Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Last week the Sheffield Data Centre website (www.sheffielddatacentre.com) was updated to show the new single server (1U, 2U, 3U, 4U, mATX tower) prices and inclusive bandwidth options.

Due to customer demand we’ve scrapped the Pay As You Go @ £0.12p bandwidth, and instead added inclusive amounts of 1TB, 2TB, 3TB or unmetered bandwidth to our rack space.

• New prices for single server space at the Sheffield Data Centre are at the following address:
  http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com/colocation/colocation-servers.aspx

Existing customer?

New customers & servers will be subject to the new packages now.  We’re looking to move existing game server customers onto the new packages before Christmas, and existing business customers with contracted rack space early next year.

All ports will be 100Mbit burstable.

We’re also one of a handful of colocation hosts who offer unmetered ports.  Subject to fair use we will let you have unmetered throughput to and from the internet for just £95 per month per server. 

(Fair use means when the network is saturated we may employ traffic shaping to ensure a fair connection speed to all users).

Contact us (box on the right) if you want to know more, or visit us at www.sheffielddatacentre.com

Many of you have asked us what happens to our “free bandwidth” offers after they run out in January.

In order to stay competitive, as well as offer something extra other colocation providers don’t, we’ve come up with 3 options for bandwidth after the free inclusive bandwidth offers expire.  Of course existing customers can benefit from these now if they wish!

Pay As You Go
Simply pay for the bandwidth you use.  Your servers will be connected to the Internet at speeds up to 34Mbit, and bandwidth (throughput) is charged at £0.50p per Gigabyte.

To give you an idea what 1GB is capable of, it’s enough to transfer:

 > 48 photos, or
 > 150 high quality songs, or
 > 1 movie, or
 > 300 emails

Pre-Pay
Get 200 Gigabytes of bandwidth (throughput) when you pay £50 (equivalent to £0.25p per Gigabyte!) in advance.  With no time limit, the bandwidth is valid until it runs out.  When you do run out simply pay another £50 for another 200GB.  Your servers will be connected to the Internet at speeds up to 34Mbit.

To give you an idea what 200GB is capable of, it’s enough to transfer:

 > 9,600 photos, or
 > 30,000 high quality songs, or
 > 200 movies, or
 > 60,000 emails

Dedicated
If you need dedicated throughput or fixed costs (for example for remote backup) then our dedicated bandwidth starts from £33 per Mbit per month.  Deals on 5Mbit and 10Mbit are available, and you can go up to 100Mbit.  You can also burst over your allocation by up to one third (33%). Contact us directly for a quote.

To give you an idea what 1Mbit continuously can transfer, over a month you could move approx 316GB of data.  The same 316GB would cost £158 on Pay As you Go!

New customer deal
We also have a fantastic deal for new customers launching soon, watch this space or contact us if you’re looking to move in to the Sheffield Data Centre now!

… not our words, but the words of Now Then, a local Sheffield magazine which last month featured the Sheffield Data Centre in it’s “traders” section of their well circulated free magazine.

They write “These guys have a 100 Mb/s connection. That’s faster than public transport.”

… faster than a bendy bus I suppose.

They go on to write “In short, the Sheffield Data Centre is well located and equipped with all the mod cons. It provides high speed access in a secure and controlled environment, ideal for businesses with internet presence, retailers, manufacturers and online companies.”

After talking to us, the producers of the magazine are now looking to move their hosting away from their current provider to the Sheffield Data Centre, so next time you read their magazine while on a bus, think of us!

The full article is available here (click for larger image):

Now Then magazine SDC article

- Stuart.

It’s with great pleasure I announce that the hosting room of the Sheffield Data Centre is complete.

The first 4 racks are fully installed and (nearly) cabled.  We’ve this week placed an order for an additional 12 racks to meet customer demand, and we’ve started to show the first prospective clients round the building.

The “snag list” is nearly complete too, with only a few jobs remaining – most notibly the gassing of the air-conditioners which is scheduled to happen this Thursday. 

Today was also the day our 100Mbit fibre went live, with a connection straight through to the Internet.  We’ve now got a few days of testing and firewall building ahead, which is where the “fun” starts  :-)

So the question everybody’s been asking us… “when are you going to open??”.  Providing the air-con gassing goes ok, and the network build is complete and tested over the weekend, we’ll begin to offer colocation from next week.  So if you’re interested in colocation with us, now’s the time to email us and arrange a visit.

We’re booking people in to see us from next Monday (22nd), so either give us a call on 0114 228 0022 or email sales@sheffielddatacentre.com.  If you’ve already got your details registered with us you’ll be getting a more personalised invitation later this week, or you could queue jump and contact us!

And finally the usual update pics…

Computer room build complete

100Mbit fibre live

Pics of the fibre B-Side install by Openreach…

Openreach on site again...

Fibre jointing in the street

B-End fibre termination