Houston Data Center
As some of you might be aware, we (Pleth Networks, LLC) have a redundant backup datacenter located in Houston, Texas. This is not our primary datacenter, our primary NOC is located in Dallas, Texas. Our RDP Backup Solution runs from the Houston datacenter.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the hosting industry and how it operates, here’s a little clarification. We basically lease server rackspace from the Planet in both locations (Dallas and Houston) and in turn the Planet provides us with around the clock service and support as well as one of the largest redundancy fiber backbones in the world, if not the largest in the world. We have some serious carriers when it comes to backbone providers!
With Hurricane Ike making his way toward Galveston and suspected landfall sometime this weekend I started doing a little research as to what the Planet was doing to insure no downtime during the hurricane and tropical storm. I have to admit that I was really impressed with Kevin Hazzard’s post on the Planet’s customer forum.
For data center power, we have confirmed our fuel levels and have brought in an additional 10,000 gallons as backup,” Hazard writes. “Backup generators at both data centers and our Houston headquarters are prepared to shoulder the power needs of the data centers and our downtown offices. We pay premium fees year-round with several providers to guarantee that we are at the front of the line if we need additional fuel. With our current fuel supply, we can continuously power our facilities for up to a week without any required backup.
I also found out that according to Houston’s building codes, the datacenter is rated to withstand tropical storm winds already. I think that they have taken a few additional steps to button down the hatch over the past week as well. In terms of onsite personnel for support and uptime assurance I also found out that they are bringing in some key folks from the Dallas datacenter to stay throughout the storm. Here’s another quote from Kevin…
“A set of our top technicians have volunteered to be part of the storm ride-out team,” wrote data center supervisor Eric Rice. “We wanted them to make sure their families were safe before coming in. Personally, I’m very glad to be in such a secure and well provided-for facility in events like this.”
All in all I feel even better about our network infrastructure. Keep in mind that all of these measures are being put into place to insure that our “backup processes” run correctly, this isn’t our primary datacenter. This is part of the reason why Pleth’s managed hosting rates are considerably higher than those of other providers out there.
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