| Location | Provider | |
|---|---|---|
|
Netherlands 1 Primary location |
Amsterdam Westpoort | GYRO Center DC2 |
| Netherlands 2 | Amsterdam Overamstel | euNetworks |
| USA 1 | Chicago IL | Steadfast Networks |
| USA 2 | Dallas TX | Cyrus One |
| Australia | Sydney NSW | Equinix SY4 |
We lease rackspace in carefully selected datacenters with strict redundancy, security and operational criteria. The criteria are standardised and documented, and we have personally toured each facility we use, so we can certify that all our locations meet or exceed our minimum standards.
The backbone of our network runs on 10Gbps Ethernet. We use either Netgear 10Gbps RJ45 smart switches or Ubiquiti 10Gbps SFP+ switches. All switches are configured in redundant pairs, and we use the Linux ethernet bonding driver to create redundant connections from each server to two independent switches. We physically test redundancy prior to go-live by unplugging individual Ethernet cables, power cables and even entire switches to make sure it really works!
To monitor and secure our networks we use the open source pfSense firewall, either on white label hardware or the excellent Netgate XG-7100 appliances.
Now that the infrastructure has been laid out, we can finally connect up our servers which power our entire operation.
By carefully selecting new hardware models and following predefined hardware lifecycle policies we ensure our equipment is always up to date and reliable.
After 3 years of service we stop actively deploying new virtual machines on the server.
At 4 years old we actively migrate any VMs that are still running to newer hardware.
At 5 years old, it's time to retire and securely dispose of the old hardware.
We use off the shelf white label hardware but almost all our kit is built on Supermicro 1U systems.
We have two standard spec builds, one "Standard" and one "Fast" configuration (spec as of January 2019).
| Standard | Fast | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Xeon E3-1220 v6 4-Core 3.0GHz | Intel Xeon E3-1270 v6 4-Core 3.8GHz |
| Storage | 4 x 2 TB SATA III 3,5" 7.2k RPM 128MB cache | 4 x 500GB SATA III 2.5" SSD |
| RAID | RAID-10 | RAID-5 |
| RAM | 64 GB (4x 16GB) ECC DDR4 2400 RAM 2 Rank | |
| WAN network | 2 x 1Gbps redundant RJ-45 via on-board controller | |
| LAN network | 2 x 10Gbps redundant via Intel 10 Gigabit X710-DA2 SFP+ | |
| Power supply | 2 x 400W redundant > 94% efficiency | |
| Management | Remote iKVM with Virtual Media | |
Once our physical hardware is racked and cabled, we install our software stack, comprising:
We then provision Xen virtual machines to power all our service offerings and customer environments. A sample of what we run on our Xen VMs includes: