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General
Data center Information
The Mc Lean,
Va. data center is a tier-one facility,
located in a building that provides well
above OC-48 (2.5 gigabits per second) fiber-optic
connectivity. This Data Center includes
telco-grade racks and wiring facilities,
as well as power backup and industrial-grade
cooling facilities.
The NOC takes
every precaution to ensure that the servers,
lines and network equipment are as safe
as possible from accidental or intentional
harm. Entrance to the rack Mc Lean room/colocation
facility is possible only through one secured
location, with staffers on-duty 24 hours
a day.
The NOC equipment
rack room is situated in a physically secure
building location, with industrial cooling
systems augmenting the room's air conditioning
for heat reduction. The node room is where
the core routers, switches, and DSUs are
located. All equipment is mounted on industrial
CableTalk racks. Dimensions are 19 in. x
76 in. The racks themselves are highly insulated
and impervious to electrical surges up to
direct lightning strike shocks.
Data
center Topology, Routing and Switching
- Hosting:
10BT/Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet
to Core Routers
- Hosting: Advanced layer
4/5 switches and content caching
- Cisco Catalyst 5500 Switches
heart of Data Center Model
- Access: Cisco 75xx Routers
connected to DS3 or above at all POPs
Mc
Lean VA. Data Center Network Architecture:
The Mc Lean
Network Operation Centers (NOC) are designed
in a robust LAN architecture to facilitate
ease of maintenance and hands-on support
while providing high-speed, low-latency
connections. High-speed Dedicated Servers
are connected via 10 Base-T or 100 Base-T
Ethernet to a core Cisco Systems Catalyst
5500 switch. The core switch is directly
connected via Gigabit Ethernet to high-end
Cisco 7500-series backbone IP routers, which
lead to multiple clear-channel 45 Mbps T-3,
100 Mbps FDDI or fiber OC-3 lines to the
Internet.
The Mc Lean
VA Data center also makes use of intelligent
switches and Layer-4/Layer-5 advanced switching
gear to provide Quality of Service (QoS)
services. Each section of the Data center
is also staffed 24 hours a day by on-site
technicians from the Network Operations
Center.
Core
Network Routers:
The Mc Lean
VA. Data center is proud to exclusively
use Cisco Systems 7500 series routers for
its backbone network.
The Cisco 7500
series is Cisco's premier high-end platform
of multiprotocol routers, which include
the Cisco 7505, the Cisco 7507, and the
Cisco 7513. These systems combine Cisco
Systems' proven software technology with
exceptional reliability, availability, serviceability,
and performance features to meet the requirements
of today's most mission-critical internetworks.
The Cisco 7500 series provides information
system professionals with the flexibility
they need to meet the constantly changing
requirements at the core and distribution
points of the internetwork.
The Cisco 7507
and Cisco 7513 feature dual high-speed Cisco
Extended Bus (CyBuses). Network interfaces
reside on modular interface processors,
which provide a direct connection between
the CyBus and the external network, and
support any combination of ATM, channelized
T3, Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, FDDI, IBM channel
attachment, multichannel E1 and T1, HSSI,
synchronous serial, Token Ring, and Packet
OC-3 interfaces.
The Cisco 7500
series runs the industry-leading networking
software, Cisco IOS software. Cisco IOS
software assures robust, reliable internetworks
by supporting both LAN and WAN protocols,
optimizing WAN services, and controlling
internetwork access. In addition, Cisco
IOS software allows centralized, integrated,
and automated installation and management
of internetworks.
Core
Network Switching Equipment:
The Mc Lean
VA. Data center exclusively uses Cisco Catalyst
5500 switches. Cisco Systems' flagship Catalyst
5500 switches are the industry's most powerful
switching solutions for high-performance
LAN networks.
The series
features a Gigabit Ethernet and ATM-ready
platform offering users high-speed trunking
technologies including Fast EtherChannel(
and OC-12 ATM. The Catalyst 5500 also features
a redundant architecture, dynamic VLANs,
complete intranet services support, and
media-rate performance with a broad variety
of interface modules.
New functionalities
in the Catalyst 5000 series support multiprotocol
NetFlow Switching for scalable convergence
of Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching, adding
the benefits of multiprotocol, multilayer
switching and other Cisco IOS network services.
Interface modules for the Catalyst 5000
series support switched 10BaseT or 100BaseT
Ethernet; flexible 10/100BaseT Ethernet,
fiber-based Fast Ethernet, and Fast EtherChannel;
Token Ring; CDDI/FDDI; ATM LAN Emulation
(LANE); the Route/Switch module (based on
the Route/Switch Processor for the Cisco
7500 router series); and future Gigabit
Ethernet. Unique to the Catalyst 5500 platform
are the ATM Switch Processor and ATM switch
interface modules and port adapters
Pro-Active
Network/Server monitoring:
Staff work
is based on a combination of machines and
operating systems, including BSD/OS, Solaris
and Windows NT. The latter, in conjunction
with the X-Windows capability of the UNIX
machines, allows technicians to perform
a great number of tasks alongside one another,
and to lessen the amount of time spent on
active monitoring and specific troubleshooting.
The monitoring
programs go to work from those systems as
well. A TCP/IP traffic monitor can send
ICMP requests to all servers on our network
more than once every two seconds. Running
in conjunction with the ping routines are
spiders that will briefly open multiple
sockets on each server and check the machine's
ability to receive mail, HTTP requests,
FTP requests, NNTP traffic, and other forms
of data.
In the event
a port will not open or respond as expected,
the program will call another routine that
will remotely access the given server and
restart the program. If the server's program
again fails to respond properly, the routine
will gather as uch information about the
failure as possible and alert the NOC technicians
on duty. The entire process takes less than
fifteen seconds.
Data
center Power Supply:
The Mc Lean
Data center uses two levels of redundant
power supply to ensure that its Internet
services are not disrupted by electrical
outages. In this manner, the Data center
can provide power indefinitely in the case
of a severe power outage. This system received
a thorough workout during the hurricane
that hit Mc Lean in 2003. The City was without
power for several days while the Data center
never experienced any downtime.
The first level
of power redundancy support is an APC DP340E
mainframe battery that activates in less
than one tenth of a second after power loss.
This battery, with an output of 40 kW/40
kVA at 3 x 280 volts, can by itself provide
power to the Mc Lean Data Center for more
than three hours.
The main line
of defense against outage is an external
SD060 liquid-cooled gas generator, a three-phase
electrical generator operating at 225 amps.
Within minutes of the APC battery activation,
our generator is activated.
The combination
of our APC mainframe battery and SD060 generator
gives the McLean Data center essentially
unlimited power capacity. The generator's
gasoline tank is 80 gallons, and can be
refilled while running. The generator, with
fuel refillings, can run for approximately
12-14 days before its oil and oil filter
need to be changed. Battery power can be
used during the approximately 1-2 hour process
of the generator oil change, and the generator
can then be reactivated. In effect, this
gives us unlimited uninterrupted power supply
capability in its data center.
Data
center Cooling:
The Mc Lean
Data Center is cooled by Challenger 3000
Liebert air conditioning units, which offers
5 tons of cooling capacity in less than
7 feet of floor space. With 21 different
installation configurations that provide
maximum air conditioning flexibility, the
Liebert units easily augment the building-controlled
and auxilary air conditioning already in
place in the NOC facilities.
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