Hosting And Designs L.L.C. has teamed up with Host Merchant Services to bring merchants the HMSPro offering — merchant account, online processing capability and $75 promotional credit. Host Merchant Services provides for  your online business needs for e-commerce success. We will get your domain ready to accept credit cards online quickly and seamlessly. As a merchant involved in this program we are offering you a $75 promotional credit to start processing with HMS. All is required is a dedicated server hosting or VPS account with us*

• To redeem your $75 promotional credit, set up a merchant account at www.hostmerchantservices.com/signup
• Complete the process by filling out an application
• Enter your coupon code with your billing information (contact us for your coupon!)
• Once approved you’re ready to start accepting online payments through your website!

About Host Merchant Services

Host Merchant Services is about bringing trust to the payment industry. They are a registered Independent Sales Organization (ISO) with Visa U.S.A. and MasterCard International with bank sponsorship provided by Wells Fargo Bank, Walnut Creek, CA.

Payment processing is confusing. The big guys make it difficult to understand exactly what your rate is and what fees are associated with accepting credit cards. Host Merchant Services delivers personal service and clarity. Their people care about customer service and will take the time to explain how everything works.

Intel’s D1X expansion is just down the road from us and it’s a big project! Several other data centers have popped up around here too; Fortune, Adobe and NetApp (along with several other tech companies that are already here)  spending hundreds of millions of dollars this year, building and outfitting their sites.

President Obama also “stopped by” for a quick visit and tour or the Hillsboro area. Obama chose Hillsboro because of Intel’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education program which helps prepare for various high tech jobs. Intel creates 3.1 new jobs for every job that they add. All that can help with this stubborn economy! Also, the number of construction and contractor jobs needed for this D1X expansion is in the thousands.

We have several server configurations not listed on our site such as several Intel Xeons and some i5′s and i7′s. Please let us know if these are of any interest to you and will see what we can arrange…

Also, those servers that come with 8GB’s RAM can actually be upgraded to 12GB’s and 16GB’s. Cost would come to $99 extra for double the RAM. 12GB’s has not been determined just yet… $50? This is not a very common upgrade request but the extra RAM is certainly available.

Also known as the Great Firewall of China, it is not uncommon to hear news about the difficulties there are of trying to access dedicated servers outside of the country of China such as accessing an American based dedicated server. We recently had a customer from China who could for some reason not gain access to his newly setup server. After checking with the Data Center to see if the server was indeed setup, online and responding to pings we decided to take a closer look as to why this customer was having such a problem gaining access. There was simply no ping response and tracerts resulted in a dead-end almost from the start.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping 64.191.5.117

Pinging 64.191.5.117 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.191.5.117:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

It turns out that after checking with a site located here: http://www.bestvpnservice.com/tools/chinese-firewall-test.php it became apparent that the IP’s were being blocked by this “firewall”. Was it a possible isolated spam or miscellaneous abuse issue? Not if almost the entire Data Center is completely blocked.

Is this something some Data Centers and web hosting providers have to be concerned about with all orders? Will we have to check with the government of China or the local Chinese ISP’s to make sure the server can be accessed? It is a concern to every Data Center and it is very likely not going to be possible in any way (for Hosting And Designs L.L.C. anyway) to change a governments decision on what and why certain sites are blocked. If Facebook is blocked too, we know there is going to be one tough uphill struggle.

For more information and for an interesting read, please visit this page at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People’s_Republic_of_China

Ironically, Wikipedia seems to sometimes be blocked from China as well…

Featured in the 5th Annual Hottest Hosts Issue of Web Host Industry Review Magazine! Available at more than 50 trade shows and events in 2012. Pick up a copy of this magazine today at www.thewhir.com.

———————————————————————————————

We were just recently awarded the APS400 99.99% uptime accreditation by UptimeSafe and we are featured in the 5th Annual Hottest Hosts Issue of Web Host Industry Review Magazine!

———————————————————————————————

managed dedicated server award

Our award for being one of the most popular managed dedicated server providers earlier this year. Whether you require a fully supported dedicated server or a completely un-managed server we offer both and you will always have full root access to your server.

———————————————————————————————

Dedicated server security should be a priority for every server owner/administrator. Prices start from just $5 per month for a basic security scan to dedicated hardware setup just for an individual server.

Server security - Keep the bad guys out!

The security software from SiteLock does not run on the server freeing up resources. Our Total Security Package runs on the server 24 hours a day protecting your server from any unwanted activity, brute force attacks and viruses etc. For Windows customers we recommend VIPRE by Sunbelt Software.

The dedicated server security hardware is available for firewalls and DDoS protection from CISCO. Today’s DDoS attacks are more destructive and focused than ever. DDoS software is NOT recommended…

Last but not least, backups are vital so if the free 10GB’s offered to every server is not sufficient then secondary 80GB drives start to just $5 per month.

These value added services are also available for our VPS hosting accounts.

———————————————————————————————

http://www.HostingAndDesigns.com has been online for nearly 10 years and is a Business Verified member of TrustGuard. Providing dedicated servers and Virtual Private Servers at affordable prices protected with DDoS guard protection by CISCO at an East coast Datacenter. All servers come managed free per request with unlimited 24/7 technical support and free backups.