Toronto-based Tucows is a leading provider of Internet services to Web hosting companies, ISPs and other service providers worldwide. The company started in 1994, providing free software downloads and generating revenue from online advertising. It has since grown to become a leading domain name registrar and wholesale supplier, providing domain names, hosted e-mail and SSL certificates. The firm, which sells these services to end users - companies and consumers - through a global network of over 9,000 resellers, has roughly eight million domain names and millions of email boxes under its management.
Tucows uses an extensive array of servers, storage, network and other computing infrastructure to run its business. To achieve the quality of service and high levels of system uptime it needs, its data centre infrastructure is outsourced to an external service provider.
"We outsource because of the huge capital investment required to build a proper and secure raised-floor environment and to achieve the levels of system availability and competent support we need," explains Edward Gray, Director of Vendor Management at Tucows. "With all the physical security, power, space and HVAC considerations, building and operating a data centre is a complex undertaking, and not where our expertise lies."
Due to the nature of its business, Tucows is highly dependent on the reliability of its data centre and computing environment to ensure business continuity for the large number of customers that rely on Tucows' services to conduct their own businesses. Tucows' previous data centre services provider was increasingly unable to meet these requirements, leaving the company in the position of having to find a new supplier that could.
Tucows felt that its previous service provider did not have adequate controls covering a critical aspect of data centre operations: the amount of power and cooling capacity available to its customers. With no controls in place to limit power allocation, the supplier's customers eventually began provisioning for more and more power, resulting in more heat being generated, which in turn resulted in more cooling being required than the data centre could provide. Because the data centre is a shared environment, hot spots that developed in one area of the facility were spilling over into the Tucows environment. These hot spots had the potential to shorten the lifespan of Tucows' IT equipment and create the risk of system failures.
"Having strict controls on just how much power an individual customer can use is essential to being a competent data centre services provider, but these weren't in place at all with our incumbent supplier," explains Gray. "When we began experiencing actual service outages that impacted our customers and therefore our revenue, we had no choice but to make a change."
In addition to power and cooling issues, Tucows was also experiencing network problems that impacted its ability to deliver uninterrupted service to its customers. As a very visible Web site, and because it manages a huge number of Internet domains, Tucows is often prey to Denial of Service attacks - the flooding of network traffic across the data centre supplier's Internet connection and into the Tucows infrastructure. When the supplier changed its Internet connection model by introducing a lower-quality, third-party Internet Service Provider that was not properly set up to handle these attacks, it began to impact Tucows and the supplier's other customers. To solve this problem, the supplier chose to unplug the Tucows connection, bringing down the Tucows network and thus its service delivery capability.
"Their physical security was also sub-standard, bureaucratic and difficult," says Gray, citing the examples of having great difficulty delivering new equipment to their cage and of having to phone the supplier to pass along information about that equipment instead of being able to simply send it via e-mail. "They made little or no investment to ensure we had a good experience working with them," he adds.
Experiencing yet another network outage was the final straw for Tucows and an RFP was issued to find a new co-location partner. After considering proposals from eight bidders, checking customer references and touring data centre facilities, Tucows selected Q9 Networks and initially deployed roughly 300 devices - mostly servers and storage devices, as well as network devices to support Internet connectivity.
"Q9 met all our technical requirements, the feedback from their customers was fantastic and they responded to the RFP in a professional manner that instilled a lot of confidence," explains Gray. "They were also very accommodating in what they were prepared to provide, which gave us considerable flexibility in how we designed our environment."
Tucows was also attracted by Q9's network bandwidth model based on peering relationships with more than 30 ISPs. By aggregating bandwidth from these providers and managing it on behalf of Tucows, Q9 is able to offer a far larger and more reliable amount of Internet connectivity than is commonly available.
Among other reasons that Gray offers for choosing Q9 is its capacity reservation model, which allowed Tucows to avoid the power and cooling issues previously experienced. While most co-location providers contract with customers based on space, Q9 contracted with Tucows based on power. With knowledge of how much power-per-square-foot they could deliver - and support with adequate cooling - Q9 worked with Tucows to understand what infrastructure they wanted to deploy, what the power needs of that infrastructure would be, and what amount of space this corresponded to. Q9 then contractually guaranteed the availability of the power, cooling and associated space.
"Learning about this approach and seeing how Q9 takes the power issue seriously gave us a lot of comfort, especially knowing about the controls that would be in place to ensure that we don't exceed this committed power level without arranging for additional power first," says Gray.
Once its relationship with Q9 got underway, Tucows was quickly able to rectify what had previously been their number one business pain point - the reliability of their computing and connectivity environment.
To help manage its environment, Tucows uses Q9's customer Web portal, which allows staff to open service-request tickets and check service status. By allowing power demand to be monitored in real time at the cabinet level, the portal also helps Tucows understand its power footprint, identify potential power issues and do better planning.
"The portal is a wonderful capability that gives us visibility into our Q9 environment, but it's only one of the many Q9 tools available to help us manage our infrastructure," says Gray. "It's this proactive management around the day-to-day operational stuff that makes my life easier and makes Q9 unique in the industry and a cut above other co-location service providers."
Although Tucows handles maintenance and support by dispatching its own technicians to the Q9 facility, its co-location service includes crisis management support, a 'hands & eyes' service built around Q9's 24x7 control centre. Q9 technicians are onsite around the clock, available to intervene in the event of a crisis or if Tucows is unable to dispatch its own technicians.
"After nearly two years, however, we've never had a crisis, never had an outage and always had reliable Internet connectivity, allowing us to deliver better service to our own customers" states Gray. "Working with Q9 has been a real transformation of our outsourced co-location model, and I'm very happy with what's happening," he concludes.
