Industrial-Grade Equipment for the Ultimate
Performance and Reliability
Brasch Consulting Services, LLC (BCS) recognizes
that downtime is not an option for your servers. That's why we
invest heavily in hardware and facilities that ensure that your
clients are up and running on the web 24 hours a day, seven days a
week.
BCS's Network Operations Center (NOC) features
raised flooring. This enables a constant flow of conditioned air and
helps to maintain uniform room temperature at all times. In
addition, raised flooring reduces static and ensures a professional,
computer-grade environment for your servers.
The facility is equipped with a Raytheon fire
suppression system, designed to immediately extinguish fire and
protect equipment and personnel. The command center is controlled
via automatic doors to further secure and protect the equipment.
Finally, the NOC is located in a secure, monitored,
class A building with a minimum number of approved personnel allowed
access to highly sensitive areas and equipment. A detailed record of
employee and visitor entry is maintained at all times.
Uninterruptible Power System
To guard against local power failures, BCS has two industrial-grade,
three-phase Liebert UPS systems. These act as back-up batteries,
maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or power outages.
With these back-up systems in place, we can keep our network up and
running indefinitely without relying on external power.
Industrial-Grade Air Conditioners
BCS's NOC has two Liebert 10 ton industrial air conditioners that
condition our computer rooms and operations center. Air temperature
is maintained at an optimal 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
Custom Web Servers
BCS's web servers are custom-built industrial machines designed for
a 24/7 web serving environment. All BCS servers are equipped with
dual-redundant, 450-watt power supplies, swappable drives and
force-filtered cooling systems. In addition, our NOC is equipped
with an inventory of identically configured, burned-in standby
servers.
Force Filtered Cooling
All of BCS's custom web servers are equipped with a
positive-pressure filtered-air system. Four large fans pull filtered
air into each server's protective case, and the components within
are cooled by fans that circulate this purified air. This constant
introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure
environment ensuring that dust and particles remain outside the
server.
Hot Swap Seagate Drives
The drives and drive bays of all BCS servers are constructed from
high-grade aluminum and rest in shock-mounted drive cages, which
adds to the durability of the hardware. BCS's drives proudly feature
the lowest failure rate in the industry.
Redundant Hot Swap Power Supplies
Each server employs dual-redundant hot swap power supplies. If a
power supply were to fail, the server would continue running with
power from the alternate supply. Meanwhile, alarms would alert a
technician, who would quickly restore redundancy. In the meantime,
servers and client sites would experience no downtime.
Standby Servers
We keep spare servers online of all CPU configurations. If a server
were to experience a hardware failure, we would turn a key, grab the
handle on the drive, pull it out and insert it into an identical
standby CPU. We would then reboot the second machine, and the server
would be up and running again in a matter of minutes.
Connected to Three Backbones
The BCS NOC, located in Baltimore, Maryland, is OnNet with
GlobalCenter (GC), Qwest Communications and GTE through three
separate bandwidth-on-demand connections that enter Baltimore in our
building.
GC, a Tier 1 provider with a 13,000-mile fiber optic
network and Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology that
provides an enormous 460 gigabytes per second (Gbps) of capacity
worldwide, has an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) fiber node
located just a few floors below the BCS NOC.
Qwest comes into Baltimore with an OC-12 line and
plans to upgrade its connection to an OC-48 in the near future.
Qwest also has an ATM fiber node just floors below the BCS NOC. Our
Qwest connection enables BCS to offer additional redundancy and
better routes to Europe, Latin America and Asia. With our carriers,
our router has up to 150,000 possible routes to send each packet of
traffic.
Furthermore, because of these unique connections,
BCS does not need to link to the Internet through an OC3 or T3
Telecom circuit. Instead, independent cables run inside our building
directly from the BCS NOC to all three carriers' points of presence.
These lines can handle the bandwidth of a T3 or an OC3 with DWDM.
Plus, they handle several times the bandwidth of an OC3. Whatever
your bandwidth needs may be, BCS has the scalability to meet them.
Network Redundancy
BCS uses intelligent end-user routing software called Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP) between Qwest, GC and AT&T, which use the same
protocol. BGP identifies which path is the most efficient for each
data packet and then routes the packet to its destination on the
fastest path. This increases the speed at which web pages sent from
our NOC arrive at their destination.
Studies have shown that the most common reason for
downtime is circuit failure on Tier 1 provider backbones, the major
data highways. To guard against this potential problem, we have
three Tier-1 providers. If one experiences problems, we can route
traffic down another one. Furthermore, because we are OnNet with
GlobalCenter, Qwest and AT&T, we share their digital distribution
architecture, which includes private peering network connections to
major Internet carriers such as MCI, Sprint, UUNET, EUNET, AT&T,
AOL, Best, Erols, @Home, IBM Advantis and others. These private
peering arrangements allow BCS to quickly and efficiently exchange
packets of data with every major backbone carrier in a one-to-one
environment.
In addition, GC has high-speed links to eight public
exchanges including both MAE East and West and several NAPS. Through
these public exchanges, customers have the ability to reach their
sites, no matter where they are.
Network Reliability
Industry analysis reveals that 70% of downtime of over 10 hours with
any ISP is caused by telephone circuit failure. With BCS, circuit
failure is virtually eliminated. That's because our NOC is in the
same building as GlobalCenter, Qwest and AT&T. There is no phone
circuit between BCS and these providers. Instead, there is a direct
connection between our Cisco 7500 routers and theirs.
BCS's providers also have peering connections with
other major Tier 1 providers that allow traffic to be switched to
alternate backbones should the need arise.
Raw Performance Equals
Low Latency/High Throughput
Too often providers operate their networks at three to four times
their responsible capacity. As a result, their corresponding
transfer times reach over 300ms. BCS's network daily average is 27%
of its capacity, with midday peak spikes reaching only 33% capacity.
BCS guarantees that clients will be carried off our network in less
than 80ms over a five-minute average at any time of day or night.
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