Late last week, The Pit signed the paperwork with our new colocation facility, Cervalis. Having been to their Poughkeepsie facility (a converted IBM Mainframe manufacturing facility) it's amusing to note that while it's advertised as "N+1", quite a bit of it is actually "N+2" or even "N+3", because of the ludicrously high levels of redundancy IBM demanded when it had a production facility that could lose a couple tens of millions of dollars in hardware (mid-production stuff) if the power or HVAC or whatnot shat itself.
For me, though, aside from the infinitely better customer service, and the fact that it's about 1/3 as far from my residence as The All Time Suckiest Hosting Corporation Ever was, is the fact that I get to design the colo the way I want it to be.
No more 15" IBM CRT. Replacing it with a 1U flip-out keyboard/mouse/LCD-monitor tray.
No more bulky-and-inflexible Belkin KVM cables running all over the place. Replacing the KVM with Dell's 2161DS, which uses CAT-5 to go between the KVM and a little "pod" that breaks that out into the usual PS/2 and HD15 connectors.
No more hodge-podge of ad hoc cabling. Cables will have color codes for what type of cable they are (external ethernet, internal ethernet, serial, KVM, crossover, telco, etc.) and might even be labelled.
Plus, it's the simple things like having a cordless screwdriver that belongs "there", and a label-maker whose home is "there".
I plan to feel all warm and fuzzy real soon now.
Kick Ass!
The 2161DS sounds just like IBM's Remote Console Manager (RCM) . wouldn't be suprised if they were just relabled apex (or whatever the companies name is now) kvm's. Either way they are awesome devices.
I convinced work to get one for my server farm, and now the only reason I would need to go into work would be to resolve hardware problems. To bad I can't convince my manager of that tho' :)
The 2161 is Avocent's DSR2161 KVM-over-IP unit, just re-branded. I have three of them (though I only use 2) for my data center. Very nice, and will save Derek a lot of time.
In fact, Derek just describe my data center. Color coded cat5, label maker and (a pair of) cordless screwdriver. Plus a 9.6v cordless drill/flashlight. It's one of the reasons I don't complain about work hardly ever. :)
The IBM facility sounds just like the Telus facility we're moving our CoLo servers into. Totally N+2/3. Mindblowing really.