BLOGBLOGhttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2012-02-12T19:53:05ZSquarespaceN+1 Definition and Examplehttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2012/2/12/n1-definition-and-example.htmlHost2012-02-12T19:53:03Z2012-02-12T19:53:03ZN+1 redundancy is a term that ensures system availability in the event of component failure. In this example, we are referring to a Datacenter environment where the components (N) have at least one independent backup component (+1). N+1 redundancy recognizes that only a small part of any infrastructure system has any chance of failing at once. 2N redundancy completely duplicates the operating infrastructure. If you need 2 generators for backup, you buy 4 generators. If you need 4 cooling units, you buy 8. N+1 redundancy recognizes that only a small part of any infrastructure system has any chance of failing at once. Odds are vanishingly small that you’re going to have 4 cooling units all fail at the same time. For N+1, you consider what are the odds of having more than 1 unit fail, the odds of having another unit fail before you can get the first failure repaired, and the potential impact.

If there is a small chance of 2 generators failing at the same time then go with N+1 while if there is a high probability of 2 generators failing at once then go with 2N. If not needed a 2N, while nice to have in place, would be a waste of time and money which is passed along to customers, goes against a green facility (if operating), or could be used elswhere in your operating budget. If you’re set up is design so absolutely no interruption is critical, such as power, you might run N+2 with 1 spare hot and the other 1 cold. To learn more about our experience with datacenter redundancy and N+1 and 2N cofiguration please visit http://www.globalcoloquote.com or email us at woody@globalcoloquote.com.

 

]]>CDN Services and Featureshttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2011/11/30/cdn-services-and-features.htmlHost2011-12-01T01:55:00Z2011-12-01T01:55:00ZSeveral of our clients leverage CDNs for delivery of their static content. Content Delivery Networks (CDN) allow dedicated server administrators to offset some of the load from their servers, using strategically distributed servers hosted by a CDN service. Although the most basic goal is to reduce load on the server, it can also be used proactively to increase overall access speed, increased fluidity of dynamic websites, and reduce bandwidth by serving content to users from locations geographically closer to their connection point.

Some common CDN features include:

On-demand storage – Usually served on a per-gigabyte basis, this can be used for backup, caching, or general storage.

Dynamic site acceleration – Dynamic sites normally require access to a database server and constant on-the-fly creation of web pages. A CDN may offer a method of caching repeatedly accessed pages and even hosting the databases or applications themselves.

Media Delivery – In the world of social media and streaming content, a CDN can deliver HD-quality video, high-quality audio, and other media, without bogging down your servers.

Electronic Software Delivery – If you deal in software, first-time downloads and upgrades can be costly, and bandwidth can add up quickly. CDNs offer affordable delivery systems.

Analytic software – In addition to providing the delivery of content itself, many CDNs also provide analytic services to track your usage statistics, and even provide marketing tips to help you make your content distribution more effective.

Ad Delivery – Some CDNs offer ad services that can distribute your custom ads with little effort on your part.

Using a CDN is a great way to reduce stress on your server’s hardware and also make the distribution of content a less involved process for the already busy system administrator.

]]>Metro Ethernet and VLanshttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2011/7/3/metro-ethernet-and-vlans.htmlHost2011-07-03T16:18:07Z2011-07-03T16:18:07ZWe recently completed a requirement for a UK-based company that required a single VLAN between three locations in New York City including their New York office that is located in an older building in SOHO. The challenge in this case was providing access to all three locations using Metro-Ethernet and the ability to provide Dedicated Internet Access at all three locations. We are able to provide our client with Ethernet-over-Fiber (25Mbps) at 25 Broadway (Telehouse), 32 Avenue of the Americas (AMC, CRG-West), and Ethernet-over-Copper at their office in SOHO on a single VLAN with Metro-Ethernet between all locations. To read more about our clients and their positive experiences you can go to our Testimonials page. 

More and more companies are using Metro Ethernet for all of their office needs including voice, data, and server requirements that are outside of the data center. We are involved in a current project that will utilize BGP in an office environment to provide Internet redundancy between two providers to give them a failover if they loose connectivity with one provider. This requires an ASN (Autonomous System Number) but can easily be set-up using ARIN. If you would like more information or a quote for a similiar set-up please contact me at woody@globalcoloquote.com or 917-710-5226.

]]>New York Metro Ethernet (new service and website)http://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2011/6/15/new-york-metro-ethernet-new-service-and-website.htmlHost2011-06-15T15:38:00Z2011-06-15T15:38:00ZWe are proud to announce our new service and website NEW YORK ETHERNET. We now offer Layer-2 for organizations that would like to connect (2 or more) datacenters or an office and datacenter- all at Layer-2. We also offer Layer-3 to organizations that need 5 Mbps to 1 Gbps of full-duplex Internet Access to their office or remote location. Our Layer-3 Metro-Ethernet comes with two options- (1) Metro-E over Copper with speeds from 5Mbps to 45Mbps. This service is a good alternative to business-grade DSL, Bonded T1's, and DS3's at at fraction of the costs. The second option (2) is Metro-E over Fiber for clients that require 10Mbps to 1Gbps over fiber. The beauty of this service is that we can create separate vlans for voice traffic so you get a dedicated segment of your connection for VoIP and Data applications. Typically, it takes only few hours for a quote and 15-business days (or less) for service. Please contact me if you would like more information. I can be reached at 917-710-5226 or woody@new-york-ethernet.com. 

]]>Hourly Backup for MS-SQL?http://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2011/5/12/hourly-backup-for-ms-sql.htmlHost2011-05-12T22:17:27Z2011-05-12T22:17:27ZYes! You now have an option for hourly backup for MS-SQL. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) allows you to perform online backups and restores of Microsoft SQL Server Databases hourly. Now in addition to daily and weekly backups you have hourly backups available without having to create a flat file. TSM allows reduction of recovery time for your Database to just a few minutes after your Data is compromised. You can have point in time restores within an hour of your lost Database and this is available with any provider using the Tivoli Storage Manager Software and it is available today. Please contact us for a free consultation or if you would like to give it a try. We can load the Client for you or provide you the link to do it yourself.

]]>Toronto's Green Data Centerhttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2011/4/15/torontos-green-data-center.htmlHost2011-04-16T00:00:00Z2011-04-16T00:00:00ZToday marks the date of Toronto's First Green Data Center at 20 Pullman Court, Toronto ON (www.20PullmanCourt.com ). We provide co-location, managed-hosting, self-managed hosting, IP Services, and DoS Protection at this location and it is sure to be a big success! There have been limited choices in terms of managed hosting and dedicated hosting providers in Canada, not to mention the requests we get for Green Datacenters in North America. This facility offers a COOL ROOF that reduces the sun's reflection and heat and will feature a redundant cooling system using both a local well for primary water supply and a connection to the city’s water system as a backup. This carrier neutral facility offers the following features:

  • 41,000 sq.ft
  • On-site Parking
  • Loading Dock
  • Customer Lounge
  • Custom Cages
]]>Datacenters for Gaming Servershttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2010/7/19/datacenters-for-gaming-servers.htmlHost2010-07-19T13:55:00Z2010-07-19T13:55:00ZOn Wednesday, May 19th at 10:00am ET, the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing to discuss tax proposals related to legalizing and regulating the Internet gambling industry in the United States. The proceedings will be held in Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building. Check out the details of the Ways and Means Committee hearing._ Over the last several years, gaming sites have become a daily activity for office workers, stay-at-home-Moms, and likely it is the number one clicked url in a bookmark folder. All gaming sites are based outside of the United States however 240M gamers are US citizens. The US is not stopping gambling but if they regulate it they can control problem gamblers. Most beneficial is the econmic factor- it will create jobs and there is an obvious tax revenue advantage. Also, off-shore operators are not mandated to have safeguards in place. If the Committee finds that it is in their best interest to legalize Internet gambling it will be very beneficial to the datacenters in the United States that can support the IT requirements of running these sites. The most likely beneficiaries of this movement will be established IT Providers, hardware vendors, and IT Consultants.

 

]]>How to Protect Your Servers During a DDoS Attackhttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2009/10/5/how-to-protect-your-servers-during-a-ddos-attack.htmlHost2009-10-05T19:52:51Z2009-10-05T19:52:51ZEvery day, servers are attacked. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. The flood of incoming messages to the target system essentially forces it to shut down, thereby denying service to the system to legitimate users. How can you protect your organization against such an attack. Under a large scale attack, your firewall is not going to be able to handle the amount of traffic forced at it. You need a Transit vendor with a large network presence in multiple cities. This means that incoming DDOS attacks arrive through different upstreams and peering connections. In each city, customers are placed behind a firewall and are able to set up their own policies and rules for their incoming traffic. This setup is similar to what many other ISPs do. During regular traffic levels or a low-scale DDOS, there is no real difference between a distributed setup and a normal isp-level shared firewall. But when a sustained DDOS larger than a pre-determined amount occurs, your vendor's network operation center (NOC) is notified. Once they have determined that the attack is sustained, you have the option of going into distributed mode. Once you are in distributed mode, the vendor takes the attacked subnet of IPs and redirects it to the firewall closes to the ingress point of the attack. This distributes the attack so that it is now spread out over the capacity of the entire network instead of targeted towards a single city location.

After the DDOS traffic hits a firewall, it is inspected and dropped if necessary. The legitimate 'scrubbed' traffic is then GRE tunneled back to the city where your servers reside, where it carries on to your network. Your online presence can function normally through most high-level DDOS attacks that would have otherwise crippled your network. The following information is what I need to set-up protection asap when the attack is occuring. Basically, all traffic good and malicious is routed to our routers, where we filter and determine if the traffic is legitimate. All malacious traffic is dropped during one of our many filtering layers, the rest is sent to you from one of our proxy servers. In essence, your web server only communicates with our servers and is hidden from the general internet.

  • Step 1. Obtain a clean IP from your network provider/ISP, preferably one on  different network segment. This new IP Address will be known as your "origin server IP". Configure the fresh/new IP onto your server.
  • Step 2. Let us know via email what your new origin IP is so we can setup the configuration on our side.
  • Step 3. If you require SSL on this server, email us the cert and private key in .PEM format. This should be in plain text and may be copied and pasted and included in the "step-2" email.
  • Step 4. If you have a firewall or other ACL's in your network please ensure that you allow those IP blocks access to your servers and I will need to forward you our IP Blocks so they will have access.
  • Step 5. We will send you and IP Address. Make a DNS change to point your domain(s) to the IP Address we sent you. Ensure your TTL  is set to 5 minutes or less.
  • Step 6. Remove the old IP Address from the server.

At this stage your traffic will start finding it's way to us where we will apply the required filters and send your server the legitimate traffic. One of our engineers will be in communication with you throughtout this process, to ensure everything is functioning as expected.

That's it. All things considered, the whole process should take about an hour.

 

 

]]>Colocation vs Cloudhttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2009/8/23/colocation-vs-cloud.htmlHost2009-08-23T19:10:00Z2009-08-23T19:10:00ZEvery day we read more about Cloud Computing and the benefits of using Cloud Computing. You have surely heard IBM and Microsoft touting the service. One the leading, or should I say "better known" orgainzations offering Cloud Computing is Amazon's Web Services . Though they tend to focus on the low-end of the market, they are probably the best known. A recent survey by the IT Industry Council (ITIC) found that 85% of companies will not implement either a public or private cloud in 2009 because of fears that service providers may not be able to adequately secure sensitive data. With that said, there are some seemingly obvious advantages to using Cloud Computing like - hardware (server,etc) savings, software (licenses) savings, management and internal resource savings, etc. You would need a consulting company to do the analysis that would take an individual months to evaluate. Well, no worries. McKinsey & Co has done all the work for us and the report is very interesting. The most common thought is "if I don't have to buy any more servers I will save money." Wrong! Your application will need to be re-designed to run in a Cloud environment, tested, re-worked, and stress-tested again. That takes time and labor. In addition to redesign there is managing another vendor relationship, additonal software licenses, data transfer, re-IP, and then there's the provider's longevity. What if they go under? Even a well-executed Disater Recovery strategy will have some issues and even minor challenges will disrupt data flow. The cost to run an application in a Cloud environment would cost double what the same application would cost in a co-location environment! Not only will you not save money, as most Cloud proponents exclaim, but you will lose money. Either way, it will be 3-5 years before anyone other than SMBs begin moving towards Cloud Computing. For more information about this report you can check out The UPtime Institutes review at UptimeInstitue.com. You will need to register but there is a lot of great information there. Or I can be reached at woody@globalcoloquote.com or 917-710-5226.

]]>10 Great Hosting Questions for IT Staffhttp://www.globalcoloquote.com/blog/2009/5/19/10-great-hosting-questions-for-it-staff.htmlHost2009-05-19T15:22:42Z2009-05-19T15:22:42ZIf you can get answers from your IT Staff to these 13 questions, you will save yourself a lot of time and maybe a few dollars. The questions are:

  • Does your company have the IT staff / resources to remotely administer a server or managed hosting environment?
  • What would this system we are discussing be used for? What is the application?
  • What type of system architecture do you have in mind (web/app/db server; load balancing; private network)?
  • What are your security requirements?
  • What is the peak number of concurrent sessions that you anticipate for this system?
  • What are your anticipated peak throughput requirements?
  • What is the anticipated monthly transfer usage?
  • What applications will you install on each server?
  • What operating system would you need on each server?
  • What are your requirements for CPU, RAM & HD (capacity & RAID configuration) for each server?
  • Do you require backups on each server? Daily or Weekly?
  • What is your timeline for implementing and moving forward?
  • What is your budget for this project?
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