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.