Each month, Contegix will spotlight one of the many, unique clients that call Contegix home for their Internet infrastructure.  They range across industries  — from innovative tech start-ups, to software giants and Fortune 500 companies. You’ll learn what challenges our clients faced while growing, and just how technology plays a crucial role in their daily operations. We’ve also opened the floor to our clients to ask us a question of choice — from the serious to the somewhat silly, but all informative. Enjoy!

Up for July is:  FMYi

An Interview With Eric Rath, Director of Technology

Contegix: Why was FMYI started?

Eric:

Justin Yuen founded FMYI in 2004 after a successful career at Nike, where he managed innovative organizational change programs, designed collaboration tools, built the business case for sustainability, and managed global employee training. Justin conceived FMYI due to his passion for sustainability and an interest in how advances in technology can help lessen our impact on the planet while positively affecting society. Over the last six years, he and the FMYI team have built a million-dollar collaboration software company of 15 employees with headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

Contegix: What are some of the challenges that FMYI faced while growing?

Eric:

We face the same challenges as many other companies. Solving these challenges has involved developing relationships with customers, understanding their needs, improving our products with an eye toward those needs, and controlling our costs.
Contegix: How has technology played a role in the success of FMYI?

Eric:

We sell software as a service (SAAS), so technology has always been the means to that end. In addition to the software we’ve developed, several open-source projects form the basis for our service. Spring framework, Hibernate, and Lucene are some of the more significant pieces.

Contegix: What made FMYI decide to go with Contegix?

Eric:

We built our software on the Spring framework, and first became aware of Contegix through its hosting of springframework.org.  Our key criteria for selecting a vendor were competence, security, professionalism, and cost. We had several conversations with the Contegix technical staff before committing, and were impressed with the breadth and depth of their knowledge of technology we already used or planned to use.  It was also clear that Contegix would be able to meet our needs as we grew.  Shortly after switching, we added several new customers with extensive security requirements. Contegix met all the requirements relevant to their operations, and were able to work with our customers to demonstrate this compliance. Over the last few years, they’ve certainly earned our trust in their competence and professionalism.  Although Contegix’s prices are not the lowest, the quality of both the service and technical counsel makes them a better value.

Contegix: How do you see us fitting into your technology strategy now and in the future?

Eric:

Someone described Contegix as assuming the role of your systems and network administration departments; and in our experience, that description is pretty accurate.  In some cases, we know exactly what we need them to do, and how; they make it happen.  In other cases, we describe to them what we need; they describe the options, and implement our choice.  They’re also proactive in all the areas you’d expect.  Contegix is our most significant technology vendor, and will continue to be.

Contegix: What other companies in the tech field (and beyond) do you admire, and why?
Eric:

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have done a great job with the StackOverflow site (and the StackExchange platform).  It’s a well-implemented Web application, and they achieved their goal of creating a rich resource of accurate, peer-reviewed technical information.  The Yahoo Developer Network and the YSlow plug-in have helped us identify and fix issues with our own Web application.  Outside the technical sector, I admire the Vanguard Group (the mutual fund company) for the degree to which they’ve aligned their business interests with those of their clients/customers, and Nike for their focus on innovation and performance.

Contegix: Fair Game: Ask us a question, serious or silly. And we’ll answer. What would you like to know about us? (Question will go to a tech person or management member for answer.)

Eric:

I have three:

Contegix necessarily uses a significant amount of electricity in providing service to its customers.  Can you explain how the cost of electricity and the environmental impact of its generation affect your future plans?

Matthew and Craig, what aspects of starting Contegix and helping it grow have been most rewarding?  How does your answer differ from your expectations when starting out?

Finally, will Albert Pujols finish his career in St. Louis?  There’s always room for him in the Bronx…

Answered by: Matthew Porter, CEO & Co-Founder and Craig McElroy, CTO & Co-Founder

Craig:

For the past few years we have focused on utilizing servers with energy efficient processors wherever possible, and will continue to do so in the future.  For our current and future expansion plans, the greenness of the datacenter is a strong factor in our decision making process.  In addition to all efforts to conserve power, we also take steps to recycle wherever possible.

Matthew:

The most rewarding thing has been positively impacting our employees’ (and even our customers’) livelihoods.  I remember the first time an employee purchased a house.  It happened to be the first house for him and his family.  That was absolutely one of my proudest moments and, thus, most rewarding.  He trusted us to respect his livelihood and ensure the company was stable.

When we started, I thought it would be winning the big customer.  It was obviously still exciting to win our biggest customer, but nothing compared to the employee’s first home.

And to answer your last question – I firmly believe that Saint Louis will not have a Lebron James-style situation!

The past few months we’ve been searching high and low for a few great Contegians to add to our crew. We are growing, and in short, if you know of an exceptional individual and huge geek at heart (or someone who is open to becoming a lover of all things geek), we’d be interested in talking to them. Please check out website for current openings and submit credentials to: resumes@contegix.com.

We have been fortunate to find two such exceptional people and recent additions —Tim Boehmer (pictured at left), our Backup and Recovery Specialist, and Zack Georgeoff (picture at right), our Technical Engineer. Both gentlemen have extensive backgrounds in IT and come from very impressive backgrounds.

So next time you get logged in and see that all your data is safe and sound, be thinking of Tim —it’s his job to make sure your critical data is backed up around the clock for complete redundancy. And when you pick up that phone for support or shoot that email, you very well might get Zack, ready to help you get your support issue solved fast. They have both been great additions to our cast and crew of Contegians. If you are in need of additional backup (and want to keep Tim on his toes!) send your request to sales@contegix.com.

By: Matthew Porter

Programmers, You Need the Sysadmin. And Vice Versa.

In honor of System Administrator Appreciation Day, I decided to revisit an article from last year regarding the role of system administrators in the world of cloud computing.  At Contegix, system administrators (our engineers) make up the overwhelming majority of our staff.  Employing a significant engineering staff is a necessity as a provider.  They are responsible for delivering hosting and cloud solutions to our customers.  The article addresses the question of whether system administrators are needed when there is no physical or network infrastructure.

In October 2009, George Reese wrote an article for O’Reilly Community titled “Your Cloud Needs a Sys Admin”.  The article discusses how and why system administrators are still needed, even in the age of cloud computing.  George breaks it down to a simple point—divide responsibilities based upon skill sets and knowledge.

System administrators have had the role of hardware procurement removed in the world of cloud computing.  This is a huge benefit as it is often (but not always) mind numbing work for most administrators.  They are now allowed to focus on where they can deliver the highest value — the development and long term maintenance of the application infrastructure.  (No one buys a dedicated or cloud server to receive pings back.  It’s always been about the applications!)  Specifically, this represents the planning of application infrastructure, reducing risks and liability in it, and managing infrastructure across the ever changing landscape of application, user, and environment requirements.

If George is right, as we believe he is, I think we could see the overall evolution and expansion of what defines cloud computing.  In reality, cloud computing is outsourcing at its core definition.  A company outsources a portion or all of their Internet infrastructure requirements to another company specializing specifically in it.  The system administrator outsources the procurement of infrastructure to a company specializing in its delivery.  This is a physical outsourcing.  Yet, what is the next step?

Our belief is that the outsourcing will extend beyond just the infrastructure into the system administration of the infrastructure and application stack.  For Contegix, this represents the promise of our managed services — delivered for dedicated infrastructure as Beyond Managed Hosting and for cloud infrastructure as Cloud Cover.  We often see this as a blend of our customers’ system administration team and our system administrators.  We work together to supplement and compliment the other party, and both parties dive deeper and take responsibility for the application stack.  It also allows our customers to focus on their core business.

I think there is also another important, overlooked point in the article.  System administrators need developers.  System administrators are great at writing scripts and programs to make their lives easier.  Yet, system administrators are not specialists at building the applications.  At Contegix, we follow the same principle in often using outsourced development blended with some internal development.

At the time the article was published, we had just launched our public cloud offering.  This represented our first step into a platform that allowed customers to decide whether they wanted unmanaged or managed.  I remember reading the article and wondering how this would be reflected in our cloud.  Today, cloud computing with our Cloud Cover represents a double digit percentage of our cloud offering.

By: Craig McElroy, CTO & Co-Founder, Contegix

At Contegix, one of our core values is to respect people, data and time. While all three of these are absolutely critical, whether dealing internally with coworkers or externally with customers, failure to respect data carries the most potential for detrimental impact.

We realize that data is the lifeblood of our customers, so this core value pertains to taking measures to ensure data is saved and preventing that data from inadvertently falling into the wrong hands. One of our steps for handling data remaining on drives as part of the server decommissioning procedures is to wipe that drive using a United States Department of Defense 5220.22-M compliant process.

Our utility of choice is the open source Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) (http://www.dban.org), which includes a number of data clearing options as well as the full DoD 5220.22-M method. This does a seven-pass wipe using random characters, complements of those characters, and random data streams. In 2004, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA Advisory LAA-006-2004) found that even a single overwrite using the above method is sufficient to render electronic files unrecoverable. Furthermore, when recently meeting with a consultant from a major information security company specializing in computer forensics, he told us quite plainly that once you get past three passes of random writes, recovery is not possible.

While this data clearing approach accommodates the vast majority of data security needs we encounter, there are always going to be exceptions. The Defense Security Service, an agency of the DoD, provides a Clearing and Sanitization Matrix (C&SM), which specifies methods for sanitization of data. As of the June 2007 edition of the DSS C&SM, overwriting is no longer acceptable for sanitization of magnetic media, with only degaussing or physical destruction being acceptable. For cases of extreme data sanitization requirements where these guidelines must be met by our customers, we will provide arrangements whereby drives from that customer’s servers will be physically destroyed by a trusted
electronics recycling and media destruction firm.

While this approach clearly isn’t as green as a multi-pass wipe and repurposing of a drive, the logic board that contains no data is first removed from the drive and appropriately recycled before shredding takes place. Take a look at the included video to witness the gruesome fate that awaited some of the drives we recently took there for destruction.

For your own data protection concerns for all electronic devices capable of storing data, not just hard drives, review the NIST Special Publication 800-88, Guidelines for Media Sanitization (http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf).
Its recommendations can be applied to all types of organizations and are helpful in devising an appropriate policy based on the confidentiality level of your information.

For those of us that work regularly in Atlassian’s full portfolio of products, we know that we are, in fact, a unique bunch unto ourselves who use software and supporting tools that not just any Joe or Jill Schmoe uses. Atlassian’s products are all built on open-source, and coming across others who use their products is becoming common, thanks to the products being such solid software. Plug: If you don’t use Atlassian’s stuff, try it! Some licenses for the software start at just $10~with proceeds going to charity!

In an effort to unite locals with the same passion for good software and to share tips and tricks about how to best utilize these tools, Contegix has partnered with Atlassian to set up a St. Louis Atlassian User Group. You can find our group on Meetup.com here: http://www.meetup.com/St-Louis-Atlassian/. Our first meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 19 at 6 p.m. at Hatch, which is located in Maplewood at 7305 Marietta, St. Louis MO 63143. We welcome you to join the group, and of course, forward the information to those you know who use any of Atlassian’s products. Together we hope to share insight and information and perhaps learn a trick or two ourselves in addition to general good times and fun that comes with meeting people.

By: Andrew Williams, Technical Support Engineeer

When working with an open source library, sometimes the best documentation is the source code itself. Here’s a quick shell function for finding the code you’re looking for in the Python scripting language. Simply add these three lines to your .bash_profile or .bashrc file.

**

function pycd () {

cd `python -c “import os.path, $1; print os.path.dirname($1.__file__)”`

}

**

Now you can you use the ‘pycd’ command to change to the directory the module lives inside. Simply specify the module you’re looking for as an argument. Here is an example using the popular “lxml” module.

**

contegix@AJW-Contegix-MBP:~$ pycd lxml

contegix@AJW-Contegix-MBP:lxml$ pwd

/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/lxml-2.2.6-py2.6-macosx-10.6-universal.egg/lxml

andrew@andrew-mbp:lxml$ ls

ElementInclude.py  _elementpath.py    cssselect.py       etree.py           objectify.py       pyclasslookup.pyc  usedoctest.pyc

ElementInclude.pyc _elementpath.pyc   cssselect.pyc      etree.pyc          objectify.pyc      sax.py

__init__.py        builder.py         doctestcompare.py  etree.so           objectify.so       sax.pyc

__init__.pyc       builder.pyc        doctestcompare.pyc html               pyclasslookup.py   usedoctest.py

**

The Python one-liner is pretty simple. It first imports the ‘os.path’ module and then the module that you specified on the command line (We’ll call this the “example” module). It then finds the parent directory of the example module by using the built-in attribute ‘__file__’. This special attribute is a string of the pathname of the file from which the module was loaded. The example module’s parent directory is then written to standard out where the shell expands it for use with the ‘cd’ command.

This command works with both modules in the standard library and with third party libraries. The only caveat is that this will not work with code that is still contained inside a “.egg” package as it’s not actually a directory on the file system.

This month’s Tech Tip is from our Engineer, Greg Walters.

The script below provides bash tab-complete functionality for users of the
Hyperic HQApi utilities. Users will be able to use bash and tab to view
a list of possible options to complete the command they’re typing out.

Enjoy!

Click here to download the code

We often get asked from clients about the people who take your calls, emails, letters and pigeon-carried memos and in turn, assist you friendly and fast. This interesting bunch is by far the best and brightest in their fields (not to brag) and they also are truly ‘unique’ individuals on their own (as if working here wasn’t enough). Every other month, we’ll be introducing you to one such unique Contegian.

You’ll learn about their role within Contegix and what they do when they aren’t here making our clients happy. We’ll cover everyone from the late-night Engineers to the CTO, the Sales Maverick and even the Ambassador of First Impressions. Each of them plays a vital part to keeping Contegix up and running smoothly, and outside of our offices, making the world way more exciting for them being here. Enjoy!

Q: What’s Your Name?

A: John Klockenkemper or, “Klock,” as everyone calls me.

Q: What’s Your Role?

John:

I am the everyman. I do provisioning for managed and colocation customers, I run all the cable, set up new cabinets, take care of the hardware – whatever else I can pitch in on and do. I keep the engineers doing support and not having to worry about setting stuff up for customers.

Q: What Brought You Here?

John:

The way I got my job here was a little different than most everyone else.

I was a lot younger, working at a golf course. One day, I took a guy’s golf bag to his car so I could go home. He told me he did all the IT work for the golf course. We got to talking and I gave him my resume. He shot it out and another IT firm got it, then passed it along to the Contegix Co-founders since they deal in Linux. I was brought in by Matthew and Craig (the Co-founders) and they interviewed me and, here I am. That was several years ago. I was a giant nerd, and Linux was a hobby and has been since I was about 12-it was an exciting opportunity for me, so I took it.

Q: Tell Us About Yourself.

John:

In short: I am a fire performer. I am a Mozilla and Ubuntu volunteer. I am a huge Star Wars nerd and I play a ton of video games.

Q: How did you get into fire performing? Why do you volunteer for Mozilla and Ubuntu?

We’ve also heard that you are also restoring a bike – tell us about that.

John:

I went to a festival my first year in college, found myself outside a fire spinning circle, fell in LOVE. When I got back to school it was practice every day after that. That was 3 years ago today, actually. Holy cow.

I volunteer for Mozilla because I have been using Firefox for years now, and I figure that I should help out with it. Same thing goes for Ubuntu.

I restored a bike. It was a no-name bike from the early 80’s. I had it for quite a while and figured since it’s summertime I should go ahead and get it in working order. I did not understand the undertaking I was about to embark on. Stripping the paint, repainting, cleaning/replacing thirty-year old parts, figuring out the archaic shifting system, dealing with crappy parts I bought – after about two months of on and off work, it’s fixed. I learned a lot of lessons, and I am about to start bike number two. Now with twelve coats of paint, instead of four!

Q: What Do You Like Most About Working Here?

John:

There are a lot of reasons I like working here. Stuff is always interesting, I get to work with very smart people, I feel like I have an impact on what’s going on around here. I can’t really define a favorite. All of them are shoulder to shoulder.

Q: Well, if you had to pick one to pass along to people…

John:

Contegix is a fascinating place – everyone here is constantly learning. There is little stagnation and I like that.

In case you haven’t heard the news (but we’re pretty sure it spread like the oil slick in the gulf), Contegix announced our forthcoming expansion into Europe with a state-of-the-art data center. All of the support and infrastructure management will still be handled from the St. Louis, MO USA offices.

There has been some buzz around the subject of possible satellite offices in Boston and San Francisco. This is not confirmed yet, but as soon as we know more, we’ll be announcing it here. What we can tell you is this: our St. Louis offices will be growing substantially not just in terms of square footage, but in terms of staff,  as well.

Our announcement was given at the Atlassian Summit in San Francisco, which we helped to sponsor this year, by our Co-Founder and CTO, Craig McElroy, during the Launch Pad Competition.

We had the opportunity to meet lots of developers and other Atlassian-pasionate people from across the globe, and catch up with our friends at Atlassian, as well. In short, the Summit was a great success and we’ll be looking forward to next year’s Summit. Who knows what big changes we’ll have by then. Take a look at our blog for our Summit Recap! Lots more information there and plenty of pictures!

We are not ones for shameless plugs or really even asking for any time from our valuable customers (since it’s our job to make sure you HAVE time free of IT worry), but we are asking for your support for a change if you’d be willing to give it.

Contegix is up again this year in the Linux Journal Reader’s Choice Awards for Favorite Linux-Friendly Web Hosting Company. We won last year against more formidable-sized firms, which was a major accomplishment; it let us know that you, our customers and friends, believe in the hard work that we do day in and day out, 365 days a year to keep our customers online and to protect their livelihoods.

We would greatly appreciate your support by going to:
http://contegix.com/lj2010

You don’t have to subscribe to the magazine in order to vote, and it will only take a few seconds of your time. One vote per person, please.

Feel free to share this information with your colleagues and friends. Like David, we are going up against multiple Goliaths again this year, and we want to show the world that excellent customer service still counts for something in technology.

Thank you for your continued support!