Tag Archive - Quebec

Visit @ Hypertec

September 22, 2009 in , , , , , , , , with 20 Comments

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Hypertec‘s Montreal installation. I’ve been a free software consultant for a good while, worked in quite a few public and private data centers, and visited a lot more – but I had never heard about Hypertec before. My visit was motivated by this client who asked me to follow the ‘tour’ and to advice him on their data center, installation and setup.

About Hypertec

As a rule, never visit somewhere without background info : Hypertec-BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) (they also use the name Hypertec-AS for the french version) is the hosting, datacenter & high availability services division of the Hypertec Group. The group look like an umbrella corporation which also hold the Hypertec Systems division (kind of a computer retail shop). The exact financial details are private (the group is private / NOT available in the stock market), but from what I’ve heard, the whole group have about 120+ employee and a sales figure of about 20M$/years. Those are very rough numbers, I could be totally off the track, and include all their activities (don’t know for the data center aspect only). There seems to be office in a couple locations (Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Toronto… ).

So, its quite strange that I haven’t heard about them… especially since they are located inside the old Nortel building in Saint-Laurent. I’ve also contact friends about them, and they were virtually unknown!

The visit

… and this is why I’m doing a blog post on them: because Jonathan Ahdoot, sales manager, walked me through their data center and I must say, he was able to impress me. The main surface is reserved for tier-4 dedicated cages to which you can add a small quantity of tier-2 rack (about 60) setup. As a reminder, in datacenter higher tier speak of better quality (scale from 1 to 4 – as defined by the uptime institute)(different from Internet peering tier).

The visit make clear quite fast why I hadn’t heard about them : they fish for the big ones and government (which can be considered a big one) contracts. They have rooms for rent that act as office away from office for couples of days, they have a 10 posts technical room, a cafeteria (which can become 24h) and … behold: a lounge. Yes ! a true lounge with satellite TV and couches. How many time would I have given everything (my clients own ;-)) for a nice couch while waiting for a file copy between the SAN and the server I’m restoring @ 2h AM. They also make their conference room available to clients (which is another nice feature, especially for office-less consultant (me!)).

I’m far from being a data center specialist: I build infrastructure and I rack them somewhere – this is mainly what I do. So I cannot go into big details about all the nice features the data center seemed to have or in the small point why it might not be as great as I think. However, there is one thing that did impress me: There is 5 flywheel energy storage system in the main engineering room, all being provided by electricity (Hydro) and hooked on a generator. This was also the first time I’ve heard about flywheel energy storage (FES), but I do find the idea quite neat. There must be a lot of energy lost through friction (even if they are in vaccum), but it does look like a system way more secure than batteries (UPS) for data center. Secure as in : I’ve already been screwed twice by “this was a planned maintenance and the ups didn’t turned on, or the tech turned off the wrong line”.

But the sky is not totally blue: Since they do seem to target tier-4 clients, they lack a bit of the standard facility we require in a tier-2: renting 48U racks rarely leave you the space for screen, mouse, keyboard, screwdriver… you expect them to be readily available on site. From what I’ve saw, they were either lacking or in bad shape (tier-2, again… the tier-4 look awesome). Anyway, if you got a cage (with multiple rack) and you don’t have space for tools, you have others problems.

Anyway, a couples contracts will require me to be in data center for the next few months (migrating 35U, deploying 20U, re-designing 24U…). So I guess I will be posting more reviews as time goes.

Veloroute des bleuets

July 22, 2008 in , , with Comments Off

Note : Photos à venir

Et voila! J’arrive tout juste d’un périple de 4 jours en vélo qui m’a permis, avec ma copine, de faire le tour du lac st-jean, au Québec. Pour ceux qui ne connaisse pas ce magnifique coin de pays, il est question de 270 km de {pistes cyclables, chaussées désignées, criblure de pierres, chaussées partagées}.

270 km, ce n’est rien de vraiment incroyable, mais en prennant en considération que ma condition physique laisse à désirer, c’est un miracle. C’est tout de même ma première sortie en vélo de l’année.

4 Jours de soleil, d’effort physique et de bonheur entier – sur le trajet que voici:

Veloroute

À Sainte-Monique, nous avons resté au gîte "Le petit hôtel" qui était entièrement déserté malgré le propriétaire des plus sympatique. Il faut croire que le 400e de la ville de Québec cause beaucoup de problèmes aux petits commercants de la région du Lac St-Jean.

À Normandin, nous avons résidé dans le gîte qui avait autrefois le nom de “l’Ancestral”. Le nouveau propriétaire est un homme avec un vécu incroyable et une belle maîtrise de l’histoire de sa maison, classée patrimoine national.

À Roberval, l’arrêt au gîte “À l’abrit-gîte de Brigitte”, n’est que peu présent dans mes souvenirs: je me suis couché très rapidement après notre arrivé. Je n’ai donc pas eu l’occasion de discuter avec les propriétaires. Ma copine m’affirme qu’ils étaient très intéressant et recommande leur compagnie.

L’ignorance et l’innocence qui m’habitait au début du voyage avait tout pour faire sourir les gens que nous avons rencontré :

1) En tenant compte de ne pas trop charger mon sac à dos, j’ai restreins mes effectifs transportés à du linge, une boutielle de 750ml d’eau et mon kit de photographie {3 objectifs + sony alpha 100 + trépied}. Catherine avait aussi son sac a dos avec des victuailles et son linge.

Il est intéressant de noter que nous avons rencontré PERSONNE avec des sacs à dos sur le trajet. Ils utilisaient des sacs latéraux pour les vélos, ou encore, plus fréquement, les services de navettes de bagages. Pour la prochaine fois, on va le savoir.

2)
Catherine: Vélo hybride avec des roues pour faire de la track.
Moi: Vélo de track avec des roues pour la ville (hybride).
Aucun de nous deux: un vrai vélo de ville pour faire de longues distances (roue de vitesse). D’un côté, l’expérience à été des plus sécuritaires, j’ai déjà eu de mauvaises expériences dans de la criblure de roches (pierres?).

3) Mon vélo possède un frein à disque à l’avant…. il est très important de noter que si il y a cillement, ca signifique qu’il y a une friction continue… En d’autre mot : je roule en freinant. Étant particulièrement idiot sous le soleil, j’ai découvert cette grande vérité de la vie après 60km de cillement.