Take 2 Hosting

User FAQ

Table of Contents:

If you have a support question and are a current customer you may open a support ticket through our web site by logging in and selecting the "Tickets" menu option or by going to:

     https://www.take2hosting.com/?p=tickets

For other questions you may contact us at any of the following:

billing [at] take2hosting.com - Any billing questions
support [at] take2hosting.com - Support inquiries
sales [at] take2hosting.com - Sales or general inquiries
abuse [at] take2hosting.com - Abuse complaints and DMCA

Take 2 Hosting, Inc.
5255 Stevens Creek Blvd. #217
Santa Clara, CA 95051

(408) 212-0360

Your first invoice will include charges for the first month of service (prorated if service did not commence on the first of the month) as well as the next full month of service. From that point on services are billed for monthly in advance of each service period (ie. hosting charges for February would be presented on the January invoice).

Payment for new accounts is required within one hour of server provisioning. Once payment is received access to the new services will be granted.

Existing accounts for which new services are ordered will be sent an invoice after the order is placed. Payment for those new services is due upon receipt and will be billed for immediately.

Payment of regular monthly invoices (those that are auto-generated on the 1st of each month) is due on or before the 20th of each month. If you have elected to pay by credit card then your credit card will be automatically charged on the 20th of the month. We accept Master Card, Visa, Discover and American Express. We also accept PayPal Instant Payments (Verified Accounts Only). PayPal eCheck payments are accepted but payment is not considered made until the eCheck payment clears.

You may see your current account balance at any time by logging in to the Take 2 Hosting web site and selecting the "Billing" tab or by visiting:

     https://www.take2hosting.com/?p=billing.

If paying by check please remit to:

Take 2 Hosting, Inc.
5255 Stevens Creek Blvd. #217
Santa Clara, CA 95051
USA

Please contact billing [at] take2hosting.com with any billing questions or call (408) 212-0360.

If you experience a hardware failure on your server please open a ticket to notify our staff of the failure. Your existing hardware will be repaired or replaced at no cost.

If a primary component of your server fails, your existing drives will be moved to another server at no cost.

Our network infrastructure is a simplified two-tier design based on routers and switches all from Extreme Networks. At the core of our network we have multiple routers all employing BGP routing protocols. Each core router consists of dual MSM management modules (in active-active mode) providing both improved routing speeds and resiliency.

Every customer attached switch is multi-homed to our core routers. This provides fault-tolerance and redundant network paths in the case of connectivity loss to a core router.

Take 2 Hosting servers are located at Silicon Valley Telecom & Internet Exchange in San Jose, California.

All of our servers are connected via 100 Mbit ethernet and include a full 100 Mbps of ingress (incoming) bandwidth. Your egress (outgoing) traffic is limited to your specific plan.

Currently we offer three different bandwidth choices applicable to egress traffic; 10 Mbps, 50 Mbps, and full 100 Mbps. The bandwidth options are for guaranteed (ie. not shared) bandwidth. This means if you opt for the 50 Mbps plan you are free to push a full 50 Mbps whenever and for however long you need.

The chart below shows the maximum transfer available on each plan based on a 330 Gigabytes of transfer per Megabit per month.

In addition to our standard 10/100, 50/100, 100/100 service offerings we do offer a Flex95 Port Upgrade option. Flex95 will open up your outgoing port speed to a full 100 Mbps with a valve subject to your 95th percentile.

If at any point during the month your 95th percentile exceeds your plan limit (ie. 50 Mbps on the 50/100 plan) your port is valved back to your plan limit. Once your 95th percentile drops back below your plan limit, your port is uncapped and fully burstable to 100 Mbps again.

This offers a viable alternative to metered burstable bandwidth without the worry of ever incurring any kind of bandwidth overage charges.

Wikipedia has a good write-up on 95th percentile billing here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing

One of the major drawbacks to metered billing vs. fixed billing is that you have the potential for monthly bandwidth overage charges. Our Flex95 billing methodology does away with all such overage charges and returns you to a predictable flat rate billing.

For those interested, here are the actual mechanics of Flex95 by way of example. We'll assume you're using the 10 Mbps plan in this example.

Every five minutes we calculate the amount of transfer you did for the previous 5 minutes. We calculate only based on your outgoing bandwidth; the incoming bandwidth is free. We take that number and convert it to an average bandwidth rate.

For instance, if you transferred 735 Megabytes of data in the five minute period, we would calculate that as 19.6 Megabits/sec.

As the month progresses we collect more and more samples (one every five minutes). Every five minutes we look to see how many samples are above 10 Mbps and how many are below. We take the top 5% of samples and throw them out (ie. if you had 1000 samples, we would throw out the top 50 samples). The highest remaining sample is your 95th percentile point.

If your 95th percentile point is below 10 Mbps then your port stays burstable to 100 Mbps. If the 95th percentile point is not below 10 Mbps then we cap your port at 10 Mbps.

We continue to sample every five minutes. If your port is capped then once your 95th percentile point drops back below 10 Mbps we uncap your port and you're opened back up to 100 Mbps again.

Additionally, we will not cap your port if you have less than 96 samples (8 hours) above 10 Mbps, regardless of what your 95th percentile point is at. This is to ensure you get adequate burst time no matter what.

We reset the statistics on the first of every month and all capped ports at that time are uncapped.

The Flex95 Port Upgrade is available on the 10/100 and 50/100 plans and is billed at a rate of $50/month.

There are several hardware configurations available. At times there may be some specific configurations that are out of stock and not available for on-demand provisioning. The different options are all presented on the server provisioning page.

Drive upgrades are available for the Server Type 1 configuration (Quad Core Xeon 3210+). These upgrades replace your existing drives. Your previous data will NOT be preserved.

If you are ordering a server and your specific configuration is out of stock we recommend that you order a server of the same type and then immediately open a ticket and request that the hardware configuration be changed to match what you're looking for. We recommend that you do not use the server until the configuration change has been done as some configuration changes entail reinstalling the operating system.

Please open a ticket or contact support if you have any questions.

Yes. Your server comes preconfigured with a single usable IP address. When provisioning your server you have the option to order the server with 5 usable IP addresses (/29 netblock), 13 usable IP addresses (/28 netblock), or 29 usable IP addresses (/27 netblock).

You may see a list of your current IP addresses and which servers they are assigned to from the "Status" tab here:

     https://www.take2hosting.com/?p=status

You may order additional IPs at any time from the "Status" tab as well. Additional IPs may be ordered one at a time or in blocks of 4 IPs (/30 netblock), 8 IPs (/29 netblock), 16 IPs (/28 netblock), or 32 IPs (/27 netblock). The cost for additional IP addresses is $1/month per IP. This interface also allows you to request additional IPs from different subnets.

At any time you may request the removal of any IP addresses that you ordered after your server had been provisioned (those IPs that are not part of the original netblock). If you ordered a contiguous block of IPs (/30 netblock or greater) the entire block must be removed.

You can maintain your Reverse DNS record from the 'Status' Tab. You may update the reverse record for the Primary IP address of your server, or for any statically routed IP addresses. The Forward DNS for the IP address must match the Reverse for the update to occur.

Type 1 servers are expandable to 8GB of memory and Type 2 servers are expandable to 24GB of memory. All current plans include the maximum allowable amount of RAM in each respective server type.

If your existing server is on one of the older plans which includes less than 8GB (Type 1) or 24GB (Type 2) then memory upgrades are available.

Type 1 servers may be expanded from 2GB to 4GB for an additional $20/month or from 2GB to 8GB for an additional $60/month. Type 1 servers which already have 4GB may be expanded to 8GB for an additional $40/month.

Type 2 servers may be expanded from 8GB to 16GB for an additional $80/month or from 8GB to 24GB for an additional $160/month. Type 2 servers which already have 16GB may be expanded to 24GB for an additional $80/month.

Yes. Type 1 servers are expandable to two 1000 GB hard drives and Type 2 servers are expandable to four 1000 GB hard drives.

Upgrading a Type 1 system from 2x500GB to 2x1000GB involves replacing the existing hard drives. Your previous data will not be preserved and an OS reinstall will be necessary.

Upgrading a Type 2 system from 2x1000GB to 4x1000GB does not impact your existing data. Your previous data will remain in tact and an OS reinstall will not be necessary.

Upgrading from 2x500GB to 2x1000GB may be done for an additional $40/month. Upgrading from 2x1000GB to 4x1000GB may be done for an additional $100/month.

You may control the power to your server at any time from the Server Control menu. Log in to your account and choose "Server Control" from the menu selections. You have the ability to turn your server off, on, and power cycle (off for 15 seconds then automatically on).

Please note that you may also access your server via its serial console port (see the Serial Console section of this FAQ). If you have difficulties with your server you should consider attempting to log in via the console port before resorting to a power cycle. It may take up to 5 minutes after a power cycle request for your server to become accessible on the network.

Should you find your system in a state where you are unable to boot it you may execute a network rescue mode boot. It is suggested that you do this only if you were unable to boot into single user mode (see the Single User Mode section of this FAQ).

To use this option you will need to connect to the serial console port of your server (see the Serial Console section of this FAQ). From the Server Control menu you will have the option to reboot the system into rescue mode. select it and reboot (power cycle) the system. After a few minutes your system will boot up in rescue mode and you may begin working with the server through the serial console port. Each Linux distribution comes with its own Rescue software. There are many differences between the Debian based Rescue mode and the Red Hat based Rescue. Your server will be rescued with the appropriate software suit based on the installation OS of your server.

You may choose to reinstall the Operating System on your server at any time. You may also choose to change the Operating System and/or the RAID level.

To reinstall/change the Operating System or RAID level simply visit the "Server Control" tab here:

  https://www.take2hosting.com/?p=control

Select the server for which you wish to do the reinstall, select "Reinstall Entire OS" from the Action drop down and confirm the action by typing INSTALL in the action confirmation form field. Then select which OS and RAID level you would like to have installed and click the "Perform Action" button.

Please note that reinstalling the Operating System will reformat the hard drives. NO DATA WILL BE PRESERVED. If you have any important data stored on the server please make sure you have a local backup copy of the data before choosing to reinstall the OS.

You may access your server through it's serial console port at any time. This allows for out-of-band access to the server and may be used to access the server even if the server has lost network connectivity (the most common causes of this are a misconfigured "iptables" firewall entry and/or misconfiguring the eth0 network port). Serial console access is also required if you wish to boot into single user mode (see the Booting to Single User Mode section in this FAQ).

To connect to the console port you will need to open a SSH connection to "ts.take2hosting.com" and log in with the details provided in the initial "New Server Information" email you received when your server was activated. After you connect to your server over console, you must then log into your server with your normal server password.

The serial console baud rate is set to 38400 bps with 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit.

You may boot your server into single user mode any time you wish. This is typically used to make configuration changes and to fix configuration mistakes.

To boot the server into single user mode you must first connect to the serial console port (see the Serial Console Access section of this faq).

Once done you may reboot your server. After a couple of minutes you will come up to the GRUB loader screen. Press a key to stop the automatic loading process. You will be left at a GRUB prompt. Press 'e' to edit the boot parameters. select the kernel boot line and add the word ' single' (no quotes) to the end of the line. Hit enter and then 'b' to boot the system. When the server boots the kernel, it will be in Single User Mode.

Take 2 Hosting, Inc. is a proud supporter of the Linux community and provides a public http mirror of all distributions that we support. You will find these mirrors at:

   - http://centos.take2hosting.com
   - http://fedora.take2hosting.com
   - http://ubuntu.take2hosting.com

This is the quickest, easiest and most secure way to update software on your Take 2 Hosting server.

Take 2 Hosting provides an API to our service control system. This offers customers and resellers the ability to seamlessly integrate with the Take 2 Hosting automation features. The API offers a simple and secure way to manage all of your Take 2 Hosting services. You may find out more about our API here.

The contact data we obtain from you, our customer, is for our internal use only. We ask for only basic contact and billing information. We will never sell, distribute, or give away your information.

In the event that you have forgotten your password to the Take2Hosting website, you can request that your password be reset.

If you have forgotten the root password to your server, you must boot your server into Single User Mode to reset your password with the passwd command.