Colocation America- Ask Me Anything
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- What are the right questions a first-time colocation seeker should be asking?
- How should colocation facilities be compared against one another? Pricing is obviously important but when services differ between offerings, what can be used to provide a valuable, effective comparison.
- What are the most common "gotchas" that need to be considered in colocation?
- Are there things that come up with tenants that surprise you on a regular basis? Perhaps things they should have known?
- What's the dumbest thing you've seen from a tenant?
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@nadnerB said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
Well, I won't be around then as I'm 12 hours into the future and it's sleep time then.
So, I'll add my questions early.- How do you guard/protect your tenants(?) against infection from poorly configured/maintained neighbours?
- How much bandwidth does the data center pipe have? (or plural)
- How long can your locations go without mains power?
- We run a strict no spammers/no porn policy, so even before anyone gets in our buildings we try to weed out the bad guys. That being said, systems can still get infected via phishing, malware, etc., so we have our network monitoring systems in place to help out and catch anything else. If any machines begin to show some suspect activity, we pull the plug and alert the customer.
- All the bandwidth your little heart desires! But really, we have cross connects with something like 240 tier-1 internet providers, so if you want that speed, you can get that speed. Our top dedicated servers get 50TB billed at the 95th percentile, and our full-racks get 100Mb/s dedicated.
- Our datacenters are all equipped with N+1 redundancy, so if our mains goes out, we have up to 72 hours on backup.
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Can you send us some wiring-porn?
Cause the wiring in there has to be amazing and I want to drool for a while.
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@NashBrydges said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
- What are the right questions a first-time colocation seeker should be asking?
- How should colocation facilities be compared against one another? Pricing is obviously important but when services differ between offerings, what can be used to provide a valuable, effective comparison.
- What are the most common "gotchas" that need to be considered in colocation?
- Are there things that come up with tenants that surprise you on a regular basis? Perhaps things they should have known?
- What's the dumbest thing you've seen from a tenant?
- How do you charge bandwidth? What is your policy on physically visiting the facility? What is your policy for moving my servers in the event of discontinuing service? What certificates does the facility have? Are there additional fees for remote access/hands/etc? Is customer service 24/7? Who is your daddy and what does he do?
- I think it comes down to customer support. Since you're kinda putting your hardware in someone elses hands, you want to trust those people and that company to make sure they're taking good care of your equipment and are able to answer your questions when you need them in a timely manner. That's why "IT'S ALL ABOUT CONNECTIONS..." for us. (Wasn't that seamless?)
- Those hidden fees are definitely something to look out for. They might provide remote access or remote hands, and definitely how they charge for bandwidth (fixed or 95th percentile).
- If you talk to @SamieWalters , our billing process.
- Mistaking hardware failure for network failures. It's like the opposite of dating....it's not me, it's you.
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@DustinB3403 said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
Can you send us some wiring-porn?
Cause the wiring in there has to be amazing and I want to drool for a while.
Those are the only shots I have on hand. I'm going to the facility later this month and I'll take some good ones.
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BTW, I'd like to use this space to issue open challenges for Please-Have-Your-Lawyers-Stop-Calling-Us, Jenga at MangoCon.
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@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
BTW, I'd like to use this space to issue open challenges for Please-Have-Your-Lawyers-Stop-Calling-Us, Jenga at MangoCon.
Posting on behalf of @art_of_shred YOU ARE ON!!!
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@Minion-Queen said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
BTW, I'd like to use this space to issue open challenges for Please-Have-Your-Lawyers-Stop-Calling-Us, Jenga at MangoCon.
Posting on behalf of @art_of_shred YOU ARE ON!!!
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@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@Minion-Queen said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
BTW, I'd like to use this space to issue open challenges for Please-Have-Your-Lawyers-Stop-Calling-Us, Jenga at MangoCon.
Posting on behalf of @art_of_shred YOU ARE ON!!!
That's amazing.
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@Minion-Queen said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@Minion-Queen said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
BTW, I'd like to use this space to issue open challenges for Please-Have-Your-Lawyers-Stop-Calling-Us, Jenga at MangoCon.
Posting on behalf of @art_of_shred YOU ARE ON!!!
That's amazing.
That's what's in store for MC.
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What about facility to facility connections? Say you want to build a network that is geographically disparate. What kinds of site to site connection options do you offer? Do you just use VPN between sites? This is between different Colo America facilities, I mean.
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@scottalanmiller said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
What about facility to facility connections? Say you want to build a network that is geographically disparate. What kinds of site to site connection options do you offer? Do you just use VPN between sites? This is between different Colo America facilities, I mean.
Yep--it's just VPN between the facilities.
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We've begun offering direct connections to the more popular public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google) in most of our facilities.
The deadline for our STEM Grant passed the other day and we had OVER 300 APPLICANTS! The first year we offered it, we had 50 applicants, and we're so amazed at the growth of this initiative--thank you to anyone who shared it! We had Ivy League schools like Harvard, Stanford, UPenn apply, plus the US Tennis Academy, various Boys & Girl's Clubs, and even the Tiger Woods Foundation!
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We always welcome everyone to check us out on social media too! We're @colocationusa on Twitter and Instagram, and Colocation America on FB and LinkedIn. Either way, you'll find us.
...OR WE'LL FIND YOU.
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@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
We've begun offering direct connections to the more popular public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google) in most of our facilities.
The deadline for our STEM Grant passed the other day and we had OVER 300 APPLICANTS! The first year we offered it, we had 50 applicants, and we're so amazed at the growth of this initiative--thank you to anyone who shared it! We had Ivy League schools like Harvard, Stanford, UPenn apply, plus the US Tennis Academy, various Boys & Girl's Clubs, and even the Tiger Woods Foundation!
Very cool.
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@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
We've begun offering direct connections to the more popular public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google) in most of our facilities.
The deadline for our STEM Grant passed the other day and we had OVER 300 APPLICANTS! The first year we offered it, we had 50 applicants, and we're so amazed at the growth of this initiative--thank you to anyone who shared it! We had Ivy League schools like Harvard, Stanford, UPenn apply, plus the US Tennis Academy, various Boys & Girl's Clubs, and even the Tiger Woods Foundation!
That's amazing that it increased so much this year!
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@scottalanmiller said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
We've begun offering direct connections to the more popular public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google) in most of our facilities.
The deadline for our STEM Grant passed the other day and we had OVER 300 APPLICANTS! The first year we offered it, we had 50 applicants, and we're so amazed at the growth of this initiative--thank you to anyone who shared it! We had Ivy League schools like Harvard, Stanford, UPenn apply, plus the US Tennis Academy, various Boys & Girl's Clubs, and even the Tiger Woods Foundation!
Very cool.
An applicant for the STEM Grant takes elementary school kids to an indoor skydiving facility, let's them do participate, and then teaches them the physics behind everything.
Seeing all of these programs and what they offer is amazing. I'm so jealous that all I got to do was dissect a frog.
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@Minion-Queen said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
@ChrisL said in Colocation America- Ask Me Anything:
We've begun offering direct connections to the more popular public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google) in most of our facilities.
The deadline for our STEM Grant passed the other day and we had OVER 300 APPLICANTS! The first year we offered it, we had 50 applicants, and we're so amazed at the growth of this initiative--thank you to anyone who shared it! We had Ivy League schools like Harvard, Stanford, UPenn apply, plus the US Tennis Academy, various Boys & Girl's Clubs, and even the Tiger Woods Foundation!
That's amazing that it increased so much this year!
It really is, but all that credit goes to @SamieWalters who has been busting her ass on this. I feel for her having to read all those grants, but it's a great problem to have
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I'd like to acknowledge the "Anything" part of the AMA.
Ask me literally any questions about anything, even if it isn't related to colo or data centers, and I'll do my best to answer it.
I'd rather fight 100 duck-sized horses than 1 horse-sized duck, for instance.
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Favorite part of MangoCon 2016?
