Announcements and Updates – Page 64

New Facility Progress #11

A generator awaiting installation.

The “rollers”, our unofficial mascots that take residence in the server room on top of a router.

Detail view of the electrical outlet installation. The smallest circuit we offer is 20A at 208VAC in single phase or three phase, but we can easily provide multiple 20 and 30 amp circuits per rack in single phase or three phase for high density racks. (We do not offer 120VAC circuits.)

Detail view of the patchrack. By keeping patch panels out of the racks and using the overhead ladder to route them where they need to be we increase server density and eliminate wasted ports. If high port density per rack is required, top-of-rack switching would be used.

Detailed view of the overhead area. Even though you can’t see this without a ladder, we like to keep everything in order.

Power cord cable management for the router and switch racks.

A view of the server room. What was spread out over five racks in the old facility was consolidated into two racks (not counting the two-post racks to the right). The extra space will be offered for colocations and dedicated servers and we will continue installing racks to fill the room. The yellow cables hanging out of the wire management on the right indicate temporary cabling.

Announcements IPv6

Outbound Mail Now IPv6 Enabled

Post author By Roller Network
Post date November 6, 2009
1 Comment on Outbound Mail Now IPv6 Enabled

We recently enabled IPv6 in Postfix on our outgoing mail (SMTP AUTH, smarthost) service. This means that if a destination you’re sending mail to is accessible via IPv6 it will automatically connect and deliver using IPv6. If not, it will transparently fall back to IPv4 and continue to deliver as before.

IPv6

Verizon Update: Contact!

Post author By Roller Network
Post date November 3, 2009

We finally have a Verizon account manager for the first time since we last heard from our original account manager on August 3. While the IPv6 issues are not resolved, we’re trying to put a rush on the fixes we needed to be made back in August so we can at least have some basic connectivity while Verizon performs an engineering assessment with regards to IPv6. To replace the circuit would take another 3 to 6 months to get new fiber brought in, so we’re going to stick with it and see what the results of the engineering assessment are.

The fiber we have is Verizon-provided but our ILEC is AT&T which means that nobody but Verizon can use it. Back in the 90’s a company called Brooks Fiber installed a whole bunch of fiber in Reno. They were bought by MCI and MCI/UUNet eventually became Verizon Business. While we are technically in a lit building because it already had a fiber on the property, it’s a light industrial park and there was no equipment that could carry our order and a new OC-12 was installed to our telco room.

Status

Move (mostly) Complete

Post author By Roller Network
Post date October 19, 2009

We successfully moved the entire facility over the weekend with a few minor hiccups with hosted mail service that didn’t show up during testing. In any case, everything is back to normal as of Monday morning. There’s still a lot of detail work to do and everything else (like office furniture) still needs to make its way over to the new place, but at this point there is nothing left to move that could impact our normal operations.

There, however, is one negative aspect to report: because Verizon is still unable to provide service to us we are running single-homed on our Sprint service. This should not be a problem as long as Sprint doesn’t have any outages, however, this is not something we’re comfortable with. We’ve tried to make it clear to Verizon that no matter what their policy is doesn’t change the fact that we need the service and someone will provide it.

Uncategorized

New Facility Progress #10

Post author By Roller Network
Post date October 14, 2009

We’re on the eve of the move and this is probably the last new facility update before actually moving in. Verizon is still missing in action, but we’re going ahead without them since it’s clear that it isn’t getting resolved anytime soon. We would like to thank Sprint for being patient with us since they were ready to hot cut back in August and we kept delaying to try to resolve things with Verizon.

Final layout of a UPS and its battery cabinet before wiring. Three of these complete units will fit into our UPS electrical room (up to 4 supported) to act as one parallel redundant unit.

A close up of the UPS wiring. The cable is 1/0 AWG.

Some of the overhead piping in the UPS electrical room.

One of the two distribution panels for the server room (right) and the UPS paralleling panelboard (left).

Overhead piping between the UPS electrical room to the panelboard that supports it. The panelboard is connected to our generator automatic transfer switch allowing it to be fed by utility power or generator power. As you can see, this is in the warehouse portion of the facility, which will house the generator.

The original load center (left), the new panelboard for our stuff (middle), and our automatic generator transfer switch (right).

The panelboard with its dead front installed, wiring cleaned up, and the transfer switch after turning the power on for the first time. The generator will be installed within the week and piped to the connectors on top of the transfer switch. Wiring the generator is as simple as connecting it to the “emergency” contacts inside the transfer switch after the not so simple process of moving a very heavy diesel engine.

The next update will be after the major move of circuits and equipment this weekend. There’s still plenty for us to do before we can consider it done and take a break, so stay tuned!