Data Foundry Blog

Data Foundry Adds Structured Cabling as a Service

Df cabling blog

Due to the superior work our infrastructure experts have done with structured cabling for our customers’ deployments, we’ve been asked to complete several cabling projects outside our data centers. The clean-cut and highly detailed work of our cabling team has lead us to launch an official Data Foundry Structured Cabling service as part of our infrastructure services.

Read More

What Is ICANN and Why Does It Matter?

Icann

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Southern California that was formed in 1998 to help the U.S. government manage certain functions that maintain the Internet’s core infrastructure. ICANN maintains the central repository for IP addresses and helps coordinate the supply of IP addresses. It also manages the domain name system and root servers. ICANN currently manages over 180 million domain names and four billion network addresses across 240 countries. It is also important to note that which ICANN does not control, such as content on the Internet, malware or spam and Internet access.

Read More

Data Foundry Signs Coalition Letter in Favor of Limiting Government Hacking

Rule41 blog

Data Foundry has taken action against proposed changes to part of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure known as rule 41, that would promote government hacking on a massive scale. We signed a coalition letter to the U.S. Congress along with 50 other Internet companies and public interest groups, including Google, PayPal and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Read More

REITs vs Privately-Owned Data Centers

Texas 1 front 960

Data center ownership is not usually something companies consider when they are looking for colocation or disaster recovery services. Security, redundancy and construction are often discussed. These are indeed important factors to consider when making a decision, but the type of ownership a data center is under can sometimes determine these important deciding factors and others, such as the quality of managed services offered.

Read More

Data Foundry Co-CEO Awarded for Internet Community Leadership

I2c award blog 1

Ron Yokubaitis received the Internet Infrastructure Coalition’s (i2Coalition) first award for Internet Community Leadership at the Smarter Internet Forum in Philadelphia, PA today. Ron has been a leader in the Internet sphere since 1994 when he co-founded Texas.net in San Antonio, TX. Since then, he and his wife Carolyn have gone on to establish Data Foundry, Giganews(a Usenet provider) and Golden Frog (Internet security solutions). The fight for Internet privacy, open Internet and laying the groundwork for innovation are important priorities for Ron and for Data Foundry. Because of his leadership and activism to drive change in U. S. Internet policy, the i2Coalition has officially named the award the Ron Yokubaitis Internet Community Leadership Award.

Read More

It's Time to Get Your Servers out of the Closet

DF blog energy efficiency 2

Environmentalist organizations often negatively target data centers because of their high energy usage. While it may be true that data center operators have a “responsibility and an opportunity to drive growth with renewable energy,” (Gary Cook, IT analyst at Greenpeace via The Atlantic) environmentalists should actually support data centers due to the fact that co-locating is much more efficient than operating equipment in a server room or IT closet in a corporate office. Furthermore, unlike many corporate offices, data center companies take it upon themselves to operate as efficiently as possible because it is in their best interest financially to do so.

Read More

Colocation Moves: 9 Common Mistakes to Avoid

Afcom blog

Last Thursday, Houston area data center professionals assembled on the club level of the University of Houston’s TDECU stadium for AFCOM’s Houston chapter meeting to hear a panel of local data center experts discuss The Good, Bad and the Ugly: Best Practices for a Successful Colocation Move. On the panel was Data Foundry’s Houston Network Operations Manager (NOC), Joshua Acevedo, to impart his data center migration expertise.

The key to a successful colocation move is planning ahead. Most of the time, companies compile a comprehensive inventory list to pass on to their colocation provider in advance. However, in our experience, many think they have thoroughly plotted out their move when important tasks have been overlooked. The devil is in the details.

Here are 9 common mistakes to avoid when planning a colocation move:

Read More

How True Dual Power Feeds Prevent Unexpected Downtime

In 2007, a truck crashed into a utility pole at a Rackspace data center in Dallas, causing power outages and downtime for several major websites. In 2010, a squirrel chewed through power lines near Yahoo’s data center in Santa Clara, taking down half the data center. Apparently these “frying squirrel” incidents are somewhat common in the data center industry. Back in February of this year, a car crashed into a utility pole near our Texas 1 data center in Austin, causing a transformer to blow and the loss of one of our power feeds. However, because our facility is fully-redundant with dual power feeds, we experienced no power outage or downtime at Texas 1.

Read More

5 Ways to Hurricane-Proof Your Disaster Recovery Plan

DF blog hurricane

Atlantic hurricane season is upon us. If hurricanes are a risk factor for your organization, it’s time to review your company’s disaster recovery plan, or DR plan. Strong winds and floods from hurricanes pose threats to business continuity, which is why Hurricane Preparedness Week (May 15-21) is the ideal time to ensure that your disaster recovery plan is up to date. Hurricane season lasts from June 1 until November 30, and twelve named storms are expected to occur during the 2016 season. See our hurricane infographic for more details.

Read More

Fighting for Privacy in a Digital World

Df blog privacy 1

One of the things that sets Data Foundry apart from its competitors is that its founders and stakeholders are fiercely advocating for digital privacy, open internet and data encryption. We also feel that it is our duty to be involved in local, state and federal policy-making when it comes to the privacy issues that affect us and our customers. Over the past couple of weeks, Congressmen Ted Poe and Pete Olson visited and toured our Texas 1 Data Center in Austin to better understand our operations and how security and privacy legislation affects our customers and the data center business in general.

Read More