Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

We’ve replaced the front doors of the remainder of our colocation racks with rear doors specially purchased to improve airflow.

This week Racks 7 to 16 have had their glass front doors removed and perferated rear doors installed.  The locks were also changed round so customers with their own keys can continue to access their equipment as before.

We tested swapping around doors last year as a trial, and with improved hot air containment and extraction in the first hot aisle, overall temperatures were lower and airflow greater.  With summer around the corner (somewhere) we’ve replaced the 2nd aisle’s doors as well.

With customers taking occupancy in the 3rd cold aisle, now was an ideal oppertunity to get this work done.

The black perferated doors were specially shipped by our supplier – Orion, and fit the racks perfectly. They also add to privacy as now you can’t see as easily into racks, but have a greater airflow.

New Rack Doors April 2011

For more information on our colocation packages, check out http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com

We’ll be launching the latest version of the Sheffield Data Centre website next week…

All the services of TheVirtualCloud will now be alongside colocation and rack space on www.sheffielddatacentre.com, along with updates to Cloud VM Servers, Hosted Exchange, and Colocation.

Lots of new info, lots of updates.  We’ll blog it when it goes live!!

Sneak preview of homepage:

Sheffield Data Centre January 2011 home page preview

Over the weekend we’ve updated the 3 x High Availability Hosting Limited websites:

www.hahosting.com
www.thevirtualcloud.com
www.sheffielddatacentre.com

The main updates are over on TheVirtualCloud – where the full Flexible Cloud Servers information is now live, along with prices, examples etc…

Take a look at http://www.thevirtualcloud.com/cloudservers/default.aspx for all the details!

Other updates include links between the sites, a full list of all services (all sites) on the homepage of www.hahosting.com, and the removal of legacy VMware hosting.

We’ve this week updated our 3 websites:

• www.sheffielddatacentre.com
• www.thevirtualcloud.com
• www.hahosting.com

We’ve refreshed some out-of-date content, added some new information, restructured the menu’s to make them easier to navigate, and fixed some spelling errors etc… (thanks to everyone who pointed them out to us… ahem!)

We’ve also posted the first signs of Hyper-V which (quietly) started going live this week.  We’re now taking orders from existing customers for Hyper-V based dedicated servers, and we’ll be opening up orders to the world at large soon.

If you get chance to have a look at our updated sites, and want to feedback anything to us (good or bad) please do!  Some of the changes this time round came from user feedback!

Thanks,
Stuart.

At 05:30 this morning a huge crane lifted our generator from it’s storage place nearby to the concrete pad and secure compound at the back of the Sheffield Data Centre.  It took a little time to plan, execute, beat the weather, and generally organise the lift – but it’s done and will be connected to the Automatic Transfer Switch shortly!

Not a great pic below, but it was practically dark when taken – the generator being lowered to it’s base:

Flying Generator

More pics and info will be available soon!

After several delays (mainly caused by bad weather, contractor delays, and Christmas!) we’ve finally had the footings dug out and concrete poured for the generator enclosure.

The grass banking was dug out on Tuesday 23rd, and concrete poured Thursday 25th.  Blockwork has been delivered and the enclosure itself is scheduled to be constructed next week.  Once the encloure is complete we’ll pull the thick generator cables through and move the generator itself into position.

We’re confident that (if there’s no more snow – which apparently doesn’t help concrete set!) the generator will be in position mid-March!

Digging out the footings

Ready for concrete

Concrete finally poured!

The generator, in storage. Waiting to be positioned.

We’ve published some changes to the Sheffield Data Centre website, live now.

• Low Latency Network for gaming servers
• Game server colocation
• Updated homepage
• Core networking diagram
• General housekeeping of the site

www.sheffielddatacentre.com

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.

The new websites for HA Hosting, TheVirtualCloud and The Sheffield Data Centre went live last night.  Information on every service we offer has been updated, some prices reduced, and new services introduced.  Along with a fresh new look based on a shared stylesheet and master page.

Major updates include:

• Single look and feel across all sites (and this blog!)
• Extra “value added” services added for VMware hosted Dedicated Servers (HA Hosting)
• Outlook Anywhere – now with same day setup (TheVirtualCloud)
• New Professional Web Hosting service added (TheVirtualCloud)
• SharePoint Hosting service added (TheVirtualCloud)
• Updated colocation services added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• New bandwidth offers and options added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• Extra services (firewalls, rDNS, Backups, SAN) added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• Extra data centre information, power, cooling, network etc… (Sheffield Data Centre)

Blog posts on specific services (such as the new Professional Web Hosting) will follow next week, in the meantime if you get a chance, check out our new websites at:

• www.hahosting.com
• www.thevirtualcloud.com
• www.sheffielddatacentre.com

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!