In two weeks we will move our hardware to another datacenter. In this message we further explain you about possible consequences and the reasons of our choices. After all, it is important for you to know where your data is.
Will Formdesk become temporary unavailable?
The move to the new data center has been carefully prepared. With the use of our spare equipment and spare capacity, we can carry out the migration without significant downtime. However, some short-term interruptions may occur (<1 min) and may cause a lower performance. Activities with an increased risk of downtime will be performed in evenings and at nights. Because Formdesk will be less redundant during the migration than usual, there is a risk that if something actually breaks down, the downtime is longer. We will do everything to minimize this risk.
When does the move take place?
The migration is carried out step by step and spread over days from May 3rd to May 5th.
Do I need to do something?
The majority of Formdesk users will not need to do anything. All that changes are the IP addresses. Some customers use our ip addresses. For example, for sending Formdesk email messages with your own email address as the sender. You or your system administrator may have registered our ip address in an SPF record within your DNS. You may also use the Formdesk ip address in your own application that does something with Formdesk, for example, via a Webhook.
If you use Formdesk’s ip address, you must add the new series before the moving, and afterwards you can delete the old ones. Our new IP series is 62.204.92.128/26 (62.204.92.128 to 190). The old series was 213.201.211.128/28, 217.195.240.0/28 and 195.86.209.64/28.
Why are you moving to another datacenter?
Partly we are moving because of Easynet’s acquisition of Maincubes (the data center*) and Interoute (the carrier*) and the associated new agreements but also recent failures in the data center that caused Formdesk downtime brought us to our decision.
To which data center are you going to move?
We have chosen for the Datacenter Group location of Delft, The Netherlands with Prolocation as a carrier, also from Delft.
How did you choose?
For the selection of a data center and carrier, we taken the following aspects into our decision: geographic location, certification, durability, security, redundancy, latency, guarantees and organization. The combination of the chosen data center and carrier complies with our terms and conditions.
The data center is ISO9001 (quality), ISO27001 / NEN7510 / PCI DSS (information security) and ISO14001 (sustainability) certified.
The data center is one of the most energy efficient data centers in the Netherlands and uses 100% green energy.
By choosing Delft, we half the travel time to the data center. While we manage our infrastructure remotely, there are situations that you physically need to be there as soon as possible.
We choose a 2N power supply. This means that we get 2 powerfeeds each connected to another UPS and aggregate. This ensures 99.999% uptime. For this configuration, there has been no power outage since the start of the data center in 2014.
Of course, all fire safety, access security and cooling measures are taken. Less obviously, there are 24/7 technicians present that may provide hands-on support.
Prolocation provides us with 2 completely redundant connections. This means that Internet traffic is sent to their core switches across different routes. Prolocation uses fiber-optic connections that enter the data center at various points. Prolocation is affiliated with Tier-1 providers, which guarantees the shortest and fastest way to the internet backbones.
* Many data centers are carrier independent. The data center offers the facility: the building, the racks, the power supply, cooling, (fire) protection. Datacenters often house many carriers. Carriers provide the connection to the internet, the are the actual providers.
