Portal Changes & Upgrades
We have been working hard over the past couple weeks improving the layout and functionality of our customer management portal, through which you manage your assets here at ColoCrossing.
Recent additions include:
-Automated SWIP reporting
-ARIN object tracking
-Service requests from portal
-Subusers with unbranded feature for resellers
Those improvements are in addition to the existing feature set, which include remote reboot, device lists, blog rss, real-time bandwidth monitoring, shipping notifications and much more! We look forward to your comments and further suggestions on how we can continue to improve the system.
Why CHI1 is special
With increasing frequency I get asked why we’re so “high” on our Chicago-land datacenter. There’s no question that we’re incredibly proud of our flag ship facility in Elk Grove Village (a suburb of Chicago) – so I saw it prudent to take a few moments to highlight the top reasons why you should host with us at CHI1:
1) Taking “Enterprise-grade” literally: Our CHI1 facility is housed inside the world class Dupont Fabros Technology facility. This brand new datacenter was purpose built, ensuring that no single point of failure exists throughout the entire infrastructure. “Purpose built” is important, because many dedicated server and colocation providers operate inconspicuously from shopping mall style datacenters. These “facilities” often slack on very important redundant cooling, power generation and fire prevention systems. That might not concern budget-conscious consumers, but for any business that understands the cost of being offline, the small savings that these other facilities offer isn’t worth the risk. Our operation at CHI1 employs multiple redundant systems for all aspects of our infrastructure.
2) Using the best stuff: ColoCrossing has made the commitment to a Cisco-only network. And CHI1 is no different from any of our other world-wide facilities in that regard. Being a Cisco only shop means we’ve made the strategic investment in the absolute best equipment available. Other outfits offer switches and routers for a fraction of what Cisco charges, but let’s be honest, nothing moves the packets quite like a Cisco. When 100% uptime is the name of the game, I’ll take a Cisco, thank you.
3) Employing the right people: Even the best datacenters can’t operate optimally (or at all really) without the right talent at the helm. Our facilities team is the best in the business. Alex Vial, ColoCrossing’s VP of datacenter operations knows his stuff, and after 7 years in the position he doesn’t need to “learn as you go.” You won’t find a single tier 1 technician at ColoCrossing either, our customers enjoy a 92% first-point-of-contact resolution; meaning 92% of all customer issues are resolved quickly and effectively by the first expert they interact with. At ColoCrossing there is no “waiting for someone who understands my problem.”
I could go on for hours about our CHI1 facility and our customer centric principles, but I’ll spare you the dissertation. If you’re interested in more information, contact our sales department at sales<*at*>colocrossing.com or give us a ring (1-800-518-9716).
- Jon Biloh
Designing your network
When customers choose to design and implement their own network, very often they themselves are not network engineers or people who normally concern themselves with the technical aspects of how their business operates. They choose to go it alone instead of hiring out for one reason or another, but usually cost is the deciding factor.
Below is a list of things to consider when putting together your network.
- Requirements
- Layer 2 / 3
- Network device manufacturer
- IGP protocol selection (if required)
- Numbering scheme
1. Requirements
The chief requirements you have to outline include how many hosts will be in the network, what bandwidth needs your applications or customers need, and your growth plan in case you need to expand the network.
Remember, designing and building your network isn't something you should be doing often. You should do it right the first time, and build it for your needs now, and into the future. A good guideline is to build for your expected needs over the next 18 months.
2. Layer 2 / 3
For small LANs, layer 2 (OSI data-link) is sufficient. Layer 2 networks are the "easiest" to administrate. In fact, if you buy unmanaged layer 2 devices, they are plug and play. Complex layer 2 environments involving spanning tree, Etherchannel, and other layer 2 topics require some administrative effort, but for the most part are still not difficult to get working.
Layer 3 (OSI network) involves routing and requires more work and understanding to get it going properly. Routing allows you to scale your network quickly and efficiently. It also allows you to break it more easily, so be careful!
3. Network device manufacturer selection
Everyone has a favorite brand and the networking world is no different. By far, the largest and most respected device manufacturer in the network landscape is Cisco Systems. ColoCrossing works with Cisco products exclusively for our internal operations.
Sometimes however, Cisco is not the right solution. It could be either due to cost, product feature set, or individual preference. Other quality product vendors include Brocade, Netgear, Juniper, and HP Procurv.
Make sure that you select a quality product backed by a reputable company. Don't cheap out on bargain basement equipment! The last thing you want to do is wake up one morning and learn that your core switch has failed, leaving your operations completely offline.
4. IGP protocol selection (if required)
If you decide to proceed with Layer 3 routing, you will need to select an IGP (interior gateway protocol). Luckily, many books have been written on this topic and many people make a living working with them. You will find many resources through the internet to help you select an IGP. A couple things to keep in mind are:
- Open or proprietary standard
An open standard is particularly important if you choose to work with multiple different product vendors. EIGRP is an example of a proprietary IGP which only works between Cisco devices. OSPF is an example of an open IGP which will work between many different vendors which support it.
- Network size
How large do you anticipate your network to be? You can balance between complexity and the need for advanced features by doing your best to know what you need in the future.
5. Numbering scheme
This one is usually overlooked. Many people simply forget to think about how they are going to subnet their network, and often times, they are wasteful as a result.
IPv4 addresses are getting scarce, so the need to conserve is more prevalent then ever. One way to conserve IP addresses is to utilize NAT (Network Address Translation).
NAT in the datacenter works just like how it does at home with your Netgear or Linksys router. On your inside network you utilize RFC 1918 addresses (192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12, 10.0.0.0/8) for internal hosts, and your router translates them to a single public IP addresses. A single IP can support over 65,000 internal hosts with NAT!
- Alex Vial
Career Opportunities
We're hiring! If you are in the Buffalo New York area, and want to be part of a growing company with great opportunities to gain experience, we want you! Please send your resumes to internal@colocrossing.com for our review. See the list below for current career opportunities.
- Location: Buffalo, NY
- Full time or part time
- Shift: Be Flexible
- Prior Experience: 1-3+ years
- Education Requirement: High school diploma, college and technical certifications are a plus
We're looking for technical support representatives who can quickly diagnose customer problems relating to all manner of IT hardware and software. This includes, but is not limited to, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD operating systems, with AMD and Intel based hardware. Experience with cPanel, Plesk, TCAdmin, and Webmin are a plus. Applicants should be friendly, have a positive attitude, and excellent written and verbal English skills.
- Location: Buffalo, NY
- Full time or part time
- Shift: 9-5
- Prior Experience: 1-3+ years
- Education Requirement: High school diploma
Account managers are responsible for bringing in sales from new and existing customers. Duties include fielding sales calls/emails and building client relationships. Having the necessary background in order to effectively sell technical services is preferred. Communications between account managers and customers must be professional and precise to give customers the best experience possible. Salary and incentives based compensation is offered.
Hosting Checklist
Companies looking for internet hosting have an important decision to make. Dedicated servers, or colocation? The decision is not an easy one most often, and the reasons for choosing one over the other depends on each companies unique circumstances.
Before making a decision one way or the other, make sure you discuss each option with a sales representative. Make sure you have your requirements drawn out, including the number of servers you'll need, any advanced storage requirements, bandwidth needs, and support.
Below is a checklist for each option I would want to use if I were in the market for hosting:
Dedicated Server:
- How many servers do I need?
- How much power, per server do I need? Are my applications CPU, memory, or bandwidth intensive?
- Where do I want my servers located? Do I want them in more then one location for redundancy?
- Do I need RAID?
- What operating system do I need? If my applications run native to *nix, and if so, do I have the necessary skills in order to manage the server?
Colocation:
- How much physical space and power do I need?
- Where are my servers going to be located? Am I in close proximity to go to the datacenter and work on my equipment if needed?
- What is the reputation like of host XYZ?
- What kind of bandwidth is available in the datacenter? How much do I need?
- Is the datacenter able to handle expansion if I need to grow?
- Will I stock spare parts, or does the facility have spare parts available?
The list of questions for colocation can go on, and on, and the considerations are quite a bit more extensive then lighting up a dedicated server.
When it comes time to make that decision, be confident in choosing a quality host who will treat you with respect and work to earn your business.
- Alex Vial
Who are you guys?
This whole blog thing is new around here, we've never really had one and personally I'm happy to have a canvas to rant (er, share!) on that someone other than my co-workers will read. I figure the first (okay second, but first real post) should be a little insight into what makes us tick.
A bit of an intro about me to gives this post some insight: when it comes to ColoCrossing, I'm the resident infrastructure monkey. I manage everything from our web servers, backup servers, email, DNS -- you get the picture. Every so often I'll give our network engineers a hand too when / if they need it, but that's not terribly often. I also do customer support and help our guys out there, which is why a majority of our current clients have seen my name one way or another (and hopefully they all were happy with me 
).
When it comes to keeping everything running, there's no such thing as a short cut and we don't allow "winging it". Our management team expects the absolute best from us and we're expected to deliver just that. We use above industry standard equipment for everything from network gear, hardware, providers, and facilities. This creates an *incredibly* demanding work environment for all of us and let me tell you, each one of us loves it. Every employee here is the kind of person who works best when a deadline needs to be met or a complex deployment needs to be delivered. It also creates a little friendly competition amongst everyone but that's a good thing I think...
We also take a personal approach to each and every client, ensuring you don't feel like just a number but actually a client who's provider is actively engaged in the success of your business. Let's face it, when you do well so do we, and we want to make sure everybody gains here. For example, our VP of Operations (Hi Jon!) still answers basic support tickets, and in the next minute will be making pro-active phone calls to customers big and small making sure they're still happy and checking in to see if there's any problems. Our support ticket system allows you to rate tickets and rest assured, if you're unhappy about the way something is handled and put in a bad review, one of our managers will follow up with the issue and figure out what you were unhappy with, and make sure it doesn't happen again. We'll call you anytime at your request, and happily take your phone call at any time of the day (or night) if there's something you're unhappy with.
So there you have it, the first real (second total) blog post in company history, giving you all a more personal insight into what goes on around here. I expect there will be plenty to rant write and talk about from everyone around here so stay tuned, someone might actually say something worth reading
Cheers!
-Brian
New Website
We've implemented a new website design which has been in development for awhile now. Our previous site, which we had since 2007, was in dire need of a refresh, and a new Web 2.0 styling. We hope you like it, please send us feedback!
We're also going to be revamping our customer portal design soon to be more user friendly, and have a better overall look.
We appreciate comments on both the new site and portal, and any ideas you might have to improve it are very welcome.