The Salt of XMission
As system administrators at XMission, we hold to the Three Great Virtues of programmers, immortalized by Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl, but adapted for admins: Laziness– The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving scripts and configs that other admins will find useful, […]
Why Your Data Center Should Have Aisle Containment
As I say in my previous blog post, data centers in the United States use a full 1% of the nation’s power so improving efficiencies makes very real sense. In this series of blog posts about HVAC (Heating Venting Air Conditioning) cooling strategies for computers I summarize the main elements you should focus on to make […]
Data Center Cooling Optimizations Bring Big Wins
At XMission we have just completed some significant energy efficiency improvements in our data center. To educate the public and our customers as well as promote sustainable energy practices, I will be writing some blog posts about industry trends and the steps we have taken at XMission to dramatically improve our energy efficiencies. These best […]
Utah Public Health Association Recognizes XMission
Today, XMission received a “Working for a Healthier Utah” award from the Utah Public Health Association (UPHA) in recognition of our ongoing corporate support of their organization. According to their website (hosted by XMission!), UPHA “is a non-profit organization of public health professionals working together for a healthier Utah through advocacy, education, and collaboration with […]
Google Fiber in Salt Lake City?
Yesterday, Vince Horiuchi from the Salt Lake Tribune called me for comment on a story that was under embargo until 11am today. Google Fiber is investigating Salt Lake City. In Kansas City and Provo, incredible concessions were made to install Google as a residential fiber monopoly. Kansas City waived franchise fees, and gave free office […]
Preventing Participation in Distributed Denial of Service
Over the past week, XMission has seen a sharp spike in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks utilize spoofing of requests over UDP services to servers that would otherwise believe they are coming from a trusted source. Essentially these unwitting servers act as amplifiers, taking in a few bytes of a command and […]
Science and Engineering Fair Judges Needed!
Every year, XMission looks forward to supporting the Salt Lake Valley Science and Engineering Fair (SLVSEF). Pete Ashdown, our founder and president, serves as a judge and awards the XMission Technology Award to the student who best demonstrates creativity in utilizing the Internet for either research or as a presentation element. I spoke with Pete […]
Important, new requirements for domain owners
If you or your business currently own any domains, please read the following important information regarding the new ICANN required validation process. What is the ICANN required validation process? The new ICANN validation process helps increase the reliability of each domain’s contact information, in case your registrar needs to contact you for any reason. If […]
See how a simple “+” brings unlimited flexibility to your XMission email.
Today’s email tip will help you make better use of your XMission email with an amazingly easy to use feature called “suffix support” and it works with traditional @xmission.com or our Zimbra hosted email accounts. One email to rule them all Suffix support gives you the power of multiple email addresses, allowing you to easily identify […]
Net Neutrality
A recent federal court decision in a case involving a Verizon challenge to FCC “Net Neutrality” rules has inspired many breathless headlines about the death of the Internet as we know it. Because this will enable giant Internet providers to start prioritizing traffic based upon what their customers are willing to pay them, it deals […]