DATA CENTRE CHECKLIST

Precept are widely recognised as a trusted partner by many organisations to handle server hosting and co-location

This is the checklist that Precept IT use to ensure appropriate physical security and environment controls are deployed for the data center.

Proximity card only with restricted access to company staff. Daytime access is escorted, out of hours access is by appointment only.

By appointment only. For out of hours scheduled access this is either by escort or time restricted pass.

Within Atlas communications, data centre engineering staff only, however physical access to equipment by our staff is driven solely by PRECEPT IT customer requirements and permission to access racks.

Racks are locked. Where customer is taking sufficient space (from 1/4 rack/10U and above) individually locked compartments are available.

All racks are electrically grounded via earth wiring

Precept IT no longer uses Tape backups. Tapes have proven on average to result in failures of 15-20% at crucial data recovery moments. Precept IT uses network related storage on high availability backup servers located onsite in the Heron Road Data Centre and Offsite in another datacentre. The data is synchronized nightly between data centres.

Precept IT shall not keep any data relating to a client longer than the express wishes of the client. Precept IT will respect any existing retention policy in place by the client. Should any retention policy undermine Precept IT’ ability to provide an adequate service, the client will be notified of the risk they are undertaking.

All data stored on the Precept IT backup servers is stored on an encrypted file system so if someone was to physically remove the servers from the Colo facility, they would take more than 1×108 years to decrypt the data at current computer speeds.

All customers are formally notified of any data centre issues via email, text or phone call of any security breach usually within 48 hours. This would be followed by formal letter from Atlas Communications as the owner of the building.

Atlas maintains core network in terms of Internet access access and within data centre equipment. This is monitored via threshold monitoring for attack or pre-attack activity. In the event of any attack Atlas has in place a number of measures to ensure that attacks are blocked, deflected or outrun.Precept IT uses Nagios Monitoring and IDS to monitor life signs on all PRECEPT IT Servers 24/7. Should a particular problem occur, an engineer would be notified via SMS to deal with the particular issue.

There are number of cameras both external and internal to the data centre. These record all activity and are movement activated. Videos are retained for 18 months unless un-used.Data Centre entrances both external and internal are monitored. As centre operates a largely escorted access, all access is logged by swipe cards which are registered to individuals with Atlas’ team.

The system used a hybrid ambient filtered air cooling and conventional dual HVAC system (the latter element providing data centre +50%). This enables most efficient use of cooling with as low an energy footprint as possible.

Two large and two smaller units. Maintenance is annual bearing in mind that ambient air cooling maintains a large element of the data centre cooling regime reducing conventional HVAC use CIAT & Mistubishi Electrics. The data centre maintains the ability to support full cooling in the event of any single element in the infrastructure (Ambient or HVAC) failure.

Currently feeds from ESB & NIE. These feeds are the same vault at a numbers of points.

The area is in an industrial zone and patrolled by private security guards. In addition the area has its own police force (Belfast Harbour Police who also are responsible for security). The latter provides camera based car registration plate recognition of traffic in and out of the area.

Yes. In the event of any failure, ambient lighting is maintained to the exits and klaxon style alarms are used in the event of serious incident such as fire.

Any electrical shutdown would be supported by automatic generator failover.

1 x generator is in use with 12 hours on a full tank with data center at full load.Maintenance and testing is monthly as per manufacturer recommendation.  No fuel is stored onsite for safety reasons. We have contracts in place with suppliers for emergency refills. Fuel is tested as part of a 6 monthly schedule

FM200 system inert gas fire suppression system. System is inspected annually including all tank tests, refills and pressure testing.

Yes. Fire retardant sealant is used to seal such areas as is required for fire suppression system to operate successfully.

Precept IT adheres to Good Security Practice and takes Internet Security extremely seriously. Precept IT shall use best efforts to prevent denial of service attacks, viruses, worms, hackers or other malicious events or codes from affecting service availability. In addition, Precept IT will keep confidential all of your information held by it in the course of providing the services and use such information only for the purposes provided for in this agreement. Precept IT currently utilities security appliances made by Cisco Systems. Notably all servers are protected by a variety of PIX or ASA security appliances depending on the needs of the client and hosting contract agreed.

Precept IT shall provide 24x7x52 service availability for your hosted service, except where essential maintenance is required. Essential maintenance will be carried out outside the standard UK working day (9am-5pm) and Precept IT will notify the client of this work 7 days in advance of completion. Precept IT does not guarantee service availability under this SLA and no service credits are available for temporary loss of service.

Precept IT ensures that it has adequate N+1 equipment on firewalls, switches and servers when deploying new equipment in the advent of hardware failure. This allows a direct swap out with a minimum of fuss of downtime.