Joyent

Joyeur Bytes - August 2007

Connector and Slingshot Are Now Open (Source) and Free

Joyent has open-sourced Connectorand Slingshot under the GPLv2.

What does this mean for you? Well, the products you have come to know and love will continue to get better as developers from around the world work with Joyent to improve on existing functionality and contribute new applications to the Connector and Slingshot product lines. A couple of folks have already started digging in, and we are hoping to have some cool announcements and applications to share with you in the very near future.

To expedite development of complimentary applications, we have also released a FREE 2 User / 2GB Connector account with all our applications: Email, Calendar, Bookmarks, Files, and Lists. Strongspace and Web Hosting are available by upgrading to the Startup, Plus, or Premier plans.

Want to learn more?

Shared Accelerators – OpenSolaris Here We Come!

The knot of vipers has been untangled, and the first round of invitations have been distributed for the shared hosting accounts on the OpenSolaris platform.

We are starting the initial roll out slowly, to make sure the migrations go as easy as we think they will, so we ask for a wee bit of patience as the first group takes the plunge. There is a new Knowledgebase and we set up a Shared Accelerators forum to ensure you have the information you need – when you need to it help you along the way.

We are starting with the Premier customers, then rolling to Plus and then StartUp accounts, and all levels will be done alphabetically to keep it as fair as possible.

Not exactly sure what level your plan translates into?

  • All VC plans are 'Plus' (for hosting portion only)
  • Mixed Grill - 'Plus' (unless you were a VC who purchased before 12/9/06 or you purchased MG outright and then purchased an upgrade before 1/22/07, in which case you are Premier)
  • Three Martini Lunch - 'Premier' (unless you purchased before 12/9/06 in which case you are Empire = Premier limits x2)

The quotas on each plan can be found on the Connector pricing page.

We will be providing more updates shortly in the Shared Accelerators Forum, so stay tuned…

New Services: Accelerators Systems Support, Audit and Scale Services

We launched several new services where you can leverage Joyent’s expertise in application design, development and systems architecture to help you avoid some common early mistakes, and ensure that your end-users always have a great experience.

More information is available online in the Systems Support and Audit and Scale sections of the Joyent website.

Support. Help us, help you.

No one really enjoys contacting the Support Department as it means something is not as you expect it, and you’re unable to fix it yourself. When that happens, it is our goal to provide you efficient, effective, and reliable technical support.

To help us respond more quickly and more accurately to your inquiry, please do us a favor and first check to make sure what you are experiencing is a covered support item. If it is, then head to the Help Desk and give us as much detail as possible (too much is never enough) so we can solve your problems as quickly as possible.

If what you are experiencing happens to fall outside of our free technical support categories, we encourage you to search the Joyent Knowledge-base for a solution. Another option is to ask other Joyeurs on our support forums (see below). We recommend you check there to see if your question has been answered yet and if it hasn’t, put it out there for the community to respond to.

And do you know about the bat phone? All Joyent Accelerator hosting customers with a ‘L’ or above sized account have access to a dedicated emergency support phone line. This emergency support line is only for connectivity and hardware related issues such as: you cannot SSH into your container; you cannot access your NAS disk attached to your container; your system is not responding at all, etc. Please do not use the emergency support line for system configuration support.

The number was included in your welcome email, but if you cannot seem to put your fingers on it, please send an email to support [at] joyent [dot] com and we will send it your way.

Bytes Issue 1: Survey Results

We wish to extend a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who took the time to complete the survey from the June issue of Bytes. It was overwhelmingly positive and reaffirmed some of the things we are doing here are right on track which was nice to see.

I guess this ‘communications’ thing actually works.

The majority of the requests came in for White Papers, Meetups, Tips and Tricks, and a little deeper discussion on the product roadmaps. Ok. Done. It might pain our Marketing team to do so, but we will minimize the ‘fluff’ factor and will beef things up technically in the newsletter (starting in the next issue). And who knows, we might even honor the request for a ‘Dave Joke of The Month’ section, but we make no promises here. Getting him to be funny on a regular basis could be a bigger project than we can take on right now…

So that is it for Issue #2. Our plan is to send these little nuggets out about six times a year, so we hope you find this newsletter interesting and will keep on reading future issues of Joyeur Bytes.

We also welcome your recommendations on subject matter and have set up a forum for you to share your feedback as well as some of your own tips, tricks and success stories. Now is the time to share people!

Be Joyent