrifice by shutting their sites down for an entire day to educate their users about, and protest against, these potential laws that seek to restrict Internet usage and we want to do all we can to support them in this important stand for Internet freedom," says Scott Molski, Vice President with Positive Internet. He continues, "it's a small sacrifice that all hosting providers who care about their customers and and the future of the Internet should make. We ask all of our hosting colleagues to join us in providing this aid to these sites and applications who are turning off their businesses to stand up for what's right."
Nick Mailer, founder of The Positive Internet Company and veteran Free and Open Source software evangelist adds that "SOPA and PIPA represent the latest in a decade-long string of attacks against the core principles of network self-determination and liberty. These principles have been the bedrock of the Internet's success, and are not simply ethical niceties but at the basis of its use in a properly free market. As with previous threats, we will not allow our species' communicative freedom to be held hostage by a handful of old-media oligarchies."
The Positive Internet Company is a leading managed services and hosting provider specializing in open source and Free software. Positive partners with startups, small businesses and some of the world's largest organizations including popular media sites like Rocks Paper Shotgun and Stephen Fry, major broadcasters like the BBC, banks, financial services firms, NGOs, political parties and entertainment groups, including the ever-popular 'Angry Birds' franchise. Positive has become the preferred choice for Free and open source managed hosting and cloud services, standards compliance, security and disaster-recovery.Positive is also hosting a number of free educational events to discuss SOPA & PIPA, "cloud computing", and how to get the most out of and avoid the pitfalls of "the cloud". Speakers include Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation, Nick Mailer, co-founder of The Positive Internet Company, and Yuriy Rusko, co-founder of Forumatic and contributor to PHPBB, the leading Free and Open forum and community software. Register today at http://www.positive-internet.com/events. Events from January 19-25 in Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey.
For more information, questions, etc. contact:
Scott Molski
+1 646 660 3252
scott.molski@positive-internet.com@posipeople
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Jan172012
Dr. Richard Stallman to speak in Boston about Freedom in "the cloud", SOPA and PIPA
On Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 6:30pm in Boston, MA, Dr. Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation will give a talk "What the ideas of Free Software imply for network services" as part of the Freedom in "the cloud": is it possible? event hosted Positive Internet.
This event is not technical in nature so anyone who uses the Internet should attend to learn about many of the freedoms in place and how we can preserve them in light of technical change and legal movements such as SOPA and PIPA.
Registration is free for this great and timely talk by the leader of the Free software movement. Register now.
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