Blog Posts tagged ‘dell’

So now we’ve made the decision to deploy hardware in the US we need to start making some of the practical solutions, such as:

1. Which facility provider should we be using? and;
2. Where should the data centre be physically located?

To make this decision we had a number of important requirements for each of the services we’d need to procure.

Data Centre Providers

1) Receiving the servers and network devices from the hardware vendor and verify received as ordered
2) Install kit into racks and record location for our internal documentation
3) Cable up the machine to both power and networking. Carefully following cabling diagrams prepared by Anchor and supplied to the technician.
4) Take care of the rubbish removal from the facility and disposal
5) Be available 24×7 for emergency response to failed servers/hardware
6) Provide a realistic service level agreement for these services so we can reliability predict mean time to repair after hardware failure.
7) Be capable enough to get the initial equipment to the point where we could access them remotely to bootstrap the environment.

Network Suppliers

The beauty of doing this entire “Internet thing” for a while is that we already have reasonable amount of experience when it comes to negotiating bandwidth contracts with telcos and other IP transit suppliers. We also have a pretty good idea on how we want to structure our connectivitity.

We also essentially need to deploy two networks:

1. Our public facing network connectivity which would be using need:

2. An out-of-band, management network. This network was going to be used to build up our infrastructure from day zero. When we say build up, we mean install operating systems, configure routers and get our primary, public facing network running. Once the environment has been bootstrapped we would be using this network for day to day management services and in the unlikely event that our primary, redundant network becomes unavailable give us a way in and diagnosing what specifically is going on. Some of the requirements for this link are totally opposite to the publiuc facing network:

Hardware Vendors

Historically we’ve used supermicro servers here at Anchor for all our dedicated server and virtual private server solutions. In more recent times we’ve been deploying Dell Hardware for various reasons. Some of these include improved performance, greater power efficiently but one of the biggest gains has actually been as result of the included DRACs (Dell Remote Access Cards), with these units we can get access to the machine consoles as if we are sitting in front of the physical machine. This means we’re able to do more and more work remotely without actually needing to be at the data centre in person. Obviously, when we’re deploying hardware on the other side of the globe this inclusion is absolutely imperative. With Dell’s Global presence it makes this decision very much a ‘no brainer’

The power rails which we use in Australia are APC devices which come with remote reboot capabilities. This allows for machines to be powered off and on remotely. We have done a fairly considerable amount of development using the devices both to track power usage as well as integration in provisioning systems. On this basis, we would be continuing with these units.

The final question is the switching infrastructure and misc items such as cables and rack cage nuts. For here the important thing was to find a supplier who was local, could delivery everything to the data centre and be vendors for HP (who we use for the our switching infrastructure) as well as the APC remote reboot devices.

The hunt begins!