Planning: Web Hosting Data Centers

Industrial-Grade Equipment for the Ultimate Performance and Reliability
Web server downtime can cost your business. Unscheduled downtime is even worse as there is no way for you to warn your customers or prospects. For this reason, you want to be certain that your web hosting company will minimize downtime and do its utmost to prevent unscheduled downtime. Part of a necessary strategy is to ensure that industrial grade servers and networking equipment are used.

Other components are stabilized power and temperature. Both power and temperature fluctuations cause premature equipment failure and, on a more immediate note, intermittent and repeated temporary outages.

Lastly, the data center itself, or Network Operations Centrex, should be secured to prevent unauthorized access.

Uninterruptible Power System
There are two forms of uninterruptible power. Battery backed up power, which has a limited life before the batteries need to be recharged, and power generators. While the second is preferable, the first is absolutely essential. Battery backup, however, which will usually last a maximum of an hour or two in the event of a power failure, cannot compete with industrial grade generators that automatically fail over to provide power in the event of a power loss and can be kept running for days.

Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
Air conditioning for servers is critical to keeping them comfortable and operating reliably. Large racks of disk drives generate enormous amounts of heat and this heat must be dissipated if the servers are to continue operating reliably. The air conditioners themselves should not cause power spikes and interfere with the quality of the power delivered to the servers.

Custom Web Servers
Many hosting companies will custom build their servers to ensure reliability and performance to their specifications. Sometimes this is as complex as selecting each of the individual components and building the systems from the ground up themselves. More frequently nowadays the company will completely spec. the server to a manufacturer like HP, Compaq, Sun or Dell and the manufacturer will build and supply the equipment.

Force Filtered Cooling
Force filtered cooling refers to a server case that has fans drawing air into the server case through a filter. The filter is necessary to minimize dust accumulation within the server which itself can contribute to premature server failure.

Hot Swap Drives
This is an important component of reliable server design as it allows for the removal and replacement of a faulty disk drive while the server is still in full operation. Disk drives, being electromechanical devices, are the most susceptible to failure in any server.

Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies
Another component that can be swapped without shutting down a server, hot swappable powers supplies are also considered essential in professional servers as they provide some filtering and are subject to power supply surges and interference that may knock them out.

Standby Servers
As a last resort, a professional web hosting company will keep spare servers on hand, all ready to function as the primary servers, in the event any one of the primary servers fails. These are called standby servers and, in some environments, are mirrored images of the primary servers and remain fully concurrent with the primary servers.

Multiple Connections To The Internet
A web hosting company can only be as successful as its connection to the Internet. This connection is normally provided by a third part, or parties. Larger web hosting firms maintain more than one connection to the Internet to provide connection redundancy and assured bandwidth capacity.

Network Redundancy
Studies have shown that the main reason for web site downtime is networking failure on Internet provider backbones. To guard against this potential problem a professional hosting company will maintain multiple connections to the Internet, as noted above.

Network Reliability
In addition to having network and Internet connection redundancy, a web hosting company needs to ensure that their own network equipment is reliable and that they have adequate backup equipment in the event of a networking equipment failure. Cisco appears to be the company of choice in the network router and switch arena and most professional hosting companies seem to select Cisco equipment.

Raw Performance Equals Low Latency/High Throughput
In order to ensure great performance and server responsiveness it is important for a hosting company to provide sufficient internal network bandwidth such that they can handle peak traffic times without overwhelming the network routers and switches. It won't matter how fast the web servers are if the network itself cannot handle the demands high traffic volumes place.

Firewalls
Firewalls provide network security to prevent hackers from destroying your server, web site, or email host. All professional web hosting companies provide firewalls to keep their servers safe.

Automated Security Monitoring
There are a number of software programs that monitor various aspects of a networks operations, including automated notification of server resource usage, network switch and router usage etc. In addition, other programs monitor security and hacking attempts. These applications page the system administrators in the event they see a problem. These applications help the system administrators a great deal in avoiding problems.