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In This Issue:
Visual
Data About UsVisual Data Systems is a leader in Internet marketing, technology consulting and World Wide Web design. As a pioneer in Internet business, we've logged more than a decade of achieving customer satisfaction and Internet innovation. Visual Data Systems offers a wide variety of products and services that can be customized to fit your unique business needs. Let our experienced professionals polish your ideas and dreams to create your distinctive Internet presence. At Visual Data Systems, there are no barriers. Just Innovations. News & EventsCatch Visual Data Systems at the upcoming Conferences: RMS Users Conference Wilmington, NC, September 22-24 Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) National
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August
2003 • Volume 1, Issue 3 Co-location Facilities and Equipment StrategyWhen Visual Data Systems first started offering services for websites in 1995, the only requirements necessary were a T1, a robust server and some technical savvy. Back then, a presence on the Internet didn't mean you had to do business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The web was simply a "nice to have" option allowing a select group of customers to view up-to-date data. Today, 24x7 on-line order entry and reservationing is a must. As such, we offer highly available equipment, bandwidth scalability, and skilled technical personnel to ensure availability and reliability.
The Network Operating Center (NOC), located on-site, provides continuous monitoring of the facility and connectivity. Our Service Level Agreement with the facility provides "Hands & Eyes" service from on-site technical engineering staff, should we lose touch with a server from our offices. This allows us to quickly determine potential issues and, if necessary, deploy the appropriate service staff and new equipment. The facility is under an hours drive from Visual Data Systems' Columbia, Maryland office. The data center is equipped with state of the art security, utilizing biometric scanners, surveillance cameras, and KeyTrac systems. Our staff has full 24x7 access to the facility for administration and installation of equipment located in our dedicated, secure cabinets and cages.
The facility ensures optimal conditions with constant temperature and humidity monitoring in a climate controlled environment. It is also fully fire protected. Our Internet servers are designed for maximum redundancy. These Dell servers are equipped with Dual Processors, redundant Power supplies and NICs, RAID-5 Disk arrays and 1 to 4GB of memory. We have reduced the single point of failure in these systems to the computer's motherboard. We recently performed a maintenance reboot on a web server that had been continuously operational for 417 days! All of these design parameters, along with features of the data center, provide significant assurance that your website service is reliable and highly available. While a motherboard failure is quite rare, it can happen, as we experienced last May. There are solutions to provide additional site redundancy, such as load balancing across multiple servers, that can be deployed to further ensure server availability. If you'd like to find out more about these additional services or are interested in receiving a proposal for additional redundancy, please contact your account manager, or call our sales team at 410.964.8665 x-215.
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Visual
Data Systems, Inc. To unsubscribe to The Visual Exchange, please send a blank e-mail to: remove@x.vdsys.com. Copyright © 2003 by Visual Data Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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In
January of 2002, Visual Data Systems moved its hosting infrastructure
to a high security data center in Ashburn, Virginia. At this data center,
our Internet servers sit on dual OC48 trunks to obtain direct connection
to the Internet Backbone. This high-speed connectivity and redundancy
provides extensive scalability, giving us the ability to seamlessly increase
accessible bandwidth as our customers' Internet popularity and commerce
activity grows.
The
facility is protected from short-term power outages and fluctuations by
central uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems. Should a power grid
failure cause severe outages, the facility is equipped with six diesel-powered
generators. If the data center loses power the UPS picks up the load immediately,
and can handle up to one hour of power loss. Redundant generators will
pick up the load within approximately eight seconds and can carry the
entire data center load for 48 hours. Additional generators can be manually
brought on-line so that refueling can occur and the facility can remain
functioning indefinitely. The facility maintains contracts with various
fuel vendors to deliver more fuel immediately in the event it is running
out.
