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In
this day and age, the data centre of a business,
can make or break the company. Whether you are
a bank, Internet Service Provider or another
type of business, how your data centre holds
to surges in traffic, security penetration, data
congestion or a physical hazard, will determine
if the client will stay with you for the long
haul.
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These
are some of the issues we have advised clients on:
Fire
Protection Fire Suppression
There
must be an Early Warning System that samples air
molecules and can detect potential fires up to two days
prior; smoke detectors; Gas Systems emphasizing a non-toxic,
non-water based fire suppression system and a double
pre-action dry pipe sprinkler system that fills up but
won't release water until the tip of the sprinkler is
burned.
Power
The
data centre has to have a system that offers a continuous
power supply with multiple generators.
Environmental
Monitoring Systems
The Air
conditioning, water detection and humidity control
needs to be assessed.
Staffing
Technical
staff has to be on hand 24 x 7 365 days a year,
at the Data Centres, allowing you access to your servers
at all times. Each facility must have adequate staff
and there must always be more than one person on site.
Each Data Centre should also allow engineers to better
monitor the facility, network and equipment from a control
center.
Connectivity
The
data centres may have connections to many different Internet
backbones including UUNet, Sprint, Cable and Wireless,
CRL, Qwest, Exodus, Agis and Net Axs. In addition, the
data centre must operate its own DS3 to enable 'peer
to peer' with many of the smaller Tier One providers
as well as operating another DS3 to the ATM switch located
there.
Internal
Connectivity
A
provider's local area network is not often enough being
seen as a point of latency. The two main sources
of latency for a full-time Internet connection are the
user's local area network and the Internet provider's
local area network. With networks anchored by say, Cisco
5500 Series etherswitches and high-end Cisco routers, you
are ensured exceptional routing of data packets.
Top-of-the-line
network hardware ensures that data requests get to their
destination and back out of the network as fast as possible.
We advise on etherswitches instead of hubs because of
their speed and their security capabilities. Whereas
only one computer plugged into a hub can talk at one
time, all the machines connected to a switch can talk
at the same time. This means more data can travel through
a switch and each server acts as its own node on the
network. Furthermore, since each servers is its own node
on the network, it is difficult for hackers to trace
data packets with sensitive information (i.e. passwords)
to a particular physical server.
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