How reliable are their systems??

So what you are saying is that the DEG guys wired the cabinet incorrectly so that both sides of the cabinet were on the same circuit?

Interesting.

The point was that from our data centre we were connected to Smart through DEG and they experienced power issues - yes there is A and B circuits … but don’t believe that it’s impossible for human-error in connecting these … which could result in unexpected downtime even though there’s still power in the building.

If that is the scenario, I don’t see how you can blame the DEG for this. This was Smart Telecom’s fault, to my mind.

I have worked in the DEG when I was CTO for Chip eServices and I am very familiar with the floor there. All the cabinets receive power from two completely seperate circuits. Each unit in the cabinet should have two power cables coming in to them (redundant power supplies) from either side of the cabinet (the A and B circuits). If Smart weren’t using all the power being supplied to them (i.e. they were only plugged into one side of the cabinet), you can hardly blame the DEG.

I say it again - the DEG building has had 100% power uptime since it opened its doors in 2001

On DEG …. I suggest you contact Smart Telecom and ask them if they have had 100% power uptime. I happen to know for definite that they had a 3 hour issue some time ago - so DEG have not infact had 100% power up time. We - hosting365 - were a customer of Smarts in 2005 in DEG and experienced the outage that took down their box from around midnight to 3:00 am on and off.

Ed, that’s a pretty serious allgation to be making against a competitor in a public forum. Are you sure you don’t want to retract it?

*me looks around nervously for the lawyers*

On DEG …. I suggest you contact Smart Telecom and ask them if they have had 100% power uptime. I happen to know for definite that they had a 3 hour issue some time ago - so DEG have not infact had 100% power up time. We - hosting365 - were a customer of Smarts in 2005 in DEG and experienced the outage that took down their box from around midnight to 3:00 am on and off.

We also run monthly load tests on our generator, in fact only last week we did this and it worked perfectly. This was a totally freak occurence. Of course the ESB have gone down unexpectedly before and the building has not been affected.

If you ( or anyone ) want to come in and physically watch our next full test that is no problem.

I don’t want to split hairs and I’m sorry if you took offence but I didn’t say moving to your own data centre wasn’t the wisest move, I said “It looks like moving…” - there is a subtle but important difference between the two statements.

Ed, an outage like this couldn’t have happened in the DEG. They have had 100% power uptime since they opened their doors in early 2001. They run monthly power outtage tests to ensure that (for instance) no feed breakers trip! The tests are logged and available to clients. Hence my saying it looks like it was a bad move.

I’m delighted to hear you guys are building your own ESB Substation. Good stuff.

Des - LOL

First O’Reilly and now Ed - what is it about you and people on holidays?
des

First of all, I didn’t answer as I was off yesterday … not exactly the best day to take holidays but there you go!

Second of all, I actually take offence to you saying moving to our own data centre wasn’t the wisest move. We didn’t become Ireland’s largest hosting company (by a factor of about 4 last time I looked at the stats) by sitting in a competitors data centre that we don’t have full time engineers living in. This is the first issue is the 18 months that we have been here.

Next of all, of course we have redundant power supplies, it would be idiotic in the extreme to have a data centre running only off the ESB. We have multiple strings of UPS batteries and a diesel generator that’s monitored 24×7 … with SLA’s on diesel from nearby suppliers.

There will be a full report coming out in the next couple of days, and there’s no point me trying to go into the technical details and have an argument with people far more technical than I am about it.

Tom and I are actually friends, so I’m not trying to be harse here Tom … we treat this incredibly seriously, but please check the facts before commenting on our power systems or business decisions on moving to our own data centre. And also, DEG won’t be the only data centre with it’s own sub station for very long, we’ve had planning permission in for a while now and a contract agreed with a building company to get this built.

Finally, this is an open-invite to anyone that’s wants to come in and tour our data centre, if you don’t believe my ‘marketing speak comments’ then get our Technical Director to actually walk you around the place.

I’ve also posted some information in a comment on our own blog here:
http://www.hosting365.com/blog/2006/06/30/oh-dear-god-its-end-of-q2/#comments

[Edited to fix broken link]

I am really starting to hate anonymous comments. They are always the worst and I rarely learn something from someone who isn’t willing to sign his or her name to their text.