Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Just an update to say the weekend’s QOS go-live work as communicated out last week was a success.

Customers with shared / allowance bandwidth were migrated Saturday (22nd) morning between 08:00 and 09:30.  Customers with dedicated / fixed bandwidth were migrated Sunday (23rd) morning between 08:00 and 09:00.

Apart from the expected interruption in traffic as the VLAN was changed (a few seconds per port), there was no outage and no service impact.

We’ve also not had any support tickets today relating to the change.

Bandwidth usage stats (very accurate ones) are now being collected for customers with fixed / dedicated bandwidth, and will be available on request.

We’ve started migrating traffic onto our brand new QOS (Quality of Service) / Bandwidth Management infrastructure.

Internal traffic, along with websites and services we host (such as www.thevirtualcloud.com) – were migrated over yesterday (18/01/2011) in the early hours of the morning with no impact to service and no downtime to end-users.

Over the course of this weekend (22nd / 23rd January) we’ll migrate physical co-lo and VM server customers over to the new network.

What is the new QoS?

Back in November 2010 we had a problem with 1 (out of 2) QoS servers.  An interim QoS / Bandwidth Management solution was implemented but didn’t give us a full picture of usage on that network.  The QoS servers are used to monitor, restrict, and prioritise traffic coming into (and out of) the Sheffield Data Centre.

The new QoS solution is based on Cisco 2960 switches, and allow us to more carefully prioritise traffic, and restrict bandwidth to customers with fixed speed connections.  We’re also able to get more accurate monitoring and stats (with MRTG) of each customers’ throughput.

How does it work?

Each customer with fixed speed connections is allocated a VLAN, we’re able to accurately monitor usage on that VLAN because it’s separate from other customers.

What & When?

To move ports onto the new QoS, we need to change the VLAN the port is allowed access too.  The trunking and allocating of VLAN’s has already been done and tested.  The process of changing the switch port (or VM NIC) takes around 30 seconds, with a disconnection of about 5 seconds.

We’re planning to do the shared access customers on Saturday 22/01/2011, and the fixed speed customers on Sunday 23/01/2011.

What impact to customers?

None really – there’s a period of around 5 seconds when the switch port changes over where traffic will be blocked.  For VM and Managed Firewall customers, this is about 2 seconds.  We’re also planning on doing the work before 9am on both days.

We finished monitoring the Low Latency Network (and the colocation networks as a whole) for bandwidth usage last weekend.

We’ve now analysed the reports and are forming packages which better suit the usage by customers, and the data centre as a business.

Customers will be contacted this week with an update. In the meantime the bandwidth analysis will remain so we can begin trending the network and available capacity.

We’ve simplified and enhanced our bandwidth offers even further, with great deals for all colocation customers regardless of type.

Full Rack / Half Rack

• 5MBit free until January 2010

Then either:

• 5Mbit dedicated for just £50 per month!
• Pay-As-You-Go for just £0.25p per Gigabyte.

Shared Racks (single server slots)

• UNLIMITED inclusive bandwidth.*  40Mbit connection to the rack, use as much as you like, no limits.
• 5Mbit dedicated for just £50 per month.
• Pay-As-You-Go for just £0.25p per Gigabyte.

*The only caveat with the Unlimited Inclusive Bandwidth, is all servers in the rack have access to the same connection, if you require dedicated guaranteed bandwidth, or reporting on throughput, go for Dedicated or PAYG.

These new fantastic bandwidth options are open to both new and existing customers, for more information check out the pages at http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com/colocation/ or email sales@hahosting.com for more info.

Hello!  Firstly, hope you like the new look blog.  We’ve moved the blog from the old home on the Sheffield Data Centre website  to a dedicated site here at www.hahosting.info – the new blog will have news, info, updates and media from HA Hosting,  TheVirtualCloud and the Sheffield Data Centre.  All the content from the original blog is here too.

This new look and feel for the blog is a sneak preview of what our websites will look like when they’re updated next week.  All  our websites will have a shared theme and flow into each other with common menus and headers.

We’ve got a lot going on right now, and we’ll be posting detailed updates later, but here’s what we’re up to in November:

HA Hosting

• Trials are being planned of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with failover clustering for Virtual Dedicated Servers.
• Upgrade of the Client Control Panel due before christmas.

TheVirtualCloud

• New web hosting infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 is starting to be rolled out.
• Outlook Anywhere Hosted Exchange price reduced to just £6.50 per month for a 1GB mailbox.
• First trial customers for our upcoming Hosted SharePoint service are now live.
• Replacement DNS Name Servers are now live, customer migrations due soon.

Sheffield Data Centre

• Energy Saving Evaporative Cooling technology delivered to site, awaiting installation.
• Ground works for the site generator have started.
• Low Latency Network for gamers has been successfully trailed.
• Free Bandwidth Forever is being offered in the shared colo racks.
• 5Mbit for £50 per month package coming soon.

In the short term we’re working on the new cooling system in the Data Centre, preparing the network for the Unlimited Bandwidth Forever deals, and completing the rollout of the new web hosting infrastructure.  Detailed updates for everything will be posted soon, so watch this space!

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.

The latest update to the Sheffield Data Centre website is now live at:  http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com

We’ve included options for 16A and 32A full racks, 8A half racks, and single servers up to 4U.  We’ve also simplified our pricing for extra power and bandwidth, with extra power at only £22 per month per Amp, and extra bandwidth at only £33 per month per synchronous Megabit.

The current lead-time for half racks and full racks is around 5 working days, and lead-times for single servers are as quick as next day subject to space.

The response to our go-live has been fantastic, with potential clients already queueing to come and see us.  If you’re interested in visiting us give us a call on 0114 228 0022 or email sales@sheffielddatacentre.com

We’ve also got some advertising going live next month into some local Sheffield publications, as below.

Sheffield Data Centre Now Open advert

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