Customers with Linux, Microsoft or blended environments can now take advantage of premium managed Web hosting services

HOUSTON, Nov. 11, 2008 – The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced the addition of the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system to its Planet Northstar Managed Hosting line of business. Customers with Linux, Microsoft or blended environments can now take advantage of premium managed hosting services. As one of just two Red Hat Premier Hosting Partners, the Planet Northstar engineering team will have direct access to the company’s product roadmaps and new platform features, creating a technically superior hosted environment for its customers.

Planet Northstar Managed Hosting provides small- and medium-sized customers with the advantage of enterprise-class IT managed hosting services, backed by a dedicated team of seasoned IT professionals who are personally accountable for their success. Web 2.0 and SaaS (Software as a Service) companies building innovative and cutting-edge applications use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a foundational component of the LAMP stack — Linux, Apache, MySQL and PhP — or J2EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition).

Databases provide the foundation for today’s advanced, multi-tier applications. To provide the support required by customers in managing these complex applications, Planet Northstar customers are assigned a dedicated MySQL cluster-certified database administrator as part of their core team.

“With our rigorous Anticipation Advantage best-practices methodology, Planet Northstar Managed Hosting becomes a proactive extension of your IT team,” said The Planet’s Vice President of Marketing and Product Management Steve Kahan. “CIOs require proactive planning, preparation and prevention, which is precisely what Planet Northstar provides. Backed by a team of certified professionals, our enterprise-class network and SAS 70 Type II world-class data centers, customers gain access to infrastructure that would otherwise be unaffordable for most companies.”

About Planet Northstar’s Red Hat Portfolio

As a Red Hat Premier Hosting Partner, the Planet Northstar team provides greater insight to platform-specific support incidents and package updates, which they manage and pass directly to customers:

Red Hat Certified Engineers: Every customer is assigned a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), who has passed rigorous testing requirements to earn the designation.

MySQL Management: A senior database administrator (DBA) specifically certified on MySQL is assigned to every customer account. Each customer account also has access to exclusive MySQL 5.1 Cluster DBAs who are responsible for reviewing the performance and future scalability of every database platform.

Red Hat LVM Expertise: Planet Northstar uses Red Hat’s Logical Volume Management snapshots to perform online and reliable database backups with virtually no performance impact. Customer databases are expertly managed to ensure maximum processing power.

Advanced Linux Platform Features: Linux engineers help customers leverage advanced platform features, including centralized authentication over LDAP; cluster suite failover; shared storage over high-performance SANs; or Apache Web server load balancing.

OS Management: Every Planet Northstar customer gains access to proactive OS management, including hardening procedures, performance monitoring, security patching, managed backups and scalability reviews to be certain systems grow with their business.

Planet Northstar is backed by The Planet’s core infrastructure, including six SAS 70 Type II world-class data centers, enterprise-class network, data center operations, customer provisioning systems, physical and environmental security, and problem management and resolution through its customer portal. Coupled with its powerful and industry-leading Service Level Agreement, Planet Northstar guarantees 100 percent power and network uptime, along with one-hour hardware replacement and 15-minute response times.

Using its Anticipation Advantage methodology, Planet Northstar utilizes a four-step proactive process throughout every client’s hosted IT lifecycle: