announced Nov 11, 1999

The New Generation of Virtual Servers
We are excited to announce that our new Virtual Server will be available shortly. For over a year now we have been developing a Virtual Server System that will offer greater performance, enhanced reliability, and better security than our current Virtual Servers. The new Virtual Servers will use the FreeBSD operating system rather than the legacy BSDI operating system that we used in the past. The change in operating systems and other significant advances offer our Resellers a number of important advantages including:

• FreeBSD offers greater support for third party applications. This has been one of the primary motivations for the new FreeBSD Virtual Server System. Currently FreeBSD offers support for over 2,700 different applications.

• The new Virtual Servers will offer greater reliability than the current Virtual Servers with increased stability and redundant hardware. For example, redundant hard drives provide uninterrupted service even in the case of a hard drive failure.

• As an added bonus, the new Virtual Server System will offer some software support for applications developed for other operating systems including Linux, System V, and even the current operating system of the Virtual Servers -- BSDI 3.1.

• Over 15% of the Internet is currently powered by FreeBSD including such popular sites as Hotmail, mp3.com, and Yahoo!.

New Virtual Server accounts provisioned after November 23, 1999 will be provisioned on FreeBSD in the new Vienna, Virginia Data Center. We anticipate that all Virtual Servers will eventually be migrated to the new FreeBSD Virtual Server platform. This transition will take place over the course of several months. Additional instructions will be forthcoming on this migration of accounts.

Rest assured that we have done significant testing to ensure that the migration will have little to no negative impact on your existing BSDI-based Virtual Server accounts as they are migrated to FreeBSD. Our web site is currently being updated with specialized documentation related to our FreeBSD-based Virtual Servers. Likewise, we are making additional changes to the new Virtual Servers to provide support for many legacy programs and commands that you may be familiar with on BSDI.

We have mentioned the new Vienna Virginia Data Center in past Reseller Newsletters, but we want to point out a few of the significant features of this new facility:

• The new Vienna, Virginia Data Center offers improved connectivity to all our Resellers. This improved connectivity is made possible through Verio's Tier 1 status and special private peering arrangements with all other Tier 1 backbones.

• The new Data Center is located in the same building as MAE-East, providing a very short local loop to one of the world's premier public peering points.

• 24/7 staffing with support engineers on site at the new Data Center to handle issues immediately.

This new Data Center in Vienna, Virginia is the first of many additional Data Centers we have planned, including some internationally. We are excited with the future and believe that our new Virtual Server will provide you with the strong platform necessary for servicing your clients well into the next millennium.