Over the course of the past year, we have been diligently working behind the scenes, building and setting up a new facility for our clients. The facility started out being one that we would expand into (and keep our existing datacenter as-is). However, the more we thought and looked at the future of our company, and what is best for our clients from a long-term perspective, we decided to move *everyone* to our new facility. I have outlined the many reasons below.

The new facility is called the Telecom Center, and is situated less than 500 feet from our current datacenter at One Wilshire. We toured many different datacenters and opted for this one based on many factors. The first being the close proximity to our current datacenter. Secondly, we have our own full suite in the new datacenter, so we are in total control of every aspect of our space and we share it with no one else. We have security cameras watching the datacenter 24/7, we have a built-in network operations center, we monitor the temperature of the air conditioning units, the floor space itself and more.

We have 6 times the space at our new facility (!!) than we have at the current one. Instead of sharing power like we do currently, (where another company can come in and take nearly half the power of the floor), we have our own dedicated power feed. This is extremely important, since we ran into a major issue with the current datacenter, where they allowed another tenant to consume an insane amount of power, leaving the rest of us with no ability to turn up additional circuits or expand. This left us with no room to grow at the current datacenter. We have not been able to add a new server at the old datacenter for over 2 months now due to this power issue. That is not good. This move to our new datacenter ensures we have the ability to expand, which is a good thing.

You will not have to do anything, we will take care of it all for you. You won’t have to do anything, other than sit back and relax. There really is nothing to worry about.

THE MOVE:

We have already conducted trial runs and extensive testing to ensure that everything goes as smooth as possible. We are NOT doing a mass migration in one shot, it will carry on for over one month’s time. We will be moving server by server, one at a time. The process of what will happen is as follows:

We will shutdown one server at a time. We will then physically carry that server 500 feet to our new facility and install it into the rack. The rails and everything are already setup, so it’s just a matter of placing the server in the rack and pressing the power button. That’s really all there is to it.

We anticipate there will be about 30 minutes of downtime while we move each server to the new datacenter. This is being very conservative, but we feel that we should be very upfront about this whole process so everyone knows what to expect. We want to be as transparent as possible.

No customers will have to do anything. IP addresses will stay the same, the network that we have will stay the same, everything is exactly the same.

We will do the moves ONLY on the weekends, so we don’t interfere with normal weekday business operations. Since we are doing a slow and deliberate move, moving a few servers at a time keeps the downtime to a minimum. While we move each server, ALL other servers will be fully online and operational. There is NO change in service at all. The only downtime, as stated, is during the physical move of about 500 or so feet.

YOUR EMAIL:

For those of you who are concerned about email delivery, don’t be. Once the server is racked and back online, any mail sent when the server was physically moved, will be in your email account when the server is back up. Email servers around the internet are configured to retry sending mail for many hours and days if not weeks, and it is very rare to lose mail.

NETWORK SPEED:

Since we are physically moving the servers, nothing changes. The network speed will in fact increase since we have actually upgraded our network capacity at the new datacenter. We have 10Gigabit switches, with a new private backend network, which is something we currently don’t have. This is a HUGE benefit for those of you who connect to multiple different servers within our network, because that means you won’t incur bandwidth costs for doing so. So there is only enhancements and advantages to be gained as a result of this. We will have, at minimum, a multiple 10Gb frontend network (and a 10Gb backend), which is something that we haven’t seen any other datacenter in the world do.

NETWORK PROVIDERS:

Since this new facility is so close to our current one, nothing will change. We will have the exact same network providers that we have now. In fact, we have made many network upgrades which will be announced in another mailing list announcement within the next weeks. Let’s just say we have every major Tier 1 bandwidth provider that exists, and our network is solid through and through. We have also added a route optimization device, which does some amazing things, and all of this is FREE to you.

OTHER TENANTS:

For those of you who want to know which other big clients are in the new datacenter… there are too many to mention, but we’ll say Sprint, Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications, Above Net, and the list goes on and on. There are major players here, just like at our current facility. It really is a top-of-the-line datacenter. We are in the same building as the world’s top 10 corporate entities.

GROWTH:

What really solidified our decision for the move is the future. We have such huge potential to grow at this new facility, which as time progressed wasn’t present in our current location. (As evidenced by the fact we were not able to get enough power to even add additional servers…) Moving to the new datacenter means we can offer more services to all of you, and stay on the cutting edge. Since we have built everything from the ground up, no expense was spared and it truly is state of the art.

UPGRADES:

Over the course of the move, we will be introducing some HUGE upgrades and enhancements to our service offerings ranging from software to hardware. Being in the new facility allows us to introduce these new upgrades for all of you. More will be posted beginning in the next weeks!

Sincerely,

Leonard Ghazarian
Owner, Caspian Services, Inc.

I am pleased to announce that Caspian Services, Inc. has been selected to design and implement Mark Keppel Elementary School’s web site.

Caspian Services, Inc. (www.caspianservices.net) is a full-service web site services company located in La Crescenta with years of experience in providing web site design, hosting, and other related services to local and national organizations, including non-profit organizations and chambers of commerce.

Our selection process, which took almost three months, with countless hours of research, interviews, and meetings, provided Keppel with the best possible information to choose a vendor. We believe that Leonard and his team of experts will provide the best value and results to Keppel’s goal of having an effective and notable virtual address.

Starting tomorrow, the designing phase of the web site will begin through which a mock up will be produced and validated. Once the mock up is approved, the real coding/programming will start. With testing and debugging included, we anticipate the completion of this project by the end of May. Once the web site is in place and loaded with the desired contents, we will work with different groups to create a comprehensive yet fun marketing campaign to promote the site for the beginning of the school year in July.

As you can tell, much remains to be done in making Keppel’s upcoming web site a place that we would feel proud to call our school’s home, albeit virtual.

This is a unique and exciting opportunity for all of us to be involved with as the virtual place being built today is expected to be there long after we all graduate from Keppel.

Feel free to contact me with your comments and/or questions as I will be serving as the coordinator of this web development project.

Thank you for your continued support.

Alfred Hacopian (sent by email)

Beginning November 1st, 2006, Caspian Services, Inc. will be at their new, larger location. We are still going to be located in the heart of Los Angeles, City of Glendale. Our new, larger location will enable us to better service our clients by offering more in house services, including more design and printing options.

To celebrate the new location, we are going to offer 2 new promotions for the entire month of November.

1) FREE WEB HOSTING FOR LIFE with any website design project. That’s right, let us design your website in November, and we’ll host your site for free. You will never have to pay for hosting again, saving you thousands over the life span of your website.

2) FREE 1000 FULL COLOR BUSINESS CARDS with any new web hosting account. Let us host your current website, and we’ll print you 1000 full color business cards for free, a $75 value. New accounts only.

Both promotions are valid for the entire month of November to celebrate our new location. Take advantage of it today!

New Location:

Caspian Services, Inc.
2946 Honolulu Avenue
La Crescenta, CA 91214

We are excited to introduce the newest member of our team, Sean Kumar.

Graduating with a degree in multimedia, Sean Kumar excelled in his once looked upon dream of design and turned it into reality. He has interned for a person who was once a former vice president of Coca Cola marketing, and then moved on to spreading his knowledge in the graphic design industry. “Not only did I want to show my passion for the field, but knew that the only way to be the best is to learn from the best, which I consider to be the industry professionals”.

Before Sean entered the design industry, he spent thirteen and a half years working for Bank of America, were nine of those years he spent as an operations manager for a team consisting of thirty associates. “I found that the corporate environment was thrilling, but after completing and excelling in one challenge, the next challenge just wasn’t challenging enough in a positive manner”. With this in mind, Sean embarked on going after his dream. A major change of career choice, Sean knew that it would be one of the hardest challenges of his professional career; a challenge that he knew would take a lot of sacrifices in his personal as well as his professional life. He attended Mt. Sierra College, which is a school that designates its curriculum solely on the multimedia aspects of today’s computer technology.

Just recently Sean acquired his position with Caspian Services, Inc. where he will not only be part of a team of designers, but also in marketing and customer service. “What I found intriguing is that pleasing the client is the most important goal of Caspian Services, Inc. This company not only wants to get the job done in ample time, but also pledges to give all clients the personal attention they deserve”. Through Sean’s positions in previous design houses, he found that clients always wanted additional services to compliment their website design, but they were not able to provide. “Clients would ask for additional services, like SEO and web hosting, that we were not able to provide. I think that is one main thing that sets Caspian Services, Inc. apart, they are able to provide a one-stop-shop for clients, from design and hosting, to maintenance and marketing”.

With Sean’s background in production management and multimedia, he has become a great addition to the Caspian Services, Inc. team. We hope that great ideas and goals are accomplished with our newest member.

We are excited to introduce our newly designed website. This would be version 5, and by far, the largest site we have had for Caspian Services, Inc.

Overall, we have added more information about all the different types of services that we provide. But even with all this additional information, the sites navigation is created to provide a better user experience.

We still provide our clients the ability to pay their invoices online with a credit card without occurring any additional charges.

We have added the ability to sign up for our monthly newsletter. The new site has a news ticker on top of every page, announcing the latest from Caspian Services, Inc.

The new site validates against the W3C XHTML 1.0 and CSS standards. It also provides a new layout for the services pages and the portfolio pages.

Look for this site to be constantly updated with more in depth information. We hope that you enjoy the new website, and it keeps bringing you back. While you are here, please don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter.