Web hosting provider Advanced Web Hosting it recently upgraded its infrastructure by migrating to a new data center in Northern Virginia.
Web hosting provider Advanced Web Hosting announced on Wednesday it recently upgraded its infrastructure by migrating to a new data center in Northern Virginia.
The web host was informed by SoftLayer that the second floor of its HOU01 data center in Houston, which had been housing Advanced Web’s servers for over a decade, would soon be closing.
Advanced Web devised and executed a plan to quickly migrate the majority of its customer base to new systems while enhancing its capability to provide best-in-class service, all within a short timeframe.
The company had already planned on overhauling much of its web hosting and dedicated server architecture in early 2013, but the SoftLayer data center closing forced Advanced to implement its loosely formed plan immediately.
Advanced Web’s management team and technical staff purchased new Dell R310 and R610 servers that were placed in Equinix’s Ashburn, Virginia data center.
“The most difficult part of this process was the timeframe that was thrust upon us. This unexpected move came during a period when we were already inundated with large projects and had little spare time to squeeze from our technical staff,” said Brad Caricofe, Advanced Web director of operations. “Our operating principles had already given us the capability to recover our systems from massive catastrophe, such as losing a data center to fire or weather-related events, within 24 hours. We applied some of what we’d learned in the past while planning for the unknown, to ensure that we could move everything within the requested amount of time.”
The company said its existing disaster recovery planning protocols also assisted with its ability to migrate customer data quickly. Advanced Web said its clients now benefit from a faster and more stable network, and greater systems redundancy.
Though Caricofe admits the company “spent far more money than we intended to with our planned upgrade in 2013,” it is “extremely happy with the results.”
Headquartered in Woodbridge, Virginia, Advanced Web provides web hosting, search engine optimization, web design, and systems engineering solutions to more than 400 clients worldwide.
Talk Back: Can you recall a similar situation where your hosting operations had to migrate its servers to another data center in a short timeframe? Was the migration process successful? Let us know in the comments.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
