VDI Public announcement:

VDIs network has degraded over the last 2 / 3 weeks well below our wishes, due to equipment stress, and other unforeseen obstacles.

VDI fully understands the situation and the confusion that it may cause to downstream clients; VDI has completed a series of meetings the last few days with Vendors and Local Fiber carriers to ensure network performance is improved as fast as possible. This is the final result of the meetings to remedy the problem and to ensure a solid network. VDI is investing approximately ¼ Million into the front-end of the network; this investment is partially outlined below.

*Additional 155 MPBS is being added to the current network to handle additional capacity Verizon Expects Loop Completion April 24th or earlier. Obviously Verizon understands this is needed ASAP and has been expedited

*Replacing 3com Corebuilder 9000 switch (CB9000) with Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switch. This will add much needed network control that the 3Com engineering team assured us was present in the CB9000, however after 2 years was never able to deliver. The Cisco Layer3 switch will be able to offer enhanced Quality of Service (QOS) support, internal routing and the ability to control bandwidth. Clients will be able to purchase bandwidth in blocks instead of worrying about the 95th percentile rule, or surprise overbandwidth charges. Shortly VDI also will be offering additional bandwidth control on the servers themselves, this will allow owners to control virtual accounts transfer speeds per IP. The expected delivery date for the Cisco Catalyst is on or about March 30th .

*The next step is a private point-to-point 1 Gig circuit to a major POP in NY City, this will allow VDI to offer more cross connects to other major backbones and be able to add additional Bandwidth within 48 - 72 hours. This is also another redundant connection that is not effected in the event that Verizon does fail. This install will be completed in approximately 3 - 4 months, because of the private point-to-point run, fiber layout and equipment installs. The proposed start date is in about 1 to 2 weeks, April 10-15th

On a final note: We are working as fast as possible to get these issues resolved. Once this is implemented, your clients will once again see that your services will be far superior any other data center. VDI has been the breeding ground for some of the worlds largest hosting companies and will continue to do so in the years to come.

Just hang in there just a few more weeks and you will see nothing but good things to come.

Virtual Development Staff

Woohoo! I hope it does get resolved soon, yesterday, the 28th, I was having a few short outages.

Bring on the upgrades Bill!!!! We all look forward to ridding ourselves of any network problems. :)

hopefully it's soon. neither i nor my clients can wait a few months for stability.

William, man, you have to fix these problems. I'm sorry if I sound bitchy but it's really getting out of hand :( I can't stand my sites being down all 5 min a few times a day. Just out of curiosity, i went over to site5.com and they're happily up at NAC. :(

Did VDI go down again?

Why the hyperbole, "your clients will once again see that your services will be far superior to any other data center." ?

Why not as good as, especially since VDI will not be superior to just any other data center?

All this "bigger, better than" gets tiresome after a while, especially when it isn't true.

Yeah. about 5 min or so. It was completely down. My host is moving off VDI.

Originally posted by klisis
Yeah. about 5 min or so. It was completely down. My host is moving off VDI.

thats sounding good right now but i just moved in and settled so i cant afford to move elsewhere anytime soon.

In fairness, two days notice was given about this outage right here at WHT.

O yea 1 more thing :)
During the Emergency operations window on Thursday, March 29th, 2001, UUNET will be performing maintenance in the following cities:

These maintenances will result in additional capacity in order to meetexpected customer demands. The maintenances will start at 3:00 a.m. local time at the affected sites.

DOMESTIC:
New York, NY; Kansas City, MO; San Francisco, CA; Chicago, IL; Tyson's Corner, VA; Dallas TX; Fort Worth, TX; Kirkland, WA; Minneapolis, MN; Newark, NJ; Detroit, MI;
Boston, MA; Houston, TX; Austin, TX; Visalia, CA; Joliet, IL; Adra, IN; Miangola, IN; Belvidere, IL; Bloomington, IL; Bowling Green, IL, Calumet City, IL; Cedar Rapids, IA;
Circleville, OH; Coldwater, MI; Connerville, IN; Davenport, IA; Davison, MI; Decatur, IL; DeKalb; IL; Des Moines, IA; Downers Grove, IL; Duluth, MN; Elkhart, IN; Evansville, IN;
Freeport, IL; Green Bay, WI; Hampton, IL; Holman, WI; indianapolis, IN; Iowa City, IA; Irving, IL; Janisville, IA; Jasper, IN; Kankakee, IL; LaFayette, IN; Lincoln, IL; London, KY; Macomb, IL; Madison, WI; Marion, IL, Marion, OH; Marshfield, WI; Macomb, OH; Milwaukee, WI; Morton, IL; Mt. Pleasant, MI; Muskgon, MI; Napesville, IL; Northbrook, IL; Oaklawn, IL; Ofallon, MO; Owosson, MI; Oxford, OH; Plymouth, WI; Random Lake, WI; Rantoul, IL; Richmond, IN; Rockford, IL; Sandwich, IL; Seymour, IN; Springfield, IL; Stewart, IL; Three River, MI; Valparaiso, IN; Waukegan, IL;
Wausau, WI; Westfield, IN; Wisconsin Dells, WI; Miami, FL; Washington, DC; Dulles, VA; Frederick, MD; Atlanta, GA; Phoenix, AZ; Seattle, WA; Orlando, FL; Windsor, WA; New Orleans, LA; Portland, OR;Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Salt Lake City, UT; Las Vegas, NV; Cleveland, OH; Elgin, IL; Buffalo, NY; San Diego, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Palo Alto, CA

INTERNATIONAL:
Sydney, Australia; Honolulu, HI; Lithgow, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Moe, Australia; Griffith, Australia

For me the outage happened almost exactly when he said that it would.

And before anyone goes there, I am not justifying the outages in the past. I am simply stating that notice was giving for THIS outage.

it's 4:xx pm here as well as where vdi is located though.

I said almost. I expected downtime today...prayed it would not be long, but this afternoon I expected it, and I thank William for posting it in advance so I could take the appropriate action with my clients.

Knowing about it in advance so I can prepare for it is better than an outage with no advance warning, not knowing why, and when it will be up.

Again, I am not justifying these outages. William said to give him a couple of weeks. I will do that. If the situation is not handled within a couple of weeks, then it is time to look into other options. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt because ALL NOCs have problems...it is how they handle them, and I do havbe to give credit to the fact that VDI stepped to the plate and admitted their services have gone down, and are taking measures to correct things.

Just my two cents. :)

What to expect in the next 4 days :)

You will see a period of 2 - 3 min outages.

We are adding new parts to router and making changes for new equipment that is due in Saturday morning.

a router reboot will alst 3 - 5 mins tops and will only do this 2 times a day.

The Switch migration will be just moving ports over and around 1 min per server or uplinks tops.

thanks

Hm so the downtime was expected?

thanks for the info, it relaxed me a bit. oh well, back to explaining.

heh yer,

THe outages will be no longer then 2 - 5 mins, I will try to get heads up as much as i can.

The Engineers just want to get this over with and parts Changed ASAP. If you want us to give 3 hours notice and time for you to inform all your clients, just let us know and we`ll make a schedule accordingly.

whew...
thats very good to hear
thanks for the alert
:)

hey william,

have you ever considered the extreme networks summit series switches? they are similarely prices but they are far superior to the cisco.

i can send you a zd benchmarking comparisn of the two if you want.

Cheers,

Raj

Extreme kicked Cisco`s butt in the lab and much bigger backplane. More port density, and it was incredible.

The Price was much more then the Budget VDI set, and we are not just doing a switch, we are also doing router, fiber and other needed improvments.

We have no choice be to make sure this is done right ASAP, I do not think we will get a 2nd chance if all is not stable in a few weeks.

When we open the Corporate super Noc in the Summer, we will be using extreme eqipment in there.

William,

i that my extreme rep might be flexible with pricing. also, extreme is really blurring the line between routers and switches.

why do you need a router? routing between subnets? extreme summits can do that. traffic shapping? extreme can do that on a per port basis.

Raj

When you get to a certain size you need to define

Core router / Aggregation router

The Switch should do the aggregation and the Extreme is perfect for this. But Cisco should still be the Core, I`m sure that Extreme can do the core, but I currently just don`t want to put it all on 1 unit.

I`m going to be looking at layer 3,4 - 7 solutions, ATM and QOS services for clients. Applicaton layer control is going to start getting more popular. Security control is going to be a nice option to add to Servers.

I love the fact that "this Business is 100% Imagination" and nothing is impossible. Thats why I named it VDI "Virtual Development Inc"

VDI is going to be an incredible place to be this summer, just need to get past these issues, and start producing the magic that we intend to do. We want to offer our clients something special that no one on the planet can touch.

Cpanel is just the start, more is to come....:)

William,

Sounds like you've really got a lot cooking :-) Best of luck. I've heard a lot of good stuff about VDI. I know for a _fact_ that Alabanza is having nightmares about you guys.

Extreme does make really good aggregation routers. They don't make routers, but their switches make really good aggregation routers...

As for your core, I think that their new Summit series can meet your needs UNLESS you are dealing with a media other than ethernet.

If it's ethernet, Extreme can do it.

They also recently bought a company that is about to unveil a layer 1-7 switch. This thing can do processing based on a cookie at close to wirespeed. Now _that_ is magic.

Sorry to be on such an Extreme kick. It all began when we had Extreme up at our offices and I came out of the meeting in shock. Really really cool.

Cheers,

Raj Dutt

Oh, just get me two tin cans and a string! I'll show you guy's what networking can be!! You'll see! YOU'LL ALL SEE!!! Mwuahahahaaa!!

Seriously though, I think Extreme has all our votes, but it just doesn't sit well with all our pocket books and everything else that needs to be done too.

The New Switch has arrived, Installation will start 6am on Saturday, march 31.

The installation will take up tp 2 hours, so there will be periods of network down times.

So please notify as many people as possible, so we do not get slammed with phone calls. :)

Thanks in advance !!

so by 8 am we should be all up? good thing my clients are on the east coast and i hope they will not even notice.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer
Oh, just get me two tin cans and a string! I'll show you guy's what networking can be!! You'll see! YOU'LL ALL SEE!!! Mwuahahahaaa!!

Seriously though, I think Extreme has all our votes, but it just doesn't sit well with all our pocket books and everything else that needs to be done too.

Someone asked if I was a VDI employee, based on my previous post, when I said "but it just doesn't sit well with all our pocket books and everything else that needs to be done too.". I meant that for everyone running a datacenter, etc. or doing any sort of higher level hosting. Sorry if that confused anyone.

The cisco guys are runnign late :(

starting 1 hour later then expected ..

Move Complete - Nitemare Over with on the this issue.

If any one has any problems please notify us right away.

It's nice to see someone admitting there are problems, giving a realistic timeframe for improvement and a brief synopsis for what is being done.

:) Cheers.....

Wednesday - Thursday - Router CPU upgrade - "Quick 10 mins"

Once this DOne - April 24th Additional 155 MBPSwill be added.

I want to Ensure that we are doing something, 1 /4 Million spent. Well invested for your business.

the First sign of trouble was 2 weeks ago, and I hope you all can see that VDI does care and react.





[Edited by William on 03-31-2001 at 08:38 PM]

nice. cant wait till the dust settles. i hope vdi will be the standing winner.

Hope the upgrades go well!!!