Whipcord Blog

If you’re seriously considering moving from an in-house server room to a colocation facility, you'll likely have some questions about power. What is a Volt-Ampere, you may be asking, and how is a VA rating different from a power rating in Watts?

When you take advantage of colocation you’re renting space in a data centre for your servers, storage hardware and network devices, leveraging the facility’s resiliency and physical security to provide you the ideal environment for your infrastructure. However, with the rise of cloud services, you may be wondering how colocation is still relevant?

Wow! After a big week in Boston at the Inbound 2017 Conference, I’m excited to head back to Canada and share all my newfound knowledge with my team.

As a business, your recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) are important aspects to your disaster recovery plan. As part of that plan, your data should be backed up or replicated and knowing your RPO and RTO will help you make an informed decision on what’s right for your business.

In 1950, mathematician Alan Turing shared his belief that computers would one day be so powerful that they would be able to think and also that artificial intelligence would become a reality. He created the Universal Turing Machine in 1936 that could be programmed to do anything, thus starting a new era of business computing. Turing also had a huge impact during World War II, but this wasn’t widely known until the 1970s as his work for the military was considered top-secret.

The biggest concern during a disaster is the financial loss that businesses will incur based on their ability to keep recovery time (RTO) low. Larger corporations have the financial resources and staff to reduce downtime, but the statistics for small to medium sized businesses are not as encouraging. It’s important to have a plan in case of disaster – which can be anything from a natural disaster to an internal failure. But, the decision on which service to utilize will depend on your in-house IT specialists so before making your decision you’ll want to consider your available resources, risks and the subsequent financial losses you may face.

When talking about disaster, most people immediately think of natural disasters, but there are more risks than just heavy rain or damaging winds. It’s important to consider man-made disasters when assessing your risks like chemical spills, cyberattacks or arson.

You can arm your company with all the best resources from software to hardware, but you’re still only as strong as your weakest link. Did you know that ‘people’ pose the highest security threat? It’s important that everyone within your organization adheres to a set of best practice security measures and knows what to do and who to talk to about cyber security, because it’s not enough to only be protected by an anti-virus.

At Whipcord we’re proud of our talented team - from the members of our Network Operations Centre (NOC) to our front-line sales team, we work hard to provide our clients with comprehensive high touch service. Today we’re featuring a newer member of our NOC who was integral in developing our new Bandwidth Accounting System.

If your company has experienced security issues, you may be wondering where you went wrong? You’ll be surprised to know that when it comes to protecting your infrastructure, there’s more to it than just the physical location of your servers and the software security you utilize. 

The Veeam ^® Availability Platform enables businesses of all sizes to ensure Availability for virtual, physical and cloud-based workloads. Veeam, through Whipcord, is offering free licences with only storage costs until December 31, 2017.

It’s undisputable that cloud solutions are on the rise, with Forbes predicting that within the next year 80% of all IT budgets will be committed to cloud solutions. The cloud continues to gain momentum as perception positively increases, and there are many advantages influencing the rise in businesses making the shift towards it.

There’s a misconception surrounding the cloud that it’s complicated. If you ask around, most people would give you a different interpretation of what they think it is. But ironically, the cloud offers a far more simplistic storage solution than previous methods. The need for cloud services is on the rise, with Gartner predicting “IaaS will grow 36.8% this year and reach $34.6 billion."

Many people believe that your data floats into cyberspace where it hangs out until you need it again. Hollywood has also created this unrealistic myth that your data is easily available to hackers.

The truth is, the cloud has a physical location and, in this case, it’s located in our data centre. Think of the cloud as a safety deposit box and the data center as the bank. You store all your valuable data in our facility, taking advantage of the security and maintenance perks.

A solid disaster recovery plan ensures your company is resilient to IT disruptions and is able to restore services in case of disaster. Veeam's Availability Suite™ 9.5 offers more than just regular backups, instead it leverages IT investments in server virtualization, modern storage and the cloud. Together, Veeam, Whipcord and our partner Open Storage Solutions make it simple to create a comprehensive Availability strategy that includes an off-site infrastructure in the cloud.

Although cloud replication has proven itself to be a trusted and long running system to keeping your backup data secure and up to date, I have discovered that it involves exactly zero clouds. While this was a small setback in my research, I now know that Replication gives businesses and networks a cloud-based replica of your environment. This replica allows for easy access to a recent backup of a singular virtual machine, a set of VM’s (Virtual Machines) or even an entire network, along with the ability to switch over to said replica should anything go wrong with your own environment.

If you use a computer often, you've likely have had inconvenient experiences resulting in data loss. From accidentally deleting a work-in-progress to your network being three feet deep in water, data loss can leave a serious negative impact on your businesses performance. Fortunately, services such as Veeam Cloud Connect Backup can be a solution to these problems, letting you can rest easy knowing you have a (literal) backup plan.

Whipcord is excited to announce our expansion into the Toronto market and to help us kick off our launch, we're co-hosting an event on February 22 with Veeam and CareTek.

Data centre services company, Whipcord, sees success in 2016, looks to increased growth in 2017

We're Canadian...eh? 

Whipcord is proudly Canadian owned and operated with all of our facilities and infrastructure located in Canada. We guarantee that your data stays here, meaning that it's secure and not bound by the US Patriot Act.

Our team specializes in four key areas

We're a one-stop-shop for all your needs with our experts specializing in colocation, backup & replication, cloud and network and we can combine services to create the best fit for your business.

Recently we had the opportunity to attend the Convergence Conference in Calgary, Alberta with our partner Wolf Creek Public Schools. Convergence brings together teachers, technology experts within schools, and government and industry representatives from across Alberta to discover emerging technologies and trends in the marketplace.

Wolf Creek has been a partner of ours since the summer of 2016 and we were pleased that they were hosting a talk on the infrastructure solutions we have provided to them. To read more in depth about how we worked to move Wolf Creek to an offsite Infrastructure as a Service solution, download their case study!

So why would an educational organization choose Whipcord? Follow along as we discuss our top four reasons over the coming weeks.

Growing Cloud Service Provider Deploys InfiniBox to Exceed Customer Requirements and Deliver Dependable Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service

BUILDING A STRONG PARTNERSHIP THROUGH IaaS

• Wolf Creek Public Schools (WCPS) is a leading school division in Alberta for using technology to enhance student learning to meet the needs of staff, students and their parents
• Whipcord specializes in colocation, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), backup & disaster recovery and connectivity

As an addition to our growing suite of services, Whipcord is offering a flexible monitoring solution. This allows you to monitor your application, database, uptime, CPU, RAM, network, etc. - whatever is important to you.

Data services company, Whipcord expands into Vancouver, hosts launch event with Veeam

Whipcord is excited to announce our expansion into the Vancouver and Toronto markets and to help us kick off our launch, we're co-hosting an event on July 12 with partners Veeam, 3Copies and Skyway West.

Press release from Infinidat

This week we sent four of our team members to the annual Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce Golf Scramble. The Lethbridge Chamber is a strong advocate for and provides a voice for businesses in the city of Lethbridge, where our flagship location has called home for the past 16 years.

Press release from Infinidat