Projects

-Water Monitoring and Graphing for Saltwater Fish Tanks www.firmotech.com/aq

-Bill Cobb’s KC Photos

-www.gardenponding.com

-www.prairie-components.com - The Midwest’s Display Technology Specialists

Xen Virtual Machine FAQs

Who would benefit from a Xen based Firmo VM?	The VMs we offer are primarily targeted to users who have a solid understanding of the Linux operating system and will require minimal help in configuration of such. With that being said, we do offer support and will be happy to assit anyone with installation or configuration issues with their VM.
How do I stop/start/access console on my VM?	Console access is made through an SSH session to an alternate server. Once on the server, you have the ability to stop/start/destroy and gain console access to your VM
What kind of support will I receive?	Unlimited Email support will be provided free of charge. There is no phone support available, although we always have a pager on 24×7 for critical issues.
Who can I contact for questions?	You can contact us for help or questions
What sort of network will my VM be on?	Each server is connected to a 100Mbit switch port with direct fiber connection to the carriers within the same building. The servers are located in the same building as AT&T, Cogent, Global Crossing, Level3, MCI, UUNet, Qwest, and Williams.
What applications can I run on my VM	This is really open to the user. You can run anything from Apache, MySQL, Bind, PowerDNS, Lighttpd, Sendmail, ClamAV, QMail, IMAP/Pop3 services… It’s really up to you and limited only by the amount of memory you purchase.
What type of hardware will my VM be on?	Our servers currently consist of dual core AMD Opteron based servers, SATA 3Gbps 7200RPM storage in a RAID0 configuration, along with DDR2/800Mhz RAM.
How long will it take for my account to become active?	All accounts are generally setup within 4hrs once order is received.
Is my bandwidth really metered, and if so, will charges just appear for additional usage?	Bandwidth isn’t really metered, but it is monitored. If you tend to use a LOT more than what your package consists of, you’ll probably be warned. If you continually use more than your monthly allocation, you’ll be advised to upgrade packages or purchase more bandwidth. No charges will just appear without you being aware of it. We would rather work with you than against you.
What Linux distribution is on my VM?	Most of our users run Gentoo. Your VM will be installed with Gentoo by default, however, you can always suggest another distro.
Can I run Windows?	Definitely not. Please don’t ask =]
How do I signup?	To request a VM, click the Order button under the package you want, or for additional information contact us

Contact Firmo Technologies

Xen Virtual Machines / Virtual Private Server

Welcome to FirmoVM, provider of Xen Virtual Machines. We are dedicated to providing you a complete available/cost-effective VM for all your needs. Whether your new to Linux and would like a small VM to experiment with, or a full time Admin wanting a secondary mail server, or a primary DNS server.. We can help you out! Please check out the FAQs before placing an order, or email us with any questions you may have.

New package pricing available! Referral offers available for existing users. Reserve a VM now and you’ll receive one free month after initial payment.

VM Type	Firmo 256MB	Firmo 384MB	Firmo 512MB	Firmo 768MB
Monthly Price	$18/USD	$27/USD	$41/USD	$54/USD
Setup Fee	FREE	FREE	FREE	FREE
Dedicated Memory Incl.	256MB	384MB	512MB	768MB
Network Data Transfer	20GB	20GB	20GB	20GB
Disk Space	10GB	15GB	20GB	25GB
IPs	1	1	1	1
DNS Access	yes	yes	yes	yes
Full Root Access	yes	yes	yes	yes
Support	Email support	Email support	Email support	Email support

Remote Systems Administration

Need assistance with your Unix servers?

Sun and Red Hat Certified!Firmo Technologies, LLC offers remote Systems Administration for all Linux, Solaris, and AIX servers.To ensure maximum uptime and availablity of your Unix systems, they need proactive monitoring and solutions enabled before a critical event goes undetected and data loss occurs. Do you know when your servers have a lost a disk in a raid configuration? What about I/O errors, a failing SCSI controller, filesystem corruption? Proactive monitoring of the system can prevent many of the major data loss scenarios. Not every company has the luxury of a 10+ member IT staff do maintain their systems, that’s why we’re here to help. We can help detect hardware and software errors, and work to get solutions in place to resolve the issue before it becomes critical.

Common software configurations supported: Apache, Sendmail, Postfix, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, MySQL, Webmin, Usermin, PowerDNS, Bind/named, NFS, Samba, and Proftp just to name a few. If you have something else, just ask!
Common Operating Systems supported: Solaris 7,8,9,10, Linux: Gentoo, RedHat, Suse, Fedora, Slackware, etc, and AIX: 4.3.3, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
Weekly/Monthly patching services
Maintenance window activities
Specializing in IBM Virtual I/O<VIO> implementations and configurations on power5 and power6 hardware.
IBM power5/power6 LPAR configurations using Virtual I/O devices; virtual scsi, virtual ethernet, SAN based back-end storage devices, etc
IBM/AIX performance tuning and monitoring
User account maintenance
raid/LVM configurations
Remote server monitoring 24×7
Server resource management; file systems, CPU, memory, processes, etc
Domain configuration for web/email services
DNS configuration and hosting; powerdns, BIND/named, etc
Security audits and hardening
On-call support
Perl/PHP/Shell scripting support
Services starting at $200/month per server. System availability and resource monitoring is included with this fee. Monthly fee includes 3 hours of system work, which includes patching, account maintenance, troubleshooting performance issues, etc…. Extra fees apply for on-site work. Work performed wil be reported monthly. Critical service patches will require verificiation prior to applying to system, this would include major mail, web, and application services. Contact us for more info!

10+ years of experience in the IT field with Solaris and Linux operating systems.

Related Certifications: SCSA, SCSECA, RHCE

Services Offered

Firmo Technologies, provider of Xen Virtual Machine Hosting and Open Source Software support…

Our goal is to provide cost effective support to the smaller businesses within the Kansas City area and beyond.

Sun Certified Security Administrator Sun Certified Systems Administrator Redhat Certified Engineer

Sun and Redhat Certified!

Open Source software support and configuration. Apache, Sendmail, Postfix, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, MySQL, Webmin, Usermin, PowerDNS and Bind/named just to name a few. If you have something else, just ask!
Remote system administration services for Solaris: 7,8,9,10, Linux: Gentoo, RedHat, Suse, Fedora, Slackware, etc, and AIX: 4.3.3, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
Initial server installation and server configuration
System OS and application patching services
Unix system performance tuning
Unix system fault and root cause analysis
Domain configuration for web and email services
Remote e-mail hosting for your business
Virus/Spam scanning and filtering configuration
Database administration
DNS configuration and hosting; powerdns, BIND/named, etc
Security audits and system hardening
On-call support
Perl/PHP/Shell scripting support
Specializing in IBM Virtual I/O<VIO> implementations and configurations on power5 and power6 hardware.
IBM power5/power6 LPAR configurations using Virtual I/O devices; virtual scsi, virtual ethernet, SAN based back-end storage devices, etc
IBM/AIX performance tuning and monitoring
Provider of Xen Virtual Machines

10+ years of experience in the IT field with Solaris and Linux operating systems.

Related Certifications: SCSA(Sun Certified Systems Administrator), SCSECA(Sun Certified Security Administrator), RHCE(RedHat Certified Engineer)

Useful IBM AIX/VIOS Links

Here’s some of the more useful IBM/AIX related links I’ve found. When I first started working with AIX, I spent days reading man pages and googling. Hopefully these will help someone out!

pSeries and AIX Information Center

IBM Wikis - AIX 5L Wiki - Home

AIX Quicksheets

AIX - Remove non-existant LVs

Subsystem Device Driver Path Control Module (SDDPCM) installation packages for the AIX operating system.

IBM - Microcode downloads

IBM - Booting in Service Mode

List of ODM Commands and Subroutines

Chapter 1. Network Installation Management (NIM) Introduction

Learn how standard AIX(R) tools can help you determine CPU bottlenecks. IBM performance experts show you how to interpret the reports generated by these tools for CPU utilization, thread priority, and scheduling to improve performance. They also provide two case studies to give you real-world examples.

Configure your swap space (including adding space in an emergency) to get the most out of your system. In this article, you’ll learn how to monitor your system to determine an effective swap space figure as well as examine methods for using swap space for more than just secondary random access memory (RAM).

IBM - POWER5 code matrix