The Planet, a provider of IT hosting services, will be participating in the expo at Interop (News - Alert), a conference for business technology. The company will showcase its IT management, hosting and cloud solutions during the expo. It will also continue its popular Server Challenge during the event, which tasks conference attendees to post the fastest time in correctly rebuilding a server.

The participants must arrange the components as they like before starting. Fan, Heat Sink and RAM (News - Alert) must be on the table outside of the chassis. The participants should not be touching any components when time starts. Also, all components must be installed for their time to be recorded and components can be installed in any order. The rules also state that the components outside the server may only be touched one at a time and the participants may attempt the build twice.

An Asus EeePCnetbook will be awarded to the winner of The Planet Server Challenge. The company has run the competition both at South by Southwest and ad:tech San Francisco this year, with more than 150 participants and rebuild times as low as 30 seconds. You can visit http://blog.theplanet.com/2010/04/20/adtech-server-challenge for the video footage of the most recent challenge. The company will also give away a Flip digital video recorder during the show. Interop attendees must submit their business card to win.

According to The Planet, a successful or complete installation will include the installation of heat sink, latch both latches, plugging heat sink into motherboard, installing fan and plugging it into motherboard, installing two RAM modules (in any of the 4 slots) and so on.

Recently, the company announced additional features for its Partner Plus Program for resellers. Extending its leadership position as a Web hosting platform, the company said it now offers registered reseller partners volume discounts up to 20 percent, depending on their monthly order value. Additionally, the company has created new server bundles optimized for resellers, including key software and upgrade options, at reduced prices.