Suggestions for colocation needed

Tue May 24 10:39:28 PDT 2005

Michael T. Halligan wrote:
>>> I would avoid 200paul. Their security is a joke. You get an HID 
>>> badge, and that's it, you have full access to the
>>> entire building. 
 >>
>> You have access to some of the floors, not all and only the common 
>> areas.  You do not have "full access to the entire building".
> 
> Perhaps now this has been fixed, but when my customer hosted there, my 
> badge gave me access to everything.

Hmm...  I personally have been there for over two years.  I have not 
found this to be the case while I've been there.

>>> They don't have a 247 noc,
>>
>> They claim to have a 24x7 NOC.  I have only seen it during the day as 
>> that is when I was there.
>>
> If they do have a noc, this is a new development. When I had regular 
> access to the building, I had a customer there as of 18 months ago,
> and the only person on site at night was  the one security guard.

It is.  Digital Reality Trust has taken over there and has implemented 
many changes.

>>> just one security guy.  
>>
>> They have 24x7 security and typically during the day there are two on 
>> staff.
> 
> If they have two, this is also a new development. In a year, I never saw 
> more than one at any given time.

Again DRT.

>>> The grounds are also unsecured because they
>>> share a parking lot with a newspaper delivery depot.
>>
>> After hours you have to use your badge to open the gate.  The grounds 
>> are monitored with cameras.  I have even seen the guards check on the 
>> lot as they like to ticket if you are parked in the no-parking areas.
> 
> Between 3 and 7am, the gate is wide open because of all the delivery 
> trucks going in and out.  I've also seen the gate fail on half a dozen 
> instances, due to the high winds that
> go through that strange hilly alleyway. I had my car vandalized once 
> there. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but 200 Paul is in the ghetto.

It is.  I agree.  As above, I have not had your experience with vandalism.

>>> They're UPS based.. I can say that in the past 10 years, all but one 
>>> of the 35 datacenter outages I've gone through
>>> have been because of faulty batteries causing cascading failures.
>>
>> I have seen more problems with APC UPSes in the bottom of racks.  They 
>> are designed to barely work when needed.
> 
> I prefer to have my servers at a datacenter, like 365, that generates 
> their own, clean power, rather than rely on pg&e and poorly
> maintained ups's. You do remember that 3-hour outage they had 2 years 
> ago when their ups infrastructure fell over itself
> in a cascading failure?

I think this may be a religious war here.  I have seen Abovenet gensets 
fail too at 365 main (but this is when Abovenet was running the place). 
  I actually prefer 48 volts DC. :-)

>>> Go and tour their facilities.. You'll have this nagging feeling going 
>>> through your head as you walk around. That
>>> feeling is "Amateur", it describes their operations. They're also a 
>>> spam friendly hosting provider.  Cogent is still
>>> their most popular bw provider, followed by wiltel. One of their 
>>> salespeople told me point blank that most of their
>>> business came from porn and spam.\
>>
>> Do you have a clue that DRT/200P/eXchange is only one of many colo 
>> providers there?  There is XO, UnitedLayer and others in this 
>> building?  They all have their own infrastructure?  Also there are 40 
>> IP providers at this location?  DRT/200P/eXchange is a *real estate* 
>> company where their main biz it to provide a building.  And they do a 
>> pretty good job at that.  I would be happy to give you a tour of the 
>> facilities some time.  You can determine if it is a A or C facility 
>> yourself.
> 
> 40 IP providers?
> 
> You mean 6 on-site bandwidth providers, and 34 low-end aggregators.. 

I can send you the spread sheet.

And, of course it depends on what you call an IP provider.  Do you 
define an ISP as only one that has a nation-wide back-bone?  One that 
does a certain percentage of peering?  Etc?  For instance, at UL we do 
have a nation wide backbone touching down at 7 locations around the 
country.  We have more than 20% of our total bandwidth going through 
peering.  Does this qualify?  I know a number of ISPs that do the same 
as us at 200P.

365 only has a fraction of the providers there.  Try to get a $10 to $20 
a Mb/s per month deal from anyone there (besides Cogent) with a 500Mb/s 
commit.  There just isn't the competition there.

> Though I always thought their wall of providers on the third floor was 
> cute, It was interesting to
> count the # of them who were out of business (I remember 2), and then to 
> count the # who didn't have a router in the datacenter, but instead 
> would arrange for some kind
> of local-loop. I expect to be able to ask for, and receive, an ethernet 
> or fibre drop to my cage at a datacenter with no more than about a 
> week's provisioning time at
> a carrier-neutral datacenter, since I'd typically expect for carriers to 
> keep access points onsite.

Things have grown since then.

> Again, a customer of mine hosted there for about a year. The staff was 
> pleasant, but overworked. They did
> not have well established processes. It was hard enough to get a line 
> strung, or add somebody to their access list. They are really a 
> no-frills rack/power/ac provider, and I think
> are a good for hosting a non-critical service. Not even the salespeople 
> there would try to sell me on that place being a world class datacenter.

Interesting you say that  Open wave just took most of the 1st floor for 
their operations.   They are doing a-bunch-o outsourced services such as 
mail and sms for phone companies.  City of SF is routing most of their 
fiber through 200P for outside connections to pick up Internet 1 and 
Internet 2 access.    There is a lengthy list of customers of 200P that 
are high profile that expect serious up time from 200P.

To that, the new owners, DRT has been putting considerable bucks into 
the infrastructure in the building.  A/C, power, security, support, etc.

I really would take another look at it.  Again, I would be happy to give 
you the tour.

BTW, I am a bit biased as we have our colo there and consider it a major 
peering and transit hub.   We have had pretty good experience there for 
the past 3 years that we have been there and see the new owners doing 
much to strengthen the service.

Also, I am not trying to sell it as we are sold out there and can't take 
customers at the location. :-)

Tim
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