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Data Center Overview
Selecting the data center to house your dedicated servers hosted with SingleHop was one of the most important decisions we have made to date. There are a number of variables when considering a data center, but the following were the most important to us.

Location
We set out to find a geographical location that was at low risk to natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and so forth. That could very well have been in the middle of Iowa, but another important factor for us in determining location is accessibility to qualified employees and Internet connectivity.

With all of this in mind, we selected Chicago as our primary data center location. Chicago boasts an extremely low occurrence of natural disasters. By having our location here in the Windy City, we have been given access to an incredible talent pool. On top of that, there is more long haul fiber that goes through Chicago than any other city in the United States, which makes connectivity to the best bandwidth providers an easy, and an affordable task.

Available Power and Scalability
Did you know that power consumption for servers is growing by 20% or more per year? It's true, and with this in mind, we had to find a facility that not only had enough power for existing equipment, but was also in a unique position to bring in additional power. CCO, the facility that we narrowed down to was sitting at 3% power capacity, which gave us ample power for our foreseeable growth. The facility is also located no more than 20 feet from a ComEd power station, and a feasibility study has already proved possible in bringing additional power in.

Another benefit to CCO is that it sits on two different power grids, which in addition to the redundant uninterruptible power supplies and two backup generators, makes it a data center that we can meet and exceed our SLA.

HVAC Systems
As power consumption increases on systems, so do the cooling requirements, which made it important for us to find a facility that is capable of increasing HVAC systems. Much like power, we needed a facility that exceeded our current cooling

requirements, and also had a plan in place to upgrade the HVAC systems. CCO had twice the HVAC capacity that we required, and they have also designated space and power for new HVAC units. The HVAC units are monitored, as is everything in the facility, by CCO's environmental monitoring systems, and they also have units that are in passive mode in the event of a CRAC failure.

Security
We have millions of dollars in hardware, and our servers store a lot of confidential data. With this in mind, security was very important to us when evaluating data center options. CCO is monitored 24 hours a day by security officers. Entrance to the building is restricted to only authorized personnel, which means that physical access to your machine will be limited to our technicians. Top