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By Philbert Shih, theWHIR.com
Mar 24, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting companies - when successful - tend to grow. And when they do, they often face the challenge of fitting as much equipment as they can into the precious data center space at their disposal.
Such was the case for Data393 (data393.com), a Colorado-based Web host formed through a merger with Ventures Online and Huge Hosting and the acquisition of application service provider E-com Media Group. The union, completed in June of last year, created a service provider with shared, dedicated and VPS Web hosting, application hosting, managed services and colocation capabilities.
Data393 houses 850 servers in 46,000 square feet of data space. But after its expansion, the company soon found it was growing beyond its expectations, pushing its data center facility to its limits.
"As we started to grow, we rapidly consumed floor space," says Steve Merkel, senior systems engineer for Data393. A large facility that the company thought would have enough room for the foreseeable future quickly began to fill. Exacerbating the situation was the fact that the acquired facilities ran on traditional DC power, a pressing problem since most prospective tenants, such as hosts, run on AC-powered systems.
Data393 faced the challenge of finding a way to optimize the space in its facilities. It had to find servers that not only took up less space, but ran cooler, faster and with lower failure rates ? all within a well-defined physical area. On top of that, it also had to find a way to avoid shelling out a crippling amount of cash to convert the facility from DC to AC power.
Rackable Systems (rackable.com) seemed the solution to all Data393's issues, since its systems had the density needed and a DC-power option, enabling Data393 to continue using the DC power-based facilities it had acquired, says Merkel.
"When we came across Rackable and saw they had a DC option as well as a very dense rack solution, we put the two together and came up with something that really met our long-term business objectives," says Merkel.
Density was a key factor, says Merkel, as the company was trying to make the most of every inch of its limited space.
Rackable's servers are designed with a density that enables significant space savings, the company says, and Data393 takes full advantage.
"We gain some efficiencies both from how they configure their racks and how they've designed their solutions," says Merkel. Data393 says it was able to save between $600 and $800 per square foot of data center space, and increased severs deployed in each cabinet from 24 to 80.
Data393 was also able to deploy quickly, with exact components specified in advance of delivery. "Their racks just rolled right in," says Chris Leebelt, senior vice president of e-business solutions at Data393. "Setup time was simple and we were operating in no time at all."
Most importantly, using DC-powered equipment has enabled Data393 to increase server reliability by about 20 percent. "It's a very efficient power source," says Merkel. He explains that by separating the rectification process (the conversion of AC to DC power) from the delivery of servers to the server room, the cooling process is optimized by cutting the heat load from the servers. With the thermal load shifted outside the server, there is lower power consumption and as a result, reduced power costs.
"Leveraging DC power technology enables even greater reliability, with the added benefit of up to 30 percent savings on power costs in direct-DC deployments," says Colette LaForce, vice president of marketing for Rackable Systems.
Data393, which uses SWsoft's (sw-soft.com) PEM to manage its data center infrastructure, has had such success that it plans to migrate its entire infrastructure to Rackable gear.
"The combination of higher density, superior thermal management, lower power consumption and easier serviceability can help lower total cost of ownership for Rackable Systems customers," says LaForce.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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