We’ve rolled out a new feature for our Managed VPS, and Managed Cloud customers.

The problem is management of the kernel. An outdated kernel can mean security risks, especially the possibility of getting “rooted”. While we have tools that can monitor every aspect of a customer’s instance, we didn’t have an effective method to assure a customer was running a secure kernel. This new feature will help ensure the proper kernel is installed, and increase the security of customer instances.

We’ve rolled out this to not only help us with our managed VPS customers, but also it’s especially important to our managed cloud customers. In many cases, with our cloud based customers, we do not have access to update your kernel. If this is the case, the customer must update the kernel themselves.

Starting today, customers can check our monitoring system to see if their instance has an acceptable kernel installed. If not, the KERNEL service row will be colored red.

Managed VPS customers who may see an outdated kernel are not to worry. We typically update kernels within the week of an update. We will send out a general notice on supportem.com about this update, and will reboot your instance to update the kernel. No work is needed on your end.

Managed cloud customers if you need assistance with a kernel upgrade, please don’t hesitate contacting support.

We now have room in data center #2.  Customers, who want a their VPS located in a specific data center, please add this to the order comments.

As of today all plans have been revised and include additional bandwidth and disk space. Pricing remains the same for all plans.

The revised plans are as follows:

• Small – 10 GB disk space, 100 GB monthly bandwidth, 20 GB of backup space
• Medium – 20 GB disk space, 200 GB monthly bandwidth, 40 GB of backup space
• Large – 40 GB disk space, 400 GB monthly bandwidth, 80 GB of backup space
• X-Large – 80 GB disk space, 800 GB monthly bandwidth, 160 GB of backup space

Any existing customer who wants their plan upgraded to match the new allocations please create a ticket with support. Downtime for the upgrade is usually no more than 10 min.

Should a service fail on your managed VPS, our monitoring will automatically restart it. We monitor not only the port to ensure it’s active but also if it returns valid results. Currently we are doing this for HTTP and ClamAV services but can add this feature to other services per customer request.

More details can be found at our customer service blog:

http://www.supportem.com/blog/article/163