The primary job of hosting is to keep your site up and running 24/7.  No interruptions. No slow-downs. No downtime. Maximum security.

Quality Hardware and Data Center

Our web servers are maintained in a state-of-the-art datacenter located in Chicago, IL.  The facility is equipped with with raised floors, dual city power grid feeds with backup power generators, water detection systems, and UPS & generators to ensure that client data is safe and secure.  An FM 200 fire suppression system is installed with early pre-fire detection mechanisms. The facility is staffed by administrators and security personnel 24x7x365, including biometric and key card security systems with a rack level locking mechanism.  iTec uses the latest generation processors from Intel and uses Juniper and Cisco for network switching/routing.

Datacenter Highlights

• SAS 70 Type 1 certified (audit report available on request)
• Dual-city grid power feeds, plus battery backup with automated transfer switch and on-site diesel generator
• FM 200 server-safe fire suppression system with early pre-fire detection mechanism
• Automatic temperature and climate control system with humidity and temperature sensors located throughout the facility
• Biometric and key card security system including man-traps and rack level locking mechanism
• Staffed 24x7 by SingleHop data center technicians and engineers and monitored remotely

Network

Our network is routed by the top of the line Juniper edge routers and aggregated through Cisco and Juniper switches. As a high quality web hosting partner, we have access to most major bandwidth providers, which have been selected based on routes to compliment our other providers. Our network gear is completely redundant all the way down to the uplinks that link up our cabinets, and to the providers that we have selected, along with the entry-points in to our facility.

Server Specifications and Hardware

The quality of web servers is essential to maximizing uptime. Server requirements vary radically in a number of areas including disk space, processor speed and connectivity capabilities.  In order to maintain our high requirements, iTec uses robust energy efficient servers with Intel Dual Quad Core Xeon processors, 8GB ram, Large Raid 10 storage arrays for maximum performance & redundancy along with 100 Mbps connectivity to our switches.

Minimum features guaranteed:

• Energy efficient Intel Dual Quad Core Xeon processors
• 8 GB DDR3 Memory
• 100Mpbs connection to the Switches.
• BGP4 Gigabit connectivity to multiple Fiber GigE Tier 1 Backbones.
• RAID-10 Storage Arrays for maximum performance & redundancy
• No desktop hardware what so ever
• Name brand server parts
• Never oversold

The Amount Of Clients On A Server
Too many clients can overload a server in the disk space, bandwidth and processor usage. Unlike some of our competitors iTec does not try to squeeze as many clients as possible onto a server. We gladly sacrifice some of the profit we could make by adding more customers onto a server by not adding those "extra" and thereby lowering the server workload to ensure that it is running at optimal levels.

Pro-active & Reactive Server Monitoring
Server monitoring is an essential part of what we do to proactively ensure that any potential problems on any of our servers are addressed quickly before issues arise. We have a 10 second monitoring system on every one of our servers and the services that run on them, such as HTTPD, MySQL, EXIM (Mail) and other critical services. This allows our system administrators to be notified of a failure within 10 seconds, which results in a quick resolution time to any service interruptions that may occur.

On top of our reactive 10 second server/service monitoring, we're proactively monitoring the servers health in real-time. This serves as our early warning system which allows our system administrators to quickly identify problems and temporarily kill any processes that could potentially cause extended periods of downtime. If an abusive client or script is identified as causing repeated load spikes on the server that is affecting service, the clients account is suspended until we are able to work directly with the client to resolve the issue. Clients who are identified as abusers are removed.

Nightly Backups
In the event that a server has a catastrophic failure, iTec has a complete backup all of our clients' web site data. In the event that we determine that a server has an unrecoverable system failure, we can quickly provision those clients onto a new standby server at a moments notice.

Conclusion - Our uptime guarantee and how we maintain our servers.
Server uptime is of great importance to our company. We understand that this is essential for our clients and we take uptime very seriously. Our robust hardware and world class data facility as well as the lower amount of clients we have on a server and our pro-active/reactive service monitoring permits us to run at absolute efficiency and maintain our great service record. In the event that a hardware failure is beyond recoverable we have backups of our clients' data and we are able to get their web sites back up quickly and efficiently.