Ubersmith blogs

Ubersmith DE 2.2 Release

Luke Arduini — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:59:52 +0000

Body:

Automation is at the core of what drives us at Ubersmith, which especially holds true in our latest release: Ubersmith DE 2.2.

We’ve added some long requested and particularly awesome features in this release, and we’re proud to continue to lead the industry with the world’s best datacenter management and billing software.

Some of our favorite (and most requested) features in this release include:

Integration with the SolusVM control panel for VM management
Netflow integration for traffic monitoring (via pmacct)
A new role-based permission system
A new WHMCS migration utility
Avatar & Gravatar support
Communication with devices via IPMI
Cloudstack billing
Switching to InnoDB for the database storage engine.

Email us now to schedule your upgrade or find out more about this release.

*Note: converting an existing MyISAM database to InnoDB can take some time. To reduce downtime in your instance, you can preconvert the database using a script included in the installer. For more details, visit this post in our knowledgebase.

Enhancements & New Features

General

Switch to InnoDB
Saved advanced searches
Split Selected Posts
Update ‘ubernews’ to use uber_http_client, and update URL called
Updates to the uber_base class
Update translation file
Improved auto-loading for class files
Support unlimited number of attachments
Improve default access checks
Avatar & Gravatar support for clients & admins
Customer Service Module - “Reseller Brand Billing”
Netflow integration via pmacct
SolusVM Support
Admin Permissions should be made more granular and support ‘roles’

Registrars

Improve returned errors when ordering SSL certificates via OpenSRS
Update eNom SSL Product Offerings

API

API function added to process refunds to invoices.
Generate Invoice API function updated to allow specification of which services to include.
Add support for start / stop timestamps when using support.ticket_list
Service Module metadata methods
API method to list device types
Clarify documentation for client.contact_update API method

Device Manager

Communication with devices via IPMI
IPMI Console Support
VLAN Threshold Feature
Reorganize port descriptions in the Switch & PDU device module
Switch and PDU summaries now loaded via ajax on device details page for faster page loads.
Support configuring width of monitoring queue
IP Address & VLAN Dashboard

Setup & Admin

Added configuration option to allow/disallow admins from disregarding invoices.
Unify Appliance Configuration
Added ticket filter option to automatically associate incoming tickets with a specific client.
Invoice date range display format now configurable.
WHMCS Import
Added setting for default invoice delivery method
Add “Unlock User” to User Management
Update Setup & Admin pages to be more consistent
Tax rates can now be configured to factor in other tax rates when determining amount due.
Switch and PDU summaries now loaded via ajax on device details page for faster page loads.
Update qbXML schema version for UK Quickbooks

Payment Gateways

Westpac Payment Gateway support
Moneybookers payment processing
More field length checking in Optimal Payment gateway
TAG (tokenization) support for the E-xact gateway
Rename Paydollar to Paydollar / Alipay
Allow payment gateway names to be translatable strings
Generic AIM Payment Support
“Payments Gateway” credit card gateway integration added.
FlexWeb / IMSP payment gateway support added.
Additional eProcessingNetwork gateway integration added.

Support Manager

Emergency notification address now a department specific setting.
Tickets with more than one matching contact allow user to select client association.
‘New’ Tickets list now includes any tickets assigned to the user regardless of what dept. they’re in.
Support filenames encoded as the name attribute in ‘Content-Type’

Client Manager

cloud.com billing module
Allow for billing all ports on a virtual switch
Support partial payments via Paypal et al
Invoice Print Queue Feature Added.
Add/edit ip assignment links added to the service details page.
Revenue by Location report now better identifies Facility vs. Zone.
Contact related (add/edit/delete) event triggers added.
Only show active payment gateways in payment reports/popups

Order Manager

Added Edit Services Order Module.
Added option to OnApp order module to allow a billing plan to be specified for new orders.
Order module to blacklist certain email addresses/domains
Add support for Netgear gs748t “v2”
Add driver for ‘ServerTech Sentry Power Tower XL’ to rebooter information
Support D-Link DXS-3326GSR

Client Interface

Pagination on client_devices.php
Control whether clients can specify rwhois abuse contact

Reports & Stats

Outstanding Services report is now brand-specific

Corrections

Return only IPv6 assignments when the IPv6 format netmask is selected
Account credit refunds are now properly reported.
Deactivating a service now automatically credits any associated outstanding tax.
Don’t define additional ‘period’ attribute for .mobi domains in OpenSRS
Return cURL (or other) errors when licensing request fails
Emailing client directly no longer returns invalid client id error.
Automated charge queue now makes explicitly check against invoice status for attempting charge.
Brand list in add/edit client popups now properly limited based on user’s access permissions.
Issue with ‘client specific variables’ when adding Menu Links
Client specific variables can not be removed in Menu Links
updatedb.php timing out in certain upgrades
Work around issue with Authorize.net lack of support for partial voids
Use multibyte-safe string methods when handling CC data
Create an attachment helper function that shows attachment size
Reset preview for invoice is broken in Firefox.
Admin user email address for brand not reflected in tickets
Using pre-set default invoice send date always sends up being set to 1
Don’t use PHP short tags
Update appliance when CDP server device is edited or deleted
Robokassa signature problem
Adding users to instances with only one brand no longer locks them out.
QuickBooks ignores clients deactivated via API
Invalid client ID error when emailing client
Ticket filter issue for tickets submitted via the UI
‘Tickets received this month’ shows duplicate day
Fix HTML error on deleted device page
Fix issue with ip_pools table definition
Deactivated services can no longer be ‘quick’ edited.
Automatic database schema updater ignores default value
Credit card expiration notice error fix
device.module_call API method now supports short-form request method for variables
Undefined function error in charge log
INSERT INTO … SELECT slow
Quickbooks web connect no longer throws undefined variable error reports.
Generate invoice order module no longer includes pre-billed services that weren’t from the order.
Properly handle pear errors in class.onapp_application.php
Virtuozzo error handling
Custom pricing ignored when creating order via the API
Email client base permissions checks made consist across related scripts.
OnApp? integration updated to work with new group_id behavior.
CDP3 Billing service module graph problem
Setting included transfer=* no longer includes bandwidth that has already been billed elsewhere.
Paypal payments that match an invoice no longer create $0.00 account credits.
Refund tax calculation issue
Department menu no longer switches back to department view when viewing the list of users.
Service discount display corrected on view ticket page.
Payflow Pro IPN calls now check transaction id against paypal payments as well as charge attempts.
Reimplemented ACH integration in order forms.
Updated client update API script to accept both ‘datepay’ and ‘daysdue’ for grace period setting.
Typo corrected in backup billing service module.
Updated class.install_database.php to account for non-standard table names
nginx always reports 0 active connections
Support cloud.com API key
Discount rounding logic made consistent between client and order managers.
ip_address variable in client.service_update() mismatch with edit_pack()
Using the ‘pay in full’ option when paying with Paypal in the client interface no longer returns an error.
Issues with order data not being saved have been corrected.
Use order form id instead of name for QuickForm? controller
Server metrics summary period
Incorrect error check in pay_inv_online()
Correct $url call in exact refund()
Support added for rupee symbol in pdf invoices.
Update cacert.pem
Support port caching in Juniper Netscreen driver
Cisco 5513 & 4912 drivers incorrectly reports port speed
WHMCS Import Fixes
Juniper Generic with VLANs does not support XE Interface
Generating an invoice via the API for accounts without a credit card on file no longer returns an error.
Nunavut added to list of Canadian Provinces. Manitoba updated to ‘Manitoba and Labrador’.
onafterpayment() callbacks triggered when invoice is paid automatically
Generate invoice order module now properly includes edited services.
Existing eProcessingNetwork gateway integration updated to work with extended transaction ids.
Order summary now properly factors discount on services with quantity other than 1.
Order summary now correctly shows pro-rated balance when last service in order is a one time fee.
Correct Issue updating orders via API
OnApp group_id variable has been changed in newer versions

Ubersmith Releases

Ubersmith DE 2.1.1 Release

Luke Arduini — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:39:43 +0000

Body:

It's been a busy autumn so far, and the Ubersmith team has been hard at work on our latest release of Ubersmith DE. While this version has a strong emphasis on bug fixes, we're also introducing new features such as reporting for empty VLANs, PayDollar & AliPay integration, and custom ticket inline edit control.

Here's a list of additions you'll find in Ubersmith DE 2.1.1:

General

Option to disable autocomplete on login screen
Unlock Staff Member link added to user list
Japanese Yen support added to Chase Paymentech / Orbital
Configurable BIN in Chase Paymentech / Orbital
Power Management Service Module
Updated WHM Host Control service module to allow cp_host to be edited
Updated Litle integration
Added Alipay support

Client Manager

Added Robokassa payment gateway support
Added an event trigger for when an invoice is paid by account credit

Device Manager

Report to return empty VLANs
'in-use' flag for unassigned VLANs
Option to download CSV of a list of devices
device_url function in device_modules to link to device page

API

Option to select which services are included when generating an invoice via the API

Support Manager

Option to require a department selection when an admin is creating a new ticket
Control whether custom data fields are editable inline

Order Manager

Order Module to allow existing services to be edited
Update OnApp order module so a billing plan ID can be specified when provisioning accounts

Search

Added country to advanced search

Corrections

Logged payment types from invoice.php now specify the method
Fixed ##amount## and ##amount_unpaid## variables in payment received notices for retried charges
Fixed Javascript calendar in IE8
Extend Worldpay timeout to 60 seconds
Fixed device location popup so zone & cage are loaded properly
Permissions array in client.contact_list now returns properly formatted JSON
prorate.php now honors expected variables
Metadata is now properly returned in client.get
Ticket stat details now correctly report time spent
'No ticket ID' error no longer displayed when editing time on a ticket follow up
Resolved issue related to PayPal payment not matching order total
Correct price now displayed for non-default upgrade and renewal periods
Order services can now be pro-rated properly
PHP now functional in flexy templates
Domains via order module now properly associate with services
Properly limit length of FirstName field in QuickBooks
Include 'cash' as valid payment type
Outstanding invoices report baed on number of calendar days past due
Suspended and canceled services properly showing up in renewal queue manager
Sales pipeline sorting
Login activity report sorting
Re-prioritize search results
Advanced search tweaks for data and metadata
OnApp resource billing module takes discount into effect
414 error on bandwidth billing graph
Password retrieval by email no longer returning an error
Fixed issue related to autoloaded code on PHP 5.3
URL fix SSL order module
Admin user email address update & brand fix
OpenSRS company name logging
Remove use of TYPE keyword when creating tables
eNom SSL certificate download fixed
Improved Orbital error handling
Corrected variable used when removing control panel accounts
Fixed error handling in EPX gateway module
Overhauled language management back end to resolve PHP errors
Fixed issue with credit card expiration notice emails
Fixed @filename attachment syntax support for API 2.0

Thanks to Mike Bensalem for the photo.

Ubersmith Releases

Spotlight: Redis Monitoring

Luke Arduini — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 01:24:43 +0000

Body:

Redis is a document oriented database software, self-described as an "advanced key-value store", and its popularity continues to grow as developers and service providers realize their services require high availability and scalability. It's quickly becoming the "go to" in-memory storage solution due to its ease of use, stability, and speed.

What's the catch?
While Redis is without a doubt powerful and fast, it gains these advantages by storing the data in system memory for quick access. It can be configured to store data asynchronously in the background on its own, but in a lot of cases, there are other processes that retrieve the data and store it in more durable solutions. When dealing with large sets of time-critical data, you can't afford to be in the dark about the status of something that's essential to the front line of your system.

Sounds volatile...
Redis is also lauded for its stability, but like any database (especially one stored in memory), you'll want to ensure it's up and running so your web services can function normally. When running multiple Redis servers on multiple hosts, it's even more important to be able to have automated monitoring to confirm the servers are running. If you are running processes on the server to migrate this data to another database, you may also want to monitor the number of keys stored in Redis to ensure they're being migrated & removed properly.

What can Ubersmith do about it?
The TCP protocol monitor is fully compatible with issuing Redis commands, and it's extremely straightforward to set up monitors to ensure certain requirements are being met even when setting up multiple Redis servers. You can issue any of Redis' CLI commands and parse the output with regex, giving you a heads up on when the Redis servers are acting up:

Where do I go from here?
Head over to our knowledgebase for a detailed outline of what you'll need to do in order to get this set up in Ubersmith: Configuring Redis in Ubersmith.

Since Redis also relies on available system memory to store the data, and running out of memory could mean slowdown or a crash, you're going to want to keep an eye on the server's RAM usage as well with the Server Metrics Module.

Ubersmith DE continues to set the standard for integrated datacenter software. As the industry continues to change, we're excited to be at the forefront of what allows companies around the world to run their day-to-day business.

Data Center Management

Feature Spotlight: Device Monitoring

Matt Toback — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:54:16 +0000

Body:

Every few months, we like to dig back into the big treasure chest of Ubersmith features and remind everyone what we can do. One thing that a lot of people take for granted is the extensive monitoring functionality baked right into every Ubersmith instance.

For old and new clients alike, we recently created an Introduction to Monitoring screencast, embedded below. This will take you through adding a new monitor to a device, selecting and configuring the type, and testing the newly added monitor.

In addition to the basic TCP, ICMP, DNS & SSL monitor types, admins are also able to add specialized monitors, depending on the type of device you're working with. Further, every monitor has the ability to set thresholds to be alerted when it exceeds or drops below set levels allows you to react before a device goes hard down.

As for the types of specialized monitors, let's see if I can do this all in one (long) sentence: Bandwidth, CPU, HDD usage, I/O, active connections on a webserver, Memcache, Varnish, MySQL, user configurable SNMP checks, and the ability to automatically reboot a device.

Lastly, we recently released support to add any Nagios plug-in to a device, making the possibilities extremely broad. A good article can be found here.

So what are you waiting for? Check out the screencast below and start adding device monitors.

Cloud Computing

Data Center Management

Hosting

HostingCon 2011 Takeaway: Most things change, some dont.

Matt Toback — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:07:44 +0000

Body:

Spending 5 days there makes me want to go on record: Everything they say is true, San Diego is beautiful.

In 8 short hours, I started learning to surf, ate some awesome Taco Surf tacos, stared into the Maserati dealership in La Jolla, strolled through Balboa park, and walked to the end of an Ocean Beach pier with Hodad's in our stomach.

Of course, the other 4 days were spent within a few short blocks of the San Diego convention center with old friends and new, and we couldn't have had a better week.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I had the pleasure of giving a short talk at the OnApp booth about our cloud billing integration. While preparing, it became clear that the heart of our integration went beyond OnApp itself; it was present before OnApp was even a glint in Ditlev's eye, and will continue beyond this latest iteration of hosting services.

Walking around HostingCon and talking to the vendors & attendees only further solidified this for me. For the last 11 years, two things have remained true in our industry, and words that we live by.

Most things change,

You and your customers will always be evolving with technology.

You've gotten better at the way you run your business. Let's say you've put better internal monitoring in place, have a really great MailChimp mailing list going, and use Splunk to parse your logs.

The customer has grown too. They've bought websites, managed servers, exchange servers, subterranean cables, cloud infrastructure and consulting services, and they will be buying the next thing. Any way you slice it, they're changing too.

They'll want to buy it from you, but if you cant offer it to them, they'll go elsewhere. They'll buy it from you competitors. They'll buy it from the startup that doesnt have the established reputation.

Quick, you dont have a cloud offering. You go through the buy vs. build discussion, decide to roll out OnApp/Cloudstack/etc, and your sales team sells a gajillion units in the first 6 hours. Next stop, world domination!

some dont.

It goes without saying, but those gajillion new services need to be accounted for. Your customers need invoices, your internal departments need chargeback, and those pieces of paper dont look much different than they did before the internet was invented.

As quickly as things change technologically though, your business backend is typically the slowest member in the relay race. They're dealing with finance departments, GAAP and auditors, caring less about object storage and more about the period the revenue was earned.

For a long time, a lot of companies got away with monthly manual processes to bill for usage. Everyone dreaded the 1st or the 2nd of the month when the reports had to be run, but as soon as it was run, there were 30 glorious day until the next. Cloud, utility, elastic, liquid, flexible, and cosmic computing finally changed that. No longer tenable, you have to get some sort of consistent reporting & invoicing to handle this stuff on a daily basis.

This is exactly where I think the Uber value shines brightest. Any of our clients can offer a cloud product tomorrow, the business backend will work seamlessly, and your customers will just see a new invoice line item.

Why we do what we do.

This is where I got nostalgic and excited at the same time.

We've had the pleasure of being more than a vendor to a lot of our customers. We've watched them grow from small resellers into worldwide organizations, and their needs changed. In a lot of cases, Ubersmith grew up with these companies, evolving together, schoolyard to boardroom.

Any good business in this industry is going to be rapidly changing over the next few years, and you need to offer what they want to buy. Any way you slice it, they're going to buy it from someone. Our job is to move with the industry, reducing your the time to market and making sure it can be you.

Thanks to Jason Pratt for the fantastic photo.

Cloud Computing

Hosting

Ubersmith DE 2.1.0 is now available!

Mike Styne — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:47:47 +0000

Body:

Summer brings thoughts of cookouts, swimming, and enjoying the warmer weather. But for Team Ubersmith, it means that it's time to get to work on another great release of the galaxy's most advanced datacenter management and billing software! With dozens of new features and fixes, we're sure you'll be just as excited as we are with Ubersmith DE 2.1.0.

Power Management

Some of the new features you'll find in DE 2.1.0 better handling of power management in your datacenter. Ubersmith now more appropriately manages devices with multiple power supplies, such as massive blade hosts and storage arrays. You can now control power on, off, and reboot tasks for these devices with a single click.

With our new Power Management service module, you can automatically power down equipment that is not in use -- saving you money, and saving the environment. A little. We also now support several new APC PDUs, and have implemented SNMPv3 support for APC PDUs in general.

New Merchant Providers

Ubersmith DE 2.1 adds support for four new merchant providers;

Our Litle & Co. payment processor integration includes support for both credit card and ACH transactions. Start pressing that make money button today!

API 2.0

With the release of Ubersmith API 2.0, we've made integrating with Ubersmith even easier. Ubersmith DE 2.1.0 includes many updates and fixes to the initial API release, including updated documentation with output examples.

Future Development

Don't see the change or update you wanted in the list below? We want to hear from you! Please join the discussion at the Ubersmith Community -- we can't wait to hear your ideas for the next release of Ubersmith DE.

General

First Atlantic Commerce payment gateway integration
St. George's payment gateway support
Litle ACH and CC gateway Support
Added support for the BeanStream Credit card gateway.
Implement QuickBooks Class support for client services
Support Attachments larger than 16MB
Advanced search .csv file output better matches displayed output and includes key service details.
Clean up search support files
Option to specify user name added to password retrieval form.
Update VerePay URLs
Sync shared support files
Use ubersmith's built-in HTTP client to communicate with Solr
Forgot Password link better handles popup blockers
Add ability to process partial payments from the client interface
Improve syntax / field restrictions in Orbital gateway

Device Manager

Virtual Switch & PDU Modules
Power Management Service Module
Support rebooting multiple outlets simultaneously
Allow monitoring XenServer bandwidth from master node
Add SNMPv3 support for APC devices
Add support for APC AP9225
Add support for APC AP8841
Add support for APC AP8959
Device ID # now displayed in devices list and on device details page.
Allow the administrator to disable device module 'actions' on a per device basis
Support controlling multiple ports from PDU device module

Support Manager

Sender, subject and body related filters now run on tickets submitted through the client interface.
Make custom ticket fields editable from within the ticket
Total time spent on a ticket added to client interface ticket view header.

Client Manager

Add ability to reactivate client
Add "Will this be invoiced?" link to service details page
RWhois role support
Support retrieving OpenSRS domain details without end-user credentials
Implement pagination on client_devices.php
Backend code to generate service lists for a particular client has been optimized.
Tool tips added to invoices to indicate why each service was included at the time.
Display Service Event Log link after service deactivation.
Tiered Ticket Billing
Add an option to pro-rate or credit a service when it is edited mid-month

Order Manager

Service updated message in order manager now indicates which service was changed.

Reports and Stats

Updated the suspensions and cancellations report to only show outstanding line items.
Add report to list unassociated devices
Report to track revenue based on device location added.
'Taxes Invoiced' report added.
'Top Customers' report added.
Per-client support time report added.
Add report to list unassociated devices
'Overdue Invoices' Report changed to 'Outstanding Invoices' and includes all unpaid invoices.

Setup & Admin

Allow admins to configure preferences for other admins
Expand Ticket Filter Actions
Paypal IPN setup instructions added to the payment processing options page.
The success message should tell you which user you deleted in setup & admin

API

Update API 2.0 Documentation
API call to list available VLANs
Add/update ticket related API functions now able to process historical records.
Add the ability to add non-staff responses to orders via the API
Support authentication in API 2.0 for hosts running PHP as a CGI
Add API function to merge tickets
Update api/2.0/uber_check_login to return user ID
client.service_module_call API method
Add attachment support to comment API script

Corrections

Updating auto-suspend/cancel date in global report no longer links back to client specific one.
Smarter handling of multipart messages
The x-uberinst mail header has been updated to not be based solely off of the database name.
client_id and order_id not being checked properly in ticket_edit()
Permissions to add a lead to the sales manager have been fixed.
Increase maxlength HTML for PACKAGES.servtype and plans.code
Support searching for IPv6 IP addresses
Service started then edited and pre-billed will now properly renew.
OnApp usage billing integration now supports v2.1 of their software.
Use DOUBLE for database currency fields
Correct typo in HTML_QuickForm_spacer class
Correct typo in common.js.php
Suspended services no longer throw renewal errors.
Default prices for upgrade options now properly recorded on the first page of built in order forms.
Correct IPv6 related problems with IP Address Usage report
Ubersmith does not validate time values properly when time-tracking is required on a comment and/or response
Running upgrade script against 2.0.0.0 database fails
Add ticket to opportunity feature fixed. Again.
AVS codes now stored for declined charges as well as successful ones.
Card details now properly sent to CIM when upgrading to Ubersmith v2.0+.
Correct issues with PayJunction payment gateway
Fix typo in Cybersource gateway
Bandwidth billing module does not show bandwidth graph for single device
XML-RPC client incorrectly handles http errors
Event trigger call properly implemented on successful retried or scheduled charge.
Fatal error screen now offers links to other pages in Ubersmith.
Mark payment popup no longer defaults to 'check' payment type.
Language based bug where clients were being set to brand_id=0 corrected.
Correct custom data display/selection issue
Country/Territory order form element type no longer lists each country twice.
Fix typo in eway gateway
Payment record made upon an account credit being edited now properly respects type of original credit.
Correct documentation for client.cc_add
Correct documentation for 'support.ticket_list'
Correct error reporting issues in payment gateways
Improve MySQL connection character setting
Correct issue with domain details lookup when 'adding' domain
Access issues with API tokens popup have been corrected.
Improve error checking when getting previous monitor state
"Call to a member function id() on a non-object" error in order form advanced editor.
Handle MySQL dropping support for TYPE keyword in CREATE TABLE syntax
'acceptcvv2' setting not sent to payment gateway modules
Credit card logs updated to further obfuscate sensitive information.
Correct str2time output
Do not include deleted devices in bandwidth billing calculations
Correct issues with popup_lang and lang_id
Invoice PDFs don't show Cyrillic characters
Correct function call in Speedchex gateway
Correct undefined variable 'row' in class.ach_account.php
Service module event triggers no longer fire for disabled modules.
Sorting issue on Outstanding Invoices report corrected.
##device_info## variable now properly replaced in bandwidth notification emails.
client_metadata_single.class.php now outputs proper value when passed custom field variable name.
Aged invoices report on client profile page no longer shows all outstanding invoices in total.
Cannot mass email clients with "0" services
Payments in invoice summary now more specifically labeled as 'Payments / Credits.'
device_module_call_aggregate incorrect validation
Upgrade to v2.1 erases support signature

image courtesy oast house archive
update 8/11/2011: Added link for Beanstream.

Ubersmith News

Ubersmith Releases

Ubersmith.com Redesign: It's not about us.

Matt Toback — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:56:16 +0000

Body:

We've been developing the Ubersmith product for over 10 years straight, and it has a ton of features. We've implemented some pretty awesome things for a number of different niches, and in such a way that we've avoided cluttering the interface for those who dont need them.

Through past site incarnations, we've had feature pages that were a mile long, others anemically short, and nearly everything in between. It was about us, and we wanted to tell you as much as you were willing to listen to.

For a moment, let's look at websites as a blind date. The girl (or guy) walks up to the suitor, they shake hands and briefly say hello. Without pause, the suitor immediately begins selling themselves in a scattered, non-stop fashion while the other sits silently trying to decide what matters.

I went to college in upstate New York...
I'm strong willed but able to compromise...
I've been to Europe 58 times...
I like heartland rock, post-punk revival and '85 Rub-a-dub
I can juggle swords...
I love dogs, cats, hamsters, parakeets, children and chinchillas...

What features are meaningful to you?

When we approached the website redseign, the above scenario came up constantly. How could we avoid being that person? How do we pair down the massive feature set to have an impact in the couple minutes a potential client will give us?

While clients end up using more features than they expected once Uber is in production, the sales process tends to focus around a handful of pain points they're trying to solve, usually consistent across industry segments.

Colocation providers generally don't care about our CPanel automation, however they're always interested to hear that we can do power season billing at the BMS level. Conversely, most Hosting companies want to know about order automation and usage based billing (bandwidth, R1Soft, etc) and dont even think about billing at a facility level.

Tell me more about yourself

The excited young couple sits down at the candlelit restaurant. The suitor, being mannerly, opens the conversation with some informative personal tidbits, and then hands off, "Enough about me for the moment, what do you like to do for fun?"

To help distill those features into focused pages, we created the idea of Business Cases, focusing on a few market segments that we talk to the most. While the Ubersmith product itself is not changed by choosing a particular path, the features you see first will be customized to your segment.

The concept of Cloud Providers became an unexpected and interesting discussion. While there are a growing number of cloud-only providers, most are hosting companies or MSPs extending their offerings. We chose to promote it to a top-level market segment primarily to clearly highlight that Ubersmith is already an established cloud billing platform, and show off some of the surrounding features. We're anxious to see if this confuses people in other segments, but time will tell.

Our hope is that market segments will help us shape the conversation around your business and your pain points. Every feature we've chosen may not hit the bullseye, but we think we have a better shot of helping you recognize your business in the Ubersmith platform.

Lastly, a very special thanks to the guys at Design is Easy, who we have to thank for the beautiful new look & feel. On top of being stellar designers, they were an integral part of the above discussions, making sure the final product reflected the methodology.

Ubersmith News

Uber celebrates World IPv6 Day

Matt Toback — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:12:05 +0000

Body:

Along with many others today, we're excited to participate in the IPv6 Test Flight on www.ubersmith.com.

For years now, Ubersmith itself has supported IPv6 within our IP Address Management feature set. When we would talk about IPv6 in sales calls over the last few years, it was almost always perceived as more of a novelty than a real feature; kind of like saying we offer alien invasion protection. We all know it's bound to happen, but likely not in our lifetime, right?

Intergalactic matters aside, we have seen an uptick in both support requests and new customers alike regarding IPv6. The good news is that they're handled in the same way you've been using IPv4 assignments in Ubersmith already:

IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and assignments coexist seamlessly for all clients, services and devices.
Auto IP allocation out of admin defined pools and blocks.
Location aware auto-assignments, allowing you auto-assign only certain pools in certain facilities.
Recognition of single IPs, CIDR notation and ranges.
Integrated IP address usage reporting with a built in RWHOIS server (excellent for ARIN).
Support for client-level allocations, which can be reused as their infrastructure changes over time.
Server health monitoring checks over both IPv4 and IPv6

We're excited that the World IPv6 Day test has finally arrived, and we're looking forward to the next couple years as it starts to become more of a reality.

IP Address Management

Let's auto-bill for some backup

Matt Toback — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:24:34 +0000

Body:

As the story goes, Paul McCartney woke up one morning with the melody for Yesterday in his head. Having come to him so simply, he assumed the tune was subconsciously stolen, going around for months asking people if it reminded them of something else. Eventually he claimed it as his own, and the rest is history.

Backup is a large part of our lives, whether or not we personally use it. Every photo, note, song, video and embarrassing moment is being stored digitally, and our worlds demand perpetual preservation of this data. Hosts have long established profitable revenue models selling backup solutions, but there is still a disconnect between selling, providing and billing the customer.

Our industry is generally selling it one of two ways:

Hard limits, manual upgrades
You sell your customer 150GB a month, and when that limit is reached, the oldest backups get cycled out. The customer emails you (or your sales emails the customer), their needs are discussed, and the billing and limits are increased by hand. This approach is prone to error, the customer is often frustrated because they lost some old backups, and the host unnecessarily forces the customer back into a micro-sales cycle to upgrade to a new backup limit.

No limits, manual overages
You sell your customer 150GB of backup without a limit, and you set a reminder to check their usage at the end of every month. Sometimes you remember, sometimes you dont, and you likely will only bother if it's a large enough number. Remind you of how bandwidth billing used to be dealt with?

These methods are dated, too high-touch, and have too much room for error.

Whatever the cloud may mean to you, we can all agree that it's evolved the model of usage based billing. Annual contracts are being replaced with hourly billing, months translated into minutes. And with elastic infrastructure being deployed in minutes, it's more important than ever to extend that flexibility thoughout your entire product set. Especially in the context of sales, it's both easier and more profitable to negotiate usage based overages at the onset - your customer gets to grow at the speed they need, and your services (and revenue) grow alongside them.

We here at Uber love revenue through automation. We love finding the money that's being left on the table, and there is definitely money on the backup table. In the same way most of our clients were able to increase revenue through bandwidth overage billing, people are already finding hundreds and thousands of existing overages that aren't being billed.

When we first started looking into usage based overage billing for backup services, we felt a little like Paul McCartney. We assumed it must have been already addressed, and kept asking our customers. The idea came so simply; it instantly made sense. Let your customers consume backup as they grow, and let Uber handle the rest.

Start automatically billing with R1Soft’s Enterprise CDP 3.0.

Milestone Release: Ubersmith DE 2.0 now available!

Mike Styne — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:00:42 +0000

Body:

Spring has (mostly) arrived, and with it comes a new version of Ubersmith!

Team Ubersmith is extremely excited and proud to announce our latest release, Ubersmith DE 2.0! This release contains several new features that we're very excited about, and we think you'll be excited too. Here are some of the updates we're sure you'll love:

API 2.0

The Ubersmith API 2.0 is a RESTful web service for communicating with an Ubersmith DE software installation. This complete overhaul of our API is designed with providing a consistent experience across the board. API documentation can now be generated directly within your Ubersmith installation, so you can be certain it applies to the version you are running.

For now, our existing HTTP POST/GET API will continue to function side by side with the new version, ensuring your existing integrations will function properly.

R1Soft Backup Monitoring and Billing

Our new integration with R1Soft's Enterprise CDP 3.0 product will allow you to monitor your R1Soft Enterprise hosts as well as the agents and disk safes it contains. You'll also be able to perform billing based on your client's storage usage. This feature could help some clients recoup significant costs that they may have not been able to accurately bill for in the past!

Billing Agreements

Ubersmith now supports billing agreements via Worldpay. This feature will allow you to establish recurring payments from a client without the need to store credit card data within your Ubersmith instance. This is an easy way to ensure PCI compliance, as no credit card data will be stored in your Ubersmith installation.

Citrix XenServer Bandwidth Monitoring and Reboot Control

Ubersmith can now handle the monitoring of bandwidth data and provide your administrators and clients with the ability to stop, start, and reboot Citrix XenServer VMs. Being able to properly bill for the bandwidth utilization of your XenServer VMs as well as providing reboot capabilities to your clients is definitely worth getting excited about!

Below, you can find our full changelog for the Ubersmith DE 2.0 release. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our support staff.

Enhancements

General

Credit card encryption enhancements
Company name now passed to Payflow Pro when charges are processed through it.
Add more clarifying tool tips to the system
Payment record database entries now explicitly log account credit ids.
New object-oriented format for credit card gateway modules
Allow any info item to be used as a custom email order template variable
Support telling print_context how much output we actually want
Improve efficiency of minidash/unread tickets queries
Improve efficiency of configuration directive processing
Expose script elapsed time as an Apache note
License server updates

Client Manager

AVS code response from credit card gateway is now stored and displayed.
Support bandwidth billing for re-associated and/or deactivated devices
Domain and service associations are now logged
Support retrieval of CA certificates / bundles
Improvements to Nominet integration
Clean up HTML Invoices
R1Soft Overage Billing
Links added to billable tickets in invoices that include support time
Billing Agreement Support

Support Manager

Additional search parameters added to ticket-client association popup window.
Controls to merge tickets added to the ticket list page.
Show salesperson & account manager on client tab in tickets
User preference to select departments included in New Tickets list
The per client default priority setting has been reimplemented

Device Manager

Usability improvement to parent device selection when adding/editing a new device.
Add port enable/disable links to the end device's page.
Log monitor output for device status changes
Encrypt Virtuozzo root passwords
Extend configurable SNMP timeouts to 5 and 10s
Support gathering bw data using realwalk in generic switch drivers
Add support for Force10 S50
Support VLAN interfaces for 'generic' Foundry devices
External Command Monitoring device module
NewRelic transaction naming support in Appliance
Add additional generic Juniper driver support with VLAN support
Support more recent Force10 S50s
Improve efficiency of remote reboot onbeforeedit callbacks
Modify rate limiting code to allow for higher amounts for Portchannel and VLAN interfaces
XenServer Bandwidth Monitoring & Remote Reboot
Expand Bandwidth Monitor device module to monitor port state
Power Circuit Billing

Reports & Stats

Date range controls added to aged invoices report.
Set Date Range for "Department Statistics" Report
Queued charges can now have their next attempt date changed by admins
IP usage report improvements

Setup & Admin

Add default late fee schedule option
Password change event trigger added
Log indexing / search system errors
Update PayPal currency codes

API

Update ip_lookup.php to allow specification of IP type
Unassign IP address API script can now remove assignments from client accounts
Support Ticket Data Modification Via the API (subject, cc, device_id, client_id, service_id, opportunity_id, order_id)
Add API script to cancel an order
list_monitors API method
Add 'description' selector to list_devices.php API call
Passing clientid=0 to /api/list_devices.php will now return all devices NOT associated with a client.

API 2.0

Initial API 2.0 release

Corrections

Remove non-functional order form file upload element
Bandwidth billing service module is now smarter about handling overage services that have been deactivated.
Advanced form editor bug that wouldn't allow header elements to have their field names changed has been fixed.
Ticket opened event trigger no longer run when tickets were already open in the first place.
Aged Invoices report renamed and fields added to better explain the dates of the invoices in question.
Editing service prices in orders will now work properly
Changing the username of an admin no longer returns an error.
Client Interface Access is needed to modify upgrades on service
Associated client icon now properly reflects active/deactivated status when viewing a ticket.
Expected closure date in the sales manager is now a proper date field with calendar controls.
Support manager template variables now reflect the associated contact instead of always using the primary contact.
Bandwidth notification emails now include device appropriate variables.
Deactivated services appear when searching through active services
Invalid ID PHP PEAR Error with config_plan_details.php
Add indexes to comment_attach table
Correct paging in renewal queue manager
Use GET when ordering cPanel licenses
Including all authorized contacts under the advanced search feature no longer returns an error.
Add ticket to opportunity feature now properly creates that association.
Portion of the daily invoicing script that handles late fees no longer throws an error report.
Unbilled services will no longer renew automatically until they are invoiced.
Correct logging error when adding applications to appliance
Update legacy front-end files using direct database access
Custom data values may not be displayed on order details page
Make sure that zend.ze1_compatibility_mode is disabled when installing / upgrading
Service count displayed in the client interface has been corrected.
print_context fails when encountering PHP_Incomplete_Class Object
PHP fatal error during installation if gettext support is not available
Adding a client with an assigned late fee schedule no longer returns an error.
Completely localize instances of support ticket status '911'
When 'IP Addresses' contact permission is set to 'None', access is not actually denied
Child/parent relationship display issue in invoices corrected.
Unable to modify "Bill In Advance" for service plans in Setup & Admin
Remove the "billing_info" parameter from api/list_clients.php
Calling the verify payment order action via the API no longer returns a PHP error.
Result highlighting fails when search phrase contains slashes
Doubled HTML encoding of headers on re-send email popup
Unable to add comment to Account Credit via the API
Contact email addresses not indexed properly
Correct issues get_inv_xml.php
Payment type IS a required variable in add_acct_credit.php
Tax rate check in advanced search now properly pulls service associations instead of plan associations.
Correct issues with device manager advanced search
PDF copies of invoices now better handle .png and other formats of logo image files
Deactivated credits are no longer editable
Don't update admin last_login time upon API access
Use correct spelling of 'Cheque' in UK QuickBooks locale
Increase size of 'packages' column in the INVOICES table
Enable/disable links for client profile permissions fixed on add/edit contact popup.
New Clients count on minidash no longer includes leads
Correct error encountered when editing service plan

Ubersmith Releases