You’ve probably heard us talk about the VentraIP data centres and how we work hard to keep your websites and data safe. You’ve probably also seen us mention that we use Australia’s most trusted data centre to help us do that. But if you’re not sure what any of that actually means, read on!
(If you’re interested in the super technical stuff, keep an eye out on the blog. We’ll be posting some more detailed information soon to satisfy your desires …)
What is a data centre?
Put simply. A data centre is a physical building that contains the critical applications and data used by organisations. Although you can’t see the internet or internet-based services, hardware and infrastructure still support them. This includes routers, servers and storage systems.
Why are data centres important?
Whenever you visit your favourite websites (facebook.com, google.com, taylorswiftfanclub.com), they will be hosted on a physical server within a data centre somewhere in the world.
These servers have to be protected and carefully maintained. If they break or fail and there aren’t appropriate redundancies in place, then any of the websites or services associated with them will also fail. As you can imagine, that could have some catastrophic consequences!
Which data centre does VentraIP Australia use?
VentraIP Australia is proudly partnered with NEXTDC.
Why NEXTDC?
NEXTDC data centres are designed to a minimum of UTI Tier III standard, which means N+1 redundancy on all critical systems. This translates to extremely high levels of service availability.
The physical security includes a multi-layered access system. There’s individual authentication using combined biometric fingerprint technology and ID access cards (IDACs), as well as an extensive CCTV network and 24/7 onsite security staff.
All of this sounds pretty crazy and like something from a spy movie! But, it means that our hardware and infrastructure is extremely well protected, which in turn means your websites and your data is safe and secure.
What kind of hardware does VentraIP Australia use (and how does it affect me)?
Bear with us. We’ll try to explain this one in English …
When you visit a website hosted by VentraIP Australia, we have some pretty important pieces of hardware in place to make sure the site loads quickly. They also stop any malicious traffic from passing through and causing issues for the websites we host.
The first step along the journey is our Corero DDoS mitigation devices, which are pretty fancy gear pieces. We are the only web hosting company in Australia to have this level of security to protect our customers’ websites (aka you!) from DDoS attacks. Think of these devices as extra-big, extra-mean security guards outside a bar making no one tries to crash your party and create problems.
What are DDoS attacks?
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks occur when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system.
In English, it means a lot of traffic is being sent to one website – so much traffic that the site shuts down.
After passing through the Corero devices, the website traffic moves through to our routers and switches. Several of these pass web traffic to either VentraIP Australia, Synergy Wholesale or Zuver, depending on who the website is hosted with. There are also some additional firewalls to keep up the security – like another security guard inside the bar and the ones outside.
Finally, we reach the servers themselves, where the good stuff is – the website and data you’re trying to access.
It might seem like a long journey to get to this point, but in reality, this journey takes less than a second.
What if something doesn’t work?
We have several pieces of redundant hardware in place to ensure that if there is a failure or downtime from one device, another device will step in to take over, so you don’t notice any issue.
There are also pieces of hardware in place that take regular backups of the data on our servers, so your data is kept safe and up to date.
