SAN project complete!

Bryan asked me to post this for him today. He's in the hospital with his wife and their new baby boy! Congratulations to Bryan and his family!

Welcome to the year 2010. The year had a very exciting start for me. On Dec. 30 we finished migrating the last database to our new SAN. This was the largest and most complex part of the project. Thanks to excellent planning by our database administrator, Lee Crain, the move went smoothly.

The completion of this SAN migration project brings increased reporting and inbound speeds, better redundancy and virtually unlimited expansion capabilities. I am really excited by the results we are seeing. We have observed 72,000 IO requests processed in a single second. Page life expectancy is considered adequate with a value of 300. At one point recently, it was at 300,000 (higher is better). Other performance metrics indicate our servers spend much of their day waiting for more work to do.

There was an issue with our hourly statistics rollups that developed after the migration. We’ve been dealing with an intermittent lock contention issue during the rollups. We hoped the new servers and SAN would improve the situation. Unexpectedly, we found the increased performance caused the system to trip over itself because it was running so fast. The net result was a tortoise and hare problem. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race.

We caught the issue quickly and made the necessary changes to resolve it. By changing how the rollup works, we are taking full advantage of the performance our new systems give us. This process is running 18 times faster than it did previously. We are speedy and steady. Several of our engineers: Kacie, Art, Myong and Lee put in a heroic effort to make these changes happen so quickly.

I’m very excited to start the New Year with the completion of this project.

Milestones

LinkTrust had one of our best years in 2009. We had a few specific goals at the beginning of 2009 and it's awesome to look back and see that we reached those goals, along with some other major accomplishments.

Releasing LinkTrust 6 to production was at the top of our list for 2009. Version 6 brought industry-leading features and performance enhancements to the platform. The project represented more than a year of planning, hard work and execution involving everyone at LinkTrust and Burstabit Technologies. As of Dec. 2009, more than 75 percent of LinkTrust partners are fully utilizing version 6!

With the increasing risk of fraud and malicious activities in our industry, improving our DDoS mitigation and response times were a top priority. We completed our integration with Prolexic Technologies in providing full DDoS mitigation services to protect our partners. As we worked with Prolexic this year, we have decreased our response times to DDoS attacks to a fraction of what they were during the first DDoS attacks LinkTrust experienced.

Our final major goal was realized in the last few days of December. Through a three-phase process, we upgraded the LinkTrust network infrastructure to a redundant SAN environment with clustered databases. The SAN project gives LinkTrust the necessary foundation to provide the high caliber of performance needed throughout 2010.

Our efforts to improve LinkTrust in 2009 paid off. The number of LinkTrust partners doubled, and there are more than 150 ad networks and merchants using LinkTrust.

This year we look forward to doubling our clientele again. We know that doing this relies heavily upon the performance of our platform and our customer service.

Our first step in 2010 to show our dedication to high performance and providing our customers with the tools to run successful businesses will be the release of some long-anticipated features including:
-Cross-platform Affiliate Fraud Detection
-Affiliate Fraud Filtering and Scoring
-Affiliate Payment Tracking
-Multiple Sub IDs (up to 10)
-Mass Creative Import
-Account Management for API's
-Unlimited Affiliate Pixels
-Geographic Traffic Reporting
-Rich Flash Graphing

We anticipate this feature list will be released as early as mid-January.

This list of features is just the beginning of the dozens of enhancements planned for LinkTrust 6 in 2010. We will release the most sophisticated lead capture and management features available anywhere, additional graphing throughout the Partner Center, more Ajax in reports and lists, multi-currency support, traffic capping, QuickBooks integration, the ability to set payouts by Sub ID, set bonuses, schedule payout changes, campaign and affiliate management APIs, click analytics, and dedicated servers or virtual farms for high-volume partners.

I'm also excited for the release of the Marketplace where offers can be cross-marketed between all LinkTrust powered networks.

In addition to providing more whistles and bells, features and performance enhancements, we're working closely with other industry leaders in integrating with their services. We recently integrated with RingRevenue's PayPerCall platform and are finalizing integrations with OpenX's Ad Server and Payoneer's prepaid affiliate cards.

We recognize that our success in 2009 is due largely to the loyalty of our partners. We look forward to building on this relationship throughout 2010. Thank you for your support and business!

Sincerely,

Bret Grow
President

Tips and Tricks coming soon!

Meet Gavin.

Gavin is the VP of education at LinkTrust. For most of our partners, he's the first introduction to the system. Working with our partners he hears about the common issues that a lot of you might come across. Look for posts from Gavin explaining answers to common questions and even a few tips and tricks to make LinkTrust work better for you.

When Gavin isn't training new partners or figuring out the best way to make LinkTrust work, he raises bees and chickens in his backyard.

Welcome to the blog, Gavin!

SAN Project Update

I am pleased to post that the second phase of our SAN project was completed successfully Tuesday night. After a full day of monitoring, things are running great. Everything went well with the move and the performance gains are awesome.

Coordinating everything within a short maintenance window can be a challenge. Our careful planning paid off though, and we had the Partner Center, Affiliate Center and Merchant Center back up within 45 minutes. This will be the last phase of the SAN project we complete until after Christmas.

LinkTrust SAN Project

I'm excited to share some details about my latest project at LinkTrust, something we've been calling the SAN Project. Hopefully this will be the first of many posts on what is going on behind the scenes at LinkTrust.

My brain is always thinking about something. About a year ago it started pondering how we store all the data in LinkTrust. At the time we had about a terabyte of data and it was growing fast. I realized we needed to start looking at a new storage solution.

The problem for us isn’t so much that we have a lot of data. Our problem is we need to access the vast amount of data quickly. Performance and reliability are key to keeping LinkTrust running well for our partners.

These considerations lead me to begin looking at a SAN. In a nutshell, a SAN is a big black box full of hard drives that work together. It provides high-performance data storage with a high degree of reliability and redundancy.

We began the project by evaluating different SAN vendors. We had to separate what the sales people told us from what their products actually do. The importance of this decision meant we had to carefully look at all our options. In the end we decided to go with Compellent. Their product offers some very unique flexibility and optimizations that I felt made it our best choice.

Once we decided on a vendor the real work began. There are a myriad of configuration choices to be made when implementing a SAN. I really wanted to make sure we got this right. It was important to me we didn’t have any single points of failure.

To ensure every piece of the system worked well, we also upgraded our switching fabric to a new set of Juniper switches. I purchased new Cat 6 network cables to ensure we weren’t bitten by an old cable starting to give out. The devil is in the details as they say. Every little piece must be considered to ensure success.

Whenever we embark on a project I want it to make things better for our partners. It needs to be worth the time effort and money we spend on it. I also don’t want there to be a lot of pain associated with upgrades or changes we make.

I work hard and plan meticulously to ensure successful project implementation. With the efforts of my great team we successfully moved our first database to the SAN last week.

To ensure success we started relatively small. The database that was moved was selected because it allowed for a seamless move with no visible impact to our partners. At the same time, it had enough load on it we could see a visible benefit when it was moved to the SAN.

Even I was surprised to see we were able to index more than 20 million records in a matter of a few seconds with no impact to user performance. This was something our previous infrastructure couldn’t do.

There is still much work to be done. We’ve grouped remaining tasks into a series of phases to allow for minimal impact to our partners and maximum success. The next phase, which will begin this evening, will require we take the Partner Center, Affiliate Center and Merchant Center offline for about an hour. This is to ensure no changes are made to configuration settings while the move is occurring.

This project really started about nine months ago. Looking back it has been a long road. We can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. We can tangibly see the benefits that this new infrastructure will bring to the LinkTrust system. We’ve been able to make the upgrades with minimal impact to our partners. I’m thrilled to see the success we’ve had with this project thus far. I’m sure I’ll only be more excited by the final outcome.

Hello from the LinkTrust Technology Department

Meet Bryan.

Bryan Call is the VP of technology at LinkTrust. He's responsible for overseeing the implementation and architecture of the LinkTrust system. When he's not working on the latest version of LinkTrust, he watches reruns of Star Trek or takes his wife ballroom dancing.

We're excited to have him become our first contributor to our blog... and bring some exciting news that will help LinkTrust perform at an even higher level. You'll definitely want to keep an eye out for his posts about the new SAN and what that means for you.

Welcome to the blog, Bryan!

LinkTrust Wire-- December Issue

The second issue of the LinkTrust Wire was emailed to our subscription list today. Want to read the Wire? Sign up for the LinkTrust Wire here!

In each issue we have four sections:
TRADE, featuring a LinkTrust partner.
INSIDER, spotlighting a LinkTrust employee.
TICKER, the latest feature releases.
JUST IN, industry events and news.

In our TRADE section we featured RevStars Media, a long-time LinkTrust partner. Find out more about them in the Wire.

For an INSIDER look at our new account manger, Jody Sears, check out this article.

Follow the TICKER to see a few highlighted features that were recently released.

Find out how current LinkTrust partners can win a ski trip from LinkTrust in the JUST IN section of the Wire. Or email sales@linktrust.com for more information about how you can win!

Thanksgiving

In keeping with the timeless American tradition, LinkTrust employees tell us what they're thankful for this year.

Bret: "I am thankful for my wife and children; a great place to work with friends; driving in snow and blizzards and Christmas lights!"

Gavin: "I am thankful we have such a great LinkTrust team to work with!"

Nate: "I am thankful for my freedom and those who provide it for me, grateful to live in this country and for my health and to have great family and friends, and a job I love."

Jeremy:"I'm thankful for APIs, banana cream pie and four-stroke motors."

Carol-Lyn: "I'm thankful for skiing so I don't completely hate the snow." :)

Gary Gray: "I'm thankful for help at work and four days off to spend time riding four-wheelers with my family."

Nathan: "I'm thankful for my beautiful wife and two cute kids, an awesome job with incredible co-workers, my health, and for the freedoms that we enjoy."

Kacie: "I am thankful for football, turkey and my family."

Myong: "I'm grateful for Windows 7."

Art: "I'm thankful for getting to work in such a dynamic, fun company."

Christina: "I'm thankful for having a loving boyfriend, some really awesome friends, and a great job."

Sarah: "I'm thankful for those moments in developing when the code just works. And Cookie Dough- Fudge Ice cream."

Lee: "I am genuinely thankful to have the job I do and to work at Burstabit"(the parent company of LinkTrust.)

Mindy: "I am thankful to get paid to meet and talk to people from all parts of the world every day. Especially the ones that are sitting on the beach while we are in the middle of winter here in Utah!"

Kyna: "Thank goodness for clean water, fresh vegetables, late winters and trips to warmer climates. And of course, my family and friends."

Jody: "I'm thankful to work with a company that I love...with people I love! If you have to spend the majority of your life away from those you would most want to be with-- it's amazing to spend that time in a place you love to be!! Thanks LinkTrust 'family'!"

Halloween

Nothing tells you about the creativity of the people you work with like a Halloween costume/pumpkin carving/potluck bringing party. The day started with the fire alarm chasing us all out of our offices-- apparently construction dust and smoke look the same to an alarm. While the lights flashed and alarms sounded we made a visit to the local McDonald's (even the kids gave us funny looks in our costumes).

At the office we had Star Trek captains (plural), witches, batman, some guy in lederhosen, and a vampire. The food was delectable: butternut squash soup, Korean barbecue and even Klingon Bloodwine from Bryan.

At noon it was time for pumpkin carving. Some of us took the easy way out and used the patterns included in the carving kits. Everybody else let their creativity run wild and used the classic Sharpie to plan their masterpiece. Nate's flame pumpkin won the contest. In my book, Frank's pumpkin gets an honorable mention, it was full of LinkTrust spirit.

New LinkTrust Recruits

We are excited to welcome Sarah Borden and Christina Dessi to our development team.

Along with being a talented software engineer, Sarah volunteers for many different organizations including the Civil Air Patrol where she participated in many different search and rescue missions.

A natural on the stage, Christina loves to join theatrical productions in her local community when she's not creating new code for LinkTrust products.

To read more about their talents and experience they bring to the table, read our newsletter article.

Treasure Hunt

One of the first emails of the day today started the entire office on a treasure hunt with the following clues:

Work Driving you crazy? Take a break!
The newest way to Cruise away the afternoon isn’t on the lake.
X doesn’t mark the spot at the end of this Road, look instead where the wild things Grow.
Race around the office, look high and low.
One more clue if I may,
The surfboard points the way.
You don’t have to go a mile,
You just have to find the right file.

Now we can practice our driving skills if we get tennis elbow or bored of baseball. Thanks for the MarioKart, Nate!

Wii Baseball Tourney -- Round 1 Blowout

We are well underway in the LinkTrust Wii Baseball Tournament. The Round 1 match up we were all anticipating didn't disappoint. In a 6-0 blowout, Gary crushed Jeremy's dream of a third straight Wii Tournament championship.

Noodles and Company

A journey around the world for eight people? And absolutely free? Sure, sign me up!

Recently Bryan and seven lucky LinkTrust employees were treated to a noodle tasting at the Draper franchise of Noodles and Company. In a moment of inter-department bonding, the development team, Sicily from Accounting, Gavin from Business Services, and Kyna from Marketing and Sales experienced the unique tastes of the Asian and Mediterranean sections of their menu. Thanks to Bryan who threw his business card in the bowl, we all got to try some delicious food and talk to some people with whom we don’t interact on a daily basis. Nothing like Noodles to bring a company together!