Snips and Snails and Ethernet Tails

When you pull 30 miles of Ethernet into a new facility, you wind up with a comfortable pile of snipped ends, good for sleeping on at 2 a.m. while servers are rebooting (according to my co-location facility's CTO).

My co-lo is digital forest, and they're moving from the outskirts of town up northeast, where they've resided in sleepy Bothell, to the edge of Seattle--literally as the southern border of town touches their server room's edge--in a spanking new building. Spanking new in 2001, that is, when the tenant who had the building constructed went belly up, leaving it mostly empty for four years.

I took pictures with their permission of my tour. You can follow the saga of moving hundreds upon hundreds of active servers on a procession across the lake and down the highway in the wee wee hours every night for weeks on their Support blog. It's gotten quieter as they've moved virtually all of their hosted boxes that they talk about publicly and are now moving client co-lo boxes (such as mine) which they don't broadcast the identity of.

I feel for them. The technical staff hasn't had much sleep in weeks and the migration continues until mid-March.

If you're looking for a very well-priced co-location facility with top-notch people, I recommend these folks unhesitatingly. They're responsive, interested in finding a solution, and their prices are damn fine. The new facility is even higher tier than their last.