PEER 1 Dedicated Hosting Review

PEER 1 offers co-located and dedicated servers to over 10,000 customers worldwide. Started in 1999, PEER 1 has grown to a staff of more than 250 people situated in 12 cities across the United States and Canada. PEER 1 has created two series of scalable dedicated hosting plans, depending on whether you prefer Intel or AMD processors, each of which comes with top of the line hardware and more than ample storage and bandwidth capacities. On top of that, PEER 1 offers a selection of numerous highly useful add-ons and VIP level managed services to help make your online presence as successful as it is effortless.

 
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Unique Benefits
• Highly scalable dedicated hosting plans
• Live 24 x 7 technical phone support by highly skilled technicians
• Personal Account Manager assigned to your account
• Free iPod w/signup
• 30 minute guided tour
• One of the leading dedicated hosts in Canada - with operations and servers in Canada

Key Features
• 1-hour hardware replacement guarantee
• Complete Systems Planning
• Vast array of Managed Services
• Tons of add-ons
• 8,500+ servers

 

 
 

Editors' Comments
PEER 1 is simply one of the pioneers in dedicated and server based hosting. The company has grown from its Canadian roots as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada to expanding to include multi-data center locations throughout North America. In 2005, the company acquired Interland's dedicated server assets and grew their base of servers to over 15,000 in North America.

You'll find a number of tier-1 companies using PEER 1 as off-premises support for their operations and servers as primary redundancy to their internal efforts. PEER 1 also has a number of application service providers (ASPs), email hosting companies and more as their main server provider. Many US-based companies also utilize PEER 1 for their Canadian presence, as PEER 1 controls some primary data center space in Canada.

 
 

Uptime Guarantee
PEER 1 makes numerous guarantees to its customers, among them 100% network uptime. PEER 1 also boasts the industry's lowest latency and absolutely no packet loss.

Basics - What you need to know
DataCenter
PEER 1 operates 15 world class data centers throughout North America, with their dedicated hosting services concentrated in Fremont, CA, Miami, FL, and Atlanta, GA. All of their facilities are linked directly via multiple high-speed connections with more than 500 networks and 4 Tier 1 upstream providers: MCI, AT&T, Savvis, and Sprint. The PEER 1 network is powered by Cisco using Hot Standard Router Protocol and standard, full duplex Fast Ethernet feeds operating at 1000 megabytes per second.


Power Management
In the PEER 1 SLA, the company guarantees that power and environmental (HVAC) systems will be operational and fully functional 100% of the time, barring routine maintenance - a guarantee backed by refund credits granted for any infraction on their part. To keep the power running at all times, PEER 1 maintains its own Uninterruptible Power Supply with redundant diesel backup generators, all of which are performance tested regularly. The HVAC systems provide full particle filtering with complete humidity control.

Physical Security
The network as well as the Network Operations Center itself is monitored 24/7/365 by trained and knowledgeable staff, the network by expert engineers and the NOC by experienced security professionals. Further security measures include closed-circuit TV cameras, biometric hand-scanning units and military grade passcards.

Server Access by Customer
Physical Access: The only people allowed physical access to the dedicated servers are appointed Senior Technicians.
Root Access: Root access is allowed to dedicated servers

Service Offerings

General Managed Services - Bundles
PEER 1 offers 5 basic dedicated hosting plans, from the Business Series Basic with an Intel P4 3.0 Ghz processor with 1 GB RAM, 2 X 250 GB hard drives, RAID 1 hardware to the Dual Core Series Premium with a Dual AMD Opteron 265-Dual Core processor with 2 GB RAM, 3 X 73 GB SCSI hard drives, RAID 1, 5, and 10 hardware, and optional 64-bit setup. No matter which plan you get, you'll have 1 terabyte of monthly data transfer at your disposal.

After choosing which plan to sign up for, you can then avail PEER 1 of their numerous optional add-ons, available at extra cost, each with its own inherent value far surpassing the cost. Tools like: data backup services, MS SQL server licenses, managed firewalls, your own Content Delivery Network, prepaid data transfer blocks, Plesk 7.5 control panel for Linux or Windows, advanced system monitoring, managed support, and web analytics.

You can also enlist the aid of PEER 1 professionals to help you with a basic security scan, cron job or scheduled task setup, enhanced security audit, installation and configuration of third party mail software, OS reprovision, or any number of other administrative duties.

Security and Updates
For a well worthwhile extra fee, you can get Advanced System Monitoring which includes SNMP support, and monitoring for HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and SQL availability, CPU and network interface utilization, available disk partition storage space and physical free memory, all exportable in 5 customizable, PDF and plain text reports. Moreover, PEER 1's Advanced System Monitoring leaves a lightweight footprint, creating little to no impact on normal system functioning.

Firewall
Depending on the number of servers and IPs you wish to support, PEER 1's network security experts will install and manage for you a NetScreen Security Appliances firewall, capable of performing Stateful Packet Inspections to industry standards.

Backup Services
PEER 1 dedicated hosting backup services include storing the backed up data on their hardware in a secure part of one of their datacenters with data installation into any new hardware of yours and data recovery should your disk get damaged.

Sample Server Plans
• Business Series Professional: Dual 3.0 Ghz Xeon processor, 2 GB RAM, 2 X 250 GB hard drive, RAID 1 hardware, 1 TB bandwidth, optional 64-bit setup

• Dual Core Series Professional: Dual AMD Opteron 265 - Dual Core processor, 2 GB RAM, 2 X 250 GB hard drive, RAID 1 hardware, 1 TB monthly bandwidth, optional 64-bit setup.

• Basic Plan: Starting at $269/month. Ideal uses include site development, basic web server or email server. Intel P4 3.0Ghz , 1GB RAM , 2 x 250 GB HD, Hardware RAID 1

• Professional and Premium single processor Intel machines: Call for quote

• Dual Core AMT Opterons: Call for quote

Customer Profiles
• Web Developers
• Hosting Resellers
• Enterprise Gaming deliver services - providers, publishers

Customer Testimonials
PEER 1 delivers the ultimate in high-speed, low latency network performance which is essential for giving our customers a gaming experience with no interruptions.
- Robert Pallini, President, Leetservers.com

Using PEER 1 is an advantage for my company. They do all the functions of an IT department and they share the same commitment level to customer satisfaction that we have at Silver Messages.
- Larita Arnold, Owner, Silvermessages.com