AJT's Multiple Data Centers and Industrial-Grade Equipment for the Ultimate Performance and Reliability

The AJT Web Hosting Team recognizes that downtime is not an option for your website. That's why we invest heavily in services and equipment that ensure our clients are up and running on the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week. AJT only operates the best equipment available and we are constantly upgrading hardware and swapping out older servers. At present, all servers are Dual AMD Opteron 3.0 GHz web servers with 8GB of RAM utilizing the Plesk 8.xx Control Panel system.

Any new client that comes on board for AJT's Web Hosting Services will most likely be put on one of our newer servers in the Dallas/Fort Worth NOC unless other arrangements are needed on a special case. The provider we use for equipment maintenance and other managed services is Rackspace. Below you will find out a little more information on how our relationship works with Rackspace and why we selected them to house this extremely important equipment.

• Founded in 1998, financially stable, profitable since February 2001.
• 43% Annual Growth Rate-Organic vs. M&A.
• Rackspace provides a range of solutions: configurations range from single Web servers, to full rack mounts (2u chasis servers) to fully-clustered solutions.
• Manage more than 8,000 servers for customers in 83 countries.
• 4 data centers - one in San Antonio, one in Dallas one in Virginia and one in UK
• Fanatical Support™ - a unique brand of unparalleled customer service.
• 97% of our customers would refer Rackspace to a friend or colleague.
• Have made industry history by achieving over 24 months of 100% network uptime.
• The Rackspace SLA guarantees 100% network uptime.
• With multiple OC-12 and OC-3 connections, the Rackspace data centers provide more than 3.5Gb/s of available transit connectivity from multiple providers.

Rackspace's multi-million dollar datacenters with raised floors, forced cooling, top-notch security, backup generators and UPS's, 100+ network administrators at our beck and call, 1-2 hour equipment replacement policy, 100% uptime guarantee and TIER I bandwidth via OC-12 and OC-3 connections, make the decision really easy for us. We only want the best for our clients. The best in service and equipment, high-end bandwidth and the ability to run our servers "in house" were the key requirements for AJT when selecting Rackspace as our provider.

We still do ALL server administrative duties "in-house" as our 24/7 technical support team can do everything remotely. The only exception is physical equipment replacements and upgrades which is were our partner comes in). So why use a provider like Rackspace? Wouldn't it be cheaper to host the servers yourself?

This answer is very simple....YES!

We would save a substantial amount of money if we could bring our servers in our office. It costs us about 40% more to have our equipment with Rackspace, rather than hosting it at our location. But money isn't everything and we refuse to compromise our business and Client relationships to save a buck. We watched 90% of Florida based web hosting providers get knocked offline, during the hurricanes of 2004. We were one of a select few that remained online without cause. Needless to say we took over about 100 accounts the coming days after the storms left.

Here are the major points that we considered with regards to having our equipment in a multi-million dollar datacenter vs. putting a small rack in the basement of our office:

1. Obtaining a OC-12 connection in Central Florida is next to impossible, it would probably be using a T3 connection which is about 1/20th of a OC-12 with regards to bandwidth. Our research found that our local competitors (that host their web servers at their office) are using Sprint Business Class Dedicated DSL and Bright House Business Class Dedicated Cable and another is using FDN - probably a T1 or T3 line. There are wonderful connections, but they cant even touch an OC-12 or OC-3 connection.

2. Equipment. Without Rackspace working for us, we then are responsible should something go wrong equipment wise. Our support team is on staff around the clock, 365 days a year, but now we would need a network admin on staff around the clock. We would also need lots of equipment set aside as "spares" simply you do not want a hard drive to go bad and have to wait a day for the FedEx man to bring you another. Having Rackspace, they have hundreds of network admin's on staff - many around the clock, and they have a whole warehouse of new parts - if something goes bad, they normally have it fixed before they even pick up the phone and call our Web Hosting Manager to advise of the problem.

3. This was touched on briefly above. Storms! Between the hurricanes, tornados, thunderstorms, floods and fires, we feel that Florida is the WORST possible choice to put a network up that must be online all day, everyday without even a hiccup. Mother nature is just to unpredictable in Florida.

4. Having Rackspace handle the duties of keeping the servers online, keeping the firewall's and security tight and maintaining/upgrading the equipment as needed, allows our Customer Support Tech's and Network Administrators to focus on our Clients websites. We are able to take the time and be "proactive" and do security sweeps every week looking for vulnerable instances on our servers and then we make suggestions to the Client to assist with any issues we find. Basically we stop bad things before they happen by taking the time to work 1 on 1 with our clients. And in turn, that is the level of service/support the AJT team receives from Rackspace. They are always there to help whenever they need to get involved.

5. Security. Rackspace has a very detailed Triple-Strength Security Policy in place keeping our servers and your account(s) safe and sound. Click Here to Read the Security Policy (PDF Format).

6.. With 100% remote server management, we can do everything that would ever need to be done to a server. We can even pull remote backups, restore files, re-boot servers and much much more! Our list of daily tasks is in the thousands! That is thousands of things we do do all servers each day to keep the machines "well oiled". Most people do not realize what goes on in the background to keep a networking running at 100% with as few problems as possible. It is a long, never-ending task that requires around the clock monitoring - almost like a newborn baby.

The bottom line is, we are not willing to compromise anything when it comes to our hosting business. Sure there are providers like Rackspace that we could get equipment online for 1/2 the cost, but you get what you pay for, plus our research showed us, other providers had many complaints against them, while Rackspace, being one of the largest, had next to zero complaints.

With that being said, we researched data centers for two years before selecting Rackspace as our new provider. Our first server went online with Rackspace in 2004 and we have since added three additional. (This is in addition to our 2 servers still housed with our other provider.) Rackspace gives us what we need to give you the BEST service possible.

We hope you enjoyed learning more about HOW we work. Now lets talk about how AJT, in partnership with Rackspace, can guarantee a 100% uptime network.

Without the best network, the best web applications, server infrastructures and operating system environments are crippled. From its genesis, the Zero-Downtime Network was designed with one purpose in mind — providing an unequaled and uninterrupted experience for our customers and their end users. Guaranteed.

And this is how the Zero-Downtime Network accomplishes it:

• Not using our network for any purposes other than managed hosting- no telecom services or cable TV service take priority over our customers needs.
  
  
• Using only high performance bandwidth, unlike many cheaper hosting providers
  
  
• Partnering with nine network providers to provide multiple redundancies in information flow to and from data centers and end users.
  
  
• Fiber carriers enter data centers at disparate access points protecting network from complete service failure in the unlikely event of a network cut.
  
  
• Our Network Management methodology continually monitors and automatically improves the network topology and configuration in real time based on route efficiency and end-user performance, ensuring the fastest and most reliable network connections.
  
  
• Maintaining low overall network utilization, providing resiliency from the largest Internet routing issues.
  
  
• A highly redundant network configuration co-developed with Cisco to protect against single points of failure at the shared network level (with an option to extend into customer's VLAN environment).
  
  
• Partnering with Cisco and Arbor Networks to create ever-improving methods to monitor and secure our network from intrusions.

Security

• Strictly monitored access to all data centers using keycard protocols, biometric scanning protocols and continuous interior and exterior surveillance.
  
  
• Access limited to data center personnel only without exception.
  
  
• All data center employees undergo thorough background security checks before being employed.
  

• All air is circulated and filtered every 90 seconds to remove dust and contaminates.
  
  
• An advanced fire suppression system designed to stop fires from spreading in the unlikely event one should occur.
  
  
• All cables are securely tied down with cable racks suspended from ceilings providing dual routes for all cables.
  

• The UPS power subsystem is N+1 redundant, with instantaneous fail over if primary UPS fails.
  
  
• For extended utility power outages, routinely tested, on-site diesel generators can run indefinitely.
  

• All routing equipment is housed in a secured core routing room fed by its own redundant power supply.
  
  
• Fiber carriers enter facilities as disparate access points to guard against service failure.
  

Network Technicians
Our data centers employ only certified networking and security teams that are thoroughly experienced in managing and monitoring enterprise level networks.

Serving Orlando, Florida and the rest of the world!
Call us today! 1-877-258-3746