Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

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.

Due to an outage last night at our previous colocation provider (one of many outages this year), we took the business decision to move our exising servers and SAN storage early into the Sheffield Data Centre.

The following services are now fully colocated within the Sheffield Data Centre:

• High Availability Hosting – VMware dedicated server hosting
• The Virtual Cloud – Web hosting, Exchange Hosting, Spam / Virus filtering
• Sheffield Data Centre – this website & blog
• Core networking / AD services / DNS services

All services were successfully migrated for 03:00 this morning (1st July), and DNS started to propagate quickly.  We worked through the night to ensure all applications were working post-migration.

We apologise for any inconvienience this may have caused (especially with slow DNS propagation beyond our control).

- 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 delightful pleasure we announce the first customer has moved servers into the Sheffield Data Centre.  A local web hosting company occupied “Rack 3″ yesterday and their kit is now live on the Internet.

We are now accepting orders and inviting customers to colocate kit with us.  Current lead-times on half and full racks are around 5 working days.  Single rack servers can be moved in immediately.

• Full rack (up to 16A):  £575 per month.
• Full rack (up to 32A:  £700 per month.
• Half rack (up to 8A):  £295 per month.
• 1U single server (1A):  £27 per month.
• 2U single server (1A):  £36 per month.
• 3U single server (1A):  £45 per month.
• 4U single server (1A):  £54 per month.
• Tower server (1A):  £35 per month – lead time July 2009.
• Extra power available at £22 per Amp per month.
• IP addresses up to a full class C (254 usable) available.

(All prices are ex-VAT)

Another 8 racks were delivered yesterday, with another 4 due either today or Monday.  Cabling works on these racks will begin straight away.

Our VMware Dedicated Server platform (www.hahosting.com), and our Web & hosted Exchange platform (www.thevirtualcloud.com), will be moved from the current colocation providers to the Sheffield Data Centre in early July.

The construction of the Sheffield Data Centre is split over 3 phases, with phase 1 is now complete.  The next phase will see the backup generator installed; final project plans for this will be drawn up in July.  Phase 3 (FM200 fire suppression) will be later in the year.

The web site will be updated over the weekend, but you can take this as official that we are open for business.

Contact us on 0114 228 0022 or sales@sheffielddatacentre now!

The Sheffield Data Centre website has been updated and is available at:

http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com

We’ve added the Half Rack specification, updated some details, and given the home page a make-over.

Also, we’ve updated the High Availability Hosting website, if you get a spare minute and want to know more about the company in general, as well as browse our other services including our VMware Hosted Dedicated Servers – pop over to:

http://www.hahosting.com

Back at the Data Centre – the raised floor under the rack locations has been layed, and is now being levelled (which is a very slow job!), the Cat6 cable is expected on site early next week ready for pulling, and the “Fire Door Keep Shut” signs have arrived!  *smile*.

Happy bank holiday everyone!

- Stuart.

- EDIT – latest internal pics!

Raised floor - towards office

Raised floor - towards loading bay