Our New Datacenter Is Online!

Over the course of the past year, we have been diligently working behind the scenes, building and setting up a new facility for our clients. The facility started out being one that we would expand into (and keep our existing datacenter as-is). However, the more we thought and looked at the future of our company, and what is best for our clients from a long-term perspective, we decided to move *everyone* to our new facility. I have outlined the many reasons below.

The new facility is called the Telecom Center, and is situated less than 500 feet from our current datacenter at One Wilshire. We toured many different datacenters and opted for this one based on many factors. The first being the close proximity to our current datacenter. Secondly, we have our own full suite in the new datacenter, so we are in total control of every aspect of our space and we share it with no one else. We have security cameras watching the datacenter 24/7, we have a built-in network operations center, we monitor the temperature of the air conditioning units, the floor space itself and more.

We have 6 times the space at our new facility (!!) than we have at the current one. Instead of sharing power like we do currently, (where another company can come in and take nearly half the power of the floor), we have our own dedicated power feed. This is extremely important, since we ran into a major issue with the current datacenter, where they allowed another tenant to consume an insane amount of power, leaving the rest of us with no ability to turn up additional circuits or expand. This left us with no room to grow at the current datacenter. We have not been able to add a new server at the old datacenter for over 2 months now due to this power issue. That is not good. This move to our new datacenter ensures we have the ability to expand, which is a good thing.

You will not have to do anything, we will take care of it all for you. You won’t have to do anything, other than sit back and relax. There really is nothing to worry about.

THE MOVE:

We have already conducted trial runs and extensive testing to ensure that everything goes as smooth as possible. We are NOT doing a mass migration in one shot, it will carry on for over one month’s time. We will be moving server by server, one at a time. The process of what will happen is as follows:

We will shutdown one server at a time. We will then physically carry that server 500 feet to our new facility and install it into the rack. The rails and everything are already setup, so it’s just a matter of placing the server in the rack and pressing the power button. That’s really all there is to it.

We anticipate there will be about 30 minutes of downtime while we move each server to the new datacenter. This is being very conservative, but we feel that we should be very upfront about this whole process so everyone knows what to expect. We want to be as transparent as possible.

No customers will have to do anything. IP addresses will stay the same, the network that we have will stay the same, everything is exactly the same.

We will do the moves ONLY on the weekends, so we don’t interfere with normal weekday business operations. Since we are doing a slow and deliberate move, moving a few servers at a time keeps the downtime to a minimum. While we move each server, ALL other servers will be fully online and operational. There is NO change in service at all. The only downtime, as stated, is during the physical move of about 500 or so feet.

YOUR EMAIL:

For those of you who are concerned about email delivery, don’t be. Once the server is racked and back online, any mail sent when the server was physically moved, will be in your email account when the server is back up. Email servers around the internet are configured to retry sending mail for many hours and days if not weeks, and it is very rare to lose mail.

NETWORK SPEED:

Since we are physically moving the servers, nothing changes. The network speed will in fact increase since we have actually upgraded our network capacity at the new datacenter. We have 10Gigabit switches, with a new private backend network, which is something we currently don’t have. This is a HUGE benefit for those of you who connect to multiple different servers within our network, because that means you won’t incur bandwidth costs for doing so. So there is only enhancements and advantages to be gained as a result of this. We will have, at minimum, a multiple 10Gb frontend network (and a 10Gb backend), which is something that we haven’t seen any other datacenter in the world do.

NETWORK PROVIDERS:

Since this new facility is so close to our current one, nothing will change. We will have the exact same network providers that we have now. In fact, we have made many network upgrades which will be announced in another mailing list announcement within the next weeks. Let’s just say we have every major Tier 1 bandwidth provider that exists, and our network is solid through and through. We have also added a route optimization device, which does some amazing things, and all of this is FREE to you.

OTHER TENANTS:

For those of you who want to know which other big clients are in the new datacenter… there are too many to mention, but we’ll say Sprint, Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications, Above Net, and the list goes on and on. There are major players here, just like at our current facility. It really is a top-of-the-line datacenter. We are in the same building as the world’s top 10 corporate entities.

GROWTH:

What really solidified our decision for the move is the future. We have such huge potential to grow at this new facility, which as time progressed wasn’t present in our current location. (As evidenced by the fact we were not able to get enough power to even add additional servers…) Moving to the new datacenter means we can offer more services to all of you, and stay on the cutting edge. Since we have built everything from the ground up, no expense was spared and it truly is state of the art.

UPGRADES:

Over the course of the move, we will be introducing some HUGE upgrades and enhancements to our service offerings ranging from software to hardware. Being in the new facility allows us to introduce these new upgrades for all of you. More will be posted beginning in the next weeks!

Sincerely,

Leonard Ghazarian
Owner, Caspian Services, Inc.