By. Steve Eschweiler
The last year was a busy one for us here at Hivelocity. Not only were we busy with the day to day of running a full service data center, we chose to fill our plate with a 12,000 sq ft data center expansion as well. For these reasons, and a few more, our facility was a frenzy of activity in 2013.
Our biggest and most noted project of 2013 was our data center expansion. We broke ground on a 12,000 sq ft addition in February and the work lasted through December. The expansion included both adding more raised floor data center space as well as the addition of a new NOC. The new raised floor space can accommodate over 150 server racks and allow the addition of over 4500 new physical servers. Our new space includes new caged space specifically designated for colocation customers as well as a lounge for our colo customers to work and relax within. TV, couch…and workspace, what more could you ask for in a lounge?
Improvements and expansions at Hivelocity were not limited to only our physical space, we did a few things to improve the performance of our network as well. First, we set up private peering points of presence in several locations across the United States including Los Angeles, Seattle and Atlanta. The addition of these POPs allowed us to offload and improve several Gbps worth of traffic from our standard network. We have immediate plans to add Miami, Chicago and New York to this private network in the very near future, so keep your ears out for updates. Miami is only a few weeks away from going live. We also added a 6th transit provide to our network continuing the network diversity our customers have grown to love. Comcast transit makes 6 total carriers now on the Hivelocity network. We don’t have customers in over 130 countries around the world for nothing.
One of the more fun projects we completed was the development of our Live Order Tracker within myVelocity. For the last 7 months customers have been able to follow along and know exactly where we are with the deployment of their new server. Our live order tracker keeps customers close in the loop, from hardware assembly to OS install, all the way to the server’s racking. Clear communication is one of the things we pride ourselves on here and with the addition of our new Data Center Live Video Feed, customers are even able to watch live as their new server is placed in its rack and powered on for the first time! Sure, it’s a bit of a novelty, but there is something really fun about watching live as your new baby comes to life. Knowing you are only moments away from gaining access and getting to play with your newest toy is just….cool. Getting custom pictures and personal message from your little one throughout its first year of life in the data center is even cooler…That’s right, we do that!
We were on a roll with our order tracker and the entire team was full of energy knowing the exceptional user experience we have created over the years was only getting better. This excitement definitely carried over to the next project on our list, creating a video tour of the data center. Dubstep Remix Data Center Tour, need I say more?
Of course we accomplished a lot more than the few things we have listed here, but these are the items that most people will remember. No one wants to read about VPNs, IMPI and process improvements. We do have some really really BIG news to announce in the next week or two but these projects will have to be reserved for 2014’s year in review blog. What I can tell you is what we are introducing is a big deal and it will make next year’s blog pretty easy to write.
