How our partnerships empower our customers

30 Nov 2021, by Slade Baylis

As a data centre, there is quite a lot of equipment required to be able to run everything.  This ranges from the physical servers needed so that our clients can run their web hosting accounts or operate their own virtual servers, all the way down to the infrastructure that is needed to supply power and cooling behind the scenes.  All of this requires many layers of software, hardware, and quite a bit of investment!  With the costs of doing it “right” being so high, it’s easy to see why so many other data centres instead choose to cut costs by going with cheaper options. 

Here at Micron21 though, at each and every juncture, we instead choose to partner with the best-in-class suppliers.  We do this so that we can benefit from their top-of-the-line technologies, high-end performance, and great support.  The end goal of all this, ultimately, is to empower all of our customers with the benefits that come through Micron21 partnering with the best.

To demonstrate this, we’re going to go into detail about some of the hardware that we’ve used throughout our data centre, as well as the relationships we have with our partners who supply it to us.

Partnerships – The power of ongoing relationships

When choosing what hardware to use, it’s not only the technology behind or quality of the equipment that needs to be considered.  Another important consideration is the ongoing relationship we would have with the supplier and how such a relationship will allow us to provide a better service. 

In order to resolve issues, having a partner that is willing to work closely with us, and also with our other partners if need be, can be the difference between just an impressive technology or platform, to one that we can totally rely on to host mission-critical services for our clients.  Having the latest advancements in technology is great, but if a supplier can’t support their partners to ensure they are working as intended, then there is quite a high amount of risk in using it for production systems.  That’s why with every partner that we choose to work with, not only do they supply the latest and greatest in terms of technology, but they also prioritise having very close relationships with those partners that they supply to.

This type of partnership empowers both us and our suppliers.  For our suppliers, they are able to rely on continued business as we expand or as our customers require additional systems. In addition, we’re able to assist them in catching edge-cases and make their systems more reliable. For us, we’re able to utilise their top-end technology and leverage their equally high-end support to resolve issues quickly and effectively.

Through having key ongoing partnerships with leaders in their respective fields, we are able to make sure that:

• Our suppliers gain familiarity with our systems, allowing them to more quickly support us and our clients if needed
• We have spare parts for equipment should they need to be serviced
• We’re able to reduce costs through volume pricing

To fully understand why we’ve chosen to partner with the suppliers that we have, we’ll need to go into further detail about each partner that we work with.

Servers – High performance and even higher reliability

Out of all the services that we provide, our flagship offering is definitely our VMware Cloud Server (VCS) platform.  It’s through this platform that we are able to offer one of the most reliable hosting options available - through a technology called Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI).  We’ve gone into detail about how this works in our recent article about how our clients can protect their mission critical systems with Hyper-Convergence.  In short though, built by our partner VMware, this technology allows organisations to mitigate against the risks of hardware-caused down-time for their systems.  It does this by dramatically reducing the possibility of hardware issues affecting service availability by replicating virtual servers and data between a cluster of physical hosts behind the scenes. 

This is an example of the types of advanced technologies that we are able to leverage on when choosing premium providers to partner with.  The power of that partnership with VMware doesn’t just stop there though.  Through our ongoing relationship with them, they are able to empower us to provide performance services that are of high standard and highly reliable, whilst also back-ending that with support to help resolve any high-complex issues that may arise.

We choose to partner with VMware as they help us to provide:

• Highly resilient infrastructure that our clients can rely on for their mission-critical systems
• The latest virtualisation technology to enable high-performance virtual servers
• Intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces for clients to be able manage their own environments if required

Whilst other virtualisation options exist, such as the open source platform KVM, choosing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) sometimes can mean that you miss out on some of the benefits of paid proprietary software.   This includes a strong commitment by the developers of the software to consistently release updates and features, as well as a commitment to support their partners who use it.  FOSS has many benefits, such as fostering great communities who can assist one another freely.   However, for our premium level services, we instead choose to use VMware - as we can rely on them to support us and our platforms.  That’s not to dismiss the benefits of FOSS though, as here at Micron21 we actually use the FOSS KVM to provide our mid-tier Virtual Private Server (VPS) services!

That HCI software provided by VMware still needs hardware to run on, which is where our next partner comes in.  Here at Micron21, we utilise top-of-the-line Dell equipment for hosting our high-end VMware Cloud Server environments.  Not only that, but we also utilise it for our mid-tier KVM Virtual Private Server services and entry level Web Hosting platforms as well!  That’s right, even with our entry level and more affordable services -  we still choose to use the best servers that we can get!

We choose to use Dell’s PowerEdge range of servers across the board to provide:

• The most resilient systems we can provide, to enable reliable and high-uptime systems
• High performance systems through premium CPU architecture and NVMe SSD drives
• Increased security through developments from Dell, including protection against counterfeit components, malware, and firmware tampering
• Power efficient services, allowing us to give clients access to high-end systems whilst reducing their environmental impact

Just like our partnership with VMware, through choosing to partner with this best in-class provider for servers, we are able to build an ongoing relationship with Dell that empowers both of us. By utilising this same “black-label” hardware across the board, we are able to ensure that we have spare parts available if needed.  Not only that, both of our partners (VMware and Dell) often work together, if required, to investigate issues if they arise.  This allows us to make sure issues are dealt with promptly, even in cases where the root cause is an edge-case that they’ve not come across it before.

A few years ago, a customer of ours called The Web Factory, ran into an issue with a server that they colocated with us.  One of their hard-drives had failed and needed to be replaced.  This was a simple issue for us to solve, as their hard-drives were set up in a RAID - which protects data by mirroring it across multiple physical hard-drives.  So the hard-drive was replaced quickly and everything seemed fine.  However, it was soon discovered that the hard-drive failed in a way that actually caused errors to be mirrored across to the other drives, eventually compounding and basically corrupting everything! 

It’s with these sorts of issues that having such valuable partners can help immensely.  They are available when we need them, as well as willing and able to work with us and each other to do whatever is required to get the issue resolved.  In this situation, both our partners, VMware and Dell worked with Micron21 staff around the clock, day and night, to get the systems back up and running and stable for our customer.

For more information, view our article about what happened to The Web Factory and how they weathered a 36-hour hardware disaster.

That level of service from our partners is the exact reason we choose to partner with the organisations that we do.  With Dell’s 24/7 next business day support and VMware’s enterprise-support backing us up, when needed, we are able to quickly and effectively provide support for any issues that our customers run into. 

However, the hardware and software required are only one aspect of the services we provide.  They would do little good without having connectivity to get them connected to the internet.  So next, we’ll go over the equipment that we have chosen to use for providing such connectivity.

Networking – World-leading partners to enable reliable networks

In the networking space, few brands can match the quality and reliability of Cisco – they are the worldwide leader when it comes to networking for the internet.  This shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as since they started back in 1984 they have risen to become one of the biggest global networking companies around.  Not only that, but in 2019 and 2020 they were also named the “#1 World’s Best Workplace” by Fortune Magazine.  Due to all these reasons, they are the exact sort of partner that we prefer to deal with here at Micron21. 

The Micron21 network is already industry leading, being the second largest peered network in Australia by connecting globally with over 1900 networks, as well as providing a whopping 700 Gbits of global capacity.  However, we didn’t just want to stop there.  When choosing a supplier for equipment to use throughout our network, we evaluated a large number of hardware and SDN software vendors. This included: Huawei, Dell, Brocade, Mellanox, Cumulus, HPE, Arista, Juniper, Big Switch, Edgecore and Backpack. When this evaluation was complete, it was clear who the best choice was. Yes, Cisco!

It’s through large investments in Cisco networking equipment (roughly 200 Cisco Nexus 93180YC switches) that we've helped to ensure that we are providing the very best.  With that technology and equipment, we are able to offer blistering fast uplink speeds of up to 1.2 terabits per second per rack.  Not only that, but we had a large shopping list of other features which we wanted to allow for, such as BGP EVPN, VXLAN, active-active MLAG, RIOT, VLAN Rate limiting, VLAN counters, and more.  It’s this going above-and-beyond attitude that guides us here at Micron21, which is why our partnership with Cisco suits us so well. 

Having discussed our enterprise-grade Dell servers, our partnership with VMware, and the premium networking equipment that we utilise through Cisco – another question remains though: “What about the infrastructure behind the scenes?”

Power & Cooling – Providing reliable services requires reliable infrastructure

Even if you go to the ends of the earth to make sure a service is as reliable as possible from a hardware, software, or networking perspective, that won’t do much good if your server has no power or starts to overheat.  That’s why it’s so critically important to consider the reliability of the facility that they are hosted within when choosing between providers. 

As we’ve detailed before, Micron21 is the first data centre in Australia to achieve the highest accreditation available regarding infrastructure reliability, which is Tier IV.   We’ve gone into detail about this in our Deep Dive – What is Tier IV? article, but in short, we’ve gone beyond even the highest possible accreditation to make sure our systems are as reliable as possible.  This means that we have added multiple levels of redundancy for the delivery of power to all the equipment in our data centre.  It also means that the same level of redundancy is in place for the equipment required to keep the temperature down to ideal levels in our data centre.  With all these systems that we’ve implemented, just like before, we’ve chosen premium suppliers as our partners.

For example, in order for our Micron21 data centre to provide customers with the most redundant power infrastructure in Australia, we utilise 3N onsite continuous rated diesel generators.  These generators are provided by Cummins, who are a leading provider of power systems globally and who have been operational since 1919.  Those generators allow for the continuous operation of the Micron21 Data Centre indefinitely, if needed, with 60 hours of fuel stored onsite and the ability to refuel whilst running for guaranteed power 24/7, 365 days a year!

On the cooling front, our partnerships are equally just as important.  One of the key features of our data centre is our precision cooling chilled-water platform.  This cooling platform is provided by Emerson, another leading global technology company, that have been around even longer - since 1890.  The system provides indirect integrated free cooling which allows us to save energy and provide complete reliability.  When combined with the use of Electronically Commutated (EC) fans in all Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units, this allows us to reduce energy consumption by 25% when compared to traditional Alternative Current (AC) motors.

It’s through partnering with these sorts of global leaders that we’re able to provide a world-class solution for all our clients.  Solutions that don’t just provide added reliability and redundancy, but also allow us to minimise our environmental impact whilst doing so.

Micron21 - Always choosing the best option

Whether it’s servers, software, networking appliances, or the equipment necessary to deliver power and cooling to our client’s systems, we always aim for the best. Through partnering with leading brands we are able to deliver the best possible in-class solution for each challenge that our clients are looking to overcome.  Not only that, but the agreements and relationships that we have with our partners, allows us to provide better maintenance of all our systems, as well as quickly resolve any issues should they occur. 

By utilising premium equipment throughout the data centre, we’re able to make sure that each and every system can be counted on not only for our own mission-critical systems, but more importantly, that of our client’s.  With this protection being built into everything that we do, that added peace-of-mind is no longer just attainable by larger organisations, it’s now also able to be shared by all of our customers – big or small.

Want to know more about the Micron21 Data Centre?

If you have any questions about the Micron21 Data Centre or the systems that we have in place to protect our customers, reach out to us and we’ll be able to provide the information you need. 

You can email us at sales@micron21.com or give us a call on 1300 769 972 (Option #1).