Why Outsource Your IT Hosting?
To install an in-office dedicated data room also requires adequate protection against fire and flood, temperature regulation,
continuous power supply and redundant components, rigorous security and reliable high-bandwidth connectivity.
It is no wonder that outsourcing your hosting makes great financial sense by sharing the overheads with other similiar clients,
and is also often far more practical than hosting in-house with the availability of 24/7 support staff and skilled engineers.
Each of our data centres provides the following important features:
- Backup power: In the event of a grid power failure, on-site fuel-powered backup generators automatically start to supply power to all equipment.
Uninterruptible power supplies (banks of fully charged batteries) provide continuity of power while generators run-up. Fuel is kept on site to provide at least
32 hours of running time, supported by agreements with major fuel suppliers for rolling supply.
- Temperature regulation: Computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units combined with hot/cold aisle data floor layouts ensure optimum
cooling of equipment at all times.
- Fire control: If a single particle of smoke reaches any one Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA) detector, gas-based suppression dampens
the fire whilst leaving equipment unharmed.
- Security: All data centres are staffed 24/7 with full CCTV coverage and proximity access control (PAC) on all doors supported by biometric
identification of all personnel on site. Full entry/exit records are kept. No personnel other than authorised data centre staff have unsupervised access to any
shared colocation areas, whilst clients with private cabinets have unescorted access to their racks only.
- Connectivity: All our data centres provide diversely routed resilient dark fibre so you always get the speed and low-latency you require,
even under the heaviest of traffic loads. The dark fibre connects to our core fibre ring in London's Docklands, with upstream transit onwards
on contract from at least two global Tier 1 providers.
- Technical support: Remote hands is provided 24/7 so if you don't want to travel to the data centre just to replace a cable, fit a new RAM module or swap a hard drive,
we can do that for you at a pre-agreed hourly rate. We can also assist with more advanced installation, troubleshooting and configuration issues through our management services.
The Tier III Difference
Our main hosting data centres comply with the electrical and networking requirements of the Uptime Institute's Tier III classification.
This means that unlike many "low cost" data centres, each of our sites is concurrently maintainable so any one system can be taken offline
for maintenance without affecting the overall service. In particular, each site has:
- Redundant components (at least N+1): Should a device fail, there is at least one "hot spare" device online ready to take its place,
ensuring a single component failure does not lead to downtime. Each component can be removed for maintenance without disruption to service.
- Dual power feeds: Each rack can be provided with A+B power feeds routed by diverse paths, ensuring that major equipment failures,
scheduled power maintenance or cable damages on one power distibution path do not disrupt power to equipment (provided equipment is fitted with
redundant PSUs or rack automatic transfer switch).
- Diverse networking: Each data centre is connected to the core network by two dark fibre uplinks through two distribution switches,
providing rapid failover in the event of fibre downtime. We ensure sufficient spare capacity across all fibres so any one fibre can carry all peak traffic
without bandwidth problems.
The Multiple Data Centres Advantage
All our data centres are carefully selected to be highly resilient with excellent uptime track records. However, no facility can be immune from "Acts of God",
terrorism or any other force majeure. However, we can supply cost-effective solutions which span multiple London data centres,
mitigating risks associated with any one individual site. By providing disaster recovery and continuity consultation, per-U colocation, rackspace, interconnects and
managed services, we provide a hassle-free service whilst reducing your costs substantially compared with leasing rack space from multiple data centres directly.