This weekend was an exciting one for the Houston data center team.

We had a planned 10 hour power outage that went off with no problems. This is the best proof that our facility works as designed and advertised. The HouDC01 Houston data center has only had two power outages since construction both of them due to the fact that the high rise that HouDC01 needed some beam repairs to the foundation next to the power vault. This required the sitting of a temporary transformer and powering the building temporarily off of the same grid that HouDC01 pulls its primary power feed from. This dropped our available power grid sources to a single one for approximately the last 90 days, but now we can get power from two full diverse and separate grids.

I decided to transfer all power to generation systems approximately one half hour before the outage was to begin. This was done so that we could deal with any bad starts and have an additional thirty minutes of time to get them started or transfered to another backup system before the building was dark. Originally I had planned for this to be our quarterly full power drop test that Zogmo does where in a maintenance window we have a simulated full power outage and allow the generators to run up to temperature with our facilities live load for one hour. Even though we have never had a bad start, the smartest decision for our customers is to transfer before and do the power drop test later. Every time we run the generator under a full load we do full PM’s which means a lot of extra cost.

Zogmo has been told by more than once consultant and I have personally been told that I am going too far on our PM program. Personally I do not think we are spending too much money or going too far with our PM program. We have weekly visual verification on fuel, coolant, and oil levels, weekly run of each generation engine, monthly full load full transfers. Yearly during the hottest and coldest time of the year. This is part of the reason that Zogmo will not go to the “floor” on pricing and can promise a 99.999% experience if you truly need it. By my estimates Zogmo’s PM program costs more than triple that of some other data center to the extremes that we go on them.

The biggest thing that we do that I don’t know of any other data centers do is a full power down load test during a maintenance window. If you look at some of the largest data center failures of recent history is that the generation systems did not start when they were called for during a power failure or glitch, or the transfer switches didn’t sense the failure correctly. Even though in “testing” they did work correctly, the only way to fully know is to do it! I have spoke to other data center managers and managers that won’t allow for the generator to even be ran with the breaker turned on when running for tests etc. They also will not trust their facilities for a live load test unless it is absolutely necessary, saying the only load that they need to put on everything is a “load bank” this is not the right thing to do, I will explain in my next post. The next time you think about a collocation facility or a provider ask them if you can be on site when they do a live load transfer or if they do “breaker drop” automatic load transfer testing regularly. Any facility that trusts its systems, which means you can trust them, should be open to this in my mind, but I know that most of the providers don’t even do “live” load testing, much lest full power failure testing.

-Linn

Zogmo, LLC, a leading provider of server colocation and hosting services, announced today it has introduced easy-to-qualify leasing for servers colocated in the company’s downtown Houston datacenter.

The new leasing program is designed to provide companies with access to high quality, world class server equipment without the expense of a dedicated rental program. Typical leases, which start as low as $49/monthly, last 24 months, at which point customers can choose to have the server shipped to their location or continue to colocate it in Zogmo’s facility.

“By introducing this unique leasing program, we hope to provide our customers with the opportunity to easily and affordably build equity in their servers,” said Linn Boyd, Vice President of Operations for Zogmo. “Leasing server equipment also provides an assortment of other budgetary advantages for businesses, including tax advantages and the elimination of periodic spikes in expenditures for new equipment.”

With server leases, businesses can take advantage of infrastructure refreshes after 24 months, and leased equipment is not required to be reflected as a debt on a company’s balance sheet. Additionally, equipment leasing allows businesses to more flexibly leverage bank lines of credit for other expenses. Other soft costs, including sales taxes, can be financed within the monthly lease payment.

During the length of the lease, customers are required to colocate their server in Zogmo’s datacenter. Leased systems consist of name brand components, and most systems are manufactured entirely by Dell.

For more information about Zogmo, please visit http://www.zogmo.com.

About Zogmo, LLC
Founded in 2005, Zogmo is a Houston, Texas-based Internet Service and Colocation Provider. The company offers an array of Fully Managed Hosting solutions, including its unique Z-Manage service. Z-Manage technicians monitor servers 24/7/365, install and configure server software, and autonomously deploy necessary security updates as they become available.

Righteous Software (r1soft.com), a developer of disk-based backup solutions, announced today it has selected Zogmo.com (zogmo.com) to host its cluster of operations and development servers. The server migration occurred earlier this week.

The move allows Righteous Software to continue its aggressive software research, development and testing schedule, opening the door to more advanced and innovative backup solutions in the coming months.

“Our requirements have very much surpassed the abilities of our previous provider, so we are excited that by moving to Zogmo, we will be able to effectively usher in new opportunities for our software and ultimately, our clients,” said David Wartell, Righteous Software founder and CEO.

Zogmo’s datacenter facility is located in Houston, Texas, and features fully redundant networking, environmental control and power distribution systems. The facility also boasts advanced physical access security and a strong capacity for future growth.