Our servers are housed in the McLean datacenter in Virginia. This is a tier-one facility located in a building that provides well above 2.5 gigabits (OC-48) of bandwidth per second via fiber-optic connections. Inside the facility, telco-grade racks and wiring are used as well as reliable power backup and industrial-grade cooling facilities.

All servers, lines and network equipment are as safe as possible from accidental or intentional harm. Entrance to the rack McLean room/colocation facility is possible only through one secured location, with security officers on-duty 24 hours a day.

The 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 housed. 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.

The datacenter is designed in a robust LAN architecture to facilitate the ease of maintenance and hands-on support while providing high-speed, low-latency connections.

Our high-speed 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 datacenter also makes use of intelligent switches and Layer-4/Layer-5 advanced switching gear to provide Quality of Service (QoS) services. There are on-site technicians available 24 hours a day to ensure the smooth running of the servers.

Only Cisco's premier high-end platform of multiprotocol routers, the 7500 series of routers are used. 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.

Power redundancy

The datacenter uses two levels of redundant power supply to ensure that its Internet services are not disrupted by electrical outages. In this manner, the datacenter can provide power for its services indefinitely in the case of a severe power outage.

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 McLean Data Center for more than three hours.

The datacenter's 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 give the McLean datacenter 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 the datacenter unlimited uninterrupted power supply capability in its data center.

The datacenter 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 McLean's NOC facilities.