RossH
08-22-2002, 07:03 PM
The Facility
Today I visited RackMy.Com's cabnites at the Inflow data center in St. Louis, Missouri. Inflow is located in the Globe Building at 710 N. Tucker. When I first walked into the building I had to sign into the security desk. This building houses some big names like Qwest, Sprint, XO, AT&T, Alliagence Telecom, etc. I went to the 6th floor and found Inflow's suite. I got on the security phone and Brad from RackMy.Com met me at the front door. I had to sign in here again and I recieved a temp security card that said I must be escorted through the suite. We walked up to the Network Operations Center and Brad used his security card to open the doors. These are the security cards that you scan right in front of the scanner. I was already impressed but maybe thats an understatement. There were atleast 7 workstations and huge TV screens monitoring network activity. We then had to scan our keycards to get into where the cages/racks/cabnites were. The first thing I noticed, security cameras were watching our every move.
Rackmy.Com has 9 locking cabnites at Inflow. 7 of these were full of servers that were working flawlessly. These were brand name Dell servers, I also saw colocated sun servers, cobalts, hp's, etc. Brad also told me they had cabnites at other suites but were moving them all to inflow. We then walked to the battery backups, which were as big as cars. The system could provider system to the NOC for an hour and then the disel generators would kick on. Inflow has contracts with 3 fuel providers incase their is a power outage they can run totally self sufficent. They also run a test on the generators weekly by turning the power off and running on generators alone.
Inflow's data center has raised floors so it is very easy for them to run ethernet to any of the cabnites and troubleshoot/fix any problems.
RackMy
Brad gave me a full tour of the facility and answerd every question I had. He showed me how they could deal with any problem that comes up with no/minimal downtime to their customers.
One thing I asked Brad was why didn't rackmy offer linux dedicated servers. Brad told me that he didn't feel they could be the best at it, and if they couldn't be the absolute best, he didn't want to do it. This really impressed me because some companies out there don't care what kind of service they offer as long as they get paid.
Just to let everyone know rackmy does windows dedicated servers as well as colocation of all types of servers. They also do support for their colocated customers who run linux.
Summary
To be honest I was kind of nervous when I went to the center. I'm an 18 year old college student, with a tounge piercing. I figured I would be treated like a kid and be brushed off. This was not the case, I was treated like a professional. Brad was possibly the best business man I have met and he took his precious time to show me around. Thanks Brad.
If I had a server to colocate, no matter if it was windows/linux, I would definantly choose rackmy.com.
Data Center: A
Support: A+
Professionalism: A+
Overall: A+
Today I visited RackMy.Com's cabnites at the Inflow data center in St. Louis, Missouri. Inflow is located in the Globe Building at 710 N. Tucker. When I first walked into the building I had to sign into the security desk. This building houses some big names like Qwest, Sprint, XO, AT&T, Alliagence Telecom, etc. I went to the 6th floor and found Inflow's suite. I got on the security phone and Brad from RackMy.Com met me at the front door. I had to sign in here again and I recieved a temp security card that said I must be escorted through the suite. We walked up to the Network Operations Center and Brad used his security card to open the doors. These are the security cards that you scan right in front of the scanner. I was already impressed but maybe thats an understatement. There were atleast 7 workstations and huge TV screens monitoring network activity. We then had to scan our keycards to get into where the cages/racks/cabnites were. The first thing I noticed, security cameras were watching our every move.
Rackmy.Com has 9 locking cabnites at Inflow. 7 of these were full of servers that were working flawlessly. These were brand name Dell servers, I also saw colocated sun servers, cobalts, hp's, etc. Brad also told me they had cabnites at other suites but were moving them all to inflow. We then walked to the battery backups, which were as big as cars. The system could provider system to the NOC for an hour and then the disel generators would kick on. Inflow has contracts with 3 fuel providers incase their is a power outage they can run totally self sufficent. They also run a test on the generators weekly by turning the power off and running on generators alone.
Inflow's data center has raised floors so it is very easy for them to run ethernet to any of the cabnites and troubleshoot/fix any problems.
RackMy
Brad gave me a full tour of the facility and answerd every question I had. He showed me how they could deal with any problem that comes up with no/minimal downtime to their customers.
One thing I asked Brad was why didn't rackmy offer linux dedicated servers. Brad told me that he didn't feel they could be the best at it, and if they couldn't be the absolute best, he didn't want to do it. This really impressed me because some companies out there don't care what kind of service they offer as long as they get paid.
Just to let everyone know rackmy does windows dedicated servers as well as colocation of all types of servers. They also do support for their colocated customers who run linux.
Summary
To be honest I was kind of nervous when I went to the center. I'm an 18 year old college student, with a tounge piercing. I figured I would be treated like a kid and be brushed off. This was not the case, I was treated like a professional. Brad was possibly the best business man I have met and he took his precious time to show me around. Thanks Brad.
If I had a server to colocate, no matter if it was windows/linux, I would definantly choose rackmy.com.
Data Center: A
Support: A+
Professionalism: A+
Overall: A+