Answer: Facility electrical connectivity is as follows:
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SF7 & SF8 - The building is dual fed from two separate Pacific Gas & Electric sub-stations. One sub-station feeds our SF7 facility, while the other sub-station feeds our SF8 facility.
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LA4 - The building is dual fed from two separate Los Angeles Department of Water & Power sub-stations. Both sub-stations feed our LA4 facility, with each cabinet receiving power from separate sub-stations.
Answer: Standard install per cabinet is 2 x 20 Amp @ 120/110 Volt circuits. We can also provide:
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30Amp @ 120/110 Volt circuit(s)
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20 Amp @ 208 Volt circuit(s)
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30 Amp @ 208 Volt circuit(s)
If you need more than 3.84 kW (2 x 20Amp @ 120/110 Volt) inside your cabinet, please refer to Question 20 and contact us for specific pricing and space options.
Answer: This depends on your current configuration and the additional circuit(s) requested, but after a signed and updated contract is received, provisioning will take anywhere from 2-5 business days.
Answer: Yes, technically, every facility has a limitation on how much power can be provided to a specific area as there is always a limited amount of power being fed to that facility. Before discussing this further however, here are a few things to consider:
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AMPs x Volts = Watts
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1000 Watts = 1kW
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A 20AMP circuit has 16AMPs usable power available
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A 30AMP circuit has 24AMPs usable power available
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A 20AMP at 120Volt circuit therefore has a 2.4kW capacity with 1.92kW usable
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UnitedLayer Cabinets are built with an allotment of 30 square feet of space corresponding to both the actual cabinet dimensions (7 square feet) and the corresponding walkways and support infrastructure such as UPSs, CRAC units, ect. needed for each cabinet (23 square feet)
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Total power fed to a given facility does not equate to total usable power for colo or managed services infrastructure, as the cooling and support equipment within the facility are also drains on this power feed
Our datacenters are built with the capacity for at least 128W per square foot, or 3.84kW per cabinet usable, or 2 x 20AMP at 120Volt circuits per cabinet. As we must take into consideration the number of available circuits we have relative to our available square footage of conditioned space we have available, if you require more than 3.84kW per cabinet, we must charge for the commensurate space associated with your additional power needs.
Answer: Power outages at UnitedLayer facilities are as follows:
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SF7 & SF8 - 200 Paul has experienced 3 separate PG&E related outages in 2007. During this time, all UnitedLayer UPS & Power Generator Sets worked as conditioned and no UnitedLayer client lost power. UnitedLayer has maintained a 100% uptime record since moving into 200 Paul in August of 2005.
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LA4 - 530 West 6th has not had an outage for the past 2 years on either redundant utility feed.
Answer: Currently power monitoring is performed within our facilities periodically throughout the day by looking directly at the UPS power display. In Q1 2008 we will install a remote tracking and monitoring feature within our UPS systems that will provide constant power draw and status information. APC 7900 series strips are pre-installed within each cabinet (
http://apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=70) and power monitoring can be performed within each cabinet remotely or by looking directly at the strip. Login access is provided by UnitedLayer after move-in.
Answer: As we have built our data center infrastructure to very exact power specifications, it is HIGHLY recommended that clients do NOT exceed the 16Amps usable on a 20Amp circuit or the 24Amps usable on a 30Amp circuit as this may cause the circuit to overload and blow. In most cases, an overloaded circuit will simply turn off, causing a power outage in the cabinet and requiring the circuits to be manually turned on.
If a client exceeds the usable power limits within their cabinet(s), including those within 1/2 cabinets with only 8Amps usable, the owner has 48 hours to reduce this load to usable power limits or face a $75 per day surcharge for the first 7 days, escalating to a $125 per day surcharge for the next 7 days, TO BE COMPLETELY TURNED OFF AFTER 14 DAYS OF EXCEEDING YOUR POWER LIMIT, SUBSEQUENT TO A 48 HOUR NOTIFICATION.
Answer: UnitedLayer is not responsible for compensating you for your damaged or lost equipment if an earthquake or other force majeure is responsible for said damages. As a result, we HIGHLY suggest clients carry Business Property coverage (including Business Continuity) in addition to Earthquake coverage for their hardware property. For details, please refer to:
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Section 1.3 of the UnitedLayer Colocation & Power Services - Service Level Agreement
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Section 1.3 of the UnitedLayer IP Transit Services - Service Level Agreement
Answer: We REQUIRE that all colocation clients carry at least a General Liability Insurance policy with a minimum of $1M per occurrence, $2M aggregate limit and $300k Fire coverage (for damage to rented premises). This is basic business insurance. Please refer to Question 24 for further details.
We also require that our clients who will be servicing their equipment within our facilities carry Workers Compensation insurance. If your company employee is to injure him/herself at our facility through no fault of our own, this prevents UnitedLayer from being pulled into the claim.
We also suggest clients carry Business Property coverage (including Business Continuity) in addition to Earthquake coverage for their hardware property.
Answer: For colocation clients, we highly encourage the use of our pre-installed remote access PDUs allowing remote power cycling of your equipment by port. After hours support can be reached in two ways; by emailing support@unitedlayer.com or by calling the Support number at 415-349-2102. Thereafter, an email response will be delivered to the Requestor, including an update on the status of the Ticket's resolution along with the identity of the person assigned to resolve it. Calls to the support number are directed to a live person 24x7. A ticket will be opened by the Support person who handles the call, assigning the caller as the ticket's Requestor.
The severity of the problem will dictate our response time. Please refer
Answer: Yes, we do most tasks within reason for free so long as it is under 10 minutes, with a limit of 2 free instances a month. We highly recommend and suggest doing all power reboots through the remote access PDU provided to you and are happy to help you set this device up. Everything else however, such as manual restarts, etc., are subject to our 10 minute rule, i.e. if your remote hands request takes more than 10 minutes, you will be charged at a rate of $125/hr (10 min = $21, 30 min = $62.50). We will do our best to inform you when we go "on the clock" or if it sounds like a request will take more than 10 minutes, but as we receive multiple "can you please just do me this one quick favor" requests throughout the day, please be aware that we must hold a strict adherence to this policy.
Answer: We currently use Nagios
www.nagios.org for all system monitoring. Bandwidth and facility power and temperature monitoring are done through Cacti
www.cacti.net. Client reports on bandwidth and power are issued once a month with billing and clients also have access to real time Cacti graphs upon request.
We plan to have a full service Client Portal, providing instant access to all this information with a variety of other self monitoring and ticket monitoring tools available live by Q2 of 2008. We encourage any/all feedback as to what functionality you would like to see within this Client Portal, so please feel free to call us and leave your suggestions at any time, as this will be taken into consideration while we continue developing this feature over the next few months.
Answer: We can provide 10Mbps to 10Gbps Ethernet, OC3-OC48 Optical, Wireless, TDM such as DS1-DS3, Wireless, and deliver last mile from DS1 to multi-gigabit via Fiber, wireless (802.11, 802.16, etc.), copper, etc.
Answer: From the network side we offer Layer 2 VLANs, BGP, HSRP, Gateway, and Load Balancing. We also offer Managed Routers and Switches and layer 4 SMTP MX, DNS (forward and reverse).
Answer: A /27 comes standard with a transit commit or purchase of a full cabinet. A /28 comes standard with a 1/2 cabinet. A /30 comes standard with our un-managed server solutions and a /29 comes standard with our managed server solutions. Additional IP's are charged at $1 per IP per month and sold in blocks of 4. A request for non contiguous IP blocks can be accommodated with a $199 setup fee.
Answer: Copper (for telecom circuits), Cat5e, Cat6e, single and multimode fiber.
Answer: UnitedLayer uses the 95
th Percentile billing method which measures and graphs bandwidth usage both coming from and going to a given customer every 5 minutes in Megabits per second (Mbps) over the course of a given month. We look at the larger of the 2 graphs (either bandwidth coming in or going out) and calculate your 95
th Percentile bill rate by removing the top 5% of all the data gathered for that graph (equates to @ 1.5 days worth of your peak traffic). Your 95
th Percentile bill rate is then the very next data point after the top 5% has been removed.
This is the method ALL Tier 1 transit providers charge for bandwidth usage.
Answer: Please refer to our Network Map for details. We currently have a 10Gbps ring throughout San Francisco, the South Bay and Los Angeles with feeds into Equinix locations in Ashburn, VA and Chicago, IL.
Answer: A hard copy invoice goes out on the 1st of every month as well as an email with the invoice for services to be rendered over the following month. For example, you will receive an invoice for the month of February on January 1st. This is true for all services with the exception of Bandwidth.
As we can not predict your bandwidth usage or overage for the upcoming month, your invoice will include what your bill for the previous month's usage. For example, your January 1st invoice will include your bill for your December bandwidth usage AND as stated above, your bill for all other services to be rendered in February.
Answer: If your expected move in date is not on the first of the month, your invoice will be prorated an amount equal to the # of days that your cabinet(s) were not provisioned.
Answer: All credits due to a client are deducted from your next month's invoice and are not to exceed one month's service fees. For complete details please refer to the UnitedLayer Master Service Level Agreement and all relevant Service Level Agreements.
Answer: Yes. A client who wishes to sign a Month to Month contract will have an additional 10% added to their monthly bill. A client who wishes to sign a 6 Month contract will have an additional 5% added to their monthly bill. All listed pricing is in reference to a 1-year contract. 2-year contracts are only accepted on a case by case basis and are subject to a 5% increase on their Monthly Recurring Cost to take effect after the 12th month of the contract and continue through the termination of the contract.
Answer: Clients who pay in full for 6 months will have the 5% surcharge listed in Question 40 waived from their Monthly bill. Clients who pay in full for 1 year will receive 1 month worth of services deducted from their total bill. UnitedLayer does not accept prepayment for 2 year contracts.
Answer: When you wish to add new services to your contract, an entirely new and updated contract is required moving forward. Whatever services you currently have will remain at their fixed pricing until the end of their contract term. Any net new services added are subject to current pricing rates and corresponding setup fees.
Answer: Yes, a security deposit is required to prevent clients from simply not paying their last month of service and moving out without our notice. (unfortunately we've had this happen in the past). We require a 50% deposit on clients Monthly Recurring Fees, not to exceed $3,000. This fee will of course be returned upon your decision to leave UnitedLayer, and can be deducted from your last month's bill.
Answer: We accept credit card payments for clients with a monthly fee LESS THAN or equal to $500. If your monthly fee is GREATER than $500, we can also accept credit card payments if you are willing to pay a 4% surcharge to offset the fees we must pay in processing this transaction. If you would like to set up a recurring credit card payment or wire transfer, please let us know and we will send the appropriate forms to get this started.
Answer: UnitedLayer provides managed solutions for servers, routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers.
Answer:
Servers - Dell 1950 or 2950 Chassis - www.dell.com
Switches - Foundry FastIron - www.foundrynet.com
Routers - Cisco - depends on client needs, though typically 2950's - www.cisco.com
Firewalls - Netscreen SSG/ISG Series - www.netscreen.com
Load Balancers - Foundry ServerIron GT & XL - www.foundrynet.com
Answer: On our unmanaged server offering, we can provision any operating system you may need. Our primary area of expertise however is Debian and our managed server offering only runs this operating system. A case by case exception can be made for those who wish to have managed server with a CentOS operating system.
Answer: UnitedLayer offers custom cages and locked cabinets in full and half sizes.
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Mesh Door Cabinets provided by UnitedLayer in SF7 and LA4 are 28"x 36"x 85"
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Mesh Door Cabinets in SF8 and LA5 will be 24"x 36"x 85".
Cabinet Rails provided by UnitedLayer:
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STANDARD - L Shaped Rail w/ Square Holes
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Custom Order - L Shaped and non-L Shaped Threaded Circle Holes
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Specification sheets on cabinets and rail types can be provided upon request
Answer: Our managed and unmanaged solutions are currently hosted within both the SF7 and LA4 facilities.
Answer: Currently, we offer basic security audits, managed backup and storage solutions along with agnostic hosted spam/anti-virus filtering for email. We are constantly rolling out new products and services based on customer feedback, so please contact us if you have any specific needs or requests.
