Technology - Server
The physical server is at the heart of our solution. Every virtual server deployed by Ultraspeed resides on one. Each physical server is built with redundancy in mind. In order to dramatically reduce the risk of hardware failure (a common cause of downtime in Managed Hosting solutions), Ultraspeed has dramatically altered its approach:
- No local hard drives in servers as hard drive failure is the most common cause of physical server failure. Instead, all data is stored on Ultraspeed's storage area network (SAN).
- Different power supply. The power supply unit within a server facilitates the conversion from AC power to the DC power required by the motherboard to operate the system. Ultraspeed physical servers are powered directly by DC power, the result of which is the replacement of the traditional PSU with a DC rectifier card. This card has no moving parts, and provides a substantially increased Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rate. The MTBF of the PSU is greater than any other component within the system.
Ultraspeed uses a SGI server chassis combined with mostly Intel parts. All servers are built by Ultraspeed locally and stress tested for at least 48 hours before being put into production.
Servers are built with two low-voltage Intel Xeon processors, giving eight cores in total; 16GB or 32GB memory configurations are both available. Virtual servers can be assigned resources within these parameters, and in consultation with the Ultraspeed Systems Engineering team.
Servers are configured with two physical network cards; one of these cards is dedicated to connecting to the private network, the other to connecting to the public network (i.e., the Internet). Each card has multiple gigabit ports on it and each port is connected to physically diverse networks, providing insulation against multiple path failure.
Servers are connected to a separate lights out management network; this gives Ultraspeed Systems Engineers remote reboot ability, along with full KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse). Ultraspeed has, as with all its business components, considered sustainability and the impact on the environment. The physical servers, and every component in Ultraspeed's infrastructure, are designed to deliver the maximum performance per watt of energy consumed.
