cloud/colo faq• cisco certified network associate • microsoft certified systems engineer •...

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As a leading cloud services provider specializing in virtual Infrastructure as a Service solutions utilizing VMware, Virtacore is uniquely positioned to help businesses leverage the cloud. Whether it’s for production, disaster recovery options, test and development, or virtual desktop infrastructure workloads, we have all the IaaS solutions to best fit your needs. 21355 Ridgetop Circle Sterling, VA 20166 Cloud/CoLo FAQ

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As a leading cloud services provider specializing in virtual Infrastructure as a Service solutions utilizing VMware, Virtacore is uniquely positioned to help businesses leverage the cloud. Whether it’s for production, disaster recovery options, test and development, or virtual desktop infrastructure workloads, we have all the IaaS solutions to best fit your needs.

21355 Ridgetop CircleSterling, VA 20166

Cloud/CoLo FAQ

1. How many hours a day is your NOC staffed, and how far is you NOC from your datacenter?

16 hours: 7am- 11pm ET Monday-Friday. Virtacore’s Tier 3 NOC is located 2.38 miles from our Ashburn data center Operation Team is onsite in the data center. On call support is 24x7x365.

Support Levels

Confidential

2. What are the minimum educational/skillset requirements for your NOC employees?

• Minimum of 2-3 years of hands-on applicable experience • Many of our employees have over 10 years of applicable experience. Certifications include: • A+ • Cisco Certified Network Associate • Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer • VMware Certified Professional (VCP)Certifications are considered relevant but are not substitutes for the experience requirement.

3. What is your technical support structure and escalation procedure? (Staffed/On-call, hours, skills….etc.…)

Technical Support is 24x7x365. Our NOC is staffed from 7am- 11pm ET Monday-Friday

Ticket Severity Levels

Level 1---Critical server/service down: (SEV1) • Get someone on the ticket immediately, and call/page someone for after-hours support immediately. (Anytime day or night, 7X24 coverage)Level 2---Urgent but not critical: (SEV2) • Please engage an engineer as soon as possible, but no longer than 4 hours.Level 3---Not urgent: (SEV3) • Please get someone on the issue within 24 hours.

4. Explain your facility security? (Cages, locked cabs, building access, monitors, etc….)

Physical security involves the protection of the data center and equipment from unauthorized hands-on access. Virtacore data centers utilize an array of security equipment, techniques, and procedures to control, monitor, and record access to the facility: • Monitored and recorded using CCTV • Multiple two-factor electronic and biometric authentication • Staffed 24x7x365 by security officers • Visitors & Equipment are screened upon entry

Environmental security consists of implementing controls to protect against environmental threats such as fire and heat, water, power loss, and natural disasters. Virtacore data centers are designed to mitigate and eliminate disruption as a result of natural disasters through various means: • Power – Primary & Backup Systems including UPS and Generators (minimum N+1 Redundancy) • Cooling – Robust HVAC system provides stable airflow, temperature and humidity (minimum N+1 redundancy) • Flood Control – Structure is built above sea level with flood monitoring and control systems • Fire Detection and Suppression – Multi-zoned, pre-action fire suppression system • Earthquake – Seismic Design Category A

Operational security involves business processes and procedures that follow security best practices to limit access to systems and confidential information. Virtacore implements and adheres to a wide-range of processes and procedures: • Employee Verification, Training & Evaluation • Identity & Access Management, Logging & Tracking • Change Management Controls

Systems security involves providing and maintaining a robust, controlled, and isolated platform where access to customer data is appropriately restricted and segregated. Virtacore maintains customer isolation through many levels of control: • Hardening, Patching & Updating of Hypervisor & Management Systems • Control, Segregation & Encryption of Data • Reserved Resources & Dedicated Appliances

5. Do you have any remote environmental monitoring? Do you have periodic “Walk Through” for CoLo equipment checks?

• Yes - Data center environmental conditions are monitored 24x7x365. • Yes - Periodic walkthroughs are performed by our data center operations staff and management. • Cabinet CCTV monitoring is available for customer use at request.

6. What is the level of Power, UPS, and HVAC redundancy in your facilities?

POWER • Electrical Capacity – Supports up to 15 kVA per cab; higher densities available on individual case basis • Utility Feeders – 1 • Utility Voltage – 34.5 kV Site Master Plan: • Total Suites – Each suite can be partitioned into 4 sub-suites • UPS Capacity per Suite – 1124 kW/kVA • UPS Capacity per Sub-Suite – 281 kW/kVA • UPS Configuration – 2N (no static transfer switch) • Standby Power Config – 1 Dedicated 2.0 MW/2.5 MVA generator per suite + 1 shared 2.0 MW/2.5 MVA swing generator supporting every 5 suites Total Standby Generation - 10 x 2.0 MW/2.5 MVA generator + 2 x 2.0 MW/2.5 MVA swing generators On Site Fuel Storage - 24 Hrs Standby Power Config. - N+1

COOLING • Cooling Capacity - Supports 281 kW (959 MBH) to 1,124 kW (3,836 MBH) per sub-suite • Cooling Plant -360 Tons per 1,124 kW suite via Roof Top Units with Air Side Economizers • Cooling Plant Configuration - N+1 SECURITY • Physical – Man Trap Entry • Human – 24x7x365 security guards • Electronic – CCTV and Recorders, Biometric Hand Scanners GLOBAL SLA • 99.999+% Power availability • 99.99+% Temperature and Humidity availability • 99.99+% Cross Connect availability BUILDING • Construction Type – IIB, Fully sprinklered • Building Type – 1-story, steel structure, concrete recessed slab • Clear Heights – 3’-0” plenum under raised floor; 12’-0” from raised floor to drop ceiling • Floor Load Capacity – • Raised Floor – 1,250 lb concentrated load; 400 psf (19.1 kN/m2) uniform load; 800 lb rolling load • Server Cabinet Weight – 1,700 lbs maximum • Seismic Design Category – A BUILDING CODE COMPLIANCE • Building – 2006 Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code; 2006 International Building Codes • Electrical – 2005 National Electrical Code • Mechanical – 2006 International Mechanical Code • Plumbing – 2006 International Plumbing Code • Life Safety – 2006 International Fire Code • Other – 2006 International energy Conservation code SIGNIFICANT BUILDING DATES • Base Building Constructed – 2011 • Equinix IBX Constructed – 2011-2013 FIRE PROTECTION • Fire Suppression – Double-interlocked, pre-action (dry pipe) CERTIFICATIONS • LEED Silver (Phase 1) and LEED Gold (Phase 2 – Anticipated) • SSAE16 SOC-1 Type II Certified

7. Are there any periodic disruptive facility maintenance action that occur? If so, how often?

Our systems from power, HVAC, and connectivity all the way through to the individual servers are designed to be fully redundant and thus there is no scheduled maintenance that would cause disruption. We do find occasional needs to interrupt service if the resource is incapable of supporting redundancy (ie - a device with a single power supply needs to be relocated to a new power distribution unit). These occurrences are exceedingly rare and proactively scheduled with our client.

8. What is your network redundancy architecture?

Complete N+1 Redundancy on our DC10 suites including granular redundancy on each part of our enterprise stack including: UCS cloud infrastructure, our Nimble & NetApp SAN environments, our diverse L3/Cogent/TWTelco connectivity and redundant N+1 Equinix colocation facility. Additionally, our edge connectivity is fully meshed with separate providers advertising our 65k+ IP addresses across both links. All network equipment is deployed with a redundant active-active design with fast failover and fault tolerance. One last fact is that we have the exact enterprise stack mirrored in Chicago Equinix with VMware, Nimble and UCS and we could offer N+2 redundancy if required.

Please also see network architectural diagram:

9. Are your datacenter’s carrier-neutral or carrier-specific, and who are your carrier providers?

Our data center is carrier neutral with access to 200+ carriers.

INTERCONNECTION OPTIONS AVAILABLE • Cross Connects – Single-Mode fiber, Multi-Mode fiber (62.5 micron), CAT5, CAT6, CAT5 (T1), and CAT3 (POTS); +200 carriers a cross connects away via DC campus • Equinix Internet Exchange™ 100MB, GigE and 10GigE central switch for public and private peering • Equinix Carrier Ethernet Exchange™ – Enables Ethernet Service Providers to interconnect to CENs and expand the reach of Ethernet services • Equinix Direct™ – Automated network

10. Do you have Cross-connect capabilities to other cloud providers? Specifically AWS and Azure

• Yes- Cross Connects – Single-Mode fiber, Multi-Mode fiber (62.5 micron), CAT5, CAT6, CAT5 (T1), and CAT3 (POTS); • There are also 200+ carriers a cross connect away via DC campus, including to other cloud providers such as AWS. • twtelecom can provide on-net direct connections for AWS, and Equinix can provide direct connections to MS Azure

11. What level of core services SLA can you provide, and what, if any, are client compensations if the SLA is not met? Do you have any Uptime statistics?

• Our SLA is 99.999% Uptime Annually • Virtacore provides credits for Non-Performance • For every hour of downtime to the infrastructure, Virtacore shall provide a credit equal to one day of service. This credit shall be limited to one month of service per thirty-day period. • We have internal /external monitoring of our granular resources via EM7 which helps us manage our SLA’s but do not publish this information as we are a private organization.

EM7 Platform Details:ScienceLogic’s EM7 solution is an all-in-one IT monitoring software product, comprehensive and complete in a single, unified platform. We have broken out descriptions of features and capabilities below: •Application Monitoring – holistic monitoring of all your applications, using a variety of methods to collect detailed application metrics. • Network Monitoring – consolidated end-to-end monitoring for all your heterogeneous network devices, with automated device information collection. • Server Monitoring – visual monitoring of all the physical and virtual servers running on your network, identified by server make, model, manufacturer, etc. • Service Monitoring – comprehensive monitoring of performance, availability, and risk of specific components, as well as any combination of IT resources as an overall service.

More SLA Details • The Engineering team and NOC leverage ScienceLogic’s EM7 to help ensure we can guarantee our uptime SLA and is open to sharing custom dashboards with APA. By coupling EM7 into our redundant IaaS architecture, redundant DC10 Equinix facility, and our VMWare ESX 5.5 High Availability hypervisor it becomes a whole solutions with multiple check points that make us able to offer and stand behind our 99.999% uptime SLA. EM7 is the window to the health and performance of our cloud. The underlying technology is the architectural foundation and the Virtacore engineering team are the experts who translate and ensure we meet and exceed client expectation.

12. Do you retain any datacenter certifications? If so please list.

• Yes- both internally audited and externally for: o SSAE 16 Type II, PCI-DSS, SOC I & SOC 2, HIPAA. • Virtacore will be able to share compliance documents with our clients under a mutual NDA.

13. What amenities are available for customers when they are working at your facilities?

• Food & Drink Vending Machines • Small Arcade/Game Station in break room • Free Coffee & Water • Kitchen & eating area w/ refrigerator • Restrooms • Full Bathrooms w Showers • Wifi • Conference room • Staging areas • Loading dock and shipping & receiving area

14. List your IaaS portfolio. (Storage, Virtualization, backups …)

Virtacore IaaS solutions: • Virtacore Power: Multi-tenant shared vCenter VMware Cloud o Virtacore Power is our secure, multi-tenant VMware-based cloud solution that gives you the ability to determine your own needs and resources in a flexible, dynamic way. Through our Virtacore vCenter interface, you have control of your resource pool and the virtual environment. o Build, manage and maintain your own VMware virtual environment to best fit your needs. With this pool-based option, we give you the ability to purchase what you need now and quickly scale your resources as you need them in the future.

• Virtacore Reserve: Dedicated Server blade environments with dedicated vCenter o Virtacore Reserve is for clients who require dedicate discrete hardware on our secure cloud environment. This cloud solution enables clients to maintain discrete hardware, manage subscription ratios, and gain access directly to the server hardware for their virtual infrastructure needs. This is ideal for clients desiring a solution where a dedicated vCenter is essential. We even let you install and configure the hypervisor, operating systems (OS), and application stack. o Cisco UCS Fabric using Nexus Switching o UCS High density compute blades

• CoreDR: Disaster Recovery services o This IaaS disaster recovery solution is geared toward companies who want to balance their recovery time and their costs. CoreDR allows VMware customers to use a hypervisor-based replication solutions. o Virtacore also offers Core DR with a solution called Zerto which enables tight RPO, reporting and synchronous replication for VMware workload without eating up too much client bandwidth. Demo’s are available upon request. o Virtacore also can provides geo redundant replication of all production work-loads stored in our DC10 cloud to our cloud suite in Equinix Chicago allowing for even greater level of redundancy as well as compliance.

• CoreRecovery Disaster Recovery Services o For clients seeking a robust VMware solution that allows for an integrated cloud-based disaster recovery option with existing virtualization, Virtacore provides CoreRecovery. CoreRecovery is based on VMware’s Site Recovery Manager (SRM) solution. Designed for experienced VMware users, this solution is intended exclusively for virtual machine (VM) to virtual machine (VM) disaster recovery or SAN-based replication. This solution includes shorter recovery time objectives (RTO) and automatic scripting of the failover and failback process.

• Managed backup service o Virtacore leverages PHD Virtual for local back-up and file level recovery

• CoreReplication: Nimble SAN to SAN replication o Virtacore, in partnership with Nimble Storage, now provides the peace-of-mind that comes with data replication to the cloud. Built into the CASL architecture of Nimble Storage devices is the ability to automatically and efficiently replicate data via a VPN Tunnel to a Nimble Storage array in the cloud. The replication only transfers the compressed, block-level changes over VPN to maintain data security, provide off-site data storage and reduce bandwidth utilization.

• Colocation Service o Virtacore offers dedicated secure colocation racks within our secure cloud suite

• Cross connections to ISPs and Telecom providers

Added Notes:Our solution architecture remains consistent with each product we offer. Each product is built with High Availability, Fault-Tolerance and no single point of failure. Virtacore is also the only provider on the East Coast to offer a direct Layer 2 link via TW Telecom E-Lync Services to our platform.

15. Do you have any DR services? (DR facilities to accommodate client user seats, PCs, Network….)

• 5-10 client user seats located in Virtacore’s Flex Space in the Data Center (Virtacore & APA will need to determine solution upon Virtacore/APA review).

16. Please list any additional Value added services that you can provide

• Engineering Support • Remote Hands support for colocation service • Asset management • Spare part stocking

17. Feel free to add any additional relevant information regarding your facilities and services that were not addressed in the previous questions. (Optional)

About Virtacore: Virtacore is a leading cloud services provider specializing in virtual infrastructure solutions utilizing VMware. Our cloud solutions and disaster recovery services are built on leading edge, best-of-class Cisco UCS architecture. We operate in the most secure and reliable Equinix Tier 3 data centers with 99.999% SLA uptime guarantees. With years of experience in cloud and Internet services, Virtacore has a solid history of providing and supporting enterprise cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and DR solutions to meet the mission critical needs of our clients. Virtacore’s cloud solutions are extremely reliable, secure, scalable, and easy to manage. We help clients to shift their IT infrastructure to the cloud and reap the benefits of flexibility, rapid deployment, and lower costs.

Virtacore’s four-tier security standard – which includes physical and logical security, as well as strict operational and compliance policies – meets the most stringent cloud security demands of our clients. Our numerous compliance certifications demonstrate Virtacore’s commitment to excellence and include SSAE 16 Type II SOC 1 and SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA-readiness.

Headquartered in Sterling, Virginia – with offices and facilities in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City – Virtacore maintains a broad U.S. footprint and serves domestic and multi-national customers across the globe.

Virtacore is wholly owned by IKANO Communications, a technology services and Internet access company backed by Insight Venture Partners. Insight is a leading global private equity and venture capital firm with $5 billion under management and a portfolio of 100+ technology investments, including Twitter. Insight supports visionary entrepreneurs and change agents with financial capital, hands-on growth expertise, and a network of valuable resources.

Nonprofits & Associations

Nonprofits and associations often face the challenges of shrinking budgets or limited funding to manage their IT resources. The constant burden of having to invest capital dollars into IT hardware and software to help keep your members up and functioning can be difficult – whether you’re refreshing hardware, or updating your AMS system. On top of that, keeping an already overwhelmed and undermanned staff ahead of these patches, updates, and refreshes is an issue our association clients know far too well.

Virtacore is the IaaS leader in the association market because we understand and help you tackle your business challenges. Our objective is to enable your association to deliver a strong ROI/TCO by providing an enterprise computing platform that solves the following issues: • Turning hardware CAPEX cycles into predictable and scalable OPEX monthly cost models • Providing guaranteed enterprise compute platform with 99.999% up-time SLA • Providing performance guarantees ensuring your important members and end-users are always online • Tighter security of data and data centers, giving members and end-users peace of mind • Unlimited scalability of resources on demand (Compute, Storage, Bandwidth, etc.) • 24×7 support to help extend your current IT team and always keep the ‘lights on’ • Attract more members and reach broader marketsFor many nonprofits and associations, Virtacore’s IaaS solutions are the perfect fit. We provide 24×7 support and the ability to refocus your IT teams efforts on driving memberships or better servicing your target groups.

Customer Testimonials:

Virtacore builds value for customers through IT problem solving. When you engage with Virtacore, we spend the time to work closely with you to identify and overcome the challenges associated with moving some, or all, of your infrastructure to the cloud.Here are a few of our customer testimonials that demonstrate how we have exceeded client expectations:

Q: How has Virtacore helped enable CytexOne to develop your IaaS offering and Internal Infrastructure?

A: When CytexOne found Virtacore, it was a perfect fit. Virtacore’s IaaS offerings were exactly what we needed for both our internal infrastructure and our clients’ ever-more-demanding needs. We are currently in the process of migrating our entire internal and customer ESX clusters to Virtacore because it’s more dependable, infinitely more expandable, and we don’t need to stay awake nights worrying about hardware. Virtacore has given us the ability to unshackle ourselves from the limitations of our infrastructure and capital – we can now focus on selling what we can build and create for our customers.Patryk Gallagher – System Administration at CytexOne Technology

Q: What IaaS/Cloud providers did you evaluate and what was the deciding factor for choosing a provider?

A: Service, Service, Service. Their 24x7x365 service and level of support is top notch and really helped us access the cloud. We are currently running our production environment with them. Additionally, we decided to go with Virtacore because of their robust cloud offering which we evaluated. Nimble, NetApp, UCS, VMware enterprise fabric was perfect for us. Last, they also allowed my staff to tour their data center site in Equinix DC10 and we were amazed at how well setup their NOC, security and IaaS platform is.David Cropper – CIO at Mamiye Brothers, Inc.

Q: How has Virtacore helped enable Measured Reactions to develop your Big Data & SaaS offering?

A: Virtacore has an enterprise level and extremely flexible IaaS platform with hybrid colo facilities that made it possible for us to build and deploy our Big Data based SaaS offering very easily. We have a very unique environment at Measure Reaction and support very unique clients so this hybrid model allows us to host our own equipment to convert TV broadcast signals into IP and then tie that directly to our Virtacore cloud environment. The Virtacore professional services team and cloud platform has allowed a Startup Organization to begin our our operations as a proof of concept and scale to general release. It’s a win-win.Adam Siner – VP of Operations at Measured Reactions

Q: What IaaS/Cloud providers did you evaluate and what was the deciding factor for choosing a provider?

A: We evaluated several IaaS & Cloud providers like Amazon, Rackspace, Godaddy, Peer 1 hosting & Windows Azure, but ultimately decided to move forward with Virtacore. Their Cisco UCS with Nimble Storage architecture provided the performance and growth flexibility at a lower cost that we wanted. Additionally, their customer service and dedicated account team have always been there for us 24/7.Tony Munoz – Lead System Engineer at Frameworks

Q: Why do you use Virtacore today?

A: We use Virtacore for cost effective DR and mirroring of one of our primary ERP/applications. Our main global IT data centers are located on premises in our Hong Kong and Chicago offices. We wanted an extra level of redundancy and found Virtacore’s VMware, Cisco UCS & Nimble platform cost effective with high level performance. We are using Veeam replication from our data center to Virtacore’s N. Virginia site for DR.Don Mungovan – Vice President, Global IT at QST IndustriesJeff Schenck – Director of Global Systems at QST Industries

Q: How would you describe your relationship with Virtacore?

A: We’re very happy working with the team at Virtacore – they’ve been knowledgeable, responsive and supportive throughout the entire process. The solution we’ve put together has completely changed our Company’s IT support without disrupting our business. Specifically my role at INDUS has significantly changed where I can look for ways to add value rather than spend time on risk mitigation. I no longer have to worry about our systems going down or our ability to scale and grow. Instead, I can focus on new ways IT can better service the business and improve our bottom line. Virtacore has helped us get here and I look forward to more we can do together in the future.John Foley – INDUS Senior IT Manager.

Q: Why did you choose Virtacore?

A: When K12Buy came across Virtacore, there were a few key differentiators that stood out. The solution provided the right features at a very competitive rate, which was extremely beneficial to the company. The service level agreement for uptime made the company feel secure. In addition, the ability to automatically track and make changes was crucial when dealing with on-going audits due to the mission-critical nature of their customers.Glenn Summerfield – President K12 buy