Merit Hosts Webinar About Merit Colocation and Merit Storage Cloud Services

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Merit Hosts Webinar About Merit Colocation and Merit Storage Cloud Services

February 18, 2009

By Brian Warkoczeski

ANN ARBOR, MI - Merit Network hosted a Webinar today to inform its Members about Merit Colocation and Merit Storage Cloud Services.

Jim Moran, services manager for Merit Network, began the event by presenting a thorough description of Merit's point-of-presence location and nearby colocation space in Southfield.

Moran described the diverse paths that Merit's backbone network has from the Southfield location and how the network redundancy makes the space ideal for Members' virtualization, disaster recovery, and business continuity activities. He also noted that Members who use Merit's On-Net Service can save money by using the colocation service since any network traffic to or from the colocation site to the Member's location will be considered "on-net."

Members who use the Merit Colocation Service will be given up to five keycards for 24-hour access to the facility and keys to their rack. The Southfield colocation facility has a 13,600 KV diesel generator that can power the facility for at least a week in the event of a power disruption.

Merit's colocation space has APC-based cabinets with adjustable racks that can accommodate whatever equipment Members place in the colocation facility. Where hot spots occur near dense server racks, air conditioners can be placed over the rack to relieve any heating issues. All colocation cabinets in the facility are connected to Merit's backbone network by gigabit ethernet.

"With regard to power, it's important to note that we do not meter the power within the data center," Moran said. "You subscribe to the type of power delivery system that you need as a one time cost. We install that into the cabinet, and then there is no metered power or unexpected cost while you use the cabinet."

"There is lots of available floorspace, and we're ready to fill this space up with your colocation activities," he said.

Robert Duncan, networking engineering director for Merit Network, added additional details about the network connections to and from the Southfield area.

"The data center has been designed and provisioned for high performance and high availability," Duncan said.

The second half of the Webinar offered information about the new Merit Storage Cloud Service. Moran and Rob Golden, vice president of research and development for Merit Network, outlined the new service and described the benefits of Merit's Storage Cloud Service.

"We call our service a 'Cloud in a Box' because among other things you know always where your data is at any given time," Golden said. "It's going to be in one of our Michigan-based data centers. It's going to be on specific named SAN arrays, and you will know exactly where it is at all times."

The new service will go live on March 31, 2009 and will feature advanced fiber channel SAN arrays and advanced capabilities. The storage cloud data will be virtualized with SAN arrays at multiple locations to make it easy to recover in a disaster setting.

"Because we're Merit and we guarantee it—in writing—you know that your data will be secure, protected and never used for any purpose whatsoever, for business purpose or otherwise," Golden said. "Your data is yours and will be protected."

Golden described the service commitment details and said that he expected storage hardware costs to continue to decline, which would translate into savings down the road for Merit Storage Cloud participants.

To subscribe or for more information about the Merit Storage Cloud or Merit Colocation Services, please contact Member Relations.

A video archive of the Webinar will be available on the Member Portal in the next few days. For more details, please see the web sites linked below:

Merit Colocation

Merit Storage Cloud
For press/media contact:

Elwood Downing
Merit Network, Inc.
Phone: (734)527-5702
Email:

Go to the Merit Network News Archive.