Top 10 things we accomplished in 2015

I’ve been recapping our Top 10 accomplishments at DiscountASP.NET for many years over on the DiscountASP.NET blog, so I started the same tradition for Everleap last year. Here is my Top 10 list for 2015.

  1. Launched Managed SQL hosting
    managed sql hostingWe offer a Shared SQL hosting solution with our cloud hosting plans but some of you told us you needed more – more SQL storage, or more customization, or you needed to manage a lot of smaller SQL databases for a growing SaaS application. So we launched a Managed SQL hosting solution where you get your own private VM with your own SQL installation. Since it’s a private VM that is not shared with any other customers, we can do some customization on the server. We can enable features like SQL CLR and SQL Jobs or install special software or set up custom configurations for transaction logs or backups.


  2. Launched direct access to SQL backups through control panel
    Untitled-1For disaster recovery purposes, we backup sites and databases nightly. Upon customer request (and for a fee) we can retrieve SQL backups from our backup system. But that is hardly a convenient way to obtain older SQL backups. So we introduced a way for you to get access to 3 days worth of your SQL backups right from Control Panel. The tool provides a way to retrieve older SQL backup copies and the Control Panel also has a SQL Backup tool so you can create a SQL backup at any time.


  3. Published Everleap platform performance data information
    Everleap-average-response-time-chart3We’ve had many questions regarding Everleap’s performance. Microsoft MVP, Kevin Griffin, performed some load tests and shared his results in his review of Everleap on CodeProject. We performed our own study running load tests on Everleap and comparing the results against other popular hosting platforms like Godaddy and Microsoft Azure. And – you guessed it – Everleap’s platform shined. Check out the results of our performance tests here.


  4. Upgraded Windows Azure Pack
    Windows Azure PackWe performed our second Windows Azure Pack (WAP) update. With our cloud hosting platform, we are able to roll out the update a few servers at a time so customer sites are still operational during the update. The only snag we ran into on this WAP update was a longer than expected outage of the Control Panel – but customer sites were still up during the Control Panel update.


  5. Launched ASP.NET 4.5.2 hosting
    asp.net hosting
    As part of our second Windows Azure Pack upgrade, we updated our platform with ASP.NET 4.5.2.  It is getting more important to keep up to date with the minor versions of ASP.NET now, since Microsoft has publicly stated that they will only support the last two minor versions. So come January 2016, Microsoft is ending support for ASP.NET 4, 4.5 and 4.5.1.


  6. Published more customer stories
    We started posting interviews with some of our customers at the end of 2014 and we continued our Customer Stories series through 2015. If you haven’t seen them, you should check them out. The entire Customer Story list can be found here. Our customers are doing some very interesting stuff. Here are the stories published in 2015:
    • Jeremy Geatches of Country Meats outgrew shared hosting at Godaddy and needed a reliable host for their family business.
    • Jim Horne of XWord Info needed a new home for his 50+ year archive of New York Times daily crossword puzzles.
    • Shawn Weisfeld of UserGroup.TV wanted to stop managing his VPS of over 400 hours of developer presentation recordings.
    • Jason Mauss of GoldenSlam needed a scalable cloud hosting solution for his busy fantasy tennis site.
    • Kyle Neumeier of Little Rock Techfest Conference wanted a cloud hosting platform with node.js and Git support.
    • Neil Baker of ezRider wanted a cost-effective cloud solution for his site that empowers cyclists to organize rides.
    • Community Spotlight: Kids-U and GiveCamp – An example of non-profits and developers teaming up at GiveCamp events.


  7. Applied monthly Windows updates to infrastructure
    This is something that our customers didn’t even notice, and that’s a good thing, and how we want to keep it. It’s increasingly important to keep up to date with the monthly Microsoft Windows updates. In traditional hosting these updates are usually disruptive, as they require reboots. Sometimes multiple reboots. That’s because with traditional web hosting, your website is on a single physical box so your site will go down while the server reboots to apply updates. But not at Everleap. Since your site at Everleap can be served from any web server in a large cluster of web servers, we can take a few servers out of rotation to perform updates while the other servers remain available to serve your website. So we roll updates out a few servers at a time and as a result, customer sites are not disrupted.


  8. Launched free website migration service
    We know that migrating a website can be a hassle and a headache. Our staff has been doing a lot of site migration work over the past two years to help our customers over at DiscountASP.NET move off of Windows 2003 servers. With this experience under our belt, we started offering free site migration at Everleap to help make it even easier for businesses to cloud-enable their websites. More information about site migration here.


  9. Renewed our Microsoft Gold Partner status
    microsoft-gold-partner-300x84We successfully renewed our Microsoft Gold Partner status for 2015 – making it our 10th year in maintaining this level! As Microsoft continues to raise the bar to attain the Gold Partnership we’ve witnessed many other hosting providers drop off. It is a significant investment on our part to maintain the Gold status and we work hard every year to qualify for it. We continue to make this investment not only because it demonstrates our expertise, but we also benefit from a closer relationship with Microsoft which allows us to bring you all the cool new cutting-edge stuff like our Everleap cloud platform based on Windows Azure Pack.


  10. Recognized in CIO Review 100 Most Promising Microsoft Solution Providers 2015
    Top 100 Most Promising Microsoft Solution Provider 2015Everleap was recognized by CIO Review in their annual 100 Most Promising Microsoft solution provider list for 2015. Having just launched Everleap in the middle of 2014, making it on such a list just a year later is pretty awesome. Here is a link to the CIO Review Everleap profile.

So that wraps up my Top 10 list for 2015. Thanks for reading and we are looking forward to bringing you more great technologies and hosting solutions in 2016. Have a great holiday season and wishing you a very Happy New Year!

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