ServePath Blog

ServePath is excited to announce participation in Microsoft’s new WebsiteSpark Program, specifically targeted towards Web Professionals. Both our dedicated, managed hosting brand (ServePath) and our Cloud Computing hosting brand (GoGrid) are members of the WebsiteSpark program. Using WebsiteSpark, Web Pros can drive new business opportunities through connections with partners and customers around the world.

Before jumping into the details and Q&A, if you already know that you want to participate in this program with either GoGrid or ServePath as your Hosting partner, please visit our signup pages on the ServePath site or GoGrid site .

But what does all of this mean? Trust me, I have read through all of the 19 pages of Frequently Asked Questions and Program documentation and it is a bit overwhelming. So, this blog post is really an effort to try to cull out the critical points of importance for you. However, if there are any questions that you do have after reading this, I encourage you to talk to some WebsiteSpark folks or sales reps at ServePath or GoGrid. At a high-level, this is an incredibly helpful program targeted towards Web Professionals.

Probably the best way to approach this is through a series of questions and answers.

What is WebsiteSpark?

Similar to the Microsoft BizSpark program, WebsiteSpark is designed to help small companies ramp up their business, web dev and design capabilities and offerings. Those companies who qualify for WebsiteSpark can add Microsoft product and platform proficiency to their business credentials as well as help create new business opportunities by connecting them with partners (like Web Hosters) and customers via increased visibility.

What is a “Web Pro”?

Web Pro stands for Web Professional. These are individuals or small companies that specialize in web development, web-based Value-Added Providers (VAPs), web-savvy IT generalists, web design or the management or creation of web services.

How do I qualify to participate in WebsiteSpark?

The qualification is fairly simple. First, your business must primarily focus on providing Web development and/or design services or solution to your customers. Second, your company must have 10 or less members (this includes owners, employees and contractors). Those are the “hard” requirements.

Additionally, you must develop and deploy a minimum of one new website using Microsoft tools and servers within 6 months of enrollment. These websites must be logged with Microsoft. Also, you and your business must be enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN – formerly known as the Microsoft Partner Program).

So I’m interested and I qualify, what do I get by enrolling?

The benefits abound! For starters, you get: New Business Opportunities, Support & Training, and Access to Software & Solutions. Let’s explore these a bit more:

• New Business Opportunities
  • WebsiteSpark Marketplace – be found by customers by building a web presence to showcase your capabilities, all with a simplified process to connect with qualified customers
  • Partner Recruiting Portal – if you need a partner to compliment or add to your offering or skill set, you can find them within this portal
  • Web App Gallery – find off-the-shelf Web applications and solutions to make your business even better. In the form of a gallery of offerings, you can choose applications that have been designed and built to work within the Microsoft Web platform…all without headaches.
• Support & Training
  • Receive professional support from Microsoft as well as Network Partners, Hosting Partners and other Web Pros
  • 2 professional support incidents per program membership
  • Free online training
  • Managed newsgroups on the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN)
• Access to Software & Solutions
  • Design/Dev/Testing Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition (3 licenses), Expression Studio 2/3 (1 license), Expression Web 2/3 (2 licenses), Windows Web Server 2008 (3 licenses) and SQL Server 2008 Web (3 licenses)
  • Production & Deployment: Windows Web Server 2008 & SQL Server 2008 Web
  • Special Offers: DotNetPanel control panel to manage web site hosting parameters

What is the cost to join?

There is actually no up-front cost to join WebsiteSpark and receive the benefits. There is a Program Offering Fee of $100 (USD) when your company exits the program. Additionally, if you choose a Hosting  or Network Partner, there may be (reduced) fees associated with using their services.

Ok, that’s cool, but how does GoGrid or ServePath come into the mix?

Obviously, if you are a web application developer or designer, you need to host your or your clients’ apps, services or products somewhere. This is something where WE are experts! If you are looking for the LARGEST Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Cloud Hosting provider out there, then you should choose ServePath or GoGrid as your Hosting Partner within the WebsiteSpark program. If you want to set up a hybrid hosting solution using a combination of cloud and dedicated servers (we call it Cloud Connect) , we are one of the few hosting providers that can do this.

We have put together a robust hosting package, with discounts not available to the general public.There are 3 specific packages available: ServePath Windows Package, GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package and GoGrid Windows Package. The details are below:

For those interested in a dedicated hosting plan, we provide the ServePath Windows Package which has incredibly nice discounts across the board.

(*1 year commitment required)

The GoGrid/ServePath Hybrid Windows Package gives you the best of all worlds with the ability to create a hybrid infrastructure environment using both Cloud and Dedicated infrastructures.

The GoGrid Windows Package offers not only GoGrid credit towards a new GoGrid account, we also want to help you move your site over to our Cloud and are providing a $100 credit to help you start.

If you are not sure which package is the best for you, be sure to contact a ServePath or GoGrid Sales Representative. They will not only help you through your choices, but also can provide you with a GoGrid trial credit to get you going in the GoGrid Cloud.

Where can I find out more information?

Probably the best way is to talk to a GoGrid or ServePath Sales Representative (as mentioned previously). However, the Microsoft WebsiteSpark site does have a lot of helpful information including a Program Guide (note: direct link to Adobe PDF document). Also, feel free to leave any questions you may have as a comment on this post.

We hope that you sign up with WebsiteSpark with GoGrid/ServePath as your hosting partner. It’s a tremendous program that you would be foolish not to take advantage of.

Yesterday we pushed out a new feature, called My Contacts, to the my.ServePath.com portal that allows you to define contact information in order to ensure that proper contacts are notified at the appropriate times. Often certain types of communications need to go to specific individuals, finance to a Billing User, technical to a System User and perhaps the CEO wants to receive all types of information. The new Contact Management module is located in the main dashboard of the ServePath portal.

Our goal with creating this feature is to ensure accurate, targeted and timely dispersal of critical messaging coming from ServePath.

The Details

There are 4 roles that can be assigned to contacts now:

• Super User – Super Users are contacted for all forms of communication. Every account must contain at least one Super User.
• System User – System Users are contacted for technical support, maintenance and other technical issues. We recommend having at least 1 System User.
• Billing User – Billing Users are contacted for financial, billing or account-related issues.
• Read-Only User – Read-Only Users are secondary users who are contacted if any of the above users are unavailable.

The contact form can be quickly filled out as there are only a few critical details, namely:

• Name (required)
• Email Address (required)
• Phone Number (required)
• Role (required)

Here is what it looks like:

Contacts can be easily created, edited and deleted from within the My Contacts module. You can see the list of created contacts as well:

We believe this new feature is very important for any ServePath customer to have accurately set up and recommend that it is filled out immediately. It only takes a few minutes to ensure that your communications are going to the proper contact person.

If you answered NO to the question in the title of this article, then you run the risk of not being able to handle traffic loads as well as not have application or server redundancy with your architecture. Believe it or not, your customers DO have a requirement that your site or application be resilient or highly available…they just want it to work whenever they access it. To that end, your infrastructure must scale as well as be redundant, especially should your infrastructure encounter an issue rendering a server as unavailable.

With a properly architected load-balanced network, your site can handle spikes of load more elegantly, minimizing performance issues when the demand peaks. Similarly, if you want to maintain a high-availability website, server outages or issues should be minimized or hidden away from the end user. A correctly set up load-balanced network will automatically route traffic away from hardware that is having issues or not responding, thus preventing your users from seeing sluggishness or down-time.

At ServePath, we recognize the importance of providing solid and robust load balanced architecture offerings, part of the reason why we have chosen f5 to be our load balancing solution of choice.

We have recently revamped the Load Balancing page on the ServePath site in order to better explain the options available to you as well as provide some examples on how load balancing can (and should) be used. Some of the questions we answer are:

• What is a Load Balanced Server Network?
• How does a load balancer work?
• Who needs a Load Balanced Server Network?
• What are some examples of a Load Balanced Server Network?
• Why host your Load Balanced Network with ServePath?

What I like best about this updated section of the site are the different examples of Load Balanced Server Networks:

Simple Load Balanced Network

• F5 Load Balancing
• Web servers distributed across public switches

Load Balanced Network With a Firewall

Hybrid Load Balanced Network

• F5 Load Balancing Across ServePath & GoGrid Servers
• Cloud Connect
• Cloud Storage

Highly Available Load Balanced Network

• F5 Load Balancing
• High Availability Via Redundancy
• Gigabit Private VLAN

Remember, having a Load Balanced Network is only part of a “high availability” hosting solution. Frequently, you need to utilize other services (like backup & recovery, firewalling or replication) to ensure redundancy and resiliency of your server environment. You can even set up hybrid infrastructure environments that use Cloud Computing (with GoGrid) as your Web & Application environment and Managed Dedicated Servers (with ServePath) as your back-end database and high-I/O infrastructure.

We offer a variety of packaged or individual solutions to meet your hosting needs. Just ask one of our Sales Reps and they can definitely help you out.

This week we rolled out a new graphic on the ServePath homepage that when I thought about it, really shows a change in mindset. ServePath has been doing managed, dedicated hosting for over 9 years and will continue to do so in the years to come. However, what has changed is the mainstream adoption of Cloud Computing and Cloud Hosting. Our Cloud division, GoGrid, has been providing Cloud infrastructure for well over a year now and has seen tremendous adoption by the likes of Web 2.0-ers, SMBs, Government Agencies and the Enterprise.

One feature that we were first to market with, is Cloud Connect. Other terms that we have been using is “Hybrid Hosting” or “Hybrid Networks”. Essentially, it enables you to combine the dynamic scalability of a Cloud-based front-end (on GoGrid) with a traditional managed backend of dedicated high-performance servers (with ServePath). The two hosting environments are combined via secure, gigabit private networks, thus enabling best-of-breed solutions to meet any infrastructure requirements.

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words…

If you have any questions about these new hosting strategies and infrastructure possibilities, I encourage you to contact a ServePath Sales Representative. There are many scenarios and opportunities available with this incredible flexibility of hosting, but we want you to surprise us with your ideas and designs. You shouldn’t wait to start planning out your Hybrid hosting solutions, we can get you there now!

Today we released a new Whitepaper written by Randy Bias, ServePath’s VP of Technology Strategy titled “Scaling Your Internet Business.” If you are a Web Application Developer or interested in learning about scalability, specific to how it relates to Web Applications in the Cloud, Dedicated, or Colocation environments, I recommend you download and read this whitepaper.

The whitepaper can be obtained here from the ServePath site.

Scalability is critical to the success of many organizations currently involved in doing business on the Web or who are providing information that may suddenly become heavily demanded. While there are many strategies that IT organizations can undertake, the way they are designed and implemented can make or break these businesses.

The ServePath whitepaper discusses the following topics:

• How web applications scale
• Scalability within different hosting scenarios
• Thinking through and choosing a scaling strategy
• GoGrid & ServePath scalability options

Scalability can come in all shapes, sizes and flavors. You can scale “up” (vertically) or “out” (horizontally). Choosing the right option can be tricky, if not daunting. Depending on what you want your strategy to be, you can choose “cloud-only”, “dedicated/colocated-only” or a “hybrid” approach.

If you are currently using dedicated or colocated hosting, you should potentially re-evaluate your current hosting strategy and architecture to see if it makes sense to use Cloud Computing or a combination of Dedicated and Cloud as a scalability option.

A “Hybrid” environment using Dedicated and Colocated servers in conjunction with a Cloud front-end using Cloud Connect.

“Businesses need more than just cloud computing to solve their scalability problems,“ says the whitepaper author Randy Bias. “Web operators and developers want to use the best tool for the job and, right now, cloud computing is one tool in their arsenal. GoGrid has pioneered the concept of cloudcenters, datacenters-in-the-cloud, which provide the full range of scalability tools needed for a growing business including cloud servers, managed dedicated database servers, private VLANs, VPNs, and even co-location for those who need their own hardware. This whitepaper describes how a growing business can use vertical and horizontal scaling techniques to the most advantage to save money and never miss a prospect, customer, reader or interaction.”

Companies interested in learning about Web Application Scalability, Cloud Infrastructure, hybrid hosting and scaling solutions available from GoGrid or ServePath are encouraged to download this whitepaper from either the GoGrid site or ServePath site.

Has the economy hit your IT budget hard? Are you looking for some additional savings when it comes to managed dedicated hosting? Well, we at ServePath are here to help you out! Starting March 1st, 2009, we have a few specials that won’t hurt your wallet much…but the thing to remember is, these won’t last! So you had better act quickly!

Note: as these are pretty HOT deals, available quantities may have already changed! Be sure to check the Special Offers page for availability.

Also, please note that these offers cannot be combined.

• Free extra 3 GB RAM with purchase of In Specs BusinessPath (total RAM = 4GB) with the following configuration:
  • 1U Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz processor
    • 4 GB RAM (regular RAM=1GB)
    • 80 GB SATA HD
    • 1500 GB data transfer
    • $199.99/mo and $249.99/setup fee (Operating systems licensing fee will be added when applicable)
• Free extra 1 GB RAM with purchase of any value servers with standard deployment time (total RAM=4GB
  • Limited quantities!
• 1-HOUR deployments – In Specs BusinessPath with the following configurations:
  • 1U Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz processor
    • CentOS 5.0
    • 4 GB RAM (regular RAM=1GB)
    • 80 GB SATA HD
    • 1500 GB data transfer
    • $199.99/month and no setup fee
    • Limited quantities!
  • 1U Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz processor
    • Windows 2008 Standard Edition
    • 4 GB RAM (regular RAM=1GB)
    • 80 GB SATA HD
    • 1500 GB data transfer
    • $249.99/month and no setup fee
    • Limited quantities!
• ProActive Monitoring Suite:
  • Description: ServePath Proactive Monitoring service allows you to outsource the management of your hosted server to certified ServePath system administrators. Our team of system administrators apply patches, monitor hardware and TCP/IP services. When a server problem arises, the ServePath system administration team proactively notifies you and resolves the problem.
  • URL: http://www.servepath.com/dedicated-servers/proactive-management-suite.php
  • $99.99/setup fee and $49.99/month for the first month, and get the next 6 months free with any dedicated server purchase
• Free Cloud Connect:
  • Description: Cloud Connect incorporates the elastic benefits of cloud computing with traditional dedicated hosting making it a powerful tool for building a hybrid infrastructure.
  • URL:  http://www.servepath.com/dedicated-servers/cloud-connect/index.php
  • No Set-up Fee for ServePath customers, if you sign up with a GoGrid account
  • No Set-up Fee for GoGrid customers when you buy any ServePath value server package

Remember, with every server that you get on ServePath, you receive the following FREE items:

• 25 GB NAS (Network Attached Storage)
• Remote Server Reboots
• Ping Monitoring with proactive response
• 16 IP Addresses¹
• Hardware replacement guarantee
• 24/7/365 Support
• Unlimited private VLAN bandwidth
• 10,000% SLA with 100% Uptime guarantee
• Fully managed DNS
• SAS 70 Type II Compliant San Francisco Data Center

Also, we have some great deals that are NOT listed on this blog post. Call Sales at 1.866.321.7284 (Worldwide: 1.415.869.7000) or start a Live Chat directly via the ServePath website.

1. IP justification form required if more than 4 IP addresses requested [↩]

ServePath has released version 2.3 of the Customer Portal located at https://my.servepath.com with immediate availability to all ServePath customers. While the entire portal continues to get enhancements and fine-tuning, there are a few items that I wanted to highlight that may be of greater importance and interest to ServePath customers. Namely:

• ServePath Backup & Disaster Recovery is now fully available within the Customer Portal
• Support Case creation now allows for “self-help” and “self case closure”
• DNS requests can now be managed directly from the ServePath Portal Dashboard

New My.ServePath.com Portal

The new Customer Portal has many of the often requested services now within the main dashboard page.

Quick Links include:

• Managed Backups – **updated** access the ServePath Backup & Disaster Recovery service (see below)
• Reboot Server – request for a server within your network be rebooted
• DNS Request – request DNS services
• Knowledge Base – view tips, suggestions, hints and other documentation within the Knowledge Base
• Security Scan – initiate a Security Scan on your environment
• Create a Case – **updated** Case creation tool (see below)
• View Existing Cases – view any open Support or Billing Cases
• View Invoices – view your most recent invoices and billing history
• Pro-Services – order a variety of services from the Professional Services & Consulting Division including:
  • OS Reloads
  • Server Duplication
  • LAMP setup
  • VPN configuration
  • Control Panel upgrades
  • Server Hardening
  • MySQL Configuration tuning
  • …and more!
• ServePath Status Blog – direct link to http://www.servepathstatus.com

Within the Dashboard you can also have the ability to see Network Status Updates, to initiate a Live Support Chat, Order Services & Hardware Upgrades and see headlines from the ServePath blog, among other things.

ServePath Backup & Disaster Recovery

ServePath offers a robust managed backup and disaster recovery service which is now accessible from within the ServePath Customer Portal. More details on this offering can be viewed here. Features and benefits include:

• Volume discounts for large storage requirements
• Easy to use web interface
• Server Cloning
• Restore specific files/folders within minutes
• Bare-metal restore and disaster recovery methods
• Thin provisioning – grow your storage allotment on-the-fly
• Disk-based data protection
• Point-in-time recovery
• Windows and Linux support
• Backup busy MySQL Servers without interruptions
• Customizable backup schedule (hourly/daily)

Schedule a backup:

Browse previous backups:

View details of your server:

View history of backups:

Create a Case

When you create a System, Billing, Professional Services or Network Case within the new ServePath Customer Portal, you now have the ability to fully drill down to a much more granular level within the same page. The process is simple: select a Category and subsequent Sub-Category. Then choose the Server(s) affected and the IP addresses of the server(s) in question. Add the additional Contact information (name, email, phone and anyone you want to copy on the case). Then be sure you create a detailed Description. Once you click the “Create Case” button, your case will be submitted to the appropriate division within ServePath. However, you will now also be presented with a list of Knowledge Base articles that may be related to the case you just created. Results are presented based on matching the Category, Sub-Category and Description. If you find a solution within that list, you can opt to close the case based on that suggested article. Note that the Knowledge Base can also be accessed without having to open a case.

We hope that you find this update to be useful and helpful. As always, we encourage feedback on this update and there is a “feedback” link within the top navigation bar of the Customer Portal.

Chances are, if you are reading this post on the ServePath Blog, that you are a Managed Hosting customer of ours or simply interested in Managed Dedicated Hosting. But, you probably have also been hearing about Cloud Computing (if you haven’t, you should probably take a look at our Cloud Computing product, GoGrid or read some of the posts on the GoGrid blog). Cloud Computing isn’t the solution to every hosting dilemma. There are some hosting requirements that simply cannot be handled within “the Cloud.” High-end, data intensively or highly transactional database servers are a good example. Also, if your product offering requires some eCommerce transactions and associated compliance therein, you may want to opt for a  dedicated environment for that sensitive data.

Back in November 2008, we announced a new product that is a hybrid hosting solution called “Cloud Connect.” The idea behind Cloud Connect is fairly basic. It is essentially a dedicated connection between a Cloud Computing front-end infrastructure (with GoGrid) and a Managed Hosting back-end server (with ServePath). This is a “World’s First” product offering!

When you configure a hybrid infrastructure, you are enabling the “best of both worlds” between Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. Not only do you get the configurability and high-performance of a dedicated server, you also get the elasticity and scalability of Cloud Computing. In our press release and on our product page, we outlined some possible uses of Cloud Connect:

• Hybrid Load Balanced Server Network – hybrid infrastructure lets you combine cloud and dedicated servers to build a hosted load-balanced server network allowing you to harness the elasticity and low CapEx of cloud computing while getting the hardware control you need from dedicated hardware.
• Development and staging environment – build a development and staging environment in the cloud and conveniently connect to your dedicated server production environment.
• Sandbox –build a sandbox development area in the cloud to test websites, website operations, and untested code in an isolated manner.
• Spikes/surge – deploy servers in minutes to handle seasonal or sudden spikes of internet traffic and pay only for what you use. Avoid long-term contracts for the servers required to handle short-term internet traffic fluctuations.
• Database-intensive applications – deploy large databases with lots of bandwidth, processing power and persistent storage needs with very flexible front-end web servers that interact very efficiently with the database.

You can add a variety of ServePath services to your dedicated back-end environment including:

• Unified Security & Backup
• Managed Server Security & Hardware Firewall
• ProActive Monitoring
• Managed Data Backup & Storage Area Network (SAN)

Cloud Connect uses secure gigabit private networks to “cross connect” GoGrid Cloud Servers with custom-built, managed and dedicated ServePath servers. The gigabit private networks, the GoGrid Cloud and ServePath dedicated servers are all located in the same data center with hard-wired  connections to ensure high performance.

If you are interested in setting up a Cloud Connect solution using GoGrid Cloud Servers and ServePath Dedicated Servers, please contact a ServePath sales representative at 1-977-946-4743 or via the Live Chat on the ServePath site.

On November 13, 2008, ServePath’s new Customer Portal (v2.1), located at https://my.servepath.com,  will be live for all current and new ServePath customers. In case you missed my previous post about some of the changes, I encourage you to look here. Once the cutover is complete, you will no longer be able to access the old customer portal. All of the functionality and features that existed in the old portal will be present in the new one (but potentially in different areas) along with plenty of new or enhanced ones.

We have compiled a list of 10 FAQs in order to help you along:

FAQ: My.ServePath 2.0

1.    How can I be alerted to ServePath maintenances and outages proactively?

You can subscribe to the ServePath Network Status RSS feed by clicking on the RSS icon next to “Network Status” on the home page. This will notify you via your RSS feed reader whenever we update the status on the website. If you’re interested in subscribing to the ServePath blog, you can do that from my.servepath.com as well by clicking on the RSS link next to “News” from the home page.

2.    How can I order new products and services through my.servepath.com?

Our current lineup of products, services and upgrades can be ordered through the my.servepath.com customer portal by clicking on the “Services and Hardware Upgrades” banner on the home page. You can select new hardware upgrades for your existing server, services such as our Unified Security and Backup package or our Proactive Monitoring Suite, or choose from a wide variety of other services and tools we can provide you with.

3.    Where can I find my Account Team’s contact information?

The members of your account team are listed on every page of the new my.servepath.com customer portal. Contact information for our Billing, Support and Sales departments are all readily available so that you can contact us anytime.

4.    How can I Remote Power Cycle or run a Security Scan on my server?

Remote Power Cycle and Server Security Scan tools are now located on the “Servers” page. From there, you can power cycle your machine or run a Nessus scan to check for open ports that may pose potential security risks on your servers.

5.    When I create a case, I see some Knowledge Base articles. How does this work?

Our case creation system will search our Knowledge Base for any articles that may relate to the case description you enter. You case is created as normal, but we will provide you with any articles that may pertain to the issue to that you are submitting. You then have the option to help yourself and close your case if you choose to. Once you select an article, you can let us know whether or not the article resolved your case by clicking on the “Yes” button. If it did help, you then have the option to close your case. If not, our Support team will still investigate the case as normal. Our Knowledge Base can also be searched from the Support tool without entering a case, so you have 24×7 access to our library of thousands of support articles.

6.    Where do I go to manage my passwords?

You can manage your passwords through the “Manage Passwords” tab from the Support menu. You can easily add system or service passwords to share with our Support teams so that we can login to your systems and help you troubleshoot the issue you are experiencing. This is a tool for you to share passwords with our Support team or keep a log of passwords to share with your server administrators. Please note that changing passwords here does change the passwords on your servers.

7.    Where can I go to give feedback to ServePath?

We have a number of ways for our customers to provide us with feedback regarding our portal, website, products and anything else you wish to share. To send us a feedback message, you can click on the “Feedback” link located at the top-right of the screen. You can also provide us with feedback under the Support menu by clicking on the “Customer Survey” tab or by clicking on the “Take our Survey” link from the home page under “Quick Links”.

8.    Where can I access my Network Statistics?

Network statistics, which many of our customers utilize on a daily basis, have been moved to the main navigation for easy access. You can also click on “Network Statistics” under the “Quick Links” section of the home page. This will take you to the Network Statistics tool where you can view bandwidth and transfer utilization graphs for any time period you specify by server and by VLAN.

9.    Where can I access my billing information?

Billing and account information is located under the “My Account” page. You can also cancel your account or services from this page.

10.    How do I reach a Support Representative immediately?

We have 24×7 Support representatives available via chat for any time you need them. There is a Live Chat link on every page in the new my.servepath.com portal for you to get quick access to any of our Support Representatives.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for improvements or new features, be sure to fill out the new Feedback form within the Portal. Also, you can always create a Support ticket using the Support tool for anything that is not immediately obvious.

We hope you like it!

ServePath engineers have been working hard on providing a newly redesigned, more efficient and effective Customer Portal. The new portal was quietly released to all ServePath customers recently so I wanted to take a bit of time to point out a few of the notable changes that can be found there.

First, both portals are currently available (old here and new here), but this won’t be true forever. Once the new portal is finalized, the old one will be gone…forever! There is also a direct link to the new portal on the old login page currently.

Once you log in to the new Customer Portal, you will immediately see a redesigned interface with new sections. Note, your login information works on both portals. For posterity’s sake, I will be including screenshots of both versions.

New ServePath Customer Portal:

Old ServePath Customer Portal:

For starters, the Dashboard has been drastically redesigned to group pertinent information together, namely:

• Products/Services – Call-outs at the top of the page to critical or new product or service offerings (e.g., Services & Hardware upgrades and the ProActive Management Suite)
• Support information – who your account manager is, phone numbers for support and billing and a Live Chat button
• Quick Links – these are links that many of our customers frequent, carefully compiled to streamline the experience
• Network Status – current RSS feeds from the ServePath Status blog
• ServePath Blog feed – quickly scan recent ServePath blog entries
• Survey – answer a few questions and be entered in a monthly drawing for Amazon gift cards (HINT: it takes about 30 seconds to fill out the survey!)

Also live with the new portal is a revamped Support Section. With the new Portal, you can choose the “Create a Case” Quick Link and within one click, be able to enter a support ticket immediately:

Most notable is that you can, on the same screen, drill down to the exact server(s) or other hardware that you need help with. Once you select a particular server or set of servers, for example, you will also be able to select their associated IP addresses as well.

Also, when a Case is entered, after the form is submitted and the Case is created, the user is presented with a list of Knowledge Base (KB) articles that may be relevant to the Case. Users can potentially resolve their issues based on the suggested articles, however, if the solution is not present, the user’s Case is already in the system. If a particular KB article solved the issue, the user can attach that article to the Case and close the Case themselves.

On the old portal, the process of entering a ticket took a bit longer and did not offer the user the ability to resolve their own case. An example of the same type of ticket entry as shown in the previous image is listed below:

There are other numerous changes in the new ServePath portal. If you are a current ServePath customer, I encourage you to compare the different versions. We are currently working on the next revision to the new portal as well, so if you have suggestions, comments or, gasp, criticism, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I will share it with the Engineering team. We will also have a feedback form within the new portal as well soon.

Hope you like the changes! We certainly do.