Failover hosting essentially consists of two separate servers that have a “heartbeat” cable running between them. The main server, which normally hosts the website and stores data, sends electronic signals to the secondary server. Should the main server fail, these signals will cease, thus causing the secondary server to immediately take over the task of hosting the website. Each server is updated simultaneously, so that they always have the same type of data. This is called redundancy, and it is used to keep one server from getting ahead of the other and thus losing track of data.

Failover hosting can have a number of other benefits and features. Occasionally, there is a third server called a “spare parts” server, which is used to decrease downtime while failback is being performed. Failback refers to the process of restoring the original server to its normal capacity after it has failed. The second server may also be able to send a page to a technician or support center in order to get someone on the scene quickly to failback the original machine. Using failover in your hosting service is an excellent way to cut down on the amount of time your site is down during maintenance or technical problems, and will ensure that you don’t lose any important information in the case of any technical problems.

There are a lot of things that you will want to avoid losing, particularly if you run a business online, and failover hosting is simply the best way to prevent that. There are several ways to use failover, as it might be automated or be initiated by a human technician, but in the end it serves as the only way to not only back up data but increase overall downtime.

“In spite of the uncertain economic conditions in the market, our customers are finding ways to generate incremental revenues through providing valuable hosting services,” says Greg Landis, president of Hosting Zoom. “Our goal was to give them the tools and enable their success. Competitively priced plans running on the best machines with a healthy heaping of add-on features are a winning formula.”

Shared hosting plans on Hosting Zoom begin as low as $4.95 per month with all the disk space and bandwidth the majority of customers need. Failover hosting plans offer fuly redundant servers for failover, free private SSLs, and free domain hosting from only $10.95.

Hosting Zoom Hybrid Servers

Hosting Zoom is proud to announce a new lineup of Hybrid Servers, where semi-dedicated meets VPS. Choose from two Hybrid plans starting from only $99 per month for 100GB space, 1,500GB bandwidth and 2GB memory. All Hybrid plans include:

• Free ClientExec software
• Free WHM/cPanel or Plesk
• Free full management
• Free R1Soft Continuous Backups
• Unlimited domains
• Limited to only 3 main clients per node full root

Hosting Zoom Dedicated Servers

Choose from four dedicated servers from:

1. E7200 (Dual Core), 2GB RAM, 2×250GB disk space – $219 per month
2. Xeon X3330 (Quad Core), 4GB RAM, 2X500GB disk space – $269 per month
3. Xeon X3330 (Quad Core), 8GB RAM, 4X500GB disk space with RAID – $319 per month
4. 2X E5405 (Quad Core), 16GB RAM, 8X500GB disk space with RAID 0, 1 or 10 – $599 per month

All dedicated plans have buydown options, and include 5 IPs, 2,000GB bandwidth, remote reboot availability, and R1Soft backup add-on.

Reseller Zoom Reseller Plans

New Reseller Zoom reseller plans offer three tiers: Budget, Advanced and Failover.

Budget Reseller Plans are starter plans with value for webmasters to host multiple low traffic websites under the same account starting from only $5.95 a month, which includes 7GB disk space, 70GB bandwidth, and 20 cPanel accounts.

Advanced Reseller Plans are great for resellers to provide web hosting as a value added service and make residual income. The Advanced servers have 50% less resellers compared to the budget plan and suitable for reselling. Advanced plans begin at only $17.95 a month with 25GB of disk space, 250GB bandwidth, and unlimited accounts.

Reseller Zoom’s advanced Clustered Failover hosting system improves performance and eliminates prolonged downtime so you get a faster response and better uptime. Plans begin at $24.95 a month with 25GB of disk space, 250GB of bandwidth, and unlimited accounts.

Reseller plans may include free WHM, eNom/Tucows registrar, ClientExec, RVSkin, and Fantastico.

I won’t lie, it hasn’t been all cake and ice cream the last several months but the benefits are awesome. When we acquired Hostingzoom we did so with knowledge that while it had a great client base, pretty solid servers, and a good reputation, it was also hitting a stage f growing pains. It was easy to identify though having been there ourselves many years ago. We made mistakes back then, and learned a great deal. We knew what we could do with Hostingzoom/Resellerzoom so we weren’t the least bit worried, just excited and perhaps a little frustrated that we couldn’t do things faster. Our entire goal in a nutshell was to drastically improve the quality of service while squashing the few problems the company faced.

We come to the public, and our loyal base, today to finally announce the hard work we’ve done, and the road ahead of us. Without further delay here are some of the things we would like to shout about.

Since August we’ve had a dedicated team of in house developers, admins, techs, and managers working on software improvements yo our own inhouse system we have used for years in other companies we run. This new system, an all-in-one client dashboard is in beta testing and while not ready just, it is within a month or so of being ready to go live. So what can this system do? A truthfully more accurate question is what can’t it  do. Here’s a small fraction of features :

- Billing system, manage/pay/download your invoices, paypal subscription, order new services or accounts, rewards system, affiliate system, server monitoring, network monitoring, ip management, user management (set you own users and permissions , for example you  want a tech to be able to contact us for support but not be able to access any billing), support center, knowledgebase, new ticket rating and escalation, the list simply goes on and on but don’t just take our word for it. Watch the forums in the next 7-13 days when we ask for a limited number of beta users to help us test.

- We have added and in some cases replaced some new faces in the staff, sales, support, management. Our family is now 75 people deep and growing.

- Several new under and above the hood features designed with one goal, focus on quality assurance.

- New support ticket system, rating and tracking features, and extended coverage with more sys admins

- Entire new ordering system for both our site and existing clients using the client dashboard

- Deployed major new capacity for our r1soft backup service, added to every shared, semi-dedicated, failover, reseller, and VPS system we run.

- Expanded backup capacity again to reduce compression levels and increase restore times

- Rewards system coming with the new dashboard, earn cash and points for freebies and services

- Improved affiliates tracking and reporting

- All new Hybrid server plans, fully managed, packed with resources and features such as free cPanel for under $100.

- All new dedicated server plans with available managed services

- We’re bring back the basic hosting plan that first made Hostingzoom famous, beefing it up with all disk space you’d ever want, and tons of bandwidth to boot

- Reseller plans are all receiving a resource injection and al Advanced plans are now full semi-dedicated and unlimited accounts

- Windows plans are now available in much more varieties, also now with overselling and unlimited accounts as well

- Expansion of our VPS offerings in both features, plans, and upgrade options

- All new dedicated server plans, next up on our agenda witht them ; kvm, remote reboot, and rapid deployment

- All new and extensive addon/ upgrade options for all our services

- New BBB charter membership, we hope you’ll never need to use it but we welcome you to. We ask that you first contact me or a member of management if you encounter a problem that normal escalation procedures don’t fix

- All new higher spec servers have been, continue to be, and wiil be used on all new orders. RAID, 4-16gb ram, r1soft backups, and lower users per system.

- New improved Failover hosting technology that has a proven track record, and again, lower users per cluster

- New knowledge base Wiki :   http://www.hostingzoom.com/wiki/

- Improved server monitoring and reporting, soon to include every dedicated and vps with settings you can edit to watch for, be alerted to

- All servers have been extensively inspected and locked down better to reduce spam and blacklisting issuses. Procedures for fixing known issues have been vastly improved.

- New backup addon available to any shared, semi-dedicated, failover, reseller, vps, or dedicated (if subscribed to backups) can access, restore, and manage their own data right from our own r1soft backup nodes. For just $2/mo. !

- Ruby on Rails , Webdav, and a handful of other popular requested features have been deployed for free. Just open your cpanel control panel and start using them now.

- Working on improving the speed and accuracy of account setups, upgrades, and feature requests

- To help celebrate these changes we have all new and matching site designs coming any day now , check back often

And the list goes on but I’ll save the details for our newsletters, watch the presses! We’re very grateful for all the loyal clients that have taken Hostingzoom, Resellerzoom, and Modvps to these heights. We look forward to a banner year in 2009.  We encourage all our clients to engage us in our forums anytime. We’ll see you theere!

Those talks grew and grew over the months until we realized we are already aligned so we made it official. All of our companies are already very profitable, and very reputable. In this agreement Kiet will remain on in his same executive level and power, with a new title. Thats as far as the changes go, we have zero plans to move, alter, or upset clients in any fashion.

We do have some awesome benefits for all the companies under our corp umbrella though. Lets go over how some of these are already being deployed and which ones are coming and how far out they are. Me, Kiet, Dylan, Les, Masood, Vlad, and other key members of HostingZoom/ResellerZoom/ModVPS have been laying out plans and discussing client needs and the main wish list. The even better news is we don’t plan to pick one, instead we have the unique opportunity to do them all. Thanks to these companies being profitable we have no need or desire to upset any flow thats working well.

Personnel
There are some great and talented people behind the entire staff here and we plan to keep them all. In fact since August this year Landis Holdings has been hiring new staff at an incredible rate. The technical staff alone has grown almost 40% and we aren’t done adding to that yet. We have some big plans to offer incredible support features and options. We have also increased our development staff to help bring in some of the much anticipated requests of the clients from the forums and emails.

Operations
We do not plan to make any change in the flow of operations on any level that could negatively impact clients. Let me make it clear, there doesn’t need to be server migrations and data transfers, nothing will be shut off or stopped. All companies already operate smoothly and profitable, we do not wish to upset any of them in any way by imposing the policies of one over the other. Each has in place its own chain of command, staff, servers, and colo. There are some things we see people wanting though that we can now instantly provide over the next week, month, and I’m confident all before years end.

Bullet Breakdown

And to prove this all isn’t just talk, everything I just mentioned has already begun. Kiet and other independent parties and staff will concur, we are in here to put some polish on the place. Point by point:
- We already have hired several new workers and are agressively working to complete development improvements to scripts and features clients have been requesting
- We have already placed a massive order for the largest shipment of servers in all HostingZoom history. Brought in to load balance, offer new services, complete all backup promises within the next 30 days, offer additional vps and reseller options, and more.
- All new servers are equipped with 4gb to 16gb ram, RAID-10, and many extras to be stored in our onsite offices.
- R1soft licenses are ready and awaiting the arrival of our equipment to engage all backups right now
- Me and several others have been actively engaged with the forum community already.
- Kiet, myself, other members of management and all the HZ staff are now and will continue to always actively be engaged with the clients and operations.

Im posting my email for anyone that needs to reach me, Greg@hostingzoom.com . Most of you already know Kiets, Kiet@hostingzoom.com and we both welcome any comments you have to offer.

Thanks, Im looking forward to meeting you all in the forums.