SoftLayer™ Continues Data Center Expansion

SoftLayer Technologies™, the innovative on-demand data center services provider, today announced the opening of three new data center pods in the company’s Dallas, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., data center facilities. The new pods add capacity for 20,000 additional servers, bringing SoftLayer’s total capacity to more than 45,000 physical machines.

“We continue gaining momentum every year. We broke more projections and records this year than last, and 2010 will bring even more of the same,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “These three new pods meet the customer demand increases that we expect in the very near future. And they are only preliminary measures in our growth strategy for 2010. We have some big plans which we can’t wait to share with everyone.”

“We’re extremely excited to introduce Private Cloud services to our customers. Private Cloud gives Softlayer customers yet another dynamic, scalable infrastructure option,” said Nathan Day, CTO, SoftLayer. “This will provide a service with segregated physical computing hardware giving customers security and peace of mind with the benefits of unlimited, on-demand scalability.”

SoftLayer’s milestones in 2009 included:

  • More than 5,700 active customers across 110+ countries
  • More than 23,000 deployed servers
  • Placement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services
  • Introduction of CloudLayer™ line of cloud services, including CloudLayer Storage, CloudLayer CDN, CloudLayer Computing, and Bare Metal Cloud™
  • Industry’s first deployment of Intel® Nehalem microarchitecture
  • IPv6 support across all data centers
  • Multiple carrier additions across all data centers for a total of 290Gbps

The new pods are part of SoftLayer’s unique approach to data center design. Each of the company’s geographically diverse data centers consists of multiple pods built to identical specifications with the same bestin- class methodologies. This level of standardization across all its geographic locations enables SoftLayer to optimize key data center performance variables, including space, power, network, personnel, and internal infrastructure.

Posted by Admin on December 1st, 2009 | 1 Comment
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The Planet Engages CAPSTAR Commercial for Data Center

The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced the appointment of CAPSTAR Commercial Real Estate Services to lease its fifth data center in the Dallas Metroplex. The first of four 12,000-square-foot pods has been completed, providing environmentally friendly white-floor space that is complete and ready for leasing. CAPSTAR principals Trey Smith and Chris Taylor will manage leasing for the facility, which is located on Plano Parkway in the 190 Business Center.

The new data center – the company’s eighth – uses the latest modular cooling technology from Turbine Air Systems (TAS), with high-efficiency, water-cooled chillers that eliminate the possibility of an interior water leak. Colocation, private racks and managed hosting services will be offered in the new facility. Space is also available for a business continuity center, which provides office space for customers requiring a disaster recovery base of operations during an outage.

“We’ve received significant interest from North Texas companies looking to expand or outsource their data center facilities,” said The Planet’s Vice President of Global Sales Tom Blair.  “Customers select The Planet based on the quality of our data centers and network, and this new space enables us to accommodate the rapid colocation market growth we’ve seen in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”

“There is a shortage of large footprint colocation space in North Texas that offers robust power,” said CAPSTAR principal Trey Smith. “The facility provides colocation and IT infrastructure solutions for both local and national companies that are seeking to expand their core infrastructure or supplement their existing operations. The state-of-the-art facility and its central U.S. location will be attractive to many companies looking for colocation and turnkey data center solutions.”

Posted by Admin on September 21st, 2009 | No Comments
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ThePlanet, is Now in Europe!

Dedicated web and IT hosting provider, The Planet, has officially opened its first international data center in London, offering geographic redundancy, enhanced performance and Gigabit connectivity.

The new facility is the company’s eighth data center, and joins its seven domestically located data centers in Houston and Dallas. The Planet’s popular Virtual Racks, the fastest-growing solution in its product portfolio, are the exclusive offering for the new European operation. The Virtual Rack solution – the optimal platform hosting choice for powering customer applications – provides flexible scalability and rapid provisioning as IT requirements grow. Customers with multi-server environments leverage increased performance with a private backend network to ensure all servers are properly linked and communicate securely. Load balancing options ensure web traffic is optimally managed by the available servers. In a limited-time promotion, the company waives all set-up fees for customers in the new data center.

Bryce Edwards, general manager for The Planet’s Complex Infrastructure line of business remarked, ”For multi-server environments, the Virtual Rack has been a highly effective solution for our customers, since it offers flexible scalability. Customers often start with just one or two servers, and appreciate the ease of adding new boxes. They can choose from a portfolio of dedicated firewalls and load balancers, and all European servers come with Gigabit uplinks. In particular, this platform is ideal for multi-tier web applications.”

The London data center features up to 20kW of power per rack, backed by N+1 redundancy on generators, transformers and UPS systems. Customers gain access to a 10GB private fiber interconnect to The Planet’s core network through its Ashburn, Va., data center, as well as local connectivity to Tier-1 providers and the major European peering exchanges.

London-headquartered TelecityGroup, which operates 20 network-independent data centers across seven European countries, provides the facilities for The Planet’s new data center. Procedures in the new facility comply with ISO 9001:2000, which benchmarks quality processes for data center operations and management.

TelecityGroup is highly regarded for both its premium data centers and operational expertise. A member of the Green Grid, it is also taking the lead in driving energy efficiency in Europe as the first data center operator to sign up for the new EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.

Customers can expect the same high-quality Virtual Rack solutions in the European data center that they experience in The Planet’s domestically located operations:

All the Benefits of a Virtual Rack : Virtual Racks offer an innovative and flexible infrastructure, with unlimited server-to-server transfer and bandwidth pooling, as well as access to advanced firewalls and load balancing.

Globally Redundant Hosting Options: Customers are able to host servers across two continents, which provides higher fault tolerance and improved site performance for end-users.

Lower Latency for End Users: The Planet’s network architecture and routing topology ensure the most reliable and fastest route to end users, wherever they are located. By hosting servers closer to end users, customers can expect better performance with fewer hops from user to site.

Connectivity to The Planet Core Network: The new data center is connected to the London Internet Exchange (LINX), which provides world-class connectivity throughout Europe. A dedicated 10 Gbps private link, connected directly to The Planet’s core North America network, provides fast and reliable connectivity to servers hosted in the company’s domestic data centers.

Same Outstanding SLA: The London data center and network are backed by The Planet’s 100 percent Network and Power Service Level Agreement, which provides customers with assurances of uptime and connectivity for their businesses.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide:

  • High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
  • Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
  • Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
  • Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
  • Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 16.9 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24×7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses.

Posted by Admin on May 11th, 2009 | 2 Comments
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Data Center Internal Private Network, Debuts at Future Hosting.

Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and the developer of Server Doctor, Future Hosting, has deployed an internal private network between its five international data center facilities.

The facilities are located in Chicago, Ill.; Dallas, Texas; Seattle, Wash.; Washington, D.C.; and London, England.

Charles Kowalski, COO of Future Hosting remarked, ”Whether it’s synchronizing data between two failover hosting points, or managing a corporate IT infrastructure spread across two continents, our internal network is an attractive feature for our customers and it does not cost them a penny more to use. It also allows our customers to reach beyond the traditional limitations of a standalone Virtual Private Server and leverage our vast capacity for growth.”

The internal network is connected to all Future Hosting servers through physically separate network cards installed alongside network cards used for Internet connectivity. Each server’s private network card is assigned a private IP address that allows Future Hosting servers to communicate with each other on the internal network.

Through the internal network, Future Hosting customers may take advantage of unmetered data transfer between all other Future Hosting servers and services in its five data centers. This capability is especially attractive for hosting resellers, developers, and others who wish to take advantage of the geographically diverse infrastructure from Future Hosting.

The internal network also bolsters security, since it allows customers with multiple servers to transfer data between locations in a secured environment not accessible to the open Internet.

There is no additional charge for customers to utilize the private network. Customers may request access from Future Hosting’s sales department.

Future Hosting is the developer of the award-winning Server Doctor, a system designed to provide a proactive approach to maintaining Virtual Private Servers. The technology automates everything from account provisioning to security scans, without tying up the resources of the customer support department.

Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including both Dedicated Servers and Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality customer service, innovative pricing models, and 3-hour Service Level Agreement. Future Hosting is based in Novi, Mich.

Posted by Admin on April 3rd, 2009 | No Comments
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The Planet, Reveals London Data Center Plans.

Global IT hosting firm, The Planet, has revealed plans for an first international data center, based on significant customer demand for both international and globally redundant hosted infrastructure, in the London area.

Douglas J. Erwin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at The Planet remarked, ”For the past 18 months, we’ve evaluated international markets that are of strategic importance to our planned global expansion, and Europe has been at the forefront of those discussions. We’ve had serious customer interest, which underscored that the time was right to move forward.”

The company initially will offer its virtual racks solution when its center opens in April. Preleasing begins immediately. The data center features up to 20kW of power per rack, backed by N+1 redundancy on generators, transformers and UPS systems. Customers gain access to a 10GB private fiber interconnect to The Planet’s core network through its Ashburn, Va., data center, as well as local connectivity to Tier-1 providers and the major European peering exchanges.

Mr. Erwin added, ”We’ve made substantial investments in our data centers and our network over the past two years, including the recent addition of new peering points on the East and West Coasts of the United States. Our storage cloud and CDN products also provide global access points. With 42 percent of our customers located in international markets, we expect considerable interest in this new operation.”

The Planet has forged a colocation agreement with London-headquartered TelecityGroup, which operates 20 network-independent data centers across seven European countries. Procedures in the new facility comply with ISO 9001:2000, which benchmarks quality processes for data center operations and management.

TelecityGroup is highly regarded for both its premium data centers and operational expertise. It is also taking the lead in driving energy efficiency in the data center in Europe as the first data center operator to sign up to the new “EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.” It is also a member of the Green Grid.

Adriaan Oosthoek, Managing Director for TelecityGroup UK and Ireland noted, ”The Planet has established a strong reputation for delivering high quality, reliable hosting and Web services. I’m delighted that TelecityGroup will play a crucial role in supporting The Planet’s roll out into Europe, by hosting and maintaining their infrastructure in our new highly resilient and secure Powergate data centre. We continue to be the data centre of choice for leading U.S. businesses expanding into Europe.”

In December, The Planet announced plans for its seventh data center, a new 86,000 square foot colocation facility in Dallas. The first phase will open in May 2009.

TelecityGroup is a Europen provider of premium network independent data centres offering a range of flexible, scalable data centre and managed services. TelecityGroup specialises in the design, build, and management of highly connected and secure environments in which customers can house their technical, web and internet infrastructure. Each of its data centres acts as a connectivity and content hub facilitating the storage, sharing and distribution of data, content and media. Headquartered in London, TelecityGroup operates 20 network-independent data centres across seven European countries. The data centres are located in prime positions for commerce and connectivity, including London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Stockholm, Milan and Dublin. TelecityGroup is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide:

  • High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance.
  • Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic.
  • Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability.
  • Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses.
  • Knowledgeable experts with the commitment to operate the best networks in the business.

    • The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 15.2 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24×7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses.

    Posted by Admin on March 6th, 2009 | 2 Comments
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