Network Support for Medium-size Businesses

The QTS Data Center, acquired in 2013 from Herakles, is located in the seismically-stable Natomas area of Sacramento. The 92,000 square foot QTS facility offers clients ranging from small businesses to large enterprises a cost-effective solution for outsourcing their primary or disaster recovery IT infrastructure. A world-class Tier III data center, the QTS facility is carrier neutral, offers 99.999 percent reliability, and is staffed with security personnel and "remote-hands" technicians on site 24 hours a day every day. This makes the QTS Sacramento data center ideal for colocation and cloud services and provides a strong foundation for achieving compliance with industry and government standards for data security and network reliability.

Progent utilizes the QTS data center as a colocation site for mission-critical servers, for Progent's test lab to help customers develop pilot systems for large projects, and for Progent's private cloud hosting services. Many of Progent's most experienced consultants are based in the Sacramento area, which allows Progent to offer a broad range of on-site engineering and consulting services for QTS customers who require the expertise of a Microsoft Certified Partner, Cisco-certified CCIE network engineers, ISSIP-CISSP-certified security consultants, Hyper-V and VMware virtualization experts, and senior disaster recover/business continuity planning consultants. Progent can also help you plan and carry out a data center migration to the QTS facility by providing services such as designing system architecture, specifying hardware and connectivity solutions, on-site and on-line troubleshooting, setting up remote network management, and training your IT staff.

Features of the QTS Sacramento Data Center
The cost of building, managing, and maintaining a Tier III data center is more than small organizations can afford and more than most large ones should spend. Gartner Group estimates the savings available through Colocation at up to 35%. By eliminating the capital costs associated with data center facilities, colocation allows companies to concentrate IT spending on more specialized areas that offer better leverage for creating competitive advantage.

The QTS Data Center in Sacramento in central California is purpose built at a cost of $48M. The Tier III colocation facility offers 99.999% uptime with N+1 power redundancy and environmental conditioning, two fiber vaults connected to a dozen ISPs, and dual, self-healing SONET rings that deliver fiber via two underground entrance points and into the facility. A Network Operations Center, staffed 24x7, monitors all systems and performance including Internet connectivity, power, security, and temperature. Cardkey and biometric access control is used throughout the facility. The facility's double interlock, pre-action, dry pipe fire suppression system puts out fires in 10' x 10' grids to avoid damage to adjacent systems. The QTS facility has its own dedicated Sacramento Municipal Utility District substation equipped with four 2-megawatt diesel generators and fed by redundant substations at the regional SMUD Complex.

Key features of the QTS Sacramento internet data center include:

• Proximity to Silicon Valley
  The QTS Sacramento data center is located 90 miles from San Francisco and 120 miles from San Jose, the heart of California's Silicon Valley. This makes it convenient for companies to provision their hosted data center, saves money on high-speed point-to-point connectivity, and still provides a seismically-neutral site to for creating world-class disaster recovery solutions.
• Uninterruptible Power
  The QTS Sacramento data center features a dedicated 69 KV substation and transformer yard fed by nearby redundant substations at the regional Natomas-Area SMUD Complex. Four 2-MW N+1 diesel generators and a 16,000 gallon fuel storage tank can provide more than three days of emergency power. Each 16 cylinder generator is fully redundant (starters, batteries, fuel pumps, etc.) and kept at a constant 120 degrees in order to start, synchronize and load balance within 13 seconds of a power outage. N+1 paralleling switch gear units can transfer from SMUD to generator power in 45 seconds. 10 N+2 uninterruptible power supplies and 33 N+1 power distribution units seamlessly cover the interval between loss of utility power and delivery of generator power.
• Totally Diverse Routed Networking
  The QTS Sacramento data center features two fiber vaults located off different streets on opposite sides of the facility to minimize the chance of disconnection due to accident or sabotage. This can provide up to 12 carriers totally diverse paths to connect fiber. Dual self-healing SONET rings deliver fiber connections via two underground entrance points and into the QTS facility, from where networking is dual routed up to the customer installation. A carrier-neutral facility, the QTS data center is currently provided network service by 12 carriers: TW Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Global Crossing, Verizon, Comcast, ATT, Cogent, Integra, SBC, Century Link, SureWest, and XO.
• Redundant Environment Conditioning
  For cooling, the QTS facility includes a closed-loop chiller system with six 500-ton water cooled chiller units. 59 down-flow 30-ton computer room air handler (CRAH) units cool two raised-floor colocation areas covering more than 52,000 square feet. 13 of the CRAH units provide redundancy at full load.
• Physical and Electronic Security
  QTS is staffed around the clock by security personnel who prevent unauthorized access, continually monitor the CCURE security system, walk the interior and exterior of the data center, create picture IDs, check people into the facility, escort authorized individuals to their assigned areas and unlock the colocation space to allow access. 72 PELCO cameras monitor entrances to the building, and arrays of video displays at the front guard desk and in the Network Operations Center monitor all the cameras. The CCURE Security System tracks the location of individuals and monitors all alarms, motion detectors, badge readers, pin pads and biometric devices. Armor-plated riot glass protects the main entrance to the facility.
• Data Center Safety Systems
  Although the QTS data center is located in seismic-neutral Sacramento, where no earthquakes have been recorded and no active faults are known to exist, the facility has a steel beam support system rated to withstand a Bay Area Zone 4 earthquake. The data center's Very Early Smoke Detection System (VESDA) samples the air at the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) return units to detect particulates at 5 parts per million and will send alarms to the QTS Network Operations Center and to an outside third-party monitoring service with information to pinpoint the location of any detected problem. A double interlock, pre-action, dry pipe (no-leak) fire suppression system uses water from above and below the data center's raised floor to extinguish fire in 10-foot square grids to protect adjacent systems from water damage.
• Data Center Operations
  The QTS data center Command Center is staffed 24x7x365 with certified engineers and technicians who monitor and operate the facility, report problems to customers, and help customers resolve issues. A rules-based Automated Building Management System (ABMS) is connected to more than 18,000 nodes throughout the facility and is programmed to operate every piece of infrastructure within the data center. For example, if a generator malfunctions, the ABMS automatically manages a smooth switchover to a redundant generator and shuts down the faulty one.

Progent's onsite and on-line consulting and support services available for QTS colocation customers include:

• Colocation Migration
  Progent can help you carry out a seamless transition from your current environment to a colocation site so you minimize or eliminate network disruption. Progent's colocation migration specialists can help you to design and spec out a network architecture that meets both your operational and budgetary requirements while adhering to industry best practices for a data center-deployed solution. Critical IT issues such as security, high availability, VPN configuration, BGP, traffic engineering, virtualization, scalability, and backup/recovery are all supported by Progent's seasoned experts who average more than a decade of field experience. To download a PDF-format datasheet describing Progent's colocation center migration services, click: Relocate Seamlessly and Affordably to a Colocation Site (PDF - 104 KB).
• Equipment Deployment and Upgrades
  Progent's consultants can provide more advanced onsite services than the "remote hands" support commonly offered by colocation centers. Progent can help you replace, upgrade, or repurpose your servers and storage systems to improve performance, increase availability, or expand capacity. Progent can help you specify and source new hardware and software and integrate your system into a cohesive IT solution.
• Network Optimization and Troubleshooting
  Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE network consultants can help you design and maintain a connectivity solution that takes full advantage of the QTS data center's infrastructure to provide world-class performance, reliability, and security at a cost that fits your IT budget. Progent can help you configure, update and troubleshoot switches, routers, firewalls, and VPN appliances and can assist you in setting up efficient solutions for capacity planning, network load balancing, remote connectivity, clustering, and fault-tolerant Internet access.
• Private Cloud Hosting and Integration
  Progent's Private Cloud Hosting service utilizes the world-class infrastructure and facilities of the QTS Data Center to provide small and mid-size businesses an affordable private cloud solution that offers the protection, availability and disaster recovery features of public clouds while adding more flexibility to customize and control servers, support legacy applications, and comply with industry and regulatory security requirements. Progent's Microsoft certified consulting team and Linux experts have the skills you need to configure and maintain your private cloud so that it delivers maximum business value and fast return on investment.
• Project Management
  Line-of-business applications are ideal candidates for hosting at colocation facilities like the QTS Internet data center in Sacramento. Progent can provide the services of consulting veterans with decades of experience in senior management positions for technology management, application development, business process engineering, and business consulting for organizations ranging from Big 4 firms to dot-com startups to state government agencies. Services available from Progent's project management experts for application development, business system deployment, or other major initiatives include requirements definition, system architecture design, setting up pilot systems, design tuning, project implementation and testing, plus project review and customer satisfaction surveys.
• Virtualization Expertise
  Server virtualization allows you to consolidate equipment and minimize your physical footprint at a colocation site. Virtualization also plays a key role in maximizing the availability of critical applications and building disaster recovery solutions, both of which are major reasons for utilizing a colocation facility. For customers with systems located at the QTS Sacramento data center, Progent can provide the services of Microsoft-certified Hyper-V consultants, VMware-certified vSphere experts, and Citrix-certified XenServer engineers who can help you design, configure and manage virtual servers with high-availability features such as live migration, non-disruptive maintenance, and fast failover of virtualized clusters. Progent can help you move from legacy virtualization platforms to current ones or manage and troubleshoot mixed-vendor systems. Progent can also help you set up virtualized network environments that support secure multitenancy for private or public Clouds.
• Remote Monitoring and Management Services
  Progent offers affordably-priced 24x7 server and network monitoring and reporting packages for systems located at the QTS Sacramento data center as well as fast mitigation support for issues that are detected. Progent's ProSight WAN Watch infrastructure performance management service makes it easy and affordable for small and mid-size businesses to monitor, manage and troubleshoot network appliances like routers and switches, firewalls, and load balancers as well as servers, endpoints and other networked devices. (Find out about Progent's entire suite of low-cost ProSight network monitoring and management services for small and mid-size businesses.) Progent's server monitoring packages based on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager allow you to keep continual watch over various Microsoft servers and .NET applications and automatically apply advanced heuristics developed by Microsoft to detect and automatically repair issues that could, if ignored, eventually cause network downtime, compromise network security, or seriously degrade system performance.
• Network Management Consulting
  Efficient remote network management is crucial for realizing the substantial cost savings associated with colocation sites such as the QTS Sacramento data center. Progent has extensive experience configuring and maintaining streamlined remote management solutions for server farms, clusters, storage array networks (SANs), virtualized environments, backup/restore platforms, and mission-critical applications. For example, Progent's Windows Server 2012 R2 consultants can help you utilize Microsoft's powerful management automation tools such as Server Manager, Windows PowerShell 3.0, PowerShell Access, and PowerShell Workflow, System Center Operations Manager, Hyper-V Virtual Server Switch, Failover Cluster Manager, and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
• Application Development and DBA Services
  Mission-critical database applications or applications designed to run on public or private clouds are great candidates for hosting at a colocation facility like the QTS Internet data center. Progent offers development expertise for popular database platforms and can provide services that include Microsoft SQL Server development and integration, Oracle application design and programming, and MySQL software development. Program's Database Administration experts can help you optimize your database solution to run at the QTS colocation site by providing DBA services such as software installation and configuration, replication and synchronization strategies, storage management and capacity planning, backup/restore options, performance tuning, change management, data migration, database consolidation, security and compliance, and troubleshooting. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can also provide expert help for key application platforms by providing Microsoft Exchange Server configuration and support services, SharePoint application design and integration, and Lync Server unified communications consulting.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning
  The Tier III QTS Sacramento data center is designed to function as the heart of a disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC) strategy. Progent's senior business continuity planning consultants can help you design, implement, and test an advanced business continuity plan that builds upon the resources available at the QTS facility. Progent's disaster recovery specialists can help you to plan and deploy a disaster recovery solution that incorporates key elements such as redundant Internet connectivity, fail-over clustering, network load balancing, and continual transparent backup. Disaster recovery expertise available from Progent includes Windows Server 2019 high availability clustering expertise, Windows Server 2016 failover clustering consulting, Windows Hyper-V 3.0 support, and System Center Data Protection Manager consulting.
• Security Assessment Services
  Progent offers a variety of low-cost network security scanning services to help companies validate the compliance of their information network with government and industry standards for data security and privacy. Progent's certified security engineers can provide remote and onsite evaluations to test your colocated system for the threat levels of the open ports and services that are exposed outside your firewall. These ports and services can include email, web sites, eCommerce applications, remote access tools, or any service that requires or is granted communication with the world beyond your firewall. For details about Progent's various security scanning and penetration testing services, refer to Progent's Security Assessment and Compliance Auditing.
• The Progent Test Lab
  The Progent Test Lab is a room at the QTS Sacramento data center with a collection of dedicated computers and network support infrastructure that can be used remotely or on-site to facilitate piloting, evaluations, performance testing, troubleshooting, disaster recovery simulation, training, and other purposes to help Progent's customers successfully carry out major projects. The lab includes a full selection of Windows 2012, 2008, and 2003 servers along with Windows 7 and Windows 8 workstations. The servers are capable of remote network PXE booting using Windows Deployment Services and can be expanded to support PXE booting into non-windows environments including VMware ESXi, XenServer, Linux, and special boot solutions such as BartPE. The networking infrastructure for Progent's lab includes two separate 100mbps network connections from two diverse providers, ample public IP space to allow dedicated subnets for lab use, switches that support IGMP multicast snooping to allow the implementation of Microsoft NLB and clustering solutions, and multiple network connections on each server to allow testing advanced network configurations such as load balancing/teaming, load aggregation, and VLANs.