For further assistance - call the Posix Help Desk - Office hours - on 012 807 0590. Once you have filled in the application - you can then 'login' to the System and add machines - etc. All Fields except the VAT and Company Reg No must be completed.
Your Equipment:
There are some minimum machine requirements.- Although true rack mount cases are not required - your case should be able to fit into our Cabinets. This means it should be about ninteen inches wide - to fit onto the "L" bracket shelves. Machines narrower than about eighteen inches may not be wide enough to fit.
- Machines should preferably not have sliding rail kits.
- Machines should have a standard 100Mb/1Gb copper Ethernet card with a UTP connector.
- The Switch-Port you are allocated is tied to your MAC address - if you move the UTP Cable to another port - it will probably not work and we will get upset.
- The Keyboard and Mouse ports should either be PS/2 or USB. Motherboards with the older style interfaces should not be used.
- The BIOS should be set to "Switch On" the machine in the event of a Power Failure, and to ignore startup errors such as No-Keyboard. Sometimes the power does go down despite our best intentions.
- The little Power, Disk and Network LED's on the front of your machine are there for a reason - please make sure that they are correctly opperational.
- The machine should have its side pannels fitted correctly - so foreign objects can not fall inside.
- Operating System Software should be kept up to date - especially security patches. This is especially importaint for people that run Microsoft Operating systems.
- The machine should be physically visited at least once every six month to check that Fans - etc are still in working order.
- The machine should be fully serviced once every two year - change the Motherboard Battery - consider replacing the Hard Drives - etc.
- The Machines Primary Name and IP Address along with your Company Name must be clearly visible on both the front and back of the machines. You could also include Contact names and numbers.
- Contact details on the Hosting Website must be kept up to date - so we can inform you of any problems.
- If a Key is required to get to the switches on the front panel - leave one - perhaps screwed or fastened to the back of the machine.
- Once a machine reaches about five years old - reduce your misery and put it out to pasture. Replace it with something newer.
The Facility:
Posix has its own hosting facility in the Midrand area strategically close to the main Internet Peering centre in Johannesburg. This allows Posix reasonably fast access to other ISP's in and around South Africa. There are seperate links to some of the other ISP's - eg SAIX (Telkom). Our International Bandwidth also lands at this facility. The Facility has backup generators and each hosting cabinet is equiped with its own UPS - etc. The Hosting Centre is switched at 100Mb full Duplex. There are various security systems (Camera's, Keyed access - etc) to ensure the safety of your equipment. Machines are monitored and if your machine dies - you can be optionally (you decide and control) notified of the event. You can even temporarily remove your machine off the 'net if needed - all under your control.IP Addresses:
You are provided with a minimum of a single IPv4 address as part of your hosting agreement. Each IPv4 address can have a corrisponding IPv6 address. Please ask the Posix Support desk for the appropriate network address. You can purchase more IPv4 addresses (each with a corrisponding IPv6 address). Each IPv4 address (and its paired IPv6 address) can have multiple reverse names. The reverse names are usually active within 15 minutes of being updated. The 'reachability' to your IP addresses is shown with a
or
as appropriate.
Costs:
All prices are excluding VAT. Charges are currently R1430.00 per machine per month which buys you 32Kb of average bandwidth. Additional bandwidth is charged at R1430.00 per average 32Kb used. In order to determine your bandwidth usage, look at the MRTG graphs for the last week and the month and find the largest average figure there is. Divide by 32 and round up the fraction. There is also an installation charge (non-returnable) of R1430.00 and you will be billed a (returnable) deposit equal to one month on you second month. Additional pairs of IP addresses (IPv4 and corrisponding IPv6) are charged at R18.00 each.Own Cabinet:
If you like, you can install your own cabinet. In this option, the Cabinet and all contents are your own (ie - you purchase everything) and you can brand your cabinet in whatever way you want. You can keep it locked (but please leave a key on-site). The Cabinet should be no taller than 38U so that with wheels - you can still get it through doors and in the lift. It should also be of the standard width (thinking of our door frames) which is a little more than 19 inches. It should contain your own UPS (We'd suggest a Rack Mount UPS such as the 1500VA 3U unit that APC sell, but there are other similar local models) and your own switch (we suggest the 3Com 3300 unit - as it has good SNMP functionality and can be plugged in to our existing management system).Posix will supply a single power supply from our Generator (not via one of our own UPS's) and a single Ethernet link.
The monthly base cost is then four times the cost of a single machine
(R5720.00) which allows up to four servers to be installed. The
Installation cost is (regardless of how many machines it contains)
also R5720.00. You can add further machines at the cost of
R1430.00 per machine per month (installation free) - and each machine will also
need to be entered into our management system.
We now only monitor the total traffic into
our switch, that is, traffic between your machines is not monitored and
can be spread between your machines in any way you choose. This allows
for machines to run as mirrors - etc. Thus for four machines you get
128Kb of bandwidth for R5720.00 and for eight machines you
get 256Kb of bandwidth for R11440.00 per month. However, if
you have four machine but use an average of just under 256Kb per month -
your bill would be for four machines and for an additional four units
of bandwidth... the same cost as eight machines.
If you are an existing hosting client - existing machines moved into your own cabinet are exempt from the setup fee.
A machine is defined as a server that is providing user services. A Firewall can either be an appliance or a machine and is exempt from any charges. It is allowed to run traditional firewall services and may run mail scanning services and may act as a proxy but only between the inside and outside. If it hosts any services such as POP3, DNS or WEB - then it becomes a Server machine and will be billed. Final discression lies with Posix.