Hurricane Electric: why we entrusted our equipment to this company

Our company has been working in the field of hosting for many years. Our technological platforms are in the USA, the Netherlands and Russia. In these countries, we cooperate with a number of major telecommunications companies. One of them is Hurricane Electric. Choosing partners in the US, we wanted to get the maximum protection for our equipment so that at the most inappropriate moment it would not fail all at once for some unknown reason (frankly, there could be no suitable time for such cases).

The choice was quite large, but we decided to start working with Hurricane Electric, and, in general, did not regret it even once. The fact is that the company is one of the largest in the world. The range of services Hurricane Electric includes colocation, and web hosting, and rental of dedicated servers with tunneling and IP-transit. Why did we decide to trust this company? Let's try to explain.

The fact is that the colocation service of this company is very developed. This is facilitated by a number of points, including a deployed backbone infrastructure: the company has its own backbone network of optical channels in North America, Europe and Asia. On the plus side, there are a large number of points of presence, with the ability to connect IP transit services. There are connections with 100 main exchange points, as well as traffic exchange with 4000 large networks. Critical sections of the network infrastructure are duplicated. Well, plus high-speed Internet ports with the ability to move to additional bandwidth.
')

Equipment placement

With the company you can work with almost any amount of equipment. You can place both a rack and a whole data center. Each year, the usable area increases, so that the equipment fits more and more. And you can place at least one server, at least ten thousand. If necessary, Hurrican Electric specialists can change the configuration of the equipment being placed, or the client can perform this operation.



Protection of server racks is respectable - in addition to monitoring systems, it is possible to lock both rack doors with a key. Regarding the size of the racks, there are the usual racks, with a depth of 30.25 inches, and deep ones, with a depth of 37.5 inches.



Cooling racks:







It is worth noting that in the US, the company has three data centers.

Fremont-1 . The area of ​​the local data center is 4180 square meters. Access, protection, support - everything is available around the clock.

Fremont-2 . The area of ​​the data center is 18,580 square meters. All the same conditions as in the previous case.

San Jose . Here the area is smaller, 280 square meters. But we must remember that this is Silicon Valley, where everything is not just expensive, but very expensive. But there are 20+ types of fiber carriers and enhanced security, biometric access. Here is the most valuable equipment for customers and the company itself.

Cooling system

In all data centers of the company, green equipment cooling system is used (for the time being partially). This increases cooling efficiency and reduces energy costs. Also used are duplicated industrial air conditioners.

Energy infrastructure

Protection of data centers from failures in power supply, if not maximum, is close to that. There are emergency generators, batteries. If necessary, the customer receives an additional protection system on an individual basis. Only specialists have access to the energy system.



If the central power supply system fails, battery systems come into play, which give energy until the generators are commissioned.

Additional protection

Each rack is also protected additionally from ground motion (seismic). The building is also protected.



If necessary, customers can use any equipment that may be required.



Another service, called “remote hands”, is also offered. The support of Hurican Electric performs, at the request of customers, any physical actions if necessary (cable replacement, connection of a monitor or keyboard, server restart, replacement of hard drives, etc.).

Security

The support is working 24/7, which, in general, is not uncommon now. But they work well, quickly reacting to tickets and problems. All technical facilities are not available for guests. For each rack there is a security camera, and the client gets access to it after ordering the service. Plus, digital locks are installed at each entrance or exit, customers are issued a card. Personnel access to equipment is monitored and monitored.



By the way, Hurricane Electric still conducts free certification of technical experts on the use of IPv6.

Afterword . We have been working with this company for several years, and there have never been any significant problems. They do what they promise. Our equipment here is, in our opinion, completely safe. And we, in turn, try to do our work well.

As already mentioned, we place the equipment in the data centers of this and other companies in other countries, we will try to write about it in more detail in subsequent posts.