Here's part 2 of our Top 20 questions to ask your colocation provider, originally published by colocationprovider.org 11. What Size of Internet Connections Does the Colocation Provider Utilize (T3, OC3, OC12, OC48, OC192), Realizing OC192 is Ideal? – There are many colocation providers out there, some even set up in garages where only a few T1's or a T3 is utilized. Make sure that the provider you choose is a legitimate colocation facility that can deliver the technical reliability and security your business deserves. Look for a provider that has the ability to provide you with the best connectivity and redundancy for fast delivery. An OC192 offers the best connection available and will eliminate latency issues that you will find with smaller infrastructures. 12. What Kind of Security Does the Colocation Facility Offer? – For you to feel completely secure, it is highly valuable to find a provider that has invested in state-of-the-art security, whereby digital surveillance cameras are throughout the facility, card key locks at every entrance and exit within the facility exist with an enforced access list, and personal locking cabinet(s) are provided. It is important to note that individual secure locking cabinets are much more secure than an open rack in a shared cage. 13. Does the Company Specialize in Colocation or Something Else, (i.e. Phone Service) and Sell Colocation on the Side? – When deciding what provider your business would best benefit from using, make sure that you research the origin of the company’s services. If the company specializes primarily in phone service, web hosting or dedicated servers, then their colocation service will likely be more costly and you will be getting less service for your money. A company that specifically sells colocation is technically built to handle its necessities: maximum Internet speed via the largest backbone and network connectivity, expansive space opportunity and equipment security, along with the appropriate technical support necessary on a 24/7 basis. 14. Does the Colocation Facility Have Redundant Power? – The provider you choose should have continuous redundant UPS and generator backed electrical power where back-up battery banks are always online to keep the power on until prime source type of back-up generators take over if ever there was an outage within the city. This would protect your business from being harmed from outside factors and allow Internet business to sustain regardless. 15. Does the Colocation Provider Use a Standard Back-Up Generator or a Prime Source Type of Generator for Back-Up Power? – A provider that utilizes standard back-up generators is not capable of sustaining power over 4 hours in an outage situation. Therefore, it is important that you choose a facility that has continuous power, which can only be provided by a prime source type of generator. (Prime source generators are rated to run indefinitely, if needed, as the primary source of power). 16. Is the A/C System in Each Section of the Colocation Facility Redundant? – It is crucial for the provider to maintain an especially cooled environment for all of the servers it houses on a continual basis. Heat is the enemy of servers and network equipment. Having redundant A/C systems means that if any of the A/C systems fail, another A/C system is already helping to cool each separate colocation suite and can therefore take over as the primary cooling system. Choose a provider that has a state-of-the-art A/C system that provides air in each section of the facility redundantly. 17. Consider the Cost of Future Needed Internet Bandwidth Upgrades – A profitable colocation service provider is going to handle upgrades fairly. Research the pricing structures for future upgrades with various providers to know how you will be charged for additional Internet bandwidth as you grow. Ask how much it costs for 100Mbps and 1,000Mbps Internet bandwidth. 18. Does the Colocation Service Provider Have Brand Name Customers? – A provider that has brand name customers is a good sign. Ask for a list of customers when shopping for a colocation provider. This will allow you to learn the stability and technical reliability of that provider and help ensure that you are making a good choice. 19. Does the Colocation Provider Offer Secure Locking Cabinets or Just Racks in a Shared Cage? – For maximum security, it is best to find a provider that offers secure locking cabinets to avoid any shared technical issues or even possible problems with theft.
20. Does the Provider Offer Non-Profit Plans to Organizations? – A provider that is profitable means that they are stable enough to give back to the community. It is always a good sign when choosing a provider, if the provider offers non-profit organizations special opportunities, such as free Internet bandwidth for educational networks. It reveals that the company has a heart to make a positive difference, utilizing its technical and financial strengths for the betterment of others!
By Chad Henderson
I have always wanted to attend the massive Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that happens ever year in Las Vegas around this time. I imagined it as this sprawling, hypnotic disneyland of amazing technology and spectacle. A place to see the all your dreams of the future laid out around you like a feast. Where else are you going to learn about the new toys and gadgets that you will be drooling over in the stores next year? Companies like Sony and Microsoft spend all year planning how they will get the most attention at shows like CES. They spend huge amounts of money on booth decorations and lighting. They hire actors and stuntmen to make flashy dramatic entrances. They plant beautiful, evocatively dressed young ladies around their products, hoping to attract more eyes than the next company. But as I sat watching Leo Leporte walk through the convention center yesterday, all streaming to me live thanks to the magic of the modern internet, it occurred to me that these huge trade shows may be entering their twilight years. Watching Twit Live allowed me to be there without having to be there, and more importantly, without having to purchase a ticket to attend. I am sure that I missed out on some of the pure amazement and spectacle that you experience by being there in person. I am sure that things like the large beautiful 3D tvs do not seem very impressive when seen through a normal video stream, and standing next to a lovely young women in a tight Sony T-shirt is much more compelling that seeing her on a laptop screen, but otherwise, I felt like I was there. I was finally getting to attend CES, all without having to deal with the hassle of travel, and the crush of thousands of other technology geeks. I was getting to see all of the new toys and gadgets, and thanks to the power of an internet celebrity like Leporte, I was actually getting to see more than I would have as a normal visitor. I was getting to see interviews with, and hands on demonstrations by, the people behind the tech. Wow, why bother going now? But as powerful as that question is, it really doesn't seem as important as it once would have been. Now that sites likeCNet, Engadget, and Gizmodo are covering not only events like CES thoroughly, but also offering a year round spotlight on everything tech and gadget related, companies are starting to realize that they do not need to spend a ton of time and money to have a presence at huge events like CES. As a matter of fact, this will be the final year that Microsoft will be doing the keynote at CES. That fact alone tells you that interest in the trade show is waning. Apple has already pulled out of Macworld in a huge way and instead started doing their own events anytime they want to make an announcement to the world and it is working. Even if companies wanted to wait for events like CES to make their big announcements, frequent leaks and rampant internet speculation often steal the thunder from what they waited to unveil. If news sites are discussing photos and specs in detail weeks before your big unveiling, why bother with it. Controlling the flow of information becomes harder the longer you wait and CES only happens once a year. For this reason, many products are now being announced long before the big events, even if the product is not actually ready. Based on these changes in the mind set of companies and visitors, I expect that these large shows will start to fade into the background and eventually disappear altogether as the expense and effort eclipse the return. So if you want to attend an event like CES in person, you better do it soon. It may not be here in a few years. Or just watch twit.tv, like I do.
Datacenterknowledge.com is rolling out a review of the best writing about cloud computing in 2011.
One of the best columns was writing in October by Michael Jackson , co-founder of Adaptive Computing. Jackson wrote about the increasing importance of cloud computing to business enterprise needs. Below is an excerpt:
Increasingly, cloud computing has become an IT priority for virtually every organization in business today. According to a June 2010 Pew Research Center survey, a decisive majority of technology professionals predict that, by 2020, most people will access software applications online and work through remotely-accessed server networks. SaaS (Software as a Service) cloud applications such as Salesforce.com and NetSuite are standard, acceptable alternatives to traditional client server enterprise applications. A new competitor to Amazon’s EC2 service surfaces almost every day, and virtually every technology company is incorporating the word “cloud” somewhere in their description.
Given these rapid developments in cloud technologies and services, what are some of the key components to watch for as your enterprise moves into this new IT architecture?
Decision Engine
The technological foundation of a cloud computing environment lies within the decision engine. A unique multi-dimensional and predictive decision engine is one that dynamically manages workloads and resources so cloud environments self-optimize to produce more results, with greater speed and efficiency. Having a limited static cloud, with no decision engine adversely impacts the scalability/elasticity of your cloud environment, the largest benefit to deploy solutions in the cloud. If your workload peaks during an off-hour, is your cloud able to anticipate the need to provision more services? Or will it collapse under the weight of higher than anticipated demand?
Having a multi-dimensional decision engine, with the ability to dynamically provision for an unexpected spike in demand, not only affects your cloud’s uptime under Service Level Agreements (SLAs), but also the speed with which your cloud can make crucial decisions.
Read the rest here: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/10/06/how-enterprises-can-maximize-the-cloud/
Is access to the web a basic right - or a utility that people should have pumped into their homes? That’s the debate raised today by Google vice president Vinton Cerf. “There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right,” Cerf writes in an opinion piece in The New York Times. According to a report on Mashable.com: “Cerf calls it a ‘mistake’ to include any piece of technology as a human right, because “over time we will come to come to value the wrong things.’ He also argues that the exclusive category should be reserved for factors absolutely essential for human lives to flourish and have significance, offering as examples freedom of individual thought and freedom from torture. But, unlike those concepts, what guarantees them has the potential to change over time, Cerf says.” Meanwhile in a blog at pacific-tier.com says that access to the web through a solid infrastructure is a need for the common good, on par with other necessary utilities, a so-called “4th utility: “The 4th utility identifies broadband access to the ‘net as a basic right of all citizens, with the same status as roads, water, and electricity. All governments with a desire to have their nation survive and thrive in the next millennium will find a way to cooperate with network infrastructure providers to build out their national information infrastructure...” For businesses and individuals, access to the web already seems like a necessity. You need it to enrich your education, connect with people you know and reach customers. How that is ensured and by whom is an argument that is still going on.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a bit about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Luckily for us, congress has not passed the act yet, but will continue to debate it when they return from their winter break. There are good indications that the act will not pass as it is currently written, which is good news for anyone that likes the internet as it now exists. Supporters of SOPA, such as notorious domain registrar and hosting company GoDaddy, continue to come under scrutiny, however. GoDaddy was recently outed as a supporter of SOPA and apparently even had a hand in guiding the creation of the act. GoDaddy is the only real 'internet' company to appear on the list of supporting businesses that was released by the House Judiciary Committee and the fact that any internet company would support the act has surprised and baffled the professional internet community. Since being revealed as supported of SOPA, GoDaddy has seen a mass exodus as outraged customers transfer to other domain registrars and hosting companies, losing over 37,000 domain names in the first few days. Users of the popular community news site Reddit even organized an official "Move Your Domains Day" on Dec 29th, 2011 and created a Boycott GoDaddy website to encourage others to make the move. The total number of domains moved away from GoDaddy so far is not known, but it is thought to be as many as 80,000 or more. The Boycott GoDaddy movement gained enough momentum and garnered enough national press that GoDaddy, which had originally reiterated their support for the act, has decided to bend before the storm and have their name officially removed from the list of supporters. On Friday the 23rd, they released an official statement reversing their course. They did not say they would oppose the act but did state that they would support the act only "when and if the Internet community supports it". This sudden change of course for the most powerful domain hosting company in the world speaks to the power of community sites such as Reddit to organize and empower customers to be heard at national and international levels. Because of this, involving your business in politics can be very dangerous and should be done with care and thoughtfulness, especially when you attach yourself to controversy such as SOPA. Will you move, or have you already moved, your domains off of GoDaddy? Let us know in the comments.