If you've ever hosted elsewhere, you'll have a greater appreciation of ICO's uptime track record. While other providers' networks are down regularly, and often for days at a time, that will never happen to ICO.
We challenge every provider in Asia Pacific to do as we do, and publish their list of outages. That list, like our list, has to include outgages caused by failure of connectivity, failure of electrical supply and failure of air-conditioning system.
Here's our record 2001 - 2007(today)
Connectivity Outages
27/10/04 17.12 to 17.25
Cause: Virus actvity on network. Resolution: Affected servers isolated.
11/05/06 19:56 to 22:13
Cause: Software failure on Cisco switch. Resolution: Software fixed.
19/11/07 9:41 to 10:22
Cause: Router outage due to Network Engineer error
Resolution: Router reset
Electrical Outages
11/03/07 21:12 to 21:42 (Affected 1/27th of Data centre only)
Cause: Component failure in one Static Transfer switch. Resolution: Changed component.
AirConditioning Outages
None
If you are new to hosting and are planning on betting your internet business on the reliability of a hosting provider, then it is vital that you don't just blindly accept their uptime "guarantees". There are three things you should insist on. The first is a record of the times and durations of their outages over the last few years. The second is to see their data centre and its backup systems. Last, it is critical that you ask a few simple questions. You will find them on this page http://www.ico.com.au/Data+Centres/Bandwidth/.
Our $80 million Sydney suburban Data Centre is an ultra-high security, highly redundant, 7000 square metre, purpose-built centre. The facility operates 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. It has the highest levels of redundancy in the Asia Pacific region, automatic fail-over capability and capacity to cater for rapid growth in demand. There is no data centre in Australia like it and we challenge anyone to meet our real-world uptime record. We welcome and invite your inspection.
Some of its features:
- Inside the Centre, ICO connects to the Internet through redundant Cisco 12000 series switches ($3 million each) connected to redundant live feeds from two different providers. Should a switch or internet connection fail, automatic failover normally happens in 26 seconds, during which time no connections are lost. This is real-world tested once a month.
- Dual mains electricity supply feeds come from Energy Australia (one from the north, the other from the south) and terminate at our sub-station on site.
- There are separate transformers and mains switch boards that feed to multiple Inverter/UPS units.
- The fully redundant 6000KVA Inverter/UPS system has automatic multi-point failover feeding to fully redundant multiple power management modules.
- Backing up the Inverter/UPs system are multiple 2.5 MW Caterpillar diesel generators. Every diesel generator is tested for forty minutes into a full 2 MW resistive load once per month.
- There are two high capacity diesel fuel tanks on site with enough fuel stored for 48 hours. There are priority fuel delivery arrangements with seven suppliers.
- There is a fully redundant Carrier air conditioning system, consisting of multiple refrigerant-cooled units. No water problems from cut water mains, no water danger to servers below.
- Dual ethernet feeds and separate power feeds go to each ICO security cage.
- There is a fully operational on-site 24 x 7 Network Operations Centre.
- There are 24 x 7 security guards on site at all times.
- 160 video security cameras, inside and out, record every part of the building and its grounds.
- Entry for authorised personnel is only through security portals (handprint, picture ID, magnetic card).
- There is a fully integrated building management system for smoke, fire and water detection, electrical and air conditioning.
- There are two main redundant high-speed internet links, each One Gigabit.
ICO also maintains a data centre presence in Melbourne, Victoria. It is AS/NZS 7799 accredited. It can be useful for certain specialised data services and allows us to provide geographic redundancy for disaster recovery plans.