Chris Allen

Cool New Upgrades at HA Hosting

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Last week saw some new cool upgrades get installed at HA Hosting.

Cooling Filters

*Pun Intended*

At the end of last week, we had upgrades fitted to our Unit 9 cooling system in the form of a new cooling filtration system.

 

As you probably know, one of the most needed features for a Data Centre is proper cooling. Having many servers stored in the same place can make rooms get very hot. Not great for servers.

The problem is that sometimes bits of dust and other very small bits of debris can get drawn in too. This doesn’t pose too much of a problem on a small scale, however, if left over a long period, grime can build up. The problems this can cause range from dirtier looking servers to even damaging them in worse case scenarios. Having the appropriate filter systems in place prevents this.

cooling filter close up

It’s That Time of Year

Now it’s turned to winter and the temperature has dropped a lot we have turned off the water part of the cooling system, as the cold air alone is usually enough. Just like us, servers start to complain if they get too cold. Thankfully, our monitoring lets us know early!

This made it the perfect time for cooling upgrades, installing new filters into our system.

With the new (rather cool looking) filters in place, we should be covered for keeping our server rooms up to the standards we want for the foreseeable future!

 

Have a question about the new cooling filtration or anything about our Data Centre? Write a comment down below or get in touch!

 

Keep in Touch

If you would like to keep up to date with what we get up to here at the Sheffield Data Centre, then the best way is to follow us on our social media:

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Should You Move to Quarter Rack Colocation?

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If you have one or two servers colocated as 1U or 2U units in a shared cabinet, you have probably wondered whether to take the step up to a quarter rack of your own. Here is how to decide.

The signs you are ready

You are a strong candidate for a quarter rack if any of these apply:

  • You are adding hardware regularly. Two servers becomes three becomes four. Each new install needs a new contract, a new IP allocation, and another conversation with the data centre. A quarter rack lets you add U as you grow without renegotiating.
  • You need your own switching. Top-of-rack switching gives you private VLANs, internal jumbo frames, faster east-west traffic between your servers, and a single point to apply firewall rules.
  • You want predictable monthly cost. A quarter rack is a flat monthly fee for up to a fixed kW envelope, not a per-server line item that creeps up.
  • You care about cabling and cooling. Sharing a cabinet means living with whoever wired it before you. Your own quarter rack is your own cable management standard.
  • You need a dedicated cross-connect. If you peer with a specific carrier, ISP or customer at the same data centre, your own rack makes the cross-connect cleaner.

What a quarter rack actually gives you

10U to 12U of vertical space (varies by provider), typically 2.5 kW power envelope across two redundant A+B feeds, your own lockable section of the cabinet, room for a top-of-rack switch and PDUs, your own cable runs. Cross-connect options if you need them. Same network, security and 24/7 access as a full rack, in a smaller footprint.

What it costs vs single server

Single-server colocation in the UK runs about £52.50 per month for a 1U slot. By the time you are running four 1U servers as single-server contracts, you are paying around £210 per month. Our Quarter Rack Colocation starts at £162.50 per month with the same power envelope and your own rack space. The break-even is around three servers.

What changes operationally

You take on a bit more responsibility. PDU placement (or use ours), cable management on your own runs, blanking panels in empty U, your own switch configuration. None of these are difficult, but they are work that the shared cabinet operator was quietly doing for you. The trade-off is faster, cleaner growth.

When to stay on single-server colocation

You are probably better staying on Single Server Colocation if you have one or two servers and no concrete plan to add more, or if your workload is small enough that managed VPS would actually fit better than physical hardware. Quarter rack is a good investment when you have growth visibility.

The upgrade path

Most customers upgrade quarter to half rack as kW or U fills, then half to full. A full 45U cabinet supports the most dense deployments. The same Sheffield data centre, same engineering team, same Tier 1 network, just more space.

Talk to us if you are sitting at three or four single-server contracts and the next install is making you hesitate. We can quote a quarter rack migration that includes the move itself under remote hands so your downtime is measured in minutes.

Backup Utility – More Than Just Recovery

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Online Backup Utility – More Than Just Recovery

 

Online Backup. Nowadays I think almost everybody knows what it is (whether they have it or not is a different question…). Most people also know that it can be used to restore data when data loss is suffered. Correct, this is its core purpose after all. But what about if you never experience data loss and never have to restore? Are you wasting your money on something you’ve never used? How about we tell you how to get some extra backup utility?

If you’ve never had to back up even once after a long period of time then consider yourself lucky! And just to clarify, just because you haven’t had to back up yet – it doesn’t mean you won’t have to! We ALWAYS recommend having some sort of backup solution in place.

But on the days/months/years you aren’t restoring from your online backup, here are a few ways you can gain some extra online backup utility.

 

Extra Backup Utility – Data That’s Convenient

The primary feature of backup is to be able to restore from a previously saved version of your data. We all know this. What you might not have thought of is that is using that same functionality to your advantage when you DON’T need to restore.

This essentially works like any other cloud storage, upload your file at one place – then you can download it from anywhere else. While this seems obvious, a lot of people get in their mind is ‘backup is for recovery’. There is nothing stopping you from getting a bit of extra utility out of it. A bit more ‘bang for your buck’ as it were. And because of versioning, you will have access to your data from different dates, should you need it.

 

The Benefit of Digital Storage Over Physical

This is another one that when you stop to think about it, seems like an obvious benefit! If all your data is backed up online, then that means you don’t have to invest in physical storage which you then have to look after and keep track of.

It’s easy to put some documents you need on a USB drive and then either damaged or misplaced it. We’ve all done it. Or even the to the more extremes of theft. And while we recommend keeping copies of your data in 3 places (the original and two copies), having your first copy of your data online means:

  • You’re not having to buy hardware, saving you money
  • You’re not having to look after multiple drives etc
  • You can access your data from anywhere with an internet connection

 

It’s a Lot Easier to Manage

A big bonus to having an online backup is that often a lot of software for it these days can be automated. This obviously means once set up a daily backup, for example, will just do itself. Sounds like an obvious feature, right?

But what about managing versions of backups? Trying to do this yourself across multiple physical disks or drives would be tedious and a nightmare to keep them all up to date. Again, most online backup software will version and keep a record of them. This makes sorting and storing your versions easy – leaving the only thing for you to do choose what version you want to restore from.

 

Peace of Mind

Backup is a type of insurance for your data. Even if you never have to use it (consider yourself lucky!) it’s always a good idea to have it in case you need it. With that said, as soon as you have a working backup system in place, you can rest easy knowing your data is safe.

Even if you never have to restore from it, isn’t the comfort of knowing your business with never be significantly impacted by data loss worth it? Nobody likes to live worrying about the ‘but what-ifs.’

 

Your Data in Safe Hands

Another bonus in addition to having the security of a backup is the fact that you’ll have a copy of your data offsite.

The reason this is good is that it means in the unfortunate case of a fire, flood, theft etc. you’ll still have a copy of your data available. This helps to reduce the likelihood of you losing all your data and potential facing the ruin of your business! We find it’s always better to be safe than sorry!

 

Keep Updated

There is our list of just a few of the additional benefits of having an online backup. We hope you found some the extra backup utility you can use interesting. If you would like to find more about backup you can visit our series of blogs on backup here.

The best way to stay up to date with what we’re doing is to follow us on social media:

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1 Year Later at HA Hosting

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Looking Back at the Past Year

 

Hi everyone, Chris here, it’s been a good while since I’ve written one of these more personal update-style blogs!

As of last week, I’ve officially been working at HA Hosting for more than a year now! It doesn’t seem that long ago since I first started! How time flies when you’re having fun, or so the saying goes.

I thought I’d take a moment to briefly chat about how this last year has gone for me and the marketing side of HA Hosting as a whole.

 

A Quick Recap

Just to quickly remind you how things started, a year ago I was hired to help HA Hosting with marketing, whilst also being trained by Watertight Marketing with monthly masterclasses. The goal was to help fix our marketing overall – think less about sales and more how we present ourselves generally (website, social media, emails etc).

 

How Are Things Now?

This is a very brief look at how we’re looking (at least in my opinion) overall, one year later!

– We have a new, much better website

– There are now fairly regular updates to the website

– Our social media now has regular content posted daily

– Our social media pages are now a collection of useful info about backup, colo, VPS, hosting

– We now have frequent blogs on the website

– We have several videos on our website to help with topics like backup etc

– We’ve made some major headway on how we present our products/info on our website

– A more active social media that can act as a less formal communication channel for you

 

What’s in Store for the Next Year?

While we’ve certainly come leaps and bounds from where we were this time last year, we still have a long way to go! Things can always be improved and that’s what we intend to do! There is a load of things we want to implement and tweak throughout the next year, all of which should make any experiences you have with us just that little bit better.

 

We Want Your Help

One thing we want to try and do more of next year is getting feedback from you! Is there something we do well that you really like, we want to know! Equally, if there is something you don’t like or feel could be improved, let us know that too! We want to improve and make things better for you or equally double down on the things we do well. If there is anything that comes to mind right now, drop us a comment at the bottom of this blog. We’ll be asking for feedback throughout the year, so if something crops up later on, be sure to let us know and we’ll do our best to help make things better for you and us.

 

Final Thoughts…

To nicely round off this blog before it gets too long, here are a couple of thoughts of mine, reflecting over the last year.

Getting into both marketing and the IT industry has been a big change of pace for me. I’ve never been in either industry before this year and had intentions of getting into the film industry straight out of Uni…However, I’m glad I did get here.

Being put into marketing has opened my eyes on so many things and I enjoy doing it a lot now! Being left almost solely in charge of the marketing is definitely challenging and has been (and still is a huge learning curve) but through trial and error and keeping up with trying new things, I think we’re finally making some decent progress!

 

I’ll stop now before I ramble on anymore and this blog post gets way too long! 😂

 

I look forward to what we will achieve in the next year and how things will change. So, until the next update from me, it was good to chat with you again.

Thanks,

Chris

The Benefits of UK Single Server Colocation

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Single-server colocation, putting your own server hardware in a data centre cabinet rented by the U, sits in a useful middle ground between full-rack colocation and managed cloud hosting. For the right workload it is the most cost-effective and predictable option you have. Here are the practical benefits.

1. You own the hardware

Cloud hosting bills you forever for compute you use. Colocation bills you for space, power and network only. After 18 to 24 months of cloud spend you have usually paid for an equivalent server outright, but in colocation you still own it. For long-lived workloads this is dramatically cheaper over a typical four to five year hardware lifecycle.

2. Predictable monthly cost

One server, one slot, one monthly invoice. No autoscaling bills, no surprise egress charges, no per-IOPS storage costs. Our Single Server Colocation starts at £52.50 per month with A+B power redundancy and a sensible bandwidth allowance included.

3. Full control of the stack

Your hardware, your operating system, your hypervisor (if any), your application. No multi-tenant noisy neighbour. No cloud provider’s idea of how your workload should be scheduled. If you need to install a specific Linux kernel or run an older Windows Server build for a vendor compliance reason, you can.

4. UK data sovereignty

Your data lives in our ISO 27001 Sheffield data centre. UK-resident, UK-managed by our own engineering team, no AWS region puzzles, no overseas hops. For GDPR, ICO compliance, and any sector with data residency requirements (finance, healthcare, public sector), this matters and can be evidenced.

5. Real physical security

24/7 access by prior arrangement, photo ID at reception, visitor log, internal CCTV, locked cabinets. ISO 27001 certified facility with annual audits. Worth knowing what you are getting for the security spend.

6. Tier 1 network

Multiple Tier 1 carriers, BGP peering, low latency to UK ISPs. Standard ports unmetered with no 95th-percentile billing tricks. Add cross-connects to other carriers if you have specific peering needs.

7. Remote hands when you need it

Most issues do not need you physically on-site. Our engineers can swap a drive, power-cycle a server, check a cable or attach a crash cart console under remote hands. The first 30 minutes per month are typically included in single-server contracts; further work is billed in 15-minute increments.

8. Room to grow

Start at 1U, expand to 2U or 4U as needed, then move to a Quarter Rack when you need three servers or more. The same data centre, same network, same engineering team. No platform migration needed when you scale up.

9. Hardware refresh is on your timeline

Cloud forces you onto whatever generation the provider has deployed. With your own hardware you refresh on a schedule that suits your tax treatment and your application lifecycle. Three-year-old kit you still trust can keep paying for itself in colocation, where in the cloud the equivalent instance type would have been deprecated and re-priced multiple times.

Where it does not fit

Single-server colocation is not the right answer if your workload is bursty (cloud auto-scaling earns its premium for spiky traffic) or if you do not want to own and operate hardware at all (use our Virtual Servers instead). For everything in between, especially long-lived production workloads with predictable resource needs, single-server colocation is hard to beat on price.

Pricing summary

From £52.50 per month for 1U, our Single Server Colocation in our UK Sheffield data centre. No setup fees, monthly contracts. Free remote hands on the first 30 minutes per month per contract. Talk to us about your hardware spec and we will size and quote the same working day.

What is a Data Centre? | HA Hosting Guide

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What is a Data Centre?

We’ve talked about Colocation a lot, but we’ve never really dedicated anything to explaining what a Data Centre is! I think it’s about time, don’t you?

 

Put simply, a Data Centre is a data storage Facility. You pay an annual or monthly typically, and in return, your data is securely stored. This could be things like Virtual Servers, Backup and Hosting. One of the big jobs they do is Colocation Server Hosting. This is where you give your physical servers to a Data Centre who will keep it’s secure and maintain its uptime.

Most Data Centres will have measures and guarantees in place so that your server(s) always get:
– Power
– Internet
– Cooling

Data Centres are specifically made for handling large amounts of servers and data storage and should have solutions in place to ensure the 3 necessities for your server are always there! This can be things like backup power in the form of UPS’ (Uninterruptible Power Source), generators, multiple internet connections and regular maintenance and monitoring of Data Centre conditions.

 

Why Use a Data Centre?

One of the big benefits is for Colocation hosting. You don’t have to pay for, build and manage the infrastructure needed to host servers. Server hosting, especially on larger scales, can be expensive and take up a lot of room!

Take a look at the infographic below that we made to show off some of the cost.

The cost of colocation infographic at data centres

Often Colo can be a lot cheaper, particularly if you’re on the smaller scale of servers. A Data Centre is made specifically for that and so can accommodate a huge number of servers, so they can split the large costs needed. This is why compared to the graphic above, it seems much cheaper!

 

External = Security

Another benefit that’s often overlooked is that it’s often more secure to store your data (or at least a copy of it) offsite.
The reason this helps make your data or servers more secure is that in the case of an incident at your office/home your data or server is still safe! This can help avoid many digital and physical disasters from happening! Physical disasters are often forgot about, but a fire, flood or theft can be devastating if all your data is affected.

 

Learn More About What We Do

If you want to know any more about what a Data Centre is or what we do at our Sheffield Data Centre, then you can find more information on our website. Alternatively, you can get in touch with us here or via our social media:
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