Industrial-Grade Equipment for the Ultimate Performance and Reliability - NOW with 100% Network Availablity
HostingWorx recognizes that down time is not an option for our servers. That's why we invest heavily in hardware and facilities that ensure our clients are up and running on the web 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
HostingWorx's Network Operations Center (NOC) features raised flooring. This enables a constant flow of conditioned air and helps to maintain uniform room temperature at all times. In addition, raised flooring reduces static and ensures a professional, computer grade environment for our servers.
The facility is equipped with a Raytheon fire suppression system, designed to immediately extinguish fire and protect equipment and personnel. The command center is controlled via automatic doors to further secure and protect the equipment.
Finally, the NOC is located in a secure, monitored, class A building with a minimum number of approved personnel allowed access to highly sensitive areas and equipment. A detailed record of employee and visitor entry is maintained at all times.
Uninterruptible Power System
To guard against local power failures, we have two industrial-grade, three phase Liebert UPS systems. These act as back-up batteries, maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or power outages. With these backup systems in place, we can keep our network up and running indefinitely without relying on external power.
Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
HostingWorx's NOC has two Liebert ten ton industrial air conditioners, which condition our computer rooms and operations centre. Our computer room is kept at an optimal temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
Custom Web Servers
HostingWorx's web servers are custom-built industrial machines designed for a 24/7 web serving environment. All servers are equipped with dual redundant 450-watt power supplies, hot swap Seagate Barracuda/Cheetah drives and force-filtered cooling systems. In addition, our NOC is equipped with an inventory of identically configured, burned-in standby servers.
Force Filtered Cooling
All of HostingWorx's custom web servers are equipped with a positive pressure filtered-air system. Four large fans pull filtered air into each server's protective case and the components within are cooled by fans which circulate this purified air. This constant introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure environment ensuring dust and particles remain outside of the server.
Hot Swap Seagate Drives
The drives and drive bays of all HostingWorx servers are constructed from high-grade aluminum, and rest in shock mounted drive cages, which adds to the durability of the hardware. HostingWorx's drives proudly feature the lowest failure rate in the industry. (And yes, we do pay more for the reliability)
Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies
Each server employs dual-redundant hot swap power supplies. If a power supply were to fail, the server would continue running with power from the alternate supply. Meanwhile, alarms would alert a technician, who would quickly restore redundancy. In the meantime, servers and client sites would experience no downtime.
Standby Servers
We keep spare servers on-line of all CPU configurations. If a server were to experience a hardware failure, we would turn a key, grab the handle on the drive, pull it out, and insert it into an identical standby CPU. We would then reboot the second machine and the server would be up and running again in a matter of minutes.
Connected to Four Backbones
The HostingWorx NOC located in Orlando, Florida in the USA connected to via 4 Tier one providers Level (3), Cogent Qwest Communications and Epik Communications through 4 separate bandwidth-on-demand connections.
Furthermore, because of these unique connections, HostingWorx does not need to link to the Internet though an OC3 or T3 Telecom circuit. Instead, independent cables run inside our building directly from the HostingWorx NOC to all four carriers points of presence. These lines can handle the bandwidth of a T3 or an OC3 with DWDM. Plus, they handle several times the bandwidth of an OC3. Whatever your bandwidth needs may be, HostingWorx has the scalability to meet them.
Network Redundancy = 100% Network Availability
HostingWorx uses intelligent end-user routing software called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP identifies which path is the most efficient for each data packet and then routes the packet to its destination on the fastest path. This increases the speed at which web pages sent from our NOC's arrive at their destination.
Studies have shown that the most common reason for downtime is circuit failure on Tier 1 provider backbones, the major data highways. To guard against this potential problem, we have three Tier-1 providers. If one experiences problems, we can route traffic down the other one. Furthermore, because we use Level (3), Cogent, Qwest Communications and Epik Communications, we share their digital distribution architecture, which includes private peering network connections to major Internet carriers such as MCI, Sprint, UUNET, EUNET, AT&T, AOL, IBM Advantis and others. These private peering arrangements allow HostingWorx to exchange packets of data with every major backbone carrier in a one-to-one environment quickly and efficiently.
Raw Performance Equals Low Latency/High Throughput
Too often providers operate their networks at three to four times responsible capacity. As a result, their corresponding transfer times reach over 300ms. HostingWorx's network daily average is 6.5% of its capacity, with midday peak spikes reaching only 15.5% capacity.
Firewalls
A firewall is a security device that secures the server from possible attacks. It is placed between the server and the Internet to moderate and document requests for data access according to a predefined set of security policies. Every one of our servers comes equipped with a firewall, which is built and managed by our in-house security engineers. Our data centre staff is managed by a network security engineer with over 15 years of experience in telecommunications cryptography. In addition to the individual firewall, our entire network is secured through a circuit level firewall, providing one more level of security for mission-critical data.
Automated Security Monitoring
To ensure the integrity of our customers' web sites, we proactively monitor system processes on each server as well as across our entire network. These monitoring programs are designed to halt and report all intrusions to the system and provide our customers with the peace of mind they need to conduct secure business transactions from our servers.
