recognizes that downtime is not an option for your servers. That's why we invest heavily in hardware and facilities that ensure that your clients are up and running on the web 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

SMI's Network Operations Center (NOC) features raised flooring. This enables a constant flow of conditioned air and helps to maintain uniform room temperature at all times. In addition, raised flooring reduces static and ensures a professional, computer-grade environment for your servers. The facility is equipped with a Raytheon fire suppression system, designed to immediately extinguish fire and protect equipment and personnel. The command center is controlled via automatic doors to further secure and protect the equipment. Finally, the NOC is located in a secure, monitored, class A building with a minimum number of approved personnel allowed access to highly sensitive areas and equipment. A detailed record of employee and visitor entry is maintained at all times.

To guard against local power failures, SMI has two industrial-grade, three-phase Liebert UPS systems. These act as back-up batteries, maintaining uninterrupted power in case of surges or power outages. With these back-up systems in place, we can keep our network up and running indefinitely without relying on external power.

SMI's NOC has two Liebert 10 ton industrial air conditioners that condition our computer rooms and operations center. Air temperature is maintained at an optimal 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

SMI's web servers are custom-built industrial machines designed for a 24/7 web serving environment. All SMI servers are equipped with dual-redundant, 450-watt power supplies, hot swap Seagate Baracuda/Cheetah drives and force-filtered cooling systems. In addition, our NOC is equipped with an inventory of identically configured, burned-in standby servers.

All of SMI's custom web servers are equipped with a positive-pressure filtered-air system. Four large fans pull filtered air into each server's protective case, and the components within are cooled by fans that circulate this purified air. This constant introduction of clean air into the case creates a positive pressure environment ensuring that dust and particles remain outside the server.

The drives and drive bays of all SMI servers are constructed from high-grade aluminum and rest in shock-mounted drive cages, which adds to the durability of the hardware. SMI's drives proudly feature the lowest failure rate in the industry.

Each server employs dual-redundant hot swap power supplies. If a power supply were to fail, the server would continue running with power from the alternate supply. Meanwhile, alarms would alert a technician, who would quickly restore redundancy. In the meantime, servers and client sites would experience no downtime.

We keep spare servers online of all CPU configurations. If a server were to experience a hardware failure, we would turn a key, grab the handle on the drive, pull it out and insert it into an identical standby CPU. We would then reboot the second machine, and the server would be up and running again in a matter of minutes.