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I thought you were leaving before, when they had the router issue?
FTFY :X
These companies will have problems too. And so will the next two you select. And so will the next two you select. etc...
If the data center its self is doing the maintenance, you can't really blame the provider, It does seem a little odd as I have herd a lot of good things about QuadraNet.
It is just my unfortunate luck that they need to work on my 1st cabinet, which contains the router, so it effects both cabinets. Power always seems to be an issue for many, and this will pass, I'm not even thinking of leaving after 1 issue causing 2 short outages, but my bad luck had 2 other outages recently as well, so it may be the straw for some, but as a few others point out, you will have some issue if you continue to move around. I was in St Louis for 5 years, 1 issue over that time, and then in LA 1 issue over the past year and a half, so I am not real interested to give Murphy a reason to follow me around.
Seems perfectly reasonable, I'd rather my datacenter perform maintenance than wait for things to rot.
Yeah, maintainance happens. Anyone running critical stuff should have it spread over multiple servers.
Yeah, It just happens in general for all providers no matter where you are there is always a possibility of downtime and issues that happens to all providers at some point. Best of luck with the issue.
Some head in the door at the intensive care unit:
Take a deeper breath, I need to change the fuse.,,
Quadranet, blech.
Would A-B power help in this situation or are they downing all power at the same time?
@pubcrawler A + B would be on different circuits so if he had a second breaker then this would not affect him.
Who pays for this $600 month per cabinet addon? Would it help, yes, but I wish to point out the fact that in the past 18 months, this would have been needed once, at a cost to clients of $21,000
It's easy to throw ideas out, but the reality, they have to be paid for, and the LEB sector weighs which ideas are too costly or offer little benefit in the long run, to bring the client a better price. So it's not a bad idea, it's just one that would have little benefit to the client at an inflated cost.
Certainly is a cost issue @miTgiB.
Almost seems like a facility should have on-demand A-B power as needed. You know, the PDU to support it on your end on the cheap side with just one live feed and in case of changeover like today, activate the B leg power.
Would require the gear and the electrical run and circuit (one time costs), but keep it "off" until needed like this then incur charge for limited usage.
I am a hopeless dreamer though. Datacenters probably would bark about such a concept as non feasible for some reason.
Probably because paying for the installation and upkeep of the infrastructure for such a thing while only billing customers for it an hour or so ever 6-12 months just wouldn't be justifiable. I'm just guessing.
By the way i think it is generally a good idea to reboot individual servers (and perform the fsck) at least once a year. Better do it planned and at convenient time instead of getting bitten by some unexpected failure and scrambling to get several servers fixed in a short time.
@jarland, no doubt the cost of redundancy is steep. Those B leg power costs are what crushes folks.
I've never asked about the standby B leg power idea at a facility before. See no reason they couldn't accommodate.
Costs = one time PDU + electrician B leg power run + hands on if needed + config time
incident = power at KwH consumed (would require metered service or flat fixed rate)
The on demand power like this seems like a good model from a customer stand point (i.e as buyer of VPS and as a colo/dedicated customer)
incident = power at KwH consumed (would require metered service or flat fixed rate)
Presented like this, it seems like it might be more reasonable, and consumption would be constant among both circuits, they draw what they draw, no more or less when you factor A + B.
I've never seen a PDU with an A + B hookup before, but I'm sure they exist, and the cost to me should only be a 1 time charge to install, so ~$300 per 20A feed, and the PDU.
I agree with Tim about costs, but we already had the infrastructure in place, only cost is to buy redundant PSU servers.
All my E5 nodes are redundant PSU, the cost to get A + B power..... Then all the E3 nodes would need to go, so next year I will look more closely at this as I have the E3's planned to start coming out of service next year when they are 3 years old.
for 1U servers dual power add a lot of cabling mess, if I remember well your E5 are 2U...
So it's a bit better....
What you need are power transfer switches like these http://www.servertech.com/products/fail-safepowerredundancy/. They take A+B power feeds and switch over from one to the other on failure. You don't need to upgrade your servers to dual PSUs.
They indeed have power distribution units that support A+B leg power without the dual power supplies in the servers which you typically can't get in affordable 1U's anyways. Some folks dislike the PDU approach and prefer the dual PSUs.
The big question is if the units support being wired for both legs of power but only having one feed power 99% of the time. I suspect they do, although not the default as shipped config.
With that sort of setup, you just would transition/turn on the B leg power feed and bring the A leg down and remain online during the power window at the facility.
To me having the PDU unit to support this + the electric line ran sitting unused is insurance. Since you aren't pulling the Amps no reason why the facility should charge $600 a month. I'd expect a fraction of that cost for this, if any cost beyond the one time and usage. Perhaps if greedy, they'd price this at something reasonable like $100-200 a month for luxury of having it.
APC has such units for this. I haven't used them, been recommended in the far past. Probably a slew of related conversation about the equipment to do this on WHT.
Yes, it's called a transfer switch:
http://www.apc.com/products/family/?id=14
I believe there are also simplier "manual" models where you manually flip a switch to select the power input you want.
Those are exactly the current line/models @rds100.
Thanks!
That's what power transfer switches are designed to do. They only use one feed until it fails then it flips over to the second input.
Never was clear about manual intervention and flip over on the units @t3k9. Expect them to auto do the magic when running two hot live power feeds though.
@miTgiB should run the idea by the facility and see if they'll work with you on this standby power model idea. I don't know anyone who does what I proposed at this time. Hopefully they'll work with you and make it cost effective like I proposed.
I was talking about transfer switches some weeks ago (I'm involved on a project for the realization of a medium DC, less than 2K square meters), to be put as source of each rack, but prices I saw for 32+32A were a bit high. Somebody has first hand experience with them?
@prometeus, each rack with this PDU/transfer devices... That's going to be quite expensive.
It's doable for higher end pricey colo / rental. Certainly not easily done on the LEB budgets.
These devices have in the past been discussed on WHT. I'd look in archives over there and get some input from similar to larger companies using them and what they roll out. In the past APC was often recommended. Unsure how their prices compare to alternatives today.
Even if I like the experience I'm doing with the LEB market, I'm not a LEB guy and most of my business is in the enterprise world :-)
The datacenter we hope to build in one-two year will be everything but cheap :P
I will consult the wht archives, thank you.
There was a discussion about A+B power on WHT from a few providers. ATS PDU is likely to fail. It also means any power interruptions will take out the entire PDU strip. It's not per server. If you want redundant power, go with A+B.
What was likely to fail @concerto49?
Do you mean the device wearing out/MTBF?
That's what the devices are meant to do. I doubt they're prone to failures.
Interested in reading what others had to say, link please...
I think he means you need indeed redundancy, like independent power sources for each.
Like separate generator groups, separate power companies, separate UPSes on both circuits.