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Old 05-25-2005, 04:50 PM
Jason Lee
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Default Suggestions for datacenter infrastructure

Hi,

I've been looking into opening my own datacenter in my city (Winnipeg, Manitoba) because of the lack of datacenters. We only have a couple of datacenters operated by carriers but they are rather expensive (over $200/month just for rack space) and one of the providers charges $20 - $25/GB for bandwidth.

I'm looking for advice on several topics. The first one is connectivity. We have 4 carriers that I'm aware of in our city (there may be others that I've never heard of).

MTS Allstream Inc.
Shaw Bigpipe
Sprint
Group Telecom

I've been considering starting of with 2 T3 (for redundancy) lines form seperate providers (MTS Allstream and Shaw Bigpipe). Would it be better to start of with 1 T3 and add another as my client base increases or start with the 2 T3s for redundancy (and increased capacity)?

The second topic I'm looking at is UPS and Generators. A colleague of mine has recomended that I go with an APC InfraStruXure system which comes with the UPS, generator (as well as related equipment) as well as 42u racks with Air distribution units. A system to handle 20 racks would cost aprox. $188,000 USD but I see don't see alot of APC units in the datacenters (major ones). Another UPS and Generator system I've looked at is from Caterpillar but I don't have a price on that system. So does the APC InfraStruXure system sound like a good investment?

The third topic is routers and switches. What would you recommend? A redundant network is a must. I've looked at Cisco, Juniper and Foundry routers & switches but am not really sure which ones to go with. I have been considering going with the Juniper M7i for my routers but I'd like to hear suggestions.

The last topic I've been thinking about is location. What should I look in for a location aside from making sure its easy to get fiber lines installed. Also if I decide to rent a place downtown I'm certain that the floor is not going to come close to being able to support the weight of a datacenter. Are there ways to reinforce these floors so they can handle the increased weight. (I'm no engineer but suggestions from your experiances would greatly help).

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions you have.

Edit: One more question. How many tons of AC would I need for 20 racks of servers (35-40 1u servers each)? Just so I can get an idea for how much AC I will need at max capacity. In Winnipeg our outside tempature gets to about 35 C (max) in the summer and -40 in the Winter (won't need much AC in the winter I guess).

Last edited by Jason Lee; 05-25-2005 at 05:36 PM.
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