UnitedLayer, Author at UnitedLayer

5 Keys to Choosing a Colocation Data Center Provider

Oct 11, 2021 | Colocation

Choosing a colocation data center is an important decision for your company. After all, your mission-critical infrastructure will be housed in someone else’s facility. There are several criteria you should consider before making a decision. This list isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of questions for every business, but it’s a good place to start. These criteria can serve as the foundation for your search or colocation data center RFP.

1. LOCATION: For several reasons, location is one of the most important factors to consider when selecting a colocation data center. The first thing to consider is how easy it is for someone from your company to get to the physical location. It is an essential consideration if you ever need to upgrade or service your equipment (think about how costly having equipment down for an extended period of time could be). You should also consider how vulnerable the area is to natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes.

Although the colocation data center provider considered these factors when developing the facility, taking extra precautions with your critical infrastructure never hurts.

UnitedLayer’s 200 Paul colocation data center is the only data center in San Francisco that is built on bedrock with Zone 4 construction and is not in a 500-year flood plain.

UnitedLayer has over 40,000 square feet of fully redundant colocation data center space, which is not in the earthquake fault, liquefaction, or landslide zone for the next 100-year and is seismically rated for protection against earthquakes.

2. FLEXIBILITY AND EXPANSION CAPABILITY (SCALABILITY): As stated in the previous section, you want your provider to be able to meet your needs now and for the next several years. Having said that, different colocation data center providers provide different levels of flexibility. Some will offer out-of-the-box solutions that may or may not meet your requirements. On the other hand, other providers will provide more customized solutions (flexibility) in addition to the more standard offerings.

Find out if there is any additional space, power, or connectivity available. Choose a provider that can scale with you over time rather than one that can’t.

UnitedLayer’s DR solutions are highly customizable, where customers can build specific Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) according to their business requirements. With on-demand scalability, you can add additional resources to meet the increased replication needs, this helps in reducing cost and improving business flexibility. UnitedLayer’s DR solutions are highly secure and

3. RELIABILITY: When selecting a colocation data center or colo provider, reliability is crucial. In the world of colocation data centers, reliability is measured as uptime. A reliable provider should have five 9s uptime, which means they are reliable at least 99.999% of the time.

UnitedLayer has guaranteed availability of 99.999% with High-availability N+2 Clusters. Other things to look for are staff certifications, customer feedback, and on-site support (vs. outsourced).

4. DEPLOYMENT EFFICIENCY: The physical characteristics of a data environment are an essential aspect of optimizing data centers. Poor server deployment may introduce latency into network systems, mainly if a facility uses sloppy, unstructured cabling. If servers are unable to vent heat effectively, the wrong deployment may result in higher cooling costs. Workloads may not be adequately distributed across computing resources, resulting in multiple servers running well below capacity but consuming the same amount of power as servers running heavier workloads.

How quickly do you need your infrastructure to be operational? How soon do you anticipate requiring a new cross-connect or additional rack space in the future? Most businesses want to get their new space up and running as quickly as possible.

Deployment efficiency can be difficult to quantify into a specific stat or number, so make sure your potential vendors communicate timelines clearly to you.

5. NETWORK ECOSYSTEM: The ability to interconnect within a shared colocation data center space is one of the most significant benefits of colocation. Interconnection can be highly beneficial to your business, whether you want to connect with partners, distributors, or even competitors for peering. Learn about the available connectivity options before making a decision. Is the facility carrier-neutral? Do they already have a large ecosystem of customers who are connected?

With over 300+ carriers at our interconnection facilities and direct access to over 3000 carriers, UnitedLayer has extremely low latency connections to all clouds, enterprise colocation data centers, and edge locations.

Choose a colocation data center solutions partner, not just a colocation data center facility

Moving to a colocation facility can help you reduce CAPEX while giving you access to cutting-edge colocation data center technologies. You can also rapidly evolve by utilizing managed services, greater power density, and the hybrid cloud. Choosing a colocation data center provider who will work with you to scale your IT over time is essential.

UnitedLayer provides colocation data center services from one of the largest data centers in San Francisco, USA, at 200 Paul Ave. Our long list of managed services enables enterprises to modernize their infrastructure and improve their responsiveness, resource utilization, scalability, and agility resulting in better customer experience and faster time to market.

Got questions? Want to talk specifics? That’s what we’re here for.

Facebook Outage: What Went Wrong?

Oct 5, 2021 | News

On October 4, 2021, Facebook and its other platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, went down globally for close to six hours. As services are restored, questions about what caused the Facebook outage and why it took so long to resolve are raised.

For hours, billions of users could not access Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp as the social media giant worked to restore services.

Why did Facebook go down?

People began to notice they couldn’t access Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger shortly before 5 p.m. UTC. It would take more than five hours for services to be restored.

Facebook issued a statement about the Facebook outage that the cause of the outage was a configuration change to the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between the company’s data centers, which had a cascading effect, bringing all Facebook services to a halt. It meant not only was Facebook gone, but everything Facebook runs disappeared too.

It involves two things that sort out how the internet works – that is Domain Name System (DNS) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
The internet has a lot of connected networks. So that means to keep the order of things, you need something like BGP to tell you where you need to go. DNS is essentially the address system for the location of each website – its IP address – while BGP is the roadmap that finds the most efficient way to get to that IP address.

According to Cloudflare, Facebook made some changes to its BGP configuration on Monday via a series of updates which resulted in the disappearance of routing paths to Facebook servers and causing global facebook outage. But not just for Facebook; it applies to everything Facebook runs. As a result, people attempting to access Facebook were unable to do so.

Why were Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp down?

Not only Facebook but all of its services were affected. It included Facebook’s internal systems, with reports of employees being locked out of offices and unable to access their own internal communications platform.

Can this sort of outage be avoided in the future?

People use Facebook to connect with friends and family and log into other services such as online sales websites. Through services such as WhatsApp, it has become the dominant mode of communication in some countries. The fact that an outage can have such a significant impact on billions of people for several hours must give some pause for thought.

Moving on, UnitedLayer’s disaster recovery solution enables enterprises to be resilient and respond to these critical situations faster and allows them to operate their business without any interruptions. Boasting zero downtime for the last ten years, we also guarantee the availability of 99.999% with high-availability N+2 Clusters.

Our Disaster Recovery Solutions are highly customizable, where customers can build specific Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) according to their business requirements. With on-demand scalability, you can add additional resources to meet the increased replication needs, this helps in reducing cost and improving business flexibility. UnitedLayer’s DR solutions are highly secure and compliant with all the industry-leading compliance standards like HIPAA and PCI.

UnitedLayer also offers setup and management of highly available routers, including setting up WAN configuration, traffic engineering, BGP, security, DDoS mitigation, monitoring, alerting, and WAN optimization for guaranteed performance.

With 20 years of experience in configuring and managing highly available networks globally has resulted in zero network downtime in the last one decade.

About UnitedLayer

UnitedLayer provides the Colocation services from one of the largest data centers in San Francisco, USA, at 200 Paul Ave. Our long list of managed services enables enterprises to modernize their infrastructure and improve their responsiveness, resource utilization, scalability, and agility resulting in better customer experience and faster time to market.

To get a better insight into what else UnitedLayer has got in store, sign up for a free demo today.

Cloud or Bare Metal Server? What’s The Difference?

Aug 12, 2021 | Colocation, Private Cloud

What is a Bare Metal Server?

Bare Metal Server is a physical server dedicated to a single tenant, which allows users full access to the hardware. This access is possible because a bare metal server does not use a hypervisor layer to create separate virtual machines (VM) on the server. Instead, placing the operating system directly on the server eliminates the need for layers. As a result, the performance is among the best on the market.

What is a Cloud Server?

A cloud server is a robust physical or virtual infrastructure that stores and processes applications and data. They are formed by dividing a bare metal server into numerous virtual servers using virtualization software.

Cloud servers are a crucial part of cloud technology. The widespread deployment of server virtualization has helped cloud computing’s rise and continued growth.

Benefits of Bare Metal Server:

Greater Access Control: The user of a dedicated server is given Administrative or ‘Root access’ to the server. This level of access allows users to have more control over the device’s hardware and software. Users can micromanage the server’s processes, optimize performance, and install additional applications using administrator-level privileges.
Customizability: One of the best features of a bare metal server is tailoring it to meet your specific business needs. You can pick and select which features and specifications you need. Whether you need a particular GPU model, NVMe storage for high IOPS, or a specific RAM-to-CPU ratio, bare metal can do it all. You can customize your bare metal server and add the features that you need.
Security & Reliability: When it comes to security, a dedicated server can be the best option for you. The name ‘dedicated’ is part of the proof. Compared to a virtual server, bare metal is a single-tenant physical server that physically isolates your applications, data, and resources for increased security and privacy. Dedicated servers are kept in a secure data center with controlled access points for on-site personnel when purchased from a hosting provider like UnitedLayer. HIPAA and PCI compliance are also easier to achieve with dedicated servers due to a high level of security.

Benefits of Cloud Server:

Data Security: The security of a firm’s data is one of its main concerns, regardless of its size or industry. Data breaches and other forms of cybercrime may wreak havoc on a company’s revenue, customer loyalty, and brand image. Baseline security measures, such as authentication, access control, and encryption, are implemented by cloud storage providers for their platforms and the data they process. Most businesses then supplement these protections with additional security measures to strengthen cloud data security and restrict access to sensitive data in the cloud.
Scalability & Flexibility: Cloud service options range from basic public cloud packages to fully managed custom cloud solutions tailored to specific demands, all of which may be scaled to match a company’s changing priorities and ongoing growth.
Reliability: The customer’s website is hosted in the cloud on several servers or computers. If a single piece of hardware fails, additional machines can instantly step in to keep the website up and operating.

How can we help you?

At UnitedLayer, we provide a dedicated virtual data center that allows enterprises to manage their private cloud fully. It comes with our enterprise-class support, which has a 15-minute response time and experts available 24x7x365 to provide support for any issue.

Whether you want a classic public cloud or bare metal server, contact us today to discuss your requirements and setting up the best hosting service for your business.

Got questions? Want to talk specifics? That’s what we’re here for.

Server Colocation And How Will It Work For You?

Jul 21, 2021 | Colocation

Colocation (quite often known as “colo”) is the method of renting space for the servers and other computer hardware at a third-party provider’s data center facility. Colocation facilities usually involve the places where everything is stored and networked, physical protection, backup power, HVAC (heating ventilation and cooling), constant support for client’s servers, and storage.

Now moving to server colocation, the server remains with the clients but it is stored, managed, and controlled by the Managed Service Provider or cloud service provider. The client or organization accesses the server over the Internet or on a Virtual Private Network connection. Using advanced IT support services on key IT services is the primary goal behind server colocation.

What are the 5 W’s of Server Colocation?

Why – Why is Server Colocation needed? Instead of building a new data center, corporations can use the space in a colocation facility to expand their existing data center.

Who – Who uses Server Colocation? The answer is simple, companies and individuals consider server colocation since it offers a stable base to create safe systems that conform to the applicable regulatory frameworks, which are either not feasible or incredibly expensive with other infrastructure hosting modalities.

What – What do we know about different types of Server Colocation? Single server Colocation is for U servers, tower servers, and PCs; partial racks come in rack increments of 1?4, 1/3, and 1?2. Usually, full racks and cabinets are 42 to 48U in size; private cage placement usually comes at increments racks of 2, 4, 8, and 10 and at last for larger businesses looking for more space with custom features such as office space, disaster recovery space, custom private cages, and custom suites are also an option.

Where – Where to find Server Colocation? You can find it anywhere in this whole wide world! UnitedLayer provides the best solutions for your business from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco and can support any expansion through its 13 data centers spread across 5 continents. Check out our website to find out more!

When – When will you need a Server Colocation? Did you outgrow your new server room? Have you encountered power problems or Internet downtime at your data center in your office? If the answer is yes, then it’s time for you to look into UnitedLayer.

Build a more productive and highly available IT architecture with hundreds of providers inside the facilities, including SDNs, global carriers, subsea networks, metro providers, and more, access to your choice with us. We provide highly skilled and certified professionals who would be an extension of the IT company. Smart hand and Remote hands 24×7×365 and mechanical & electrical monitoring.

Visit us at UnitedLayer to learn more about the different services offered and how you can get the best out of them.

What is Colocation Services?

Jul 20, 2021 | Colocation

In a third-party data center, colocation service is the process of storing privately equipment of networking and operated servers. There is the choice to “co-locate” servers by renting space in a colocation data center (it is known as a third-party data center as well) rather than the in-house situation whereby servers reside inside a room or portion of an organization’s business infrastructure.

Companies split the cost of power, cooling, connectivity, and data center floor space with other occupants by colocation. It is affordable than a new data center being built. When servers are built in-house, companies can manage their equipment the same way they do. Rather than creating a new data center, by utilizing the space in a colocation facility, corporations can easily increase their current data center.

The main distinction between colocation and the public cloud is the storage and handling of the data. It is a question of providing tangible assets as opposed to virtual ones. Cloud-based infrastructure systems provide cost savings due to shared resources, much like colocation. Still, that’s where they leave their similarities.

Colocation and cloud providers provide options to housing their data for enterprises. Each service has its pros and cons, depending on their particular specifications. In deciding the best course of action, identifying the placement service that best suits your business needs will go a long way.

At UnitedLayer, we have a growing list of services that are managed which helps corporations to restructure their infrastructure and enhance their responsiveness, optimization, resource efficiency, and flexibility, leading to better and enhanced customer experience and quicker time to market. UnitedLayer will offer you colocation facilities from one of the largest data centers in many countries.

Visit our website www.unitedlayer.com and register for a free demo today to get a deeper glimpse into what else our Colocation facility has to offer.

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