NaviSite representatives have attributed last week’s prolonged downtime at the company’s Silicon Valley data center to an electrical surge that came from the grid and damaged relays in the facility’s transfer switches, crippling its ability to automatically switch to generator power.

“The generators didn’t receive a signal to start once the street power was lost,” NaviSite Chief Marketing Officer Claudine Bianchi said. “We then manually started the generators and transferred the load.”

Power to the entire data center was down for 40 minutes – the time it took to dispatch a master electrician on site and for that electrician to manually switch the facility to generator power. While looking looking for ways to add resiliency to the facility’s electrical infrastructure to ensure automatic transfer in case of similar events in the future, NaviSite has already made the now-obvious adjustment.

“We’ve augmented our staff there to include someone who can manually switch over (to generator power),” Bianchi said. The facility will now be staffed around the clock with a qualified electr... Читать дальше »

PEER 1 Hosting (TSX:PIX) today announced the opening of its $40 million data center in Toronto, Ontario. The 40,000 square foot facility marks the first time PEER 1 is offering all three of its hosting solutions – colocation, dedicated hosting and managed hosting – under one roof.

“Our new state-of-the-art Toronto data centre ensures we stay current and provide the fastest and most reliable network to serve our customers, now and in the future, while providing PEER 1 with enhanced flexible capacity to support its own growth,” said Fabio Banducci, president and CEO for PEER 1 Hosting.

The company is building the facility in four phases, with each section built as a separate Performance Optimized Data Centre (POD), allowing PEER 1 to cost-effectively manage growth. Each of the four PODs has the capacity for approximately 270 cabinets, equivalent to roughly 7,500 servers. The first POD, built at an estimated capital cost of US$10 million, also includes 8,000 square feet of office space, and inventory, network and storage areas. The remaining three PODs will be built out in phases based upon customer demand.

The new data center will feature a redundant critical cooling infrastructure using both a local well for primary water supply and a connection to the city’s water system.

“We’re also using redundant high-efficiency Variable Frequency Drive centrifugal chille... Читать дальше »