Hostmedic » review http://www.hostmedic.com Emergency Medicine for Hosting & Server Admins Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:23:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Under Promise & Over Deliver… http://www.hostmedic.com/admin/marketing/under-promise-over-deliver/ http://www.hostmedic.com/admin/marketing/under-promise-over-deliver/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:42:06 +0000 Glenn Kelley http://www.hostmedic.com/?p=739

This evening I had the opportunity to call up a local restaurant to make reservations… The employee @ El Dorado’s stated it might be up to 50 minutes for a table for 11. We hung up after agreeing on a time – and then I received a telephone call back in under 5 minutes stating – the table was ready when we were.

I have often ordered take out from El Dorado’s and always experience the same thing… My order is always ready sooner than promised. The first time this happened I looked at it like wow – must be a slower night then they expected… the second – perhaps this is a coincidence…

PIC-0085I ordered wireless from a company called Country Connections and was given a delivery date longer than I would have liked — and then in just under two days later my service was installed.
I called this week to let them know the service was less than stellar – and was told they would schedule a tech to review the situation early next week. Today they replaced the radio unit that services my house. This is more than just small town America companies helping out their customers – it is Smart Business. Each of these two organizations are performing what is perhaps the oldest marketing trick in the book – one that players like Time Warner, Vectren Gas, and most other service organizations have forgotten.. Announce the minimum of service and then give your best to deliver more that expected without bragging or making much noise about it.

The end result is the basically the same every time – A Positive effect on the customer. This creates word of mouth about the excellent level of service… not only did they deliver on what they promised – but… they provided much much much more…

Mark Stephenson, of Country Connections stated: ” We work hard and will not give any promises that we cannot meet.”

He and the team @ Country Connections succeeded in making me happy – and I will tell all my friends that I am a fan of their service.

And – next time your in Washington Court House Ohio make it a point to visit El Dorado’s and ask for Jessica to be your waitress. The service is stellar.

]]> http://www.hostmedic.com/admin/marketing/under-promise-over-deliver/feed/ 0 Cisco/Linux NSS4000 4Bay Gigabit Network Storage System Review http://www.hostmedic.com/admin/reviews/ciscolinux-nss4000-4bay-gigabit-network-storage-system-review/ http://www.hostmedic.com/admin/reviews/ciscolinux-nss4000-4bay-gigabit-network-storage-system-review/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:27:30 +0000 Glenn Kelley http://www.hostmedic.com/?p=511

NSS4000 Gigabit 4Bay Chassis

NSS4000 Gigabit 4Bay Chassis

Linksys / Cisco have a serious contender here for the small business community needing a quick easy storage solution to throw into their network.

The flexiibility to optimize the NSS4000 for capacity and sharing is not to be taken lightly.  Sadly – the limiting facter is 15 concurrent users – but as a network shared storage it works well. The feature set of the NSS series set it apart from entry-level, desktop NAS systems, while at the same time its competitive pricing gives small businesses the opportunity to realize substantial cost savings when compared with more expensive storage systems.

Unlike other NAS systems, that need to contain operating system software on one or more hard drives in a NAS system, the NSS400 contains the Linux OS that controls it on board. This gives the NSS system added stability and reliability, as well as the flexibility to be configured without connected drives or reconfigured at any time – even hot swapping and resorting hard drives to different storage bays.

If you are serious about needing an entry level NAS and do not want to go opensource – this should be one for you to review.  Go with one suggestion however – grab the empty chassis and add your own drives.   We have 4 2TB drives running our testing environment – something not even sold off the Linksys shelf – sadly the 150M limit on SATA vs SATAII did bog us down a little.

General


  •
  • Host Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet
  • Enclosure Type Rack-mountable – 1
  • Total Storage Capacity 0 TB
  • Installed Devices / Modules Qty 0 (installed) / 4 (max)
  • Width 17.3 in
  • Depth 16.5 in
  • Height 1.7 in
  • Weight 20.9 lbs

Processor / Memory

  • Flash Memory Installed 512 MB Flash

Storage Controller

  • Type RAID – Integrated
  • Controller interface type Serial ATA-150
  • Storage Controller / Supported Device Type Hard drive , Disk array (RAID)
  • RAID level JBOD , RAID 0 , RAID 1 , RAID 5 , RAID 10 , RAID 5 hot spare

Networking

  • Type Network adapter – Integrated
  • Data link protocol :  Ethernet, Fast Ethernet. Gigabit
  • Remote management protocol HTTP , HTTPS , SNMP 3
  • Network Services Compatibility DFS , FTP , XFS , FTPS , Microsoft CIFS , Network File System (NFS) , Server Message Block (SMB)
  • Features DHCP support , VLAN support , DiffServ support , 256-bit encryption , IP address filtering , MAC address filtering , Quality of Service (QoS) , Access Control List (ACL) support
  • Networking standards IEEE 802.1Q , IEEE 802.1p

Expansion / Connectivity

  • Expansion Bays Total (Free) 4 ( 4 ) x Hot-swap – 3.5″ x 1/3H
  • Interfaces 2 x Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T – RJ-45 , 3 x USB ( Management ) – 4 pin USB Type A

Miscellaneous

  • Rack Mounting Kit Included
  • Compliant Standards FCC Class A certified

Power

  • Power Device Power supply – Internal
  • Power provided 150 Watt

Software / System Requirements

  • OS Provided / Storage Operating System Linux 2.6 (via firmware)

Environmental Parameters

  • Min operating temperature 32F
  • Max operating temperature 113F
  • Operating humidity range 10 – 90%
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