SiriusAddict.com

Today, I took a trip down the road and then to Philadelphia with my art class. It was pretty cool – it’ll be broken down into 3 separate posts.

Basically, the class I am taking is a web design class. So, the trip was to a hosting company and two web design companies. The sites we visited were HostMySite, PowerDesign, and PixelWorthy.

The first site, HostMySite, was really interesting to me…

Basically, we took a tour one of their data centers (1 of soon to be 3). We went into the server room where there it was so cool and neat in there. I’ve always wanted to go into a server room just to feel how cool it is in there and just because it’s restricted to the public. Normally, no one but authorized techs. would be allowed in the room. So just because you work there doesn’t mean you have access to the server room.

There were a lot of security aspects of the building, too. For example to just get into the server room, you need a keycard which only certain employees had. If that wasn’t enough, once in you have disarm the alarm. So even in the event you did get in, you’d still be faced with the alarm. It was also mentioned about the amount of redundancy that the place has. The multiple datacenters are always talking to one another for backups, etc. Another aspect that was interesting was that the floor was raised above the ground a few feet so the ventilation system produced by the two air conditioners (only one is operational at a time) could cool from the ground up (makes sense since cold air drops). In addition, all of the server connectivity was above the servers near the ceiling since it’s more organized that way.

They also said that in the decade or so they’ve been in business, there has only been 40 minutes of downtime total. Not too shabby, if you ask me. What was also of interest was that the server room, as most all do have now, had a fire supression system. First, gas would spray out of the cone-shaped items in the ceiling in the event of a fire. This gas was breathable and wouldn’t hurt the techs if in the room. If that failed and as a very last resort, the sprinklers would turn on but only in the affected area so the rest of the servers aren’t damaged or destroyed. Also, the water pipes that feed the sprinkers aren’t active until necessary, i.e. hitting a sprinkler head would just break the sprinkler head and not shoot out water.

The battery backups would last about 15 minutes if I remember correctly and there are two huge batteries in the facility. Surprisingly, 15 minutes isn’t a long time. However, the batteries only turn on in the event of a power-failure and the servers never have a chance to shutdown or reboot. During this time, it takes 15 seconds for the generators outside to turn on and begin feeding the building with more power. As with everything else, the generators are redundant and will be filled with gas if even remotely close to empty.

Also of note is that the vital server statistics are checked 24/7 (since the center is open 24/7) every 120 seconds. So there’s practically no chance of something going wrong. Overall based on the tour of the place, it seemed really secure and reliable. The prices are in normal range, but that won’t keep me from switching from my Hosting Company, Surpass Hosting mainly due to price and features that HostMySite can’t match at this time.

Overall, a VERY informative and interesting tour!