Single Hop review

General Impression

SingleHop (headquartered in Chicago), is an award-winning, on-demand infrastructure provider. The company's focus on automation has led them to develop powerful datacenter-grade controls, available to all clients for the management of their servers, services, and cloud computing services. SingleHop leads its industry as the fastest growing host and in 2010 was ranked as the #3 fastest growing IT service firm by INC Magazine's INC 500 list.

Our slogan is "We Manage IT Differently." And we mean it.

We Manage IT Differently
If we can't automate it, we won't offer it. The key to providing our clients with on-demand infrastructure is being able to automate the provisioning.
Our flexible managed web hosting service allows clients to select, and pay for only the web hosting services that they need and pay for nothing that they do not need.
Our commitment to control is unparalleled. Our clients have more control over their infrastructure than ever, and this will continue to be a focus point of ours.

In everything we do, we try to do it better. When buying servers, for example, we make sure that they are manufactured using environmentally friendly processes and that when they are powered on, they use (on average) 30% less electricity. Data Centers and servers use 1/5th the world's electrical supply. In reducing our power use, we are also reducing our long term expense for power. By reducing our costs, we are able to pass the savings of our dedicated servers and small business dedicated web hosting services on to our clients.

Certifications

• SW Soft/Parallels Gold Partner
• Microsoft SPLA Partner
• CCO - SAS 70 Type I (report available on request)
• CPanel Partner
• BBB Accredited Business
• CISP/PCI

Dedicated Machines
Whether you're here and know exactly what you're looking for or you're here and it's your first experience with dedicated servers and dedicated web hosting, SingleHop can help. Do you need help putting together an unmanaged or fully managed dedicated web hosting solution? Our Hosting Consultants will build you a dedicated server and managed web hosting services package with your needs in mind. Even if you're an accomplished IT professional, our knowledgeable sales staff can help you access all of the benefits offered to SingleHop clients.

At SingleHop, clients enjoy access to our industry's most talented network operations and technical support professionals. Our experienced, communicative staff of IT professionals has been building, networking and administering dedicated servers for dedicated web hosting clients their entire lives. We employ a robust crew of systems administrators and support engineers, network engineers, NOC technicians and hardware specialists accessible to our clients 24 hours a day, every day.

We offer this service and support to all our clients, from small businesses looking for a fully managed dedicated server to host their websites and email to the IT departments of Fortune 1000 companies seeking an engineered, administered, dedicated hosting solution running on a network excelling in speed and performance. That's how we built our business. Contact us today to get started.

Manifesto & mission
Who we are
As we grow, it is important that we maintain the characteristics that have been the driving force behind our success. While we love what we do, we know our industry can be stale and boring; after all, competitors simply rent out servers and provide basic system administration. So, what must sets us apart is not just better service, but an obsession with service. A consistent and cooperative effort to see each one of our customers not just happy, but amazed; a daily dedication to improve ourselves by offering more to those who trust us with their business. Having the aforementioned in mind, the following is what should intimately guides us in everything that we do:

Service
We strive to serve our clients with respect and understanding, without sacrificing the efficiency that keeps our client's costs low. We always maintain a positive attitude, even when the going gets tough. We understand that we don't just service computers we serve people, people whose businesses and livelihoods depend on us being responsive, diligent, and getting the job done right, the first time.

Innovation
We work here because we love what we do, and we love what we do because we make our clients lives easier through new innovations and ideas. We work hard because, like our customers, we can't wait to grow and improve. We love imagining how to make the world better, faster, and more efficient, and if the solution doesn't exist, we will invent it. In the end, it's not about the accepted way, it's about the better way.

Transparency
Being transparent means that we will always strive to be as open and honest as possible. We promise to share not just the good, but also the bad, and even the ugly. To us transparency means a very specific thing. It starts with simple and easy to understand contracts, a willingness to accept when we have messed up, and treating each other and our clients with honesty, integrity and respect.

Empowerment
In all that we do we focus on finding, or creating ways that give our customers more control, more knowledge, and a better understanding of their services with us. If there is one thing that encompasses all of our values, this one is it. Empowerment begins with transparency, transcends service and moves forward with innovations. It means we welcome and recognize problems, offer real solutions, focus on doing so without being asked, and take calculated risks to make sure that things get done right.

Green & Eco-Friendly Hosting
Though SingleHop isn't a major conglomerate, we feel a genuine responsibility to do our part in reducing power usage and greenhouse gases.

Data center energy usage doubled from the year 2000-2006. It is now predicted that energy usage for data centers will double again to 100 billion kilowatt-hours, costing $7.4 billion annually. Even more distressing, is that the peak load on the present power grid for data center is approximately 7 gigawatts, equaling 15 baseload power plants. If the current trend continues, demand will rise to 12GW by 2011 requiring an additional 10 power plants, meaning that in the next five years, possibly 90% of companies will have service interruptions due to power grid overloads.

Though this may seem an odd concern for a web hosting company, it is a truly significant environmental issue. An EPA report on data centers, presented to the U.S. Congress in 2006 presented both hopeful and disturbing figures. In 2006, data centers in the United States alone used 60 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. That is 1.5% of all US electricity consumption. They use more electricity than the state of Mississippi, as well as 19 other states , and use a similar amount of energy used by approximately 5.8 million combined US households (5% of US housing stock).

Furthermore, our servers are largely lead free, halogen free, and mercury free, reducing water contamination, chemical and solid wastes, and emissions, both from us and during the production of these servers. We even do the little things that still make a difference, like recycle all parts that are disposed of and recycle our boxes and garbage.

Data Center

Data Center 1: CCO
Our main Chicago data center, what we generally refer to as DC1, houses over 2,000 dedicated servers for over 1,000 customers around the world. DC1 features redundant N+1 power, HVAC, and top-of-the-line networking facilities.

Data Center 2: DFT
SingleHop's latest data center location, nicknamed DC2, features ultra-redundant power, HVAC, and networking systems with no single point of failure. The building features over 200,000 square feet of raised-floor computing space; SingleHop currently has 10,000 Sqft of computing space in this location.

Network Information
SingleHop operates two state of the art data center facilities in the Chicago area. For more information on our data centers, or to schedule a tour, please contact one of our team members.

The SingleHop network is powered by a high-speed Cisco core, with an emphasis on stability and redundancy. As a Chicago Dedicated Server provider, we have access to multiple major bandwidth providers, and have contracts with many of them to provide the best speed and uptime to our customers. High-speed Cisco cabinet switches connect into multiple cores to provide redundant paths to all customer servers, eliminating many downtime issues due to core maintenance.

Leveraging custom-developed automation tools, the SingleHop network is able to rapidly respond to changes in network conditions, and quickly update customer configurations to provide a superior level of service.
We at SingleHop have anticipated and are doing our part to reverse this trend. Our policies are already in line with EPA suggestions for improving energy usage in hosting companies. We have always purchased only power efficient hardware. While the EPA cites a typical server having a processor requiring 80 watts at peak power, our dual processor D-L5310 uses only 40 watts. Also, the EPA states that an average rack of servers uses around 20kW of power. Ours average around 12.6 kW. Our servers are all low-voltage and power efficient, reducing our carbon footprint. Also, cooling, on average, accounts for 50% of electricity usage in data centers. Hot spots in data centers can disrupt service. Our data center is engineered in a cold aisle/hot aisle configuration, which results in the need for less cooling and virtually eliminates hot spots. Also important to note, is that our power efficiency is key to our service uptime guarantee. By our strategic engineering of our data center and our use of low voltage servers, our lower energy usage prevents power overload and service interruptions. This is absolutely vital. Data centers are an integral part of our modern society in the digital age. Data centers and dedicated servers are now used to store medical records, governmental records, and are an important feature of many businesses. Our power outage prevention measures ensure that these records are always accessible, allowing public services and businesses to function more efficiently and effectively.

Conclusion

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