Jim's Input on Ahsay's Price Increase

I've been using the software since 2004. The 2010 price change to me is merely a bump in the road. The product was very underpriced for years. Take a look on the market for 2009. Ahsay will dominate their market completely in 1-3 years because of new and developing focus: increased quality assurance; support staff and hours are increasing; and the product line is having an extreme focus and performance. I look at the price increase as a move to ensure their presence. And if you are using Ahsay, it's your presence too. Don't look at quantity of 1. Yes, those jump off the page. I always look at big numbers like quantity 1,000 OBM.

I hear so many statements about "my business plan" is shot. Really? I've spoken and e-mailed with hundreds (yes, literally), and there are not too many business savvy deployments out there. I've attempted twice in the past five years to setup a co-op for Ahsay partners where we could buy in $50,000-$100,000 bulk purchases, but when push comes to shove, the "my business plan" doesn't have any real demographics, so people don't buy in bulk. They buy the minimum possible. If you ask yourself how to compete with M*** or Carbon***, then I'll help--don't! Scherring from Ahsay said it best in that even if Ahsay gave you the software free, you couldn't afford the hardware infrastructure.

Are the Ahsay pricing levels for 2010 reasonable for the industry? Yes. Shop around.

Are the pricing levels relative to Ahsay themselves steep? Only with ACB. It's the new flagship though, and file backup is easy and profitable.


Ciao,

Jim Robinson, MBA, PMP

2009 Sale and 2010 Price Changes

I wanted to get some year-end information out.

Ahsay Price Changes

Ahsay is introducing price changes for 2010. Their forum is active because some don't want higher prices while others embrace the change with Ahsay's new quality assurance going full swing. One great feature is that Ahsay will increase free account sizes from 500MB to "at least" 2GB.

You can view list pricing here: http://www.ahsay.com/en/partners/ahsay_partners_pricing.html

Ahsay Reseller Changes

Peak Backup will continue to support and sell the Ahsay product line. Almost all resellers are being dropped in 2010. I was on the phone with Ahsay's sales manager two days this week already, and I did not ask why the realignment of resellers is taking place.
Peak Backup Changes

With Ahsay's focus on quantity versus packages, I'm not sure the shopping can handle the new structure. So, I'm evaluating this. You may see a new cart for 2010.

The discounting of 5% initial, 12.5% for repurchase, and 10% off maintenance will be similar. The only number I expect to modify is 12.5% for repurchase to 10%. This is alignment with pricing changes for 2010. I am not trying to squeeze any more profit.

Peak Backup will focus only on OEM (brandable) sales. We'll support existing Standard clients.

DECEMBER SALE

In preparation for higher 2010 pricing, I've made major purchasing commitments in 2009 to help all add licensing or get into the software before price changes. I have the Peak Backup sale going through December 22, 2009 so I can enjoy some time with the family. I may add an extension from December 28 through December 31, 2009; however, it will be less than the 25% now.

I personnally do not like offering a high discount sale because it leaves people out who purchased in previous months. This is really driven by offsetting some purchasing pricing that was not announced by Ahsay until recently. So, I'm offerring only the two most popular packages to keep this sale focused and coupled with our Dec - Feb committment with Ahsay.

25% off Ahsay List. The following two packages will be on sale at PeakBackup.com until December 22, 2009. This is for new licensing or existing license issued by PeakBackup.com or Ahsay.com directly. If you are adding to an existing license, include that license name at checkout. The two products with major discounting are:

1. OEM All-In-One 25 License / 25 Mailbox
http://www.peakbackup.com/products/OEM-All%252dIn%252dOne-25-License-%7B47%7D-25-Mailbox.html

2. OEM ACB 100 License
http://www.peakbackup.com/products/OEM-ACB-100-License.html

Use this code at checkout and ensure the pricing is reduced before you pay: Dec2009

Note: The only change is that the normal 1-2 day business turnaround will be 2-3 days. This is accounting for expected year-end delays associate with the ordering surge.

5.5.3.X Upgrade Recommendations

Upgrading Ahsay with any release is fairly straight-forward and requires near-zero downtime if you're quick (implemented it by script). When upgrading from 5.5.2.X (or earlier) to 5.5.3.X (or higher), you need to schedule some downtime to let the system implement the new indexing that ultimately greatly enhances performance. None of this is official from Ahsay, but here is how Peak Backup upgraded our servers:

1. Schedule a maintenance window with your customers. Your window depends on the size of your user home directory sizes. Make it something equivalent to the time it takes to perform a recursive directory listing.

2. Disable replication. If something goes wrong, you'll still have your data is good working order.

3. Perform an initial file copy to retain your customization and settings per the administrator upgrade guide. Peak Backup uses rsync instead of copy because of logs files involved in step 6.

4. Prevent users from backup. Either plumb down the network interface or suspend all accounts (http://peakbackup.blogspot.com/2009/08/multiple-ahsay-accounts-suspended.html)

5. Shutdown the service.

6. Perform a second copy of the system logs. Copy could take a while if you’re using copy. Hopefully you'll consider a rsync-like protocol (then it’s 5 seconds).

7. Start the service. With this specific upgrade, Ahsay software knows that performance indexing needs to be performed. It will parse over every file in the user home directories. You can watch this in the logs.

8. When indexing is complete, enable your network interface or enable all users (whatever method you chose).

9. Checkout completely, then enable replication.

10. Wait a week before auto-upgrading your clients.

NOTE: Our upgrades are literally as fast as a service restart plus 5 seconds and do not require preventing user backup access as soon as the service is back online. This specific release recommendation suggests extended downtime for indexing. This is the first time in years of using the software where we just had to show patience and let the system run.

Jim Robinson
Peak Backup LLC
http://www.peakbackup.com

5.5.3.X Upgrade

What happens when you upgrade or you incorrectly modify a license file and some (or all accounts) are set to suspended, infile delta disabled, and shadow copy disabled? Instead of logging into the system and spending hours clicking enable on each account, the following works perfectly in Linux.

==============================
cd /directory/above/userfolder
ls userfolder >/tmp/modify.txt
for n in `cat /tmp/modify.txt`
do
curl 'http://localhost/obs/api/ModifyUser.do?SysUser=SYSUSER&SysPwd=SYSPASSWORD&LoginName='$n'&Status=ENABLE'
curl 'http://localhost/obs/api/ModifyUser.do?SysUser=SYSUSER&SysPwd=SYSPASSWORD&LoginName='$n'&EnableShadowCopy=Y'
curl 'http://localhost/obs/api/ModifyUser.do?SysUser=SYSUSER&SysPwd=SYSPASSWORD&LoginName='$n'&EnableInFileDelta=Y'
done
==============================

NOTE: EACH curl is one line (it's wrapping due to the length)

EXAMPLE
User storage is /storage/users
syspass: PEAK
password: BACKUP

cd /storage
ls users>/tmp/modify.txt
for n in `cat /tmp/modify.txt`
do
curl 'http://localhost/obs/api/ModifyUser.do?SysUser=PEAK&SysPwd=BACKUP&LoginName='$n'&Status=ENABLE'
curl 'http://localhost/obs/api/ModifyUser.do?SysUser=PEAK&SysPwd=BACKUP&LoginName='$n'&EnableShadowCopy=Y'
curl 'http://localhost/obs/api/ModifyUser.do?SysUser=PEAK&SysPwd=BACKUP&LoginName='$n'&EnableInFileDelta=Y'
done

MySQL Backup

Below is what we use to backup MySQL databases.

#!/bin/bash

NOW=`date +"%m-%d-%Y-%H:%M"`;
BACKUPDIR="/backup/mysql/$NOW";

### Server Setup ###
#* MySQL login user name *#
MUSER="CHANGE";

#* MySQL login PASSWORD name *#
MPASS="CHANGE";

#* MySQL login HOST name *#
MHOST="localhost"; #or IP
MPORT="3306"; #standard port is 3306

# DO NOT BACKUP these databases
IGNOREDB="
information_schema
mysql
test
"

#* MySQL binaries *#
MYSQL=`which mysql`;
MYSQLDUMP=`which mysqldump`;
GZIP=`which gzip`;

# assuming that /nas is mounted via /etc/fstab
if [ ! -d $BACKUPDIR ]; then
mkdir -p $BACKUPDIR
else
:
fi

# get all database listing
DBS="$(mysql -u $MUSER -p$MPASS -h $MHOST -P $MPORT -Bse 'show databases')"

# SET DATE AND TIME FOR THE FILE
NOW=`date +"d%dh%Hm%Ms%S"`; # day-hour-minute-sec format
# start to dump database one by one
for db in $DBS
do
DUMP="yes";
if [ "$IGNOREDB" != "" ]; then
for i in $IGNOREDB # Store all value of $IGNOREDB ON i
do
if [ "$db" == "$i" ]; then # If result of $DBS(db) is equal to $IGNOREDB(i) then
DUMP="NO"; # SET value of DUMP to "no"
#echo "$i database is being ignored!";
fi
done
fi

if [ "$DUMP" == "yes" ]; then # If value of DUMP is "yes" then backup database
#FILE="$BACKUPDIR/$NOW-$db.gz";
FILE="$BACKUPDIR/$db.gz";
#echo "BACKING UP $db";
$MYSQLDUMP --add-drop-database --opt --lock-all-tables -u $MUSER -p $MPASS -h $MHOST -P $MPORT $db gzip > $FILE
fi
done

AhsayPro Expansion

The AhsayPro site was originally setup to showcase an example usage of Ahsay's API. From that experiment, both AhsayPro.com and the PeakAPI.com have grown quite a bit. The AhsayPro server is one to two months away from a colocation move. Besides heavier bandwith needs, our goal was to find a SAS Type II Colocation. I found an unbelievable data center with $3.99/mbps for bandwidth. In the interview process, I found most of their business is referral. So, I setup a site that highlights the data center. Who knows, maybe a few referrals will help negotiate an even better deal down the road!

Check out http://www.sasbandwidth.com

For AhsayPro users, storage location will be SAS Type II hosted soon.

Jim Robinson
PeakBackup.com

Happy Easter

Happy Easter.

There's lots going on this past month. From adding a partner to Springs Data, making a ton of enhancements to the PeakAPI.com solution to the snow storm today.

PeakBackup.com: The site's merchant processing is now working 100%. There has never been a security issue, but the American Express and Paypal are online for payment.

PeakAPI.com: The roadmap will be updated soon. There are many enhancement for administrator control as well as security patches. April will bring an enhancement release. May is the month we're hoping to have the proof of concept for WHMCS online with AhsayPro.com. If that goes well, the WHMCS release will finally be released.

SpringsData.com: We've added Rob as a partner and now have SAS Type II data center services available.

New Website

Blogs, forum posts, and PeakAPI has stalled with the release of www.peakbackup.com. It's now production as of this post. More interesting posts here to come.