Hilltop leases servers and redundant tier 1 connections a highly respected leader in providing wholesale hosting solutions to hosting companies large and small. Our provider maintains one of the largest and most modern data centers on the east coast.
The Alabanza 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 your servers.
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.
Uninterruptable Power System
Two 3 phase Liebert UPS systems provide protection from local power failures. These act as back-up batteries, maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or power outages. With these backup systems in place, we can keep our network up and running indefinitely without relying on external power.
Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
Our NOC has two Liebert ten ton industrial air conditioners, which condition our computer rooms and operations center. Our computer room is kept at an optimal temperature of 65 degrees fahrenheit.
Custom Web Servers
Our web servers are custom-built industrial machines designed for a 24/7 web serving environment. All Alabanza servers are equipped with dual redundant 450-watt power supplies, hot swap Seagate Baracuda/Cheetah 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
Each of our custom web servers is 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 which circulate this purified air. This constant introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure environment ensuring dust and particles remain outside of the server.
Hot Swap Seagate Drives
The drives and drive bays of all servers are constructed from high-grade aluminum, and rest in shock mounted drive cages, which adds to the durability of the hardware. Our 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. Meanwhile, servers and client sites continue to operate with zero downtime.
Standby Servers
We keep spare servers on-line 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 (Network Redundancy)
Our NOC, located in Baltimore, Maryland, has direct connections to Cogent, Qwest Communications and AT&T through three separate bandwidth-on-demand connections that enter Baltimore in our building.
Cogent, a top-10 Tier 1 provider with a 13,000-mile fiber optic network provides us a Gig-E, Sonnet Ring connection through a POP located just a few floors below the Alabanza NOC.
Qwest also has an ATM fiber node in the same building just a few floors below our NOC. Our Qwest connection enables us to offer additional redundancy and better routes to Europe, Latin America and Asia.
AT&T operates the world's largest Tier One Internet backbone. AT&T Managed Internet Service provides a reliable, dedicated, high-speed Internet connection and industry-leading Service Level Agreements (SLAs). AT&T's world-class OC-192/OC-48 IP backbone, provides managed, state-of-the-art hardware and software, smart routing capability, and continuous performance monitoring.
Furthermore, because of these unique connections, our NOC 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 Alabanza 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, we have the scalability to meet them.
Network Redundancy
We use intelligent end-user routing software called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) between Qwest, Cogent 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.
Network Reliability
Industry analysis reveals that 70% of downtime over 10 hours with any ISP is caused by telephone circuit failure. We have managed to virtually eliminate circuit failure because our NOC is in the same building as Cogent, Qwest and AT&T. There is no phone circuit between us and these tier 1 providers. Instead, a direct connection between our Cisco routers and theirs takes us directly to the largest internet backbones in America.
All 3 of out tier 1 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 hosting providers operate their networks at three to four times the responsible capacity. As a result, their corresponding transfer times reach over 300ms. Our NOC has a network daily average of 27% of capacity, with midday peak spikes reaching only 33% capacity. We guarantee clients will be carried off our network in less than 80ms over a five minute average at any time of day or night.
