[BBLISA] co-location

[Grant Young]

I had a feeling that Hosting.com would be controversial.

I admit my info is about a year old.  I pulled my former employer's
equipment out about a year ago because of economic considerations.  My
feeling was that they were suffering the telecomm slowdown as badly as
everyone else which made their billing and customer service a bit
cranky.  I can't say I was real impressed with their NOC staff but I
didn't have any problems.

As for security...  When I went in I had to leave an ID (driver's
license) which they checked against a list of authorized folks for
access before they unlocked the inner door to the machine room.  Then
they had to unlock the cage we had our equipment in.  Not DOD tight but
adequate for my purposes.

Just speculation, but it's possible Boston.com moved out because of a
fiber cut in South Boston that knocked out the facility some months
ago.  They might have redundant power grids (which seems silly if you've
got good backup generation capability) but it's possible that they
really only have a single network feed which might be their achilles
heel.  I'd ask about that if network redundancy is an issue.

I'm glad there are other alternatives to look at.  I'd check them out in
the future.

On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 11:12, Stephen Reppucci wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Tabor J. Wells wrote:
> 
> > I disagree with the assessment on hosting.com's DC. There are far better
> > DCs in Boston including InterNAP in Somerville, L3 in Cambridge, Switch &
> > Data in Waltham and Cable and Wireless (now Savvis) in Waltham. All of these
> > facilities are much better than the ALGX DC I toured a few weeks ago.
> 
> I agree with Tabor's assessment of hosting.com.
> 
> I was the person responsible for moving boston.com there, and lived to
> rue the decision. The data center was OK, but their NOC people,
> especially the first tier, were horrendous.
> 
> Example: We were in the cage adding a couple of servers one day, when a
> NOC person in search of a clue wandered in, announcing that she had
> received a phone call FROM A USER claiming that they couldn't access
> boston.com from their home.  The clue-seeker told us she had come down
> to "reboot the boston.com server". I shudder to think what switches she
> might have tried to push had we not happened to have been there.
> 
> Another example: They had a log book in their lobby, accessible to
> anyone who wanted to wander in, where you were supposed to sign in and
> WRITE IN YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.  I always put a fake number there,
> but one day one of their Barney Fife clones was on the ball and checked
> my name against the info I had to supply when we signed up and realized
> I hadn't written my correct SS# in. He wouldn't let me in the facility,
> and they couldn't understand why I would have an objection to having my
> SS# exposed like this.
> 
> Shortly after we moved from BBN to Harvardnet, mainly to get away from
> the shoddy procedures in place there, they had a mass hiring of ex
> BBN'ers, so we ended up with exactly the same NOC people we were moving
> away from. I also had the misfortune of getting assigned a "Customer
> Care Rep" who (I later came to find out) was sleeping with some high
> level VP there.  When I chewed her out about some of the crap service we
> were experiencing, she had her consort phone my boss, and report me as
> being "unreasonable". Didn't help that my boss was a duplicitous
> marketing droid with no grasp of tech issues, and that Harvardnet was
> running huge advertising campaigns with b.com at that time...
> 
> I don't believe boston.com has moved out of that facility though,
> although I haven't spoken with people there in 6 months or so.
> They also claim to be one of the only facilities in the area that is
> supplied by two different power grids; I don't know if this claim is
> accurate anymore.
> 
> The site in Billerica (was WorldCom when I viewed it, but is now C&W, I
> think??) was by far the best location I've visited, but it was much more
> expensive for what I needed.
> 
> You also might want to check out Navisite, up in Andover. I have two
> small colo sites that I support there. The nuts and bolts of the service
> are good, although their CS leaves a lot to be desired also (though they
> have been shown signs of improvement recently.)
> 
> Good luck.
> <Steve>
-- 
Grant Young <grant at toaster-repair.com>