Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Just days after we’d ordered the racks, and nearly a week early the additional 10 racks we’d ordered for the Sheffield Data Centre have been delivered to site.

Now in storage awaiting installation next week, these 10 racks now have to be cabled, leveled, secured etc… before being ready for customers in May.  We’ve already had several emails from existing and potential customers mentioning the new racks, and any special deals / packages we could offer.  Details to be announced soon.

Here are the new racks being delivered to site Friday:

We’ve placed an order with Orion Cabinets for the next (and final) 10 racks for our current computer room at the Sheffield Data Centre.

These 10 racks will be different from the current racks in the following ways:

- 24 power sockets (12 per half)
- per kWh power monitoring
- 24 patch ports (12 per half)
- UPS moved to Management rack (giving an extra 5U)
- combination locks
- newer / higher quality racks
- side panels as standard
- top cable entry

When the 2nd fibre from BT gets installed, these racks will be connected to both feeds giving resilient connectivity options.

Pricing for these new racks hasn’t yet been finalised, and will be announced closer to general availability. We are taking reservations now, so contact saleshahostingcom for more information.

Now the 2nd Evaporative Cooler has been installed, work has started on getting the next 10 racks installed at the Sheffield Data Centre.

The racks are due to be installed next month (May), before which electrical, network, structual and air extraction prep work will take place.

More updates (and pictures!) as time goes on…

Friday 06/04/2012 – We completed scheduled maintenance on the standby generator at the Sheffield Data Centre.

Maintenance involved checking and topping up fluids, checking the charging and sump warming circuits, start / stop tests, and a 30 minute run test whilst checking voltages, frequencies and phase alignment.

All systems OK!

We’ve got lots going on right now at the Sheffield Data Centre, and HA Hosting in general, updates to each will follow as required but a short list of projects starting soon/now are:

• Access Control upgrades
• 2nd Evaporative Cooler install
• Rack 10 power upgrades
• Additional racks
• New website
• SharePoint 2010
• BT Fibre install update

+ more that we’ve not finalised dates for yet!

Access Control upgrades

We’ll be upgrading and expanding the Paxton Access Control system used at the data centre starting this week, a short project but we need to move cables and controllers in preperation for…

2nd Evaporative Cooler install

In order to provide cooling for the extra 8 racks due to be installed later this year, we need another Evaporative Cooler situated in the void above the front half of the data hall.  There will be some ducting and prep work for the extraction too, although this will go in later.

Rack 10 power upgrade

We’ll be installing a dedicated 16A UPS into Rack 10 (one of the shared racks) this weekend (17th / 18th March).  A small number of customers (4 actually) will have to shut their server down so we can plug them into the new supply.  We’ve contacted them individually in advance to plan this.

Additional Racks

There is space in the existing data hall for another 8 racks, prep works have begun for these to be installed, ready for their actual installation in late Q2 this year.  These racks will be cabled differently to the existing racks, as a “proof of concept” for Data Centre 1.5.  More information to follow nearer the time, but changes include top-level cable trays,  fully enclosed racks (all sides) and (TBC) extra spce within racks.

New Website

We’ve started talking to Sheffield based website developers about a new HA Hosting website.  More information to follow soon.

SharePoint 2010

A long time coming, but development plans for SharePoint 2010 are now being drafted.  The existing SharePoint 3.0 sites will be migrated when the new servers are live.

BT Fibre install update

We announced last month we’ve ordered a second fibre from BT.  We’ve had surveys done and are waiting for the final schedule.  Updates to follow when known!!

…And finally

We have a huge piece of news to announce later this week  :-)

We’ve sent out communications today to customers informing them of firmware upgrades this Friday morning @ 03:00 on 4 network switches at the Sheffield Data Centre.

Not all services will be out at the same time as we’re staggering the upgrades over the course of an hour.  Customers may experience a brief outage while the switch they’re connected to reloads following the firmware upgrade.

For customers:  For more info see the email which was sent today (08/02/2012) around 1pm.

Once these urgent upgrades are done, future switch firmware upgrades will be staggered sometime in March.

UPDATE 10/02/2012 @ 04:00 – a switch has factory reset  :-(  we’ve upgraded the firmware and reloading the config, customers connected to VLAN’s 812 onwards may experience a few more minutes of outage while the switch reloads again, once done we’ll carry on with the rest of the upgrades.

UPDATE @ 04:40 – both core QOS switches have now been upgraded, took longer than we thought (sorry about that), all colo services should now be back online!  Customers on QOS1 (VLAN’s 801-811) may have been intermittent for 19 minutes, customers on QOS2 (VLAN’s 812-823) may have been intermittent for 22 minutes.

This week we have ordered an additional fibre into the Sheffield Data Centre.

The fibre will be provided by BT for connection direct into their 21CN network, with onward Internet transit.  This brings our fibre connectivity N+1 in line with power and cooling which is already redundant.  BT also brings a second transit provider to us.

We’re all really pleased here at HA Hosting, as another fibre will enable us to trial several in-the-pipeline products, including the possible return to dedicated gaming colo.  The additional bandwidth has already been partially pre-sold to existing customers requiring extra capacity, and will allow us to meet future needs.

Due sometime in April, we’ll of course blog the install when it happens, and if BT have top open any more manholes, we’ll try to get pictures  :-)

We’ve today ordered 4 x Intel i7 servers to host Virtual Private Servers at the Sheffield Data Centre.

These servers will suppliment our existing AMD Phenom II server cluster, giving customers either AMD or Intel options.  We’ll be doing some testing this week before bringing the servers into live service next week.

Prices to customers won’t change, and we may run a special offer in February for Intel based VPS’s.

HA Hosting provide Virtual Private Servers from just £10 per month, with a choice of Windows or Linux Operating Systems.  See http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com/servers/default.aspx for full details.

The last customers have been migrated from Exchange 2007 to our new Hosted Exchange 2010 platform.

The legacy (3 year old) Exchange, Management, Domain Controller servers will now be soft-decommed before being switched off at the end of the month.

The website still says Exchange 2007 – this will be fixed!

Hosted Exchange 2010 10GB mailboxes are £6.00 per month.  Unlimited and ” basic” mailboxes are also available, contact us for more information, a trial, or to order.

We’ve started carrying out power audit work at the Sheffield Data Centre, accurately documenting what each customer & device is allocated, and what it’s using.

All co-lo customers will be contacted over the weekend with regards to what they’re allowed, and if they’re using any excess, but for the sake of completeness here are the allowances (unless  by prior arrangement):

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Single Server

• 1 x power socket
• 1A power

Quarter Rack

• 4 x power sockets
• 2A power

Half Rack

• 6 x power sockets
• 5A power

Full Rack

• 12 x power sockets
• 10A power

Additional Resources

• Additional power @ £22 per month per Ampre
• Additional sockets @ £2.50 per month

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All prices exclude VAT.

Customers are not permitted to plug devices direct into the UPS, only into PDU’s provided by us.

Customers may provide their own additional PDU’s, but they should plug into our PDU.  We use our PDU as the measuring point for power consumed.

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Our wholesale energy prices have increased this year, we’ve decided not to pass on this cost to customers at this time, however we will be invoicing customers more activly with regards to their actual power and socket usage.