Internet exchanges have come a long way since the early nineties, when most of these platforms were formed. In the previous twenty years the niche industry of IP interconnection through public peering has seen a number of evolutions. How can Internet exchanges remain successful in the years to come? Especially those with an international focus?
Let me first start with the factors that are key for keeping Internet exchanges healthy and their business sustainable:
A data centre’s a data centre isn’t it? Power, aircon, security and diverse connections in and out of the building? Pick a location and a Tier level – 1,2,3,4 to determine the resiliency and cost. Throw in some green credentials and your uncle’s name is Bob!
Well you could put it like that. You wouldn’t be looking at the whole picture. Before building our Newark data centre we at Timico did a fair bit of market research. We looked at the needs of our customer base and what was available in terms of infrastructure technology that fitted the bill. The latter ranged from getting all the electromechanical bits right and ensuring that the cloud story was absolutely up there. When talking cloud we are talking the connectivity, storage processing and virtualisation infrastructure.
There was one piece of the story that we found compelling. This was how to make sure
We often hear people complaining when it rains – great weather – if you’re a duck. Well it’s stopped raining here in Newark although I understand the river Trent is still running high and I see from Facebook that trains are delayed due to flooding.
It’s bloomin’ cold out though. Staff arriving for work are wrapped up well, scarves around their faces, hands thrust firmly in pockets. It may come as a surprise to many of you that in this freezing cold weather the old “duck” saying has a modern day equivalent which is “great weather – if you’re a data centre”.
Uh? 🙂
At 10am this morning, 28th November 2011 we officially took delivery
of a datacentre. Not quite the same impact as the ceremony that ended the first world war (10th hour of the 28th day doesn’t sound quite the same as 11th hour of the 11th day) but hey…
I’m not even sure there was a physical ceremony. If there was I wasn’t there but the new build is certainly buzzing with engineers doing their stuff.
Progress is going to be rapid now with the official launch/opening ceremony due on Wednesday 18th January. The box on the right is one of the EMC SANs I showed being delivered on Friday.
The initial environment will have Juniper in the core network with VMware running over Cisco Nexus and EMC. I’ll post more detail on this as we get nearer launch though if you urgently want to know more drop me a line at [email protected].
Funny how we get excited by little things. The other day I came into the office in the afternoon and they had started putting down the Tarmac for the carpark. Like lightning I whipped out my trusty phone Galaxy S2 and took a photo.
Today I got up from our fortnightly management meeting and hey presto, someone had painted white lines on the Tarmac. It’s very odd but somehow this makes it all look real. Note no executive parking spots. The early engineer gets the space nearest the door:)
To my knowledge this is also the first UK data centre to provide a kennel for the guard dogs. I am happy to be corrected here. This key piece of infrastructure arrives on 28th November and I’m sure there will be a photo shoot. Get down Shep!
As we approach the final days of the Timico data centre build the lads are putting down the tarmac in the car park. This is quite convenient as I happened to be in need of a steam roller – assuming that’s what they still call them despite the absence of steam. If you can’t get the video below to work then there’s a link here to the original YouTube location.
Here are a few other photos mapping the before and after. There’s a prize of the best caption for the “after” shot – entries left as comments please 🙂
Site manager Nigel has a word with the driver of the roller. In case you were wondering my 14 year old plays the trumpet. He found this in a skip at his school and decided it would go well on his bedroom wall in a slightly altered state
Just to finish off an artistic view of the air conditioning fans outside the data centre:)
Not long to go before we start kitting the new data centre out as a data centre so I’ve chosen some 
artistic and tasteful photos for your delight. Of course they might not be to everyone’s taste but there is beauty in the modern day industrial infrastructure of the country – just as we now admire the steam 
engines and rows of red brick mills that were once associated with satanic darkness.
This time around the jobs created will be highly skilled and professional at a time when we could do with some good news in the local economy.
We are in the process of hiring for the extended shifts that will be necessitated by the 24×7 operational nature of the expanded Network Operations Centre.
Last week we ok’d the purchase of a wall of monitor screens for 
the operations room itself. I’m quite excited about this as it will have a high visibility impact on the place – all controlled by an iPad or similar (I asked what they would be using for a remote control for all those TVs – more on this in due course). As I said not long now.
It will also be worth talking about our expanded sales structure as we move in to 2012 and I will do this as some important new hires come on board.
Bye for now.