Roadwarriors know what it means to be able to pack a bag. Being mobile is very important to me and my line of work – I’ve come to depend on certain devices, tools and methods to not only make myself comfortable and able to work but to simply stay sane. There are too many things that change technologically to rely on the latest gadget that comes along for important things such as recalling a password, taking notes and looking up information.

Right now I’m sitting about an hour away from my home (main) office at my colocation service provider, Sonic.net. I house my bare-metal primary Internet servers here. I primarily use the server to host my websites, e-mail servers, DNS, and projects such as what is currently called Echonet.

Choosing Sonic.net was a somewhat difficult process (though the choice was obvious if not looked at from a financial-only perspective). I really wanted a data center at least semi-close to where I live (1hr away is doable) so if I really, really had to, I could drive down and fix something myself. But it wasn’t just that – Sonic’s atmosphere is something I love just being around. Like I tell most people, it’s like hanging out at a dot-com company before the dot-com bust. There’s a bunch of nerdy (cool) people walking around, playing arcade games and ping-pong, talking about their projects.. there’s the data center itself with Star Trek style security doors that open on one side, scan your RFID card *and* take your fingerprints, weigh you (so when you leave you aren’t holding a stack of rackmount equipment) and then let you in.

The office I’m sitting in now waiting for some backups to complete is specifically for colocated customers that need somewhere to work quietly. It’s an amazing perk to have access to all of these things…and like I said, I definitely do pay for it – but you know, you get what you pay for. I just wish I had more to throw down every month on a dedicated cabinet so my server isn’t sitting alongside many other peoples’ stuff, where a cord may accidentally get yanked, or worse. Maybe some day.

This, in addition to the fact that Sonic.net continually wins awards for respecting and protecting their customers’ privacy. This was just the icing on the cake for me. Not only are they technically capable of building and maintaining an infrastructure strong enough for thousands of people and businesses to rely on Internet access, hosting, etc., they really do strive to be the best out there regarding what I feel is most important this day in age – giving the customer the right for their data to be protected. They’re one of the most respected ISPs/data centers in the country (world?) when it comes to privacy and security. And that’s one of my favorite things about them.

Cheers, Sonic.net – thanks for giving me the tools, infrastructure, and security my business needs – and Street Fighter, of course.

Categorised as: Blogs | Technical