Two new DNS servers are now available to customers on the Node4 network. These servers support both IPv4 & IPv6 – they will REPLACE the existing servers.

The existing DNS servers will be decommissioned on Friday 13th January 2012 therefore you must update your equipment configurations to use the new servers before this date

Old IPv4 DNS servers:

83.166.160.10
83.166.160.21

New IPv4 & IPv6 DNS Servers

IPv4 109.234.205.235
IPv4 109.234.205.243

IPv6 2a00:5600:101:0::2
IPv6 2a00:5600:101:1::2

Contact Node4 support if you require any technical assistance updating your equipment configurations.

Continuing the Green theme from the last post, I’d like to explain a bit about how our new air conditioning system gives us the best possible combination of performance, resilience, economy and flexibility.

Our Wakefield site makes use of a technology called free cooling. Well it’s not quite free (these things cost hundreds of thousands of pounds) but it is a highly efficient way of taking advantage of one of the main features of the UK climate. It’s cold most of the time!

Whenever the outside temperature is less than the temperature of the water coming back from the data centre, we don’t actively cool the water in our chillers. We let the atmosphere do the work for us. So for most day of the year (and pretty much every night) our chillers are doing very little work, but if it does get hot, they kick in to keep the air cool.

For resilience, each room has pairs of air conditioning units that are fed from different chillers. There is enough capacity to keep the rooms cool even if we lost ½ of the air con infrastructure. We also run the fans from the UPS system to keep the air moving at all times, even during a power failure.

In addition to all this, we are cutting the fan speeds needed to pressurise the raised floor void by using baffles under the floor space to direct cold air where it is needed. We can vary the fan speeds and the input temperatures to precisely control the conditions within the cold aisles. We are making use of Thermal Imaging technology to map our data centre airflow and temperature distribution to ensure the best possible environment for your equipment.

All in all we are doing everything we can to reduce our energy costs and carbon emissions. This is something we can pass on to our customers and, when carbon taxes start to take hold it could add up to some quite significant savings.

By Chris Pagel, Network Services Manager

Being a Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert can actually be a burden. why? Well there’s a perception that CCIE’s know everything about everything and can answer any question thrown at them. Well I’ve been a CCIE for almost ten years now and I still don’t know everything and I never will. That’s why the CCIE logo isn’t on my business card and why I prefer not to be introduced as “our CCIE” when meeting customers.

When I passed my CCIE I was very proud, and I still am, it was and still is one of the most sought after and most respected qualifications in IT.

10 years ago CCNA and CCNP did not exist, you went straight for CCIE and that was it. There was a pre-qualification test, as there is now, and a two day lab. The lab was one of, if not the, most stressful things I’ve ever done. The months of effort I had put in to revising, and the late nights configuring routers in every conceivable configuration in my spare bedroom would have counted for nothing if I had failed. Luckily I passed, one of three out of the twelve who did the exam over those two long days. Today there’s a structured path to get to CCIE and a one day lab exam, I’m not sure if that makes it any easier.

To me being a CCIE is not about passing an exam it’s about being a good engineer, being dynamic and adaptable, having a logical approach to an issue or problem and having the ability to work under pressure and to see it through. I know people who can do this and they don’t have a CCIE (or any other qualification for that matter) but that are equally as good as any CCIE I know.  It’s not always about having the qualification.

I was glad when Cisco took the decision to split CCIE in to six tracks a few years back. Due to the breadth of technology area’s Cisco products now cover it made sense.  I had hoped that this would make the CCIE re-certification tests (every two years) a little easier as it would be more specific to the subject of routing and switching, however I was wrong. There’s still a vast range of topics to cover so it’s no easier.

A CCIE qualification is a good thing to have it certainly opens doors and gave me opportunities that wouldn’t have been available to me otherwise. So if you’re looking to do CCIE my advice would be to go for it – follow the CCNA, CCNP path first but be realistic it’s going to take over your life and will take a lot of commitment and you need to immerse yourself in Cisco for months. The best advice I can give is to speak other CCIE’s and get them to help and mentor you. You also need the backing of your employer, that’s very important as you will need lab equipment and study time.  It’s worth the effort for the rewards – well it was for me anyway.

I was a little disappointed to find out that Cisco don’t do anything to mark 10 years of CCIE certification, but I suppose there’s a lot of us now. Still a t-shirt wouldn’t have gone a miss!

You can find more information about CCIE at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Career_Certifications
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccie/index.html

Captain Cisco

By Paul Bryce, Business Development Director, Node4

No, this is not a blog post about virtual gaming or how to make money out of the virtual world of second life, it’s about how virtualisation of servers and applications is fast becoming a reality and with increased focus on economic and environmental issues, it’s probably worth checking it out.

Top analyst Thomas Bittman from research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that in the next 3 years the installed base of virtual machines will grow tenfold and that by 2012 the majority of server workloads will be running within a virtual machine. http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2008/12/server_virtuali_2.html

So what is it and how might it help your business?  VMware, the leading developer of virtualisation software, defines virtualization as essentially letting one computer do the job of multiple computers, by sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments.  Today’s computer hardware was originally designed to run only a single operating system and a single application, but virtualization breaks that bond, making it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the same time, increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware ( http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/  ).  You might be looking to consolidate servers or reduce costs of your physical infrastructure and virtualization may be the answer.  But I see the real benefits of this technology being around improved business continuity (ie not losing everything when a server fails) as well as making desktop environments much easier to configure, manage and keep secure.

Here at Node4 we’re investing a lot in our virtual capability as we are well positioned to offer our customers solutions in this area.  We have the Data Centre(s), we can offer high capacity connectivity and are accredited by Platespin (http://www.platespin.com/products/forge/ ) and Dell Equallogic who have specific offerings in this area (http://www.equallogic.co.uk/solutions/vmware_virtual_infrastructure.aspx ). 

In addition we have just signed up to become a VMWare Authorised Hosting Partner so that we can rent the licences to you, just like we have been doing with the Microsoft ones with our SPLA agreement for many years.  We’ll be adding more details to our web-site in the coming months, but if you want to know more in the meantime just contact your account manager (who should have all completed their training by now!)

If you were looking for something more on virtual reality and how it might be beneficial in business, then take a look at the video below – mind blowing stuff!

\’On-Stage\’Experience: Next Generation Cisco TelePresence  

I hope you have a very happy Christmas!

By Rik WIlliams, Data Centre Operations Manager

How do you make a 3.5MVA N+1 data center Green, yet still cost effective?

That’s the big question that Node4 have been wrestling with over the last few months, but we reckon we’ve come up with the solution. Our brand new data centre (DC3) in Wakefield will be one of the first in the country to combine 2 of the latest energy saving technologies throughout the site: cold aisle containment and free cooling chillers.

By using these methods, we hope to make DC3 one of the most energy efficient data centres in Europe with a PUE of 1.3 to 1.4 (i.e. only about 1/3 of the total power to the site is used on cooling and power conversion).

Click for Cold Aisle Containment Diagram

Cold aisle containment is a new but relatively simple idea to get the best efficiency from air conditioning units. The data hall is set up as a standard hot / cold aisle arrangement but the cold aisles are then sealed off at either end and a transparent ceiling is installed to trap the cold air in front of the racks where it is needed the most. The rest of the room becomes a hot aisle as the air is returned to the air conditioning units, so the room itself will be between 30 and 35 degrees C.
 
Although that might be a bit warmer than the average techie is used to, the air flowing through the front of all the servers will be about 20 degrees C which is just as it should be.

This kind of arrangement gives a number of advantages over a non-contained room

• Hot air can’t re-circulate and mix with the cold air. We are only cooling the air once
• We can use a higher output air temperature from the air conditioning unit, saving on power
• Temperature differences between the top and bottom of the racks are much smaller meaning that equipment at the top of the racks is less likely to fail

We estimate that this could save between 40% and 60% on our air conditioning bill, and will be far more environmentally friendly than a normal data centre.

We’ll talk more about how we actually cool the air using our new free cooling chillers and take advantage of the Yorkshire weather in a future blog post.

http://www.comms-dealer.co.uk/green-telecoms/green-factor-rises-agenda-ict-buyers

The Green factor is rising up the agenda for ICT buyers with 64% confirming that reducing their firm’s carbon footprint is a key requirement when purchasing new IT equipment.

A market survey by Extreme Networks and Data Integration also found that only 20% of respondents actively measure IT-related energy spend. "The green issue is important in today’s society, especially for organisations looking to reduce their carbon footprint," comments Extreme Networks’ Regional Director for UK and Ireland, Paul Phillips.

"The fact that 78% of organisations recycle their IT equipment suggests that there is a high level of awareness of the WEEE regulations that were introduced at the beginning of 2007. However, it is essential that businesses measure the amount of electricity required for powering and cooling their IT systems. Currently only a fifth of businesses do this, and it is just important to measure the success of Green IT initiatives rather than going green just for the sake of it."

Data Integration’s Managing Director, Garath Lauder, added: "The number of customers demanding evidence of our suppliers’ green credentials in RFPs has increased markedly in the past 12 months and we are now more cognisant of the issue of power consumption when designing networks.

"Many customers do already recycle old IT equipment, but it is essential that businesses measure their IT-related energy spend in order to know whether their purchasing decisions are helping to meet their green goals."

Additional findings from the joint survey undertaken by Extreme Networks’ Platinum Partner, Data Integration included:
• 49% of organisations cited reduced operational costs as the main driver for greening IT operations. Organisations are increasingly looking for network technologies that will reduce energy consumption and empower the business take control of the network through intelligent measures.
• 43% of businesses cited Green IT as important to their organisations
• 78% of participants say they recycle their IT equipment
• 51% of respondents say they are unsure whether their organisations have sustainability goals for Green IT, suggesting that not all organisations are aware of the benefits and return on investment of their Green IT equipment

Hosting providers, Node4 have this week launched a brand new website devoted to dedicated servers, serversupermarket.net. The site was created in response to an increase in requests for dedicated servers in their state-of-the-art data centre.

Using pre-built, high specification DELL kit, the servers are ready to be switched on as soon as the customer places an order through the website. There are three options of specification depending on the customer requirements; starting from an entry level server, which is a DELL PowerEdge R200 and includes 10Mb of network connectivity with a range of operating systems and back up options for a monthly or annual fee. Colocation space can also be ordered through the site for the businesses who would like to keep their existing servers. For more details please visit www.serversupermarket.net . Technical support is provided through a ticketing system on an online portal, along with ordering and billing, creating a whole one-stop service. 

For the next three months, Node4 will donate £25 to a local RSPCA shelter for every server sold on the new site.