Data Center
Industrial-Grade Equipment for the Ultimate
Performance and Reliability
Uninterruptible Power System
Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
Advanced e-Resources recognizes that downtime is not an option for your web site.
That's why we invest heavily in hardware and facilities that
ensure that you are up and running on the web 24 hours a day,
seven days a
week.
Advanced e-Resources' Network Operations Center (NOC) features raised flooring.
This enables a constant flow of conditioned air and helps to
maintain uniform room temperature at all times. In addition,
raised flooring reduces static
and ensures a professional, computer-grade environment for
the server that houses your web site.
The facility is equipped with a Raytheon fire suppression system,
designed to immediately extinguish fire and protect equipment
and personnel. The command center is controlled via automatic
doors to further secure and
protect the equipment.
Finally, the NOC is located in a secure, monitored, class A
building with a minimum number of approved personnel allowed
access to
highly sensitive areas and equipment. A detailed record
of employee and visitor entry is
maintained at all times.
Uninterruptible Power System
To guard against local power failures, Advanced e-Resources has two
industrial-grade, three-phase Liebert UPS systems. These
act as back-up batteries,
maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or
power outages. With these back-up
systems in place, we can keep our network up and running
indefinitely without relying on external power.
Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
Advanced e-Resources' NOC has two Liebert 10 ton industrial air
conditioners that condition our computer rooms and
operations center.
Air temperature is maintained at an optimal 65 degrees
Fahrenheit.
DELL Web Servers
Advanced e-Resources' web servers are DELL industrial
machines designed for a 24/7 web serving environment.
All Advanced e-Resources servers are equipped with dual-redundant, 450-watt
power
supplies, swappable
drives and force-filtered cooling systems. In addition,
our NOC is equipped with an inventory of identically
configured, burned-in
standby
servers.
Force Filtered Cooling
All of Advanced e-Resources' DELL web servers are equipped
with a positive-pressure filtered-air system. Four
large fans pull filtered air into
each server's protective case, and the components
within are cooled by fans
that circulate
this purified air. This constant introduction of
clean air into the case creates a positive pressure
environment ensuring that
dust and
particles
remain outside the server.
Hot Swap Seagate Drives
The drives and drive bays of all Advanced e-Resources servers
are constructed from high-grade aluminum and
rest in shock-mounted drive
cages, which adds to the durability of the hardware.
Advanced e-Resources' drives
proudly feature the
lowest failure rate in the industry.
Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies
Each server employs dual-redundant hot swap power
supplies. If a power supply were to fail, the
server would continue
running with power from the alternate supply.
Meanwhile, alarms would
alert a technician, who
would quickly restore redundancy. In the meantime,
servers and client sites would experience no
downtime.
Standby Servers
We keep spare servers online of all CPU configurations.
If a server were to experience a hardware
failure, we would turn a key,
grab
the handle
on the drive, pull it out and insert it into
an identical standby CPU. We would then reboot
the second machine,
and the server would be up and running
again in a matter of minutes.
Connected to Three Backbones
The Advanced e-Resources NOC, located in Baltimore, Maryland,
is OnNet with GlobalCenter (GC), Qwest
Communications and AT&T through three separate bandwidth-on-demand
connections that enter
Baltimore
in our building.
GC, a Tier 1 provider with a 13,000-mile
fiber optic network and Dense Wave Division
Multiplexing (DWDM) technology that provides
an enormous
460 gigabytes per second (Gbps) of capacity
worldwide, has an Asynchronous Transfer
Mode (ATM) fiber
node located just
a few floors
below the Advanced e-Resources
NOC.
Qwest comes into Baltimore with an OC-12
line and plans to upgrade its connection
to an OC-48 in the near future. Qwest
also has an ATM fiber node just floors
below the Advanced e-Resources NOC.
Our Qwest connection
enables Advanced e-Resources
to offer additional redundancy and
better routes
to Europe, Latin America and Asia.
With our carriers, our router
has up to 150,000 possible
routes
to send each packet of traffic.
Furthermore, because of these unique
connections, Advanced e-Resources does not
need to link to the Internet
through an OC3
or T3 Telecom circuit. Instead,
independent cables run inside our building
directly from the Advanced e-Resources NOC
to all three carriers' points of
presence. These lines can
handle the bandwidth of a T3 or
an OC3 with DWDM. Plus, they handle
several times the bandwidth
of an OC3. Whatever your bandwidth
needs may be, Advanced e-Resources has the
scalability to meet them.
Network Redundancy
Advanced e-Resources uses intelligent end-user
routing software called Border
Gateway Protocol (BGP) between
Qwest, GC and AT&T,
which
use the same protocol.
BGP identifies
which path
is the most efficient
for each
data packet and
then routes the packet to its
destination on
the
fastest path. This increases
the speed at which web pages sent
from our NOC
arrive at their destination.
Studies have shown that the most
common reason for downtime
is circuit failure on Tier 1 provider backbones,
the
major
data highways. To guard
against this potential
problem,
we have three Tier-1 providers.
If
one experiences problems, we
can route traffic down another
one. Furthermore, because we
are
OnNet with
GlobalCenter, Qwest and AT&T,
we share their digital
distribution architecture,
which includes
private peering network connections
to major Internet
carriers such
as
MCI, Sprint, UUNET, EUNET,
AT&T,
AOL, Best, Erols, @Home, IBM Advantis and others.
These private peering arrangements allow Advanced e-Resources to
quickly and efficiently exchange
packets
of data with every major backbone carrier in
a one-to-one environment.
In addition, GC has high-speed
links to eight public exchanges
including both MAE East and
West and several NAPS. Through
these public exchanges, customers
have
the ability to
reach
their sites, no
matter where
they are.
Network Reliability
Industry analysis reveals
that 70% of downtime of
over 10 hours with any ISP is caused
by telephone circuit failure.
With Advanced e-Resources, circuit
failure is virtually eliminated.
That's because our NOC
is in the same building
as GlobalCenter, Qwest
and AT&T.
There is
no phone circuit between
Advanced e-Resources and these providers.
Instead, there
is a direct connection
between our Cisco
7500 routers and theirs.
Advanced e-Resources' providers also
have peering connections
with other major Tier
1 providers that
allow traffic to be switched
to alternate
backbones should the
need arise.
Raw Performance Equals
Low Latency/High Throughput
Too often providers operate
their networks at three
to four times their
responsible capacity.
As
a result, their corresponding
transfer times reach
over 300ms. Advanced e-Resources'
network
daily
average
is 27% of its capacity,
with midday peak spikes
reaching only
33% capacity. Advanced e-Resources
guarantees that clients
will be carried
off our network
in less than 80ms over
a five-minute average
at any time of
day
or
night.